Ep. #1180: Pat Flynn on Fun & Functional Kettlebell Training

Pat Flynn: [00:00:00] I think kettlebells are a fun training tool, right? They’re very dynamic. If you like training with complexes and circuits, they’re really well situated for that style of training, but they’re versatile enough that you can hit the mobility aspect. You can build muscle with kettlebells. Again, I’m not going to claim they’re the ideal bodybuilding tool by any means, but certainly you can put the basic muscle building principles into use with kettlebells.

So if you’re looking for just bang for buck efficiency, something that’s a little bit different, doesn’t take up a lot of space. I think this conversation might. At least intrigue you 

Mike Matthews: howdy ho friend and welcome to a another episode of muscle for life Thank you for joining me today. I am mike matthews your host And in today’s episode, you are going to be hearing from my friend, Pat Flynn, who I welcomed back on the show to talk about kettlebell training.

Pat has a new book out called Strong On 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility in 20 Minutes or Less. And in that book, Pat offers a [00:01:00] blueprint for transforming your fitness using just one powerful tool, and that is, of course, the kettlebell. And in today’s episode, he is going to talk about the kettlebell, what it is good for, what it is not so good for, how to make kettlebell training fun, how to make it functional, how to make it sustainable.

Pat shares the big six exercises as he calls them and talks about why each is one of the big six and how to perform each of them correctly, how to do them effectively. Pat is going to talk about practical programming, so how to make kettlebell training effective, how to integrate it into your existing regimen depending on your goals and depending on your circumstances and more.

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So go to buylegion. com slash elevate now, try it risk free. And while it can’t bulletproof your immune system, it can’t put the brakes on aging. It can help you stay healthier, heartier, and happier. Mr. Pat Flynn, I haven’t seen you in a while. You’re much hairier than the last time I saw you. I’m a new 

Pat Flynn: man.

Mike Matthews reborn from the ashes. Yeah. Yeah. I just just totally let yourself go for about a year and a half. And voila, you can, you too can look like this, right? Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And then you get another round of reborn when you shear it all off. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So I go in these cycles I’m sure.

Nobody has [00:06:00] followed me for that length of time. But if you have, you realize that, I don’t know, every five to seven years, we grow out all the hair and then we cut it off. So yeah, you just, and for no particular reason, usually it starts because I just get lazy and I’m like, ah, it doesn’t look too terribly bad.

And my wife hasn’t threatened divorce yet, so we’ll just keep going. And then. You just get really annoyed with the long hair. Like all these little things just add up, constantly getting in your mouth or just stuff getting stuck in your beard. And then I just throw my hands up. I shave it all off.

And then I look like you for a while, just not as handsome. 

Mike Matthews: My hair’s getting a little bit long, but I just let it grow. I don’t have as much endurance as you but I let it grow until I’ve had enough, which in Florida in the summer, I don’t last very long in the winter. I can last longer.

But it’s just that where eventually I get sick of the longer hair and it just gets in the way and it feels like not, I’m not a claustrophobic person, but it starts to feel, it starts to feel oppressive, like the amount of hair, and then I cut it and then [00:07:00] I repeat, but I don’t do the beard just because.

One, I don’t actually think I would enjoy the experience and then two, getting through that phase, that awkward phase of where I’m at now, which is just like whatever I shave every so often, let it grow and whatever, getting from that to a beard that is even Functional and that isn’t just weird and patchy and I have no I haven’t stuck through 

Pat Flynn: that phase Yeah, you have to commit.

So my that’s my advice if you want to do the hair and the beard you have to be willing To be very uncomfortable and awkward looking for a little because like even with long hair you get there’s that weird phase but it looks like you have a Weird bowl cut or something like it’s like as dorky as anything could look and my wife was like You know What the hell are you doing?

I’m like, just bear with me, hon. It’s going to look cool. Just stick with me through this time. I promise you it’ll be worth it. Same thing with the beard. There’s that phase where it’s not just awkward looking, but it’s super itchy. Yeah. You just, if you just push through. You can do it. But it takes real commitment.

So there’s a lesson there. I’ll let the [00:08:00] listeners draw whatever that is for themselves. Like fitness, 

Mike Matthews: Like kettlebell training, which is actually what we’re here to to talk about. Because you have a new book that is coming out, right? It’s not out, yeah, it’s coming out in a month or so in December.

Pat Flynn: I guess depending when this airs I don’t know, but As of this recording, it comes out in two weeks December 17th, I believe. So not too long from now. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Very cool. And it’s called strong on and it is all about kettlebell training, particularly minimalist kettlebell training. I thought it’d be fun to have you on the show to talk about fitness for once.

I don’t think we’ve done a fitness episode in a very long time because Kettlebells are something that I just haven’t written or spoken much about. And I do think that they are a great training tool, but like all tools, there are circumstances to understand where it depends on what you’re trying to do and how much time you have and your inclinations and so forth.

And so here we are to [00:09:00] talk about that. I thought you’d be the perfect guy. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah thanks, dude. Yeah, appreciate it. So that’s right The book’s called strong on and dan john the great legendary dan John, he endorsed it and part of his endorsement said that this is the book that should have been written 15 years ago Right when the kettlebells were first kind of exploding.

So i’m a little bit late, but I guess it’s it’s better late than never I don’t think 

Mike Matthews: anybody does anybody own that Niche at least at least on amazon the kettlebell one. Like pavel Pat as I say pavel stuff, but I can’t say that i’ve seen his books in the bestseller lists So at least whatever amazon they show the top 25, maybe I’m sure it’s he’s still there, but there’s probably enough probably 

Pat Flynn: an opportunity that’s a good question.

I’ll be interested to see how this does, because i’m with a publisher that’s put a good amount behind this book And I pitched them saying hey I think that there’s still a lot of life In the kettlebell world and that this could be a real thing. So I guess we’ll find out and I think there’s a lot of [00:10:00] value here now to set the expectations for people And I think this is really important, Mike.

I’m not I’m not a dogmatist in fitness and religion, different story, but when it comes to, when it comes to fitness, I think that there’s lots of viable paths. And if you’re like trying to be a power lifter and have the world’s strongest deadlift, and this probably isn’t the conversation for you, right?

