Originally posted by Johnathan Napalm
What I mean was, some indepedent scientific studies detailing why KB training is better than the bodybuilding routines we already know and use, not more of the same stuff from Dragondoor fan club. KB looks no different than the obsolete tool that Kyokushin used to use in the 60's. (Take a look at Oyama's old books.) The ancient Chinese martial artists used to train with something that looked like KB, except that it was made of stone.
First -
The main difference between what Pavel recommends and what "traditional" lifting promotes is the use of irradiation rather than isolation. When you do
anything, be it a punch, a kick, lifting a box, sitting down or standing up, the muscles work
together, not separately. The idea of isolating a particular muscle group works, sure. There are years and years of bodybuilders that can show how big they got from isolation. But the big name weight lifters, the guys that could uproot buildings, developed their power not from isolation but from irradiation (i.e. using coordinated lifting rather than picking out only one muscle group). This is the benefit of Pavel's training - unified, coordinated, functional strength.
Second -
Defining "obsolete" could be a chore. The kettlebell's main difference from a similarly weighted dumbbell is that the weight is not centrally located along the same axis as the grip. You can lift a 35 pound dumbbell up over your head in a single hand press pretty easily, I'd gather. Interestingly enough, doing the same press with a 16kg KB proves much more difficult since the weight is located elsewhere (in my Army office, among trained and fit soldiers, I have only found 2 other than myself that is able to perform even a single rep of an inverted KB press, much less train with multiple sets of 5 - 10; one guy almost KO'd himself as he attempted
one inverted press and nearly dropped the KB on his own head!).
Old doesn't mean obsolete. The problem is that many folks throw out the old ways with the old equipment, and forget what the old equipment was for in the first place. Then, when they pick up the old equipment out of curiosity, they no longer know how to use it to produce the results gained by those who had no other methods available to them.
Gambarimasu.
:asian:
