The Metabolic Swing

On a separate piece of paper, write down the following questions. 

1) What is the definition of a squat movement?
2) What is the definition of a hinge movement?
3) What is patterning?
4) What is grinding?... no laughing here!
5) What is the "pedal" and what is the "brake" in terms of the kettlebell swing?
6) What does "metabolic" mean?

The Metabolic Swing

by Dan John – 2/15/2011

Next Page | Pages 1 2

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_metabolic_swing

The Unknown Movement Pattern

I'm going to tell you about the single most powerful movement pattern you can perform. Sadly, most people have no concept of how to do it.

It's the hinge.

What's the hinge? It's a basic human body movement that few athletes and bodybuilders bother to train. It's the tackle and the check in hockey. It's that dynamic hip snap involved in the kettlebell swing, the snatch, and the clean. It's also the vertical jump and the standing long jump.

It's not a squatty, slow move, but rather a dynamic snap. The truth is, the hinge, in its own right, is more "powerful" than the squat.

The Explosive Snap

The hinge is simply achieved by pushing the butt back.

Think about it: your upper body isn't sitting on top of your legs like a shack on stilts. Rather your body is "slung" between the legs. Here's the issue: most people, at first, will excessively bend the knees. You need minimal knee bend. Here's the formula:

Squat: Maximal knee bend and maximal hip bend

Hinge: Minimal knee bend and maximal hip bend

The benefits of a powerful hinge?

1.  Just learning to do the move correctly can open up your hamstring flexibility.

2.  Doing it slowly with a massive load will impress your friends for generations.

3.  Learning to have symmetry in the movement can jumpstart your injury-free career.

4.  Doing it fast? It's a one-stop shop to fat loss, power, and improved athletic ability!

Swings: A Metabolic Hit

Swings are the top of the food chain in hinge movements. They're also the most underappreciated exercise in life, sport, and your gym. In fact, if all I could do for an athlete is teach him a proper swing and encourage some form of deadlift, I'd be making a huge impact.

The metabolic hit of a correct set of swings is going to be shocking. It's one of the best conditioning exercises I know. And according to a new study coming out of the University of Wisconsin, the kettlebell snatch – which is quite similar, metabolically speaking – is "equivalent to running a six-minute mile pace" and "burns as many calories as cross-country skiing up hill at a fast pace."

So what's the best way to perform a swing? First, you pattern, then you grind, and finally, you swing!

Patterning: The Wall Drill

"Patterning" – learning and engraining the hinge movement correctly – is important. That might sound odd because the hinge is such a natural human movement. But, when load is added many people cheat themselves by not pushing the butt back and trying to use the quads as the focus.

So, first we pattern using the wall drill:

1.  Stand next to a wall facing away. Hinge so your butt touches the wall. Step about six inches from the wall and repeat the butt touch.

2.  Now, simply move an inch or two more and repeat. Keep doing this: touch the wall and scoot out a little more.

When you feel your hamstrings burning and shaking, you have it right. Like a bow and arrow, those strings can deliver an unbelievable amount of power.

Grinding

After patterning, I work on grinding. Grinding is simply slow strength moves that can work wonders for your patterning while delivering a lot of metabolic work and improving your strength.

Using either a heavy sandbag, a kettlebell, or a weight plate, hug the weight to your chest. I suggest keeping the weight over your sternum and upper abs. (Think of the waiter's bow exercise, only with the weight held a little lower.) Now, repeat the hinge movement.

I usually do a set of five, then repeat the wall drill.

This movement, which I'm now calling the Bulgarian Goat Belly Swing, is an excellent way to slow down the hinge and teach the keys to the more dynamic work: pressurized breathing, the correct feeling of the swing hip, and the abdominal tightness that insures stability.

Symmetry

Before I move on to the million-dollar move, I always take a few minutes to check symmetry.

I use a mirror and a single kettlebell. Hold the 'bell in one hand and practice the hinge feeling. Again, if you have to re-pattern the hinge with the wall drill and some Bulgarian Goat Belly Swings, that's fine.

I look for the "CSZ" line. That's the "chin, sternum and zipper" line: all three should remain in a single vertical line. Holding a kettlebell in one hand like you would a suitcase, do several hinges.

I'm a big fan of single-arm moves, but this one really helps you tie down the "opposite side." If you see yourself pulling "off line," re-pattern the first two drills.

The Perfect Swing

If I had to pick one move that will burn fat, loosen the hips and legs, and raise the buttocks to an eye-pleasing height, it would be the swing.

The swing can be taught horrifically. One TV expert came out with a DVD on kettlebells and the swing technique is immoral. The swing is a simple move to watch, but a little more complex to learn. 

Michael Perry, a Russian Kettlebell Certified instructor, offers an excellent summary which I'll borrow from below:

Start with a symmetrical stance and bend the knees slightly. This knee bend shouldn't change much throughout the movement.

Find the crease at your hips, put your hands in that crease, stick your butt behind you, and feel your hands fall into that crease. Make sure your spine is neutral while sticking your butt back. Breathe in and fill your diaphragm. This is the bottom of the swing.

Place your forearms on your inner thigh/top of quad with a straight arm. Push your arms into your legs and envision yourself holding two sheets of paper underneath your armpits. Keep your armpits tight and arms close to the ribcage. This is how to stay connected at the bottom of the swing.

Bring your hips forward quickly, keep the arms tight to the ribcage, but allow the kettlebell to float to the 3 or 9 o'clock position. Snap your hips and clench your glutes while shortening the distance from your ribcage to your pelvis. This is you bracing at the top of the swing.

Exhale but stay tight at the top of the swing. Keep your hands on the kettlebell to control it, but don't hold on too tight.

I also like the gas pedal/brake analogy:

Hip-snap and pop the glutes = gas pedal

Tighten the lats and brace the abdomen = brakes

Make sure that you don't use too much gas or too much brakes; balance them out to make the drive nice.

Okay, ready for some sore glutes and hammies? Here are some favorite workouts using the swing.

The X-Swings-Per-Day Method

Set a rep goal. It might be as little as 75 swings performed three days per week.

I made a goal of 250 swings per day in January and everybody asked me about my diet.  It was awful and I ate and drank too much. But I started looking pretty good from the 250 swings. Yes, swings work that well.

So, one simple route is to come up with a number: 75 swings is excellent for beginners. Break it into bite-size sets like 20 or 25.

I Go/You Go

If it's true that we need to teach our hearts to climb up and recover quickly (i.e. waving the heart rate), well, here's my contribution. This is my best swing workout.

The rep scheme 5-10-15-15-10-5. Get a partner and alternate sets. That's sixty reps, and the rest period is only a few seconds between sets. Although you can do this up to five rounds, try one or two first, then make plans.

30/30

Another rep scheme, 30/30, also works well. Thirty seconds of swings, followed by thirty seconds of rest, is a marvelous way to get a lot of work into a short period of time.

If all you have is ten minutes, try 30/30. Toss in a set of farmers walks and you've taken care of business.

As Good As It Gets

The hip-hinge is as good as it gets for the human body in terms of performance. Take the time to learn the basics and make this a big gun in your training arsenal!

PF4L: Thursday, April 25

Please read the following articles and answer questions in complete sentences in your notebook.  

1) Do squats hurt your knees (in the general sense)?

2) Do you squat on top of your legs or between them?

3) How far apart should feet be on the squat according to the author of this article?

4) What do you prefer, the "Butt Burner 4000" or "The Eagle"?

5) What is the mistake that most trainees make?

Goblet Squats 101

by Dan John – 3/03/2011

The greatest impact I've had on strength and conditioning starts with a story:

Years ago, faced with 400 athletes who couldn't squat correctly, I attempted move after move, lift after lift, to teach the squat. I failed each and every time.

I saw glimmers of hope from teaching one kid the Zercher squat (weight held in the crooks of the elbows) and a few picked up the pattern when we lifted kettlebells from the ball off the ground (called "potato sack squats" because they look like you're picking up a sack of potatoes off the ground). But nothing was really working.

Somewhere between a Zercher and a potato squat was the answer. It came to me when I was resting between swings with the weight held in front of me like I was holding the Holy Grail. I squatted down from there, pushed my knees out with my elbows and, behold, the goblet squat!

Yes, the squat is that easy. It's a basic human movement; you just have to be reminded how to do it. Remember, squats don't hurt your knees, but how you perform them can.

Squats can do more for total mass and body strength than probably all other lifts combined. Doing them wrong can do more damage than probably all the other moves, too. The goblet squat fixes all.

