5 Things Training College Athletes taught me about getting STRONG & LEAN with kettlebells, Part 5

I recommend you use this system to eliminate most, if not all of your “issues” and weaknesses. It’s what I use to stay healthy, strong, and most important - pain free.

I’ll never forget this moment as long as I live:

Amy, one of my wife’s teammates, came into the strength room, and said to me, “Geoff, what should I do, I can’t lift my arm.”

She looked pale.

She was already walking with a limp, thanks to the knee brace on her knee, from a rupture ACL just a few months before.

“What do you mean you ‘can’t lift your arm,’ Amy?” I replied.

Amy: “Well, since I can’t practice with the team because of my knee, Coach had me hitting balls against the wall, working on my serve.”

Me: “How many serves exactly, Amy?”

Amy: “Well I did 100 this morning, and I had to do 100 this afternoon.”

Me: “Amy, why don’t you go see the Athletic Trainer and get checked out.”

Turns out Amy tore her rotator cuff.

As a result of not being able to use her knee and therefore her hips properly during a volleyball serve, Amy’s body overused her rotator cuff to the point of injury.

How many of us have similar issues that keep us from moving properly?

One area doesn’t move well (and probably hurts) so another area moves too much, and starts to hurt as a result.

I know I collected my fair share of injuries between my late teens and early 30s.

And yet, many of us just push through, either unaware that something’s wrong, or worse -

Ignoring the stiffness, tightness, and pain altogether.

Pushing through - getting “one more rep.”

Problem is:

How soon does “one more rep” become your “last rep?”

Depending on your age and current mileage, sooner than you think. And certainly sooner than you want.

JJ Shutte, was the starting Heavyweight on the Wrestling team.

He’d wrestled 2 years, then played 2 years of football, the last of which he hurt his shoulder.

(I see a theme here…)

After his surgery, he decided he wanted to wrestle again - his last year of college and his last year of eligibility to compete.

So, we spent the summer building him back up.

He went from 225lbs to 238lbs, and dropped about 3% body fat over the course of 12 weeks.

One of the things we did was rebuild his weakness - that right shoulder.

We didn’t ignore it. We knew it was a liability and we addressed it head on.

His best bench press while playing football was 405lbs.

We got him doing 385lbs for 3 reps on the Close-grip Bench Press. (CGBP = 80% of BP, usually.)

Speaking of rotator cuffs, Julie was a senior, and had made the Canadian National softball team, and was 6 weeks away from competing at the World Championships.

There was just one problem:

She was suffering from “dead arm” - she’d lost the strength in her pitching arm and now it just hurt to throw.

The athletic trainers had her doing rotator cuff isolation strength training work.

And it wasn’t working.

Julie was getting worse, not better.

So, she came to see my boss, Tom, for help. He in turn assigned me to work with her.

My recommendation?

“Rest your shoulder, Julie. Stop doing those isolation exercises, because they’re not helping.”

“We need to make the rest of your body do the work it’s supposed to, instead of your shoulder doing all the work.”

So, Julie and I worked on her core, specifically rotational work, and her hips, specifically lunge variations.

Within 2 weeks her shoulder stopped hurting.

Within 4 weeks, her strength came back.

And within 6 weeks, not only did her arm not hurt, but she was pitching great, and better than she had in quite some time.

The point is, if you have issues, you need to fix them.

Otherwise there’s a very good chance you’ll end up with some form of “dead arm” or worse - need surgery because you hurt yourself pushing through.

There’s no shame in acknowledging a weakness.

The great athletes I worked with acknowledged theirs and worked hard to overcome / eliminate them.

PART 1 - 5 Things Training College Athletes taught me about getting STRONG & LEAN w/kettlebells

PART 2 - 5 Things Training College Athletes taught me about getting STRONG & LEAN w/kettlebells

PART 3 - 5 Things Training College Athletes taught me about getting STRONG & LEAN w/kettlebells

PART 4 - 5 Things Training College Athletes taught me about getting STRONG & LEAN w/kettlebells