I’m not going to act like the kettlebell is going to replace the barbell or be superior to the barbell for certain efforts. But if you’re somebody like me and what am I like I’m a dad of Six kids like you, I run my own business. I’m doing a PhD, I’m writing all these books, like life is hectic and I don’t care about being the best in the world at anything fitness related, right?

Like I’m not training to be a figure competitor or a bodybuilder, but I do care about trying to be like as generally physically awesome as I can be right. I want to be really lean. I want to have visible abs. I want to have a good amount of muscle, at least the most I can have on like my awkwardly Irish frame.

And I want. Efficiency, and I want little clutter, and I [00:11:00] want the Swiss Army knife of functional. I know that’s a cliche term of functional fitness. And I think if that resonates with you, then the kettlebells really worth looking at, and I can help you learn how to use it. I can teach you the basic moves.

I can teach you some cool, simple programming, and we can apply all the general principles that you talk about all the time really well, Mike, in your book and your podcasts of just strength, muscle and conditioning, and just show how to implement them with kettlebell training so you can have workouts that are Not only efficacious, but I think fun.

I think it’s just fun. I think kettlebells are a fun training tool, right? They’re very dynamic. You can, if you like training with complexes and circuits, they’re really well situated for that style of training, but they’re versatile enough that you can hit the mobility aspect. You can build muscle with kettlebells.

Again, I’m not going to claim they’re the ideal body building tool by any means, but certainly you can put the basic muscle building principles into use with kettlebells. So if you’re looking for just bang for buck efficiency, something that’s a little bit different. Doesn’t take up a lot of space. I think this conversation might.

At least [00:12:00] intrigue you, to be sure, 

Mike Matthews: let’s talk more about building muscle, which is going to be one of the goals of many of the people listening. And yes, of course, you can build muscle with kettlebells, but can you 1st speak to some of the limitations? Because if somebody were to come to you and say, I don’t want to be a bodybuilder but maybe a lifestyle bodybuilder.

Like my number one goal right now is to gain muscle in the right places of my body. I want to gain muscle really as, as effectively as possible. Would you recommend kettlebell training to them? Or would you recommend some other style of training? 

Pat Flynn: If you’re just about pure optimization then I would recommend a mixed modality approach, obviously, right?

Because different tools are just going to be naturally better suited to particular jobs. And when it comes to building muscle, there’s just going to be certain tools that are going to do certain jobs better than other ones. So having a sort of collection 

Mike Matthews: or music. And why is that just for people wondering?

Cause I’ve been asked this before where [00:13:00] people come across kettlebell workouts and they’ve reached out to me and said, Hey, so I’m trying to get as jacked as possible, as quickly as possible, basically. And this looks like it could work for that, but am I missing something? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, totally. So I’ll give you, I’ll give you an idea of where a limitation with not to turn people off from kettlebells, but a limit, a real limitation of kettlebells.

I think there’s several. They’re not insurmountable, and they’re not complete dead ends. But if you’re really trying to build and develop your PECs, kettlebells are a little bit limited, right? You can do floor presses and stuff like that, but I just, I honestly don’t think they’re as good of a tool for that as the barbell or even dumbbells, right?

They’re just a little bit awkward. Or even machines, probably. Or even machines. So that’s something, but look, look, you can still just do, you can still do that it’s still fine. Like it’s not nothing. So it just, but just acknowledging that if we’re talking about pure optimization, this isn’t probably, this is not the optimal tool for that.

But then when we look at something like a military press, the kettlebell, Is great for the military press, right? [00:14:00] And like double cleans and presses are fantastic. So they’re gonna, they’re gonna hit that really well. Awesome for front squats, double kettlebell front squats. A lot of people that’s going to be, which is a deceptively hard exercise, I will say.

Yeah. And Bulgarian split squats. They’re great for that. But when we start to look towards the posterior chain I don’t know, man the deadlifting type of moves to kettlebell is somewhat limited now you can train the ballistic stuff really well with the kettlebells, the swings, the cleans, the snatches.

So on the other end of the force velocity spectrum kettlebells, great. But for the heavier grindier type of stuff, once you get. As strong as, an athletic middle schooler, you’re going to be beyond, what the kettlebell can do for you there. So 

Mike Matthews: I will say that the single leg RDL can be challenging.

Once, once you get the balance under control and you actually can load it, I’m thinking back to with kettlebells, Doing challenging sets of, if I remember, eight to 10 reps, which is well within any sort of normal [00:15:00] hypertrophy program, being able to go relatively close to failure. Now, getting the balance was a little bit tricky at first, so then I could actually use enough weight to make it challenging.

But once I got over that hump, 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, so that’s a good example of identifying a limitation and like getting the most out of kettlebells, and I’m with you, I think like practically getting the balance thing is I don’t really do those exercises. Why? Because I just pick up a barbell to to fill that gap.

And, that’s something that might just be, it could just be as simple as that. It’s okay, horizontal pushing and some hinging, I’ll just do dips or dumbbell bench press and rack pulls. And then I can cover a lot of the rest with kettlebells. So no, in terms of if you’re just looking for sheer optimization and as Mike, oftentimes we’re looking at effectiveness and efficiency sometimes, or optimization, we might have to spend more or spend more time or go someplace else to optimize.

Yeah. But yeah, if you’re trying to optimize muscle building, I would not recommend that you restrict yourself to just kettlebell training. At the same [00:16:00] time, I think you can still build a good amount of muscle with just kettlebells, right? And there’ll be some gaps, but you can still find creative enough kettlebell exercises that will do the job.

They just won’t do the job as well as some other tools. 

Mike Matthews: And what about, you had mentioned the posterior chain, but Just so people understand that’s also including the back muscles. I wanted to ask you specifically about that. So when people, because often at least in social media, when people talk about posterior chain, they’re talking about glutes enhance that typically what’s talking about.

So what about training the back with kettlebells? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I think there’s lots of options. And in fact, when people first starting to start doing swings and cleans and stuff like that, I’m sure you’ve had this experience with yourself or others, Mike, like it’s often the back where they’re feeling it a lot the next day.