Form: Squat Between Your Legs!

Let's start simply. Find a place where no one is watching and squat down.

At the bottom, the deepest you can go, push your knees out with your elbows. Relax. Go a bit deeper. Your feet should be flat on the floor.

For most people, this small movement – driving your knees out with your elbows – will simplify squatting forever.

Next, try this little drill: Stand arms-length from a doorknob (or partner). Grab the handle with both hands and get your chest up. Up!

Imagine being on a California beach when a swimsuit model walks by. When an athlete does this, he immediately puffs up the chest, which tightens the lower back and locks the whole upper body. The lats naturally spread a bit and the shoulders come back a little. Now, lower yourself down.

What people discover at this moment is a basic physiological fact: The legs are not stuck like stilts under the torso. Rather, the torso is slung between the legs.

As you go down, leaning back with arms straight, you'll discover one of the true keys of lifting: you squat between your legs. You don't fold and unfold like an accordion; you sink between your legs. Don't just sit and read this. Get up and do it!

Now you're ready to learn the single best lifting movement of all time: the goblet squat.

Get Started

Grab a dumbbell or kettlebell and hold it against your chest. With a kettlebell, hold the horns, but with a dumbbell just hold it vertical by the one end, like you're holding a goblet against your chest. Hence the name, "goblet squats."

Now with the weight cradled against your chest, squat down with the goal of having your elbows – which are pointed downward because you're cradling the bell – slide past the inside of your knees. It's okay to have the elbows push the knees out as you descend.

6' 9" Olympic basketball player Duncan Reid and 5' 2" Alyssa Umsawasdi.

The point? Each can goblet squat just fine.

Stop Thinking. Start Squatting.

Here's the million-dollar key to learning movements in the gym: Let the body teach the body what to do. Try to keep your brain out of it! Over-thinking a movement often leads to problems. Allow the elbows to glide down by touching the inner knees and good things will happen.

The more an athlete thinks, the more the athlete can find ways to screw things up. Don't believe me? Join a basketball team and get into a crucial situation. Shoot a one-and-one with three seconds to go, down by two points, and get back to me later if you decided thinkingwas a good idea.

Goblet squats are all the squatting most people need. If the bar hurts in back squats (I won't comment), your wrists hurt in front squat (swallowing my tongue here) and the aerobics instructor has banned you from using the step boxes for your one-legged variations, try the goblet squat.

Seriously, once you grab a bell over 100 pounds and do a few sets of 10 in the goblet squat, you might wonder how the toilet got so low the next morning.

Foot Placement and Patterning

Where do you place your feet? Do three consecutive vertical jumps, then look down. This is roughly where you want to place your feet every time you squat. The toes should be out a little. You don't want to go east and west, but you want some toe-out.

This drill, along with the goblet squat, teaches patterning. Unless you already have the pattern, you shouldn't move into heavier work.

From Goblets to Grinds

Like goblet squats, I also have my athletes do grinding moves called double kettlebell front squats (DKFS). The load remains in front, forcing the whole core to stay rigid. Moreover, with two bells, you can still have your elbows down to push the knees out.

Feet a little too narrow here. This guy clearly
doesn't know what he's doing.

DKFS are exhausting in an odd way: like wrestling an anaconda, you seem to be slowly choking yourself to death. The pressure is also teaching you to stay tight, but continue to grease up and down.

Also, the DKFS seems to really work the upper back in the style I call "compression." It's a forgotten method of muscle and strength building where the constant squeezing of a muscle system is the movement, for lack of a better term.

The goblet squat and the DKFS lend themselves to the two greatest workouts I know: the ButtBurner 4000 and the Eagle.

The Workouts

In my last two articles, I introduced these two exercises: the Bulgarian Goat Bag Swing and the Farmers Walk. Let's look at all the fun you can have with these two!

Grab a kettlebell or dumbbell in the 25-60 pound range. Go lighter than you think. Now, do this:

The ButtBurner 4000

1. Perform one goblet squat, then one Bulgarian Goat Bag Swing.
2. Perform two goblet squats, then two Bulgarian Goat Bag Swings.
3. Now, three and three. Work your way up to ten and ten... if you can.

If you just go to fives, that's 15 reps of each exercise. Tens gets you 55 each, and a lot of lost breath. It should go without saying but I'll say it anyway: build up on this one slowly.

