Pavel Tsatsouline (TW/FB: @BESTRONGFIRST, STRONGFIRST.COM) is Chairman of StrongFirst, Inc., a worldwide school of strength. He is a former physical training instructor for Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces, and is currently a subject matter expert to the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Navy SEALs. He is widely credited with introducing the now-ubiquitous kettlebell to the United States and is the author of Kettlebell: Simple & Sinister.
Before interviews, I always check equipment with the same question. It’s intended to get people talking for at least 10 seconds. This is what happened with Pavel:
TIM: “Pavel, if you don’t mind, tell me about what you had for breakfast this morning as a sound check.”
PAVEL: “Sound check. Breakfast: Coffee.”
I thought this was so funny that I stuck it at the beginning of the episode. Many fans listen to it over and over again for laughs.
If you’re looking for brief, high-return warmups, here are two to consider.
Grasp a weight with both hands and rotate it around your head to loosen up the shoulder girdle. I use a 25- to 45-pound kettlebell or plate for this and perform 5 slow reps in each direction. Start light.
When everything else failed, Cossack squats with a kettlebell (as shown below) roughly doubled my ankle mobility, which had a chain of positive effects. Keep your heels on the ground throughout, keep your knees in line with your toes, and keep your hips as low as possible when switching sides. I do 5 to 6 reps per side for 2 to 3 sets, often supersetting with Eric Cressey’s “walking Spiderman” warmup.
The last quote isn’t a motivational throwaway line. It’s literal. If you’re training for maximal strength, you should feel better after your workout than you did when you walked in. There is a huge neural component.
Pavel introduced me to track coach Barry Ross. Ross had read a study performed by Peter Weyand at Harvard concluding that the key to a sprinter’s success is their relative strength: specifically, how much force he or she puts into the ground per pound of body weight. Then Ross read Pavel’s prescription for increasing strength with minimal muscle gain: deadlifts with heavy weights, low reps, low volume, and a de-emphasized negative. Barry put two and two together and developed a deadlift-based program to create world-class sprinters. One of his early prodigies was Allyson Felix. His deadlift-based protocol utilizes partial range of motion and no negative/eccentric (lowering). I followed this protocol over a period of ~8 weeks and describe this at length in The 4-Hour Body, so I’ll only provide the simplified basics here:
The Basic Technique: Deadlift to your knees and then drop the bar. I used a “sumo-style” stance, but conventional is fine.
Format: 2 to 3 sets of 2 to 3 reps each, each set followed by plyometrics (e.g., sprinting 10 to 20 meters, 6 to 8 box jumps, etc.), then at least 5 minutes of rest. My best gains came from 10-minute rests, which aren’t uncommon among power athletes.
Frequency: I did this twice weekly, on Mondays and Fridays. The total “time under tension” during sets is less than 5 minutes per week.
Results: I added more than 120 pounds to my max deadlift in ~8 weeks and gained less than 10 pounds of additional mass. For relative strength, I’ve never experienced anything like it. Think you’re too old, or too X for deadlifts? Pavel’s father took up this lift in his 70s. He pulled more than 400 pounds without a belt a few years later, setting several American records in the process.
Have terrible endurance? Here’s a strategy from Pavel’s colleague, fitness instructor Rob Lawrence. For kettlebell swings, sprints, or any exercise that makes you feel gassed, decide beforehand that you’re going to rest from one set to the next for a certain number of breaths (i.e., you get to do 5, 10, 30, or however many in between). This is going to discipline you to slow your breathing and stop overtaxing your nervous system. This control will help your endurance, even before biochemical adaptations.
Amelia Boone (here) uses the breathing ladder with burpees as a warmup. She will do ascending sets of burpees, from 1 rep to 10. In other words, she’ll do 1 burpee, take 1 breath, 2 burpees, 2 breaths, and so on until she does 10 burpees and 10 breaths.
Do these three exercises in some form every day, and you are guaranteed to get a great return on your investment. The TGU is also excellent for diagnosing deficiencies.
If you want to master pull-ups, you need to develop your “hollow position” (see here). This, plus