So you’ll get that again from a lot of those ballistic hingy type of movements and the basics there are the swings, the double swings, the one arm swings. I’ve got all sorts of tutorials of these on my YouTube channel. People haven’t seen these [00:17:00] before. But kettlebells are great for rowing too, right?

So if you’re like just looking for a great tool to do like really heavy single arm rows with, which is one of my favorite back exercises, kettlebell is awesome for that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s actually less awkward than I think it feels a little bit nicer than the heavy dumbbell. 

Pat Flynn: I agree. Yeah. I prefer, I actually prefer kettlebells for it.

Yeah. So in some instances, I think the kettlebell is like a killer app. Like it’s as good as any other pieces of equipment. Sometimes I think it’s one of the best things for a particular job. And other times it’s. Not as good as some other pieces of equipment, but for a lot of people, it’s still good enough.

I think that’s, I think that’s the realistic picture. But the cool thing about kettlebells is it’s just really, it’s versatile it’s fun, and for most people, most of the time, it’ll get you most of pretty much all the fitness. Benefits you want, if that makes sense, realistically, right?

If you’re, I like what was the term of the lifestyle, but I don’t, haven’t heard that one before. I liked that. I’m going to the lifestyle bodybuilder. Maybe that’s a [00:18:00] new book. Yeah. Somebody used to, they use the term I hadn’t heard before. It was cause I was wearing like this big baggy shirt and then there was a picture of my shirt off and I actually do have some muscle and there was a term for somebody like me who doesn’t look super muscly with a shirt on, but then you take the shirt off and.

You actually do have muscle, right? I had to like Google it. It was like on Urban Dictionary, but now I forget what it is. I’ll have to look it up later. It was funny. Yeah. Yes. If you remember, please share. That’s that’s called a natural weightlifter. That’s what that’s called.

Yeah. Yeah. Just not doing drugs. 

Mike Matthews: Seriously, man, I’m with you, right? I can think of a number of times in the past when I was I was quite lean and had a little bit less muscle than I do now. And so I remember one time I was wearing a long sleeve shirt that was baggy and somebody hadn’t seen me in a while.

And they, they were surprised and concerned. Like they, they thought maybe I like, was I sick? Did I get some sort of disease? And I don’t, I stopped working out what, what happened. And no, I have literally [00:19:00] have ab veins. That’s 

Pat Flynn: I call this the problem of shirts, right? So the idea is if you’re not, if you’re not doing drugs, if you’re not doing drugs, then you have a choice, right?

You can either look better with your shirt on or your shirt off, but you can’t have, you can’t have both. And so if you want to if you want to look better with your shirt on, you’re going to have a little bit extra loving to really fill it out. So you might want to just keep your shirt on, but you’ll look good with it on.

Conversely, if you want to have ab veins, then. You’re always going to look small and people are, they’re going to be surprised when that shirt comes off, they’re going to be like, whoa, where did that come from? Whoa holy crap, right? And I’ve always inclined toward I think that’s cool.

That’s like the Bruce Lee physique. I think that, and I used to have a martial arts instructor. First time I did a lesson with him, I’m like, who is this guy? It doesn’t even, does he even lift? And he took off his shirt. I’m like, Whoa. So that’s right. Until you take off your shirt, like people will probably be like, do you even lift?

But that’s just the decision you got to make, right? You have a, you have, as one person said, Oh, you have a good swimmer’s 

Mike Matthews: [00:20:00] body. That’s the kind of compliment you’re going to get. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah. But I think it’s important to have, again, those realistic expectations, just in general, when you’re getting into fitness, if you’re going to be a natural lifter.

Which is what I recommend for most people, right? Just understand that’s the game, unless like you’re really a crazy mutant freak. And I guess there are a few of those people out there. It’s okay, which direction do you want to go? Shirt on or shirt off? 

Mike Matthews: Let’s let’s talk about the big six kettlebell movements for the big six lifts that form the foundation of effective kettlebell training.

Can you tell us about those? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. Yeah. Thanks. I see you have opened my book. This isn’t like totally original to me, right? This is like within the kettlebell world. These are the core six movements that people tend to focus on. And so starting out what we like to teach people just to get some familiarity with the kettlebell are your your kettlebell swing.

We can talk about each of these individually if you want the goblet squat, which apparently was invented. I don’t think just apparently, I think legitimately invented by Dan John. [00:21:00] So the kettlebell swing, we have the goblet squat, we have the turkish getup, which has like It’s like the Howard Stern of exercises.

Like people either really love this thing or really hate it. We have the military press, we have the clean and we have the snatch. So these are sort of your fundamental moves where various combinations you can put together all sorts of compound moves and cool workouts. And you can double up a lot of them too.

So like from the swing can naturally evolve to double swings. You have double cleans, not really double get ups. I wouldn’t recommend those. Don’t really recommend double snatches that much either. Double presses for sure, and then front squats are typically with two kettlebells. There’s lots of cool auxiliary exercises, but these are I use these as the sort of primary ingredients to a lot of my training programs.

And can you briefly explain for each of those exercises why? Yeah. So think in terms of different movement patterns, muscle groups. So the swing is going to be your hinge type of movement. So I like for a lot of times when I approach exercises to think of just your kind of your basic movement patterns, push, pull, hinge, squat.

Carry, I guess the getup kind [00:22:00] of counts as a carry, but I also, I do recommend and have in the book various other carries, suitcase carries, stuff like that. So this is taking a page from Dan John. So you have your hinge, you have your kettlebell swing you have your squat, you have your goblet squat and front squats, you have your push, you have your single arm press.

Rows, sorry, I forgot rows too. Would be your pull, but cleans and snatching do have a row component as well. And cleans and snatches are just cool, so those are a little bit redundant with swings. But the way I justify them are in a couple different ways. One is a clean is a necessary transition exercise for when you’re doing a lot of kettlebell exercises to get into what’s called the rack position.

Which is just where the kettlebell is on your forearm position against your rib cage. And now you can access military presses and squats. So the clean helps you get there. It also to justify cleans and snatches is it helps you to learn, not just force production and reduction, which the swing does, but also now force redirection.