This combo will revitalize the entire lower body and teach you to really own both patterns (hinge and squat).

The Eagle

The "Eagle" is named after the school's mascot I used to teach at in Utah. It combines the farmer's walk (the basic patterning or teaching tool for loaded carries) with the grinding double kettlebell front squat.

It's simple:

1. Grab two kettlebells (I'm not sure anything else works, but you can experiment) and do five to eight front squats.


2. Drop the bells to your sides and walk away, perhaps as far as 40 meters.


3. Do another set of front squats.


4. Walk again.

If you can do eight sets of eight with this exercise (plus serious farmer walks in between) you are in rare air.

Greatness with Patience

The mistake most trainees make is that they try to move too quickly for complex movements before getting the form down. But greatness resides in those who have the patience to master the patterns first, then add complexity later.

The simple patterns can also make for the most shockingly exhausting workouts. Try the ButtBurner 4000 and the Eagle sometime and see the value of simple, hard work.

(Personal Fitness For Life (PF4L): April 22

Please read the following article and answer the questions that follow below in your notebook.  Please answer questions in complete sentences.

1) When do the majority of exercise-related deaths occur?

2) What are three reasons that walking is an excellent exercise?

3) Why is the squat an excellent choice for "best exercise"?

4) What is "sarcopenia"?

5) What is "H.I.T." of "H.I.I.T"?

6) What is a benefit of stair running?

What’s the Single Best Exercise?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Published: April 15, 2011

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• LINKEDIN
• COMMENTS (23)
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

Let’s consider the butterfly. One of the most taxing movements in sports, the butterfly requires greater energy than bicycling at 14 miles per hour, running a 10-minute mile, playing competitive basketball or carrying furniture upstairs. It burns more calories, demands larger doses of oxygen and elicits more fatigue than those other activities, meaning that over time it should increase a swimmer’s endurance and contribute to weight control.

Enlarge This Image

Jonathan De Villiers for The New York Times

Readers’ Comments

Share your thoughts on the Well blog.

Enlarge This Image

ENERGY WELL SPENT In METs (metabolic equivalent to task), a measure of energy exerted for a given activity.

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (23) »

So is the butterfly the best singleexercise that there is? Well, no. The butterfly “would probably get my vote for the worst” exercise, said Greg Whyte, a professor of sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University in England and a past Olympian in the modern pentathlon, known for his swimming. The butterfly, he said, is “miserable, isolating, painful.” It requires a coach, a pool and ideally supplemental weight and flexibility training to reduce the high risk of injury.

Ask a dozen physiologists which exercise is best, and you’ll get a dozen wildly divergent replies. “Trying to choose” a single best exercise is “like trying to condense the entire field” of exercise science, said Martin Gibala, the chairman of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

But when pressed, he suggested one of the foundations of old-fashioned calisthenics: the burpee, in which you drop to the ground, kick your feet out behind you, pull your feet back in and leap up as high as you can. “It builds muscles. It builds endurance.” He paused. “But it’s hard to imagine most people enjoying” an all-burpees program, “or sticking with it for long.”

And sticking with an exercise is key, even if you don’t spend a lot of time working out. The health benefits of activity follow a breathtakingly steep curve. “The majority of the mortality-related benefits” from exercising are due to the first 30 minutes of exercise, said Timothy Church, M.D., who holds the John S. McIlhenny endowed chair in health wisdom at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. A recent meta-analysis of studies about exercise and mortality showed that, in general, a sedentary person’s risk of dying prematurely from any cause plummeted by nearly 20 percent if he or she began brisk walking (or the equivalent) for 30 minutes five times a week. If he or she tripled that amount, for instance, to 90 minutes of exercise four or five times a week, his or her risk of premature death dropped by only another 4 percent. So the one indisputable aspect of the single best exercise is that it be sustainable. From there, though, the debate grows heated.

“I personally think that brisk walking is far and away the single best exercise,” said Michael Joyner, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a leading researcher in the field of endurance exercise.

As proof, he points to the work of Hiroshi Nose, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of sports medical sciences at Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan, who has enrolled thousands of older Japanese citizens in an innovative, five-month-long program of brisk, interval-style walking (three minutes of fast walking, followed by three minutes of slower walking, repeated 10 times). The results have been striking. “Physical fitness — maximal aerobic power and thigh muscle strength — increased by about 20 percent,” Dr. Nose wrote in an e-mail, “which is sure to make you feel about 10 years younger than before training.” The walkers’ “symptoms of lifestyle-related diseases (hypertension, hyperglycemia and obesity) decreased by about 20 percent,” he added, while their depression scores dropped by half.