And that’s, I think that’s a, I think that’s a cool thing to learn. I think that’s an important sort of athletic quality. So you’ve got this kettlebell that really wants to just take you in all sorts of different directions. You really have [00:23:00] to learn to control this wild thing to redirect a force to, to develop some sort of elegance and grace.

I think that’s, I think that’s something that’s often overlooked in training. Whatever, when I forget it, Turkish getup is cool. I like, so people implement the getup in different ways. There was a time when people like to be like circus performers with the getups. They would do getups with like human people and look how heavy I can go.

I don’t really use getups for that. I like getups just honestly for mobility, for warming up. I actually think the getup is a good conditioning tool too. Which is one of its original purposes, just getting up and off the ground fairly quickly with not too heavy of a load has you moving through a lot of different joints, learning to stabilize the weight through the stanchion of your skeleton.

I do think there’s a good amount of benefit to the Turkish get up for mobility and conditioning purposes. I don’t use it as much for absolute strength. Just personally, I don’t a lot of other people still do. Yeah, I 

Mike Matthews: see it often from people whose opinions I respect often see it prescribed for mobility.

Also, shoulder health. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, for [00:24:00] sure. What I 1 thing I like to do just to show how you can combine it with some auxiliary exercises. I’ll do some fairly light get ups. And at the top of every get up, I’ll hit a, people probably can’t, I won’t demonstrate because I know not everyone’s watching a kettlebell windmill.

And a kettlebell windmill is a little bit different than what you might see in yoga. It’s not a side bend. It’s really a combination of hip flexion and thoracic rotation. So also really great for mobility and shoulder health and stuff like that. So that’s a pretty common sort of mobility flow or warmup for me.

Just get ups into windmills back down. Just do that for a certain amount of time. Feels good. Looks good. I think it’s, I think it’s a useful. Exercise am I missing any at this point? Sorry, I forgot the list, but those are, yeah, you got six 

Mike Matthews: plus one with with the carry. How do you typically do carries?

Are you doing one 

Pat Flynn: side or two? Yeah, so there’s three or four carry variations. I like, oh, by the way, I forgot, forgot squats. Obviously squats are for squats, right? Yeah. Goblet squats. Yeah. Great. Great. Squats are for squats. We don’t need to [00:25:00] justify that. 

Mike Matthews: I particularly wanted to hear on the cleans, the snatches, the Turkish get up.

Cause again, people see this and it just looks weird. And somebody just doing it for social media. No it’s a real thing. And there are actual benefits and in the hip swing, obviously people see that’s the one that everyone just associates. That’s kettlebell training. It’s just doing swings.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. And look, you can get stronger by lifting heavier weight or removing weight faster. So the swings are going to focus more and snatches more a lot of times on the lifting weight faster, obviously a power element to those and awesome conditioning tools. So there’s a little more justification there for carries.

I like your classic suitcase carry, your single arm carry. I like farmer carry, which is just one bell in each hand. I like. Overhead carries, but only with one hand. I don’t like the double overhead carry something about that just sometimes doesn’t seem to sit right with a lot of people, but you can do cross carries.

Dan John recommends these. So that’s one overhead and one in the suitcase. And another [00:26:00] one I really are just rack holds or rack carries. And that’s where you put the kettlebells in the rack position, essentially where you would be before you press the kettlebell. And that was the first kettlebell exercise I actually ever did.

The first time I went into. What would be my martial arts gym for many years when I lived in Pennsylvania, my boxing coach at the time just grabbed two 32 kilogram kettlebells and just maybe hold them in the rack for a minute, which was excruciating. And then he would do this drill with us where we do these rack holds where it’s really hard to breathe.

He thought it, mimics the rigors of being in a clinch position, trying to keep a long, tall spine. Don’t collapse under the weight. Taking a few steps forward or backwards. And then we would do bag work. Cause I always have. Somewhat fond memories of that. So I like rack holds, rack carries, farmer walks, suitcase walks, and single arm overhead walks.

I think those. 

Mike Matthews: And what are the benefits of these cares? Cause you don’t see many people doing these types of exercises, at least in, in mainstream gyms. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I think it depends on the carry, right? So the, pretty much all of them, or at least the [00:27:00] suitcase and the farmers are going to have a significant.

Grip strength elements, which I think it’s important. I think it’s good to have a strong grip, good posture benefits. The single arm carries seem to have some benefits for for the core that don’t seem to happen from the double arm stuff. It’s particularly because of that asymmetric loading.

Yeah. Because of the stabilization that needs to occur. Yeah, stabilization. So I think that’s why it’s beneficial. Even though you can go heavier and do two kettlebells, I think it’s still beneficial to have the single arm stuff in there for the stabilization. Those are some reasons I think that it’s worth keeping them in there.

The overhead stuff, you’re going to get some mobility and shoulder stability. Benefits as well. I don’t know why I keep raising my arm whenever I talk just instinctive, right? Yeah. See, I think there’s a range of benefits depending on the, on, on the carry stuff. And they’re also just really they’re really hard to mess up, especially like the farmer carries it’s nice.

It’s nice to have some exercises that like, don’t require a lot of concentration. A lot of kettlebell movements I think are fairly accessible, but. The snatch [00:28:00] is a little technical. The clean is a little technical. You got to think about these moves at least starting out. So it’s good to have some stuff that, that I think is decently high yield that you don’t really have to think about it.

And especially if you’re a coach, you could have pretty much anybody do these exercises right away. 

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Let’s talk about programming. So let’s speak to, first, let’s speak to somebody who is following a Typical weightlifting program of one kind or another who would like to incorporate some kettlebell training, maybe not replace it, but would like to incorporate some kettlebell training into this program.

And let’s say minimally this program has them doing the big movements with barbells, dumbbells, machines. So they’re doing some pushing and some pressing. They’re doing some pulling or some hinging or both. They’re doing some squatting. So they have their bases covered, but they would like to include some kettlebell training in that.

And how would you think about programming that? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. So if you already have a program and you’re just looking to incorporate kettlebells for [00:33:00] whatever reason, 

Mike Matthews: you can even speak to maybe what you feel would be the best reasons or the best uses. For example, let’s say they have a good hypertrophy, strength, hypertrophy, Kind of power building program going.

All right. So they’re doing that. It would be, it’d be redundant. I think to say, okay, so let’s let’s do some kettlebell rows. You probably don’t need to do kettlebell rows because you’re doing barbell rows or dumbbell rows or machine rows. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, like I said, at the beginning, if somebody’s already on a good program, I like I wouldn’t want to say, Oh, if you switch to kettlebells, all your dreams are suddenly going to come true.

If you haven’t been able to gain muscle with barbells and dumbbells, kettlebells, like something else is wrong, right? Some of those are on kettlebells. 

Mike Matthews: Or maybe they’re doing well with that action. So they want to stick with what’s working, but they would like to augment and get some of the additional benefits that could be obtained.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So where are kettlebells like in terms of killer apps, like what are your kettlebells really good at? I think there’s, again, there’s a few exercises where the kettlebells are right up there. So you might just want to put kettlebells in for certain [00:34:00] exercise selection considerations. I think military press is an easy option there.

Single arm rows, even just for some variation at some point. You mentioned Bulgarian split squat. Great. 

Mike Matthews: Great for that. 

Pat Flynn: Well gary and split squats. So those are three extras and maybe even front squats Depending how strong somebody is in a front squat because the kettlebell front squat is if it mimics anything it mimics Something more like a zurcher squat than a traditional barbell squat But a lot of people don’t like the zurcher squat because it’s freaking really uncomfortable, right?

But it’s a cool exercise So the I think I did that once and I’m like, nah, I remember doing it one time. I’ll just put it, I’ll put it up here. I’ll put on my back. I’m okay. Yeah, for sure. But the kettlebell front squat could be something there that, that is worth considering for that reason. So those are four exercises that I think wouldn’t be a complete waste of time and could be actually quite useful for people who just want to implement it with respect to exercise selection.

I think kettlebells are particularly useful when it comes to [00:35:00] your traditional. I guess I don’t even know how traditional it is, but your complex and metabolic conditioning type of stuff, right? So if you’re looking for something that can fill a gap or that you want to just have a little bit more Of your complex based conditioning work in a program for whatever reason kettlebells are gonna be great there and more fun than just 

Mike Matthews: doing sprints or something 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, totally.

And it’s not incompatible. So a lot of times like I’ll do sprints once a week and I’ll do complexes once per week, and it’s keeps things really interesting, spicy. And for me, my, my generalists talk about generalist training, I try to have three good, just classic heavy strength and muscle building workouts per week.

And then two ish they’re less in duration of these conditioning type of bouts. Maybe it’s just 15 to 20 minutes sprints or complexes. I think kettlebells really shine there. Cause you can put together all sorts of flows of one arm swings, snatches, push presses, lunges the kettlebell because it’s compact and it’s got the handle, like it just is, it flows.

[00:36:00] really nicely through just a string of exercises, right? In a way that like dumbbells are clunky and barbells kind of work, but they’re a little bit clunky, too. I think the kettlebells is really well situated for that style of training for the metabolic conditioning type of efforts.

Mike Matthews: What are your, what are some of your favorite just off the top of your head complexes that you like to run through? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, so my book has 101 workouts and a lot of them are complexes, but there’s a few, there’s a few fan favorites on my YouTube channels. I’ll spell a few out. Here’s a simple one, right?

So just take five kettlebell exercises and do five reps of each. So you could go like five forearm swings, five clean and press, five snatch. Five reverse lunge and then throw in five pushups or something at the end there. So not too, you could double the reps if you wanted to, you could even double the kettlebells and do it all double kettlebells.

So the classic five by five types of complex works really well. And so you’re running through that and then you’re resting and then you’re repeating. Yep. Switch sides, rest, repeat, classic, am rap with good technique type of [00:37:00] prescription escalating, ladder type of complexes.

So maybe you start with two reps of a string of exercises, something like two swings, two one arm swings, both sides, two snatches, two, Thrusters then you repeat, but then you do four of each and then six of each eight, climb, climb as high as you can, but good technique back down, that stuff works really well.

EMOM works super well with kettlebells. So EMOM is every minute on the minute type of training. I’ve got a lot of different EMOM workouts and I actually like Mike. So playing with staggered EMOMs. In the sense that you might do something a little bit more intense on minute one and a little bit less intense on minute two and staggering it like that gives you a little bit more time to recover so you can actually stay on the clock.

So you might do like a nasty little five by five complex on minute one. And in minute two, I don’t know, maybe you just hold it a 20 second plank or something like that. I think I’ve got some pretty creative and useful emoms and then you have classic like VO two max type of protocols. So you could just take single arm snatches, 15 seconds.

On the right, rest 15 seconds, [00:38:00] 15 seconds on the left, rest 15 seconds. Then you do that for 15 to 30 minutes. And the idea there is it should feel like a kettlebell jog. That’s a really, I think, useful application on more in the endurance side of things. And then a lot of mobility stuff.

We already talked about get ups. We talked about windmills, but there’s a lot of other, I think, useful, creative kettlebell exercises. Kettlebell halos are really good, I think, for opening the shoulders up. You can, the goblet squat, as Dan John says, is great for reminding us of, like, how our hips are supposed to work.

So you can get down into goblet squat, you can pry your knees out, get some really good, Both mobility and flexibility work from that type of stuff. So if you’re already happy with your general strength and muscle type of stuff, I think you can throw in kettlebells for a couple of exercises and it’ll be just as good and just some maybe interesting variety.

And then kettlebells really shine on the conditioning front and are super useful in the mobility front too. 

Mike Matthews: For the for mobility, could you give us an example of just like an upper body mobility routine that you might [00:39:00] work through as well as a lower body? You’ve mentioned a couple specific exercises, but for people curious for, let’s say, it’s I’m guessing if it’s just strictly a mobility routine, it’s probably no more than 15 or 20 minutes.

I’m guessing. What are those 2 routines look like? Typically, 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, so for upper body, I like, I already mentioned the kind of get up to windmill combo, but I’ll reiterate it just and put a little more detail on it. So what I’ll often do or recommend is you just put a certain amount of time on the clock. I think that works well for mobility type of stuff.

So maybe 10 minutes, just flow with it. And you increase the range of motion as your body says, okay, this is cool. We can do this. So you do, you start with the Turkish getup, you get to the top. And go slow with it, right? So if you break down the get up, it has six or seven different stages to it.