Walking has also been shown by other researchers to aid materially in weight control. A 15-year study found that middle-aged women who walked for at least an hour a day maintained their weight over the decades. Those who didn’t gained weight. In addition, a recent seminal study found that when older people started a regular program of brisk walking, the volume of their hippocampus, a portion of the brain involved in memory, increased significantly.

But let’s face it, walking holds little appeal — or physiological benefit — for anyone who already exercises. “I nominate the squat,” said Stuart Phillips, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and an expert on the effects of resistance training on the human body. The squat “activates the body’s biggest muscles, those in the buttocks, back and legs.” It’s simple. “Just fold your arms across your chest,” he said, “bend your knees and lower your trunk until your thighs are about parallel with the floor. Do that 25 times. It’s a very potent exercise.” Use a barbell once the body-weight squats grow easy.

The squat, and weight training in general, are particularly good at combating sarcopenia, he said, or the inevitable and debilitating loss of muscle mass that accompanies advancing age. “Each of us is experiencing sarcopenia right this minute,” he said. “We just don’t realize it.” Endurance exercise, he added, unlike resistance training, does little to slow the condition.

Resistance training is good for weight control, as well. In studies conducted by other researchers, a regimen of simple weight training by sedentary men and women led to a significant decrease in waist circumference and abdominal fat. It also has been found to lower the risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Counterintuitively, weight training may even improve cardiovascular fitness, Phillips said, as measured by changes in a person’s VO2max, or the maximum amount of oxygen that the heart and lungs can deliver to the muscles. Most physiologists believe that only endurance-exercise training can raise someone’s VO2max. But in small experiments, he said, weight training, by itself, effectively increased cardiovascular fitness.

“I used to run marathons,” he said. Now he mostly weight-trains, “and I’m in better shape.”

But there’s something undignified and boring about a squats-only routine. And the science supporting weight training as an all-purpose exercise approach, while provocative, remains inconclusive. Is there a single activity that has proved to be, at once, more strenuous than walking while building power like the squat?

“I think, actually, that you can make a strong case for H.I.T.,” Gibala said. High-intensity interval training, or H.I.T. as it’s familiarly known among physiologists, is essentially all-interval exercise. As studied in Gibala’s lab, it involves grunting through a series of short, strenuous intervals on specialized stationary bicycles, known as Wingate ergometers. In his first experiments, riders completed 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the volunteers repeated the interval several times, for a total of two to three minutes of extremely intense exercise. After two weeks, the H.I.T. riders, with less than 20 minutes of hard effort behind them, had increased their aerobic capacity as much as riders who had pedaled leisurely for more than 10 hours. Other researchers also have found that H.I.T. reduces blood-sugar levels and diabetes risk, and Gibala anticipates that it will aid in weight control, although he hasn’t studied that topic fully yet.

The approach seems promising, since most of us have minimal time to exercise each week. Gibala last month published a new study of H.I.T., requiring only a stationary bicycle and some degree of grit. In this modified version, you sprint for 60 seconds at a pace that feels unpleasant but sustainable, followed by 60 seconds of pedaling easily, then another 60-second sprint and recovery, 10 times in all. “There’s no particular reason why” H.I.T. shouldn’t be adaptable to almost any sport, Gibala said, as long as you adequately push yourself.

Of course, to be effective, H.I.T. must hurt. But a study published last month found that when a group of recreational runners practiced H.I.T. on the track, they enjoyed the workout more than a second group of runners who jogged continuously for 50 minutes. The H.I.T. runners, the study’s authors suspect, were less bored.

The only glaring inadequacy of H.I.T. is that it builds muscular strength less effectively than, say, the squat. But even that can be partially remedied, Gibala said: “Sprinting up stairs is a power workout and interval session simultaneously.”Meaning that running up steps just might be the single best exercise of all. Great news for those of us who could never master the butterfly.

Gretchen Reynolds (gretchenreynolds@hotmail.com) writes the Phys Ed column for The Times’s Well blog. Editor: Tony Gervino (t.gervino-MagGroup@nytimes.com).