I’ve got three or four tutorials of this on my YouTube channel, people want to see it. Then at the top you get into that deep windmill position, hang there for a few seconds, come out of it, do a reverse, get up, switch sides and repeat, and just flow with that after that, you can go to goblet squat, prying stretches.

So this is the idea where you get into [00:40:00] the goblet squat. You’re holding the kettlebell by the horns or the sides of the handles, you drop into a deep squat and you start shifting your weight side to side as you pry your knees outward. Great way to find space into the hips and get this is one of my favorite things to do before a heavy squatting routine.

Few sets of that doesn’t have to be crazy. Just, I do recommend this though. If you’re down in the prying squat, say you’re spending 30 seconds down there, just prying things out and open, don’t stand up with the weight, put the weight down. And then stand up just as a, just a simple precaution.

And then the last one to, and why is that for people wondering? Just because you’re so lax at that point, right? Don’t stand back up under load. Just put it down. And then after that, I typically, this isn’t kettlebell exclusive. I just think it’s good. I just like your classic hip flexor type of stretches too.

You don’t need a kettlebell for that one, but those would be three exercises where I think you’re going to get everything primed that needs to be primed before. And my warmup philosophy is or mobility philosophy. I always like to have both a. A global and local or general and specific warm up.

So my general warm up is something like that, [00:41:00] maybe with even a little bit of jump rope or running, just to get more of the blood flowing. And then my specific warm up is, okay what’s on the menu today? And whatever’s on the menu today, let me do a few light sets of that just to make sure that nothing’s totally screaming at me or nothing demands a little bit more extra love or attention.

So hopefully you could be, pretty well prepared, but also somewhat efficient with your warmups. I think if you take an approach like that. In the book, you also talk about a simplified diet 

Mike Matthews: plan. Can you speak to that a little bit? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, thank you. It’s been a while since I read my book. So let’s see if I can if I can remember what I talk about as a as 

Mike Matthews: an author.

I understand that may sound weird to people listening. No, I’ve been there myself, especially you write a number of books and then you, okay, let me go back, especially if you have continued to work in the space because often you’re revising your ideas and yeah. I’ve tried to stay on top of that with my books.

That’s why I’ve released multiple editions over the years, mostly because it just [00:42:00] bothered me that I w I, I’d look at this previous edition and on the whole, sure, it’s good. And a lot of people have gotten a lot of value out of it, but they’re just always, there would basically be like a critical mass of things that would just bother me.

I would keep a list until I had to do it. I can’t leave. I can’t put my name on this anymore. I have to fix this. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah dude, I think I will answer the question. So three points there real quick. One is, I think that’s the mark of a great coach or at least not a bad one is somebody who is one generally consistent with a set of core principles, right?

So you don’t want somebody who’s like changing their mind every five seconds because they’re just like chasing fats. That’s the mark of a charlatan. But also willing to evolve over time as they learn more things and new evidence comes in and stuff like that. So like that sort of evolution to me is yeah, that’s the kind of person I want to follow, right?

There’s a clear consistency here, groundedness in principle, but that person themselves is refining and getting better. So that that I think is definitely to your credit, Mike. The other thing is when people [00:43:00] don’t often realize The book comes out in two weeks. I didn’t write it two weeks ago, I wrote it like over a year ago.

Traditional publishing is glacial. It’s glacial, right? And I don’t, I guess I need to work on some narcissism, but I don’t typically sit and just read my own work every night, right? Soon as I’m done with the thing I move on, right? It would be even, it’d be even more narcissistic to listen to listen to your audio, but, listen to yourself speaking to yourself oh, I can’t get enough of me.

Yeah, so all that being said, I think I have a good idea of what’s in the book, because I think I’ve stuck pretty consistently to my core principles of nutrition for a while, so I’m sure I have some specifics in there that just escaped me right now, but I think, there’s a few Key hinge things that I think are really important and some other things that I think are probably useful for a lot of people.

So one of the big hinge things is caloric control. Obviously, we need to take in consideration caloric control either for weight loss or weight gain. And [00:44:00] there’s a couple, I think like Useful general rules here for people. One is like the rule of 300, if you want to, if you want to lose weight without going insane, something like a a 300 calorie drop is going to be like a good, like rough starting point, right?

If you want to gain weight, something like a 300 calorie surplus, three to 500, I think is pretty reasonable. You could do percentages as well. Like something like a 10 ish to 20 ish percent daily calorie deficit. And depending on like how chunky you are and how aggressive you want to be, you might want to be on the higher end of that deficit if you’re already relatively lean, or you just don’t want to be that aggressive, you go on the lower end.

The other thing I recommend with a calorie deficit is to cycle it. So I like this sort of 5 2 approach where you have five days consecutively of where you’re in, working in this deficit and you have two days where you come back to maintenance. I think there’s some benefit to that. I think there’s some research to back that up.

It’s traditional bro science, but sometimes real science has to catch up to bro science. [00:45:00] And I think in some ways it has, right? I found 

Mike Matthews: people like the optionality and counterintuitively, at least it sounds counterintuitive to a lot of people who are starting out. A lot of the people, they often, once they start seeing results, they just want to go seven days.

They know that they can take two days off and increase their calories, but they get so excited that they’re seeing results, often real results for the first time that they have no desire. To eat more food because they feel fine because their diet is calibrated properly. They’re not particularly hungry.

They’re not craving anything. They know they can have little things here and there, but simply having that option can be helpful, at least in the beginning. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, no I agree. I think it’s, I think it’s a useful at least a consideration. So I’m almost certain that’s in the book. I’d be surprised if that isn’t.

But if it’s not then we’ll put it in the revised edition the all right So a few other things I think protein should talk about protein I don’t think you can go wrong And I think a lot of things tend to go right if you set some sort of a [00:46:00] protein target traditional bro science is a gram per pound of body weight I honestly don’t think that’s the worst recommendation in the world I think it’s probably a bit overkill for a lot of people.

I like alan aragon’s recommendation He he says a gram of protein per pound of desired body weight A gram per centimeter of height can work quite well for that’s another great one, right? They’re all going to push you in the general same general neighborhood, right? So whatever one you want to do.

I’m not too fussy about it, but I’ve been recommending. Yeah, following Aragon there. So if you want to weigh 160 pounds, try and get in the general neighborhood of 160 grams, right? And What I find Mike is if you just give people a few simple rules, right? Hey, try and hit these, getting this calorie and ranges too.

It helps to have ranges. I think like you’re talking about optionality, right? Hey, as long as you’re somewhere between this 10 to 25 percent or even five to 25 percent and you’re like in this general range of approaching target. Yeah. Two thumbs up, dude. I think that’s good. There’s more area.

For success there, [00:47:00] right? Whereas if you give somebody like some hyper specific target, they don’t exactly hit that they might still calorically be moving in the right direction, but psychologically they’re registering it as a failure. I think that’s, I think that’s a mistake. Give people ranges.

Try and widen the area of success for people. Many 

Mike Matthews: people, especially when they’re new and they get very specific prescriptions, they often think there’s more significance to that exact prescription than there is. They think that there’s more significance to one gram per blah. They don’t understand because often it’s not explained to them that.

We’re really talking about a range. Just try to be somewhere around there. There’s nothing special about hitting it exactly or not hitting it exactly under or over. Just be around there most of the time. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, spot on. So that’s definitely right. And then, yeah, I think it’s worth for most people most of the time, try to avoid what are called hyper palatable foods.

Like with the stuff with the slogan, you can’t eat just [00:48:00] one. If it has a mascot, you shouldn’t be eating it. See, I’m all about these simple rules, right? That’s great. I use that one. If it has a mascot, just stay away from it. Like chicken breasts. So far as I know, doesn’t someone’s going to refute me.

Yeah. It’s just find a different one. So there you go. Calorie range. Protein rage. Don’t eat stuff with a mascot. Done. All right, let’s, 

Mike Matthews: Let’s talk a little bit about willpower. Be curious to hear your thoughts because it’s unpopular, right? To finger willpower as a causative factor in obesity but technically willpower is simply the ability to regulate our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, especially To resist short term temptations and desires so we can pursue long term desired outcomes.

So unless somebody has the explicit goal of being or becoming obese, then regular overconsumption of calories is [00:49:00] technically a, It’s a failure of willpower just to some degree now there can be other things in play But it’s just funny that’s a controversial statement 

Pat Flynn: No, it upsets people here, but it’s true and look we all have failures in willpower very frequently That’s just a common thing.

So don’t argue over the obvious, figure out how to how do we what do we do about it? That’s the more useful question. What do we do about we’re not saying you’re even we’re not saying you’re a bad person If i’ve had many failures of willpower throughout my whole life, right just a condition of being human So There’s this motivation paradox, right?

This discipline motivation, how do I get in and stay motivated? I think there’s actually some interesting and useful things that have some backing in the research, but also mirror my personal experience. So also just to quickly add some 

Mike Matthews: context, the reason why I wanted to segue to that is particularly in the context of diet where that’s that’s, I’m not sure it’s, it seems to be one of the biggest impediments that, that people run into in fitness, [00:50:00] at least with nutrition versus exercise.

There are many people who exercise regularly who just can’t get their diet under control and often it is at least partly a failure of willpower. And like you said, the point is okay, that all that happens to all of us, but what do we do about it? How do we overcome this? 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, so what I want to do is be the philosopher talk is make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, right?

So what people want is intrinsic motivation. This is just the ability to have that drive to just do the thing, regardless of whether it’s hard or not. And we all know people with intrinsic motivation. I think I have it in certain areas of my life, including with exercise and diet. You certainly have it, Mike.

And it’s just the person who can just, yeah, just. Through willpower, just do the hard thing to get the job done, right? And they don’t seem to have these many failures of will or willpower. And I think that the issue is people think that you need intrinsic motivation [00:51:00] starting out, but that, but you don’t, and that’s not typically how it works.

Rather, what happens is you get started and you get results. And once you see the results and the power of the process, you then buy in, and then you become intrinsically motivated and you become. Self reliant. That’s what people are after. How do I become self reliant stable? But then it’s how do I get started if I don’t have intrinsic motivation and the idea there is you need extrinsic motivation.

You need external structures. And this mirrors my actual. Journey is such a cheesy term, but yeah, it was a fitness journey, right? So I grew up, I was a fat kid growing up. The only exercise I really took for a lot of my life was sitting and resting, playing a lot of video games and come high school, I was like, sick of being the chunky kid among my friends.

I’m like, I need to start getting in shape. And I had massive failures and willpower. Like I couldn’t stick to the diet I wanted to do, couldn’t do the exercise. That I wanted to do, I just always quit, man, [00:52:00] until as a joke, I went with a friend into a martial arts studio, wound up actually really loving it, got involved in the community, got a coach and a community behind me and had actual skin in the game.

I had extrinsic structures of motivation and support that kept me going and committed through a certain power that I did not yet have intrinsically. And then I started to see the changes and I started to see it working and I got. Really excited and I started to really buy in a way that I never had before to the point that I then for the first time in my life in that area felt truly intrinsically motivated, right?

And then over time, that sort of intrinsic motivation grew. And it grew stronger and then I didn’t need the coaches. I didn’t need the community anymore. A lot of times I still have them and I have them and I got them in other areas of life where I still needed to develop intrinsic motivation, but that’s the general lesson, right?

It’s if you don’t have that intrinsic motivation, which very few people do starting out. Then I think your best [00:53:00] bet is to look towards some sort of wider community, some type of, some sort of coach or mentorship or just group that can help in whatever, there’s a variety of ways to help provide you with the external structures, the extrinsic motivation to help put you in play in that process until you start seeing results and you have that critical point of buy in.

And we’ve all seen that happen to people, right? I’ve seen people come in a gym so much. They’ve never been able to just, they’ve always had these failures of willpower, but they get involved in the community. People hold them accountable. They’re publicly accountable. They get around a different friend group, a different peer group, which is really important, right?

It’s really hard to have success around people that are constantly trying to sabotage you. It’s a lot easier when you have people that are supporting you, checking in on you. And then at some point you just see this flip, right? Where Oh, now. Now they’re into this and next thing you know, they’re a trainer in the gym and they’re super intrinsically motivated.

They love it. They show [00:54:00] up early. They crush it. I’m not going to say it’s a secret, but it is. I don’t see people really talking about. Those distinctions much, but to me that’s the way forward. If you’re stuck in that sort of trap, at least it was for me. Yeah. I would agree 

Mike Matthews: coaching also exercise classes are great for that, for people getting started to provide that social experience and to get around a bunch of people who are working to get better and who genuinely like to see.

Other people succeed with them, which is most people in most gyms. A lot of people, they’re intimidated in the beginning because they have. Other ideas about who the average person in the gym is, even the average meathead guy over in the in the heavyweights section that on, on average, that guy’s exactly what I just described, probably one of the most supportive people that you’re going to, you’re going to have in your life, at least for your health and for your fitness and many people [00:55:00] who are new they realize that as I’ve, again, one of these refrains I’ve heard over and over, particularly from women who have been informed Especially intimidated by the weightlifters.

But then at some point. They always realize that they are not only accepted, but they, they are encouraged by the scary looking meathead who thinks it’s awesome that the, this woman is going in there and squatting and bench pressing and deadlifting. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I agree. Most people, most of the time in the gym are genuinely excited to see new people.

Yeah, that’s 

Mike Matthews: the rule. There are exceptions, but that really is the rule. Yeah. Regardless of where you’re at, regardless of what shape you’re in right now the rule is most people are excited to see you there and respect that you’re there and you’re doing the work because we all started from. From somewhere and it was not in shape.

Maybe a person started with large Maybe another person started small, but we are we all started somewhere. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s right And I remember I [00:56:00] forget when that occurred to me, one of the reasons I you know went to a martial arts studio as a joke instead of going to the gym is you know, like I was like the least athletic of all.

Like the last thing I wanted to do is go to the high school gym and hear it from all my, I guess the high school bros are probably the exception, right? So I just, it is a high school thing, right? But once you’re out of high school, that’s done. That’s not like that anymore. Like seriously. So yeah, I’ll grant that if the gym is just high school bros.

Probably not the best culture, right? And I avoided that cause I didn’t want to hear it from all of them. Oh, look, Pat’s here. Look who’s laughing now, fools. But yeah, I think that’s so important, Mike. It’s just, it’s, I get it. It’s, and I’ve been there. I understand the intimidation factor.

But you can be confident in the fact that the vast majority of people in the vast major gyms are excited that you’re there and they’d be very eager to help you if you ask them, if you wanted to. And most people are consumed 

Mike Matthews: with what they’re [00:57:00] doing. Most people are either staring at themselves 80 percent of the time, or are just focused on their workout too.

It’s not, that’s also a, just a misconception that, that even particularly among the fittest people, like they’re the ones looking down their nose at anyone who. Doesn’t have the ab veins like they do no, they’re just staring at themselves. They literally don’t even see you 

Pat Flynn: I have like i’ve never ever thought to get annoyed about how somebody looks performs in the gym the only thing that performs me in the gym is like when that annoys me in the gym is like Again, it’s so it’s like the high school bros.

So I you know, we go to a ymca So there’s all sorts of people there who just Sit on a piece of equipment and just text and do Instagram and they’re not even using it. That’s the thing that that’ll grind me a little bit. Nobody likes that. So as long as you’re not doing that. You’re fine, right?

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: It’s also okay to let people work in with you as well. I will add it’s actually a nice thing to do. 

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I would encourage people to invite people to do it too. If I see somebody [00:58:00] who’s like clearly they’re like, Hey come work in and they’re like, okay. I smell fine.

Maybe next time. But yeah. 

Mike Matthews: We could keep on going all over the place if we wanted to, but we’re coming up on an hour. So I think we should move to wrap it up. Is there anything else coming back to just really anything that we’ve discussed? Anything else that you would like to add?

Anything that is still bouncing around in your head before we 

Pat Flynn: No, just just like when it comes to, to, to my new book and kettlebells, there’s really two pillars that I’m building this on. One is generalism. So don’t worry about being the best in the world. You just want to be good to great, or at least fairly competent at lots of different things.

You want to want strength, you want muscle, you want to be lean and mobile. I think it’s a great tool and minimalism. And to me, minimalism is just trying to find that practical intersection between effectiveness. Effectiveness, doing the right things and efficiency, which is doing things right. So if that resonates with you, then I think kettlebells, you could, you’ll find that they are cool and useful.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Awesome. Again the book is strong on and it’ll be, [00:59:00] yeah, we’re, I’m probably about a month and a half ahead. But we can, if you want it out at a specific time, I can accommodate, but if you don’t care, then it’ll come out probably in the next four to six weeks. One way or another, I’m guessing, even if you want it at a specific time, it’s going to be when the book is available.

People can go find it wherever they like to buy 

Pat Flynn: books. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. It’s always a joy chatting with you, man. Really appreciate it. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. And let’s also just let people know where they can find you on social media. You’ve mentioned a YouTube channel, anything else in particular you want them to know about?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So my primary website is chronicles of strength. com. I have two YouTube channels. If you just Google Pat Flynn kettlebells, you’ll find my original one. I started a new one though, about a year ago, and it’s exciting to see its growth. It’s called kettlebell quickies. And as you can probably guess from the name, it’s all about just time crunched fitness ideas and solutions with a kettlebell so people can head over to kettlebell quickies and check out some of the workouts and tutorials.

Awesome. Thanks again for taking the 

Mike Matthews: time back. Thank you. [01:00:00] Before we wrap up today’s episode, I need to tell you about a new mushroom supplement that I am using every day. And that is Elevate, which is from my sports nutrition company, Legion. And the reason why I am taking Elevate every day is it is the only naturally sweetened and flavored mushroom supplement with clinically effective doses of three ingredients.

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So go to buylegion. com slash elevate now, try it risk free. And while it can’t bulletproof your immune system, it can’t put the brakes on aging. It can help you stay healthier. Hardier and happier. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful, and if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes, and it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily [01:04:00] found by other people who may like it just as much as you, and if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have leave ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscleforlife.

com muscle F O R life. com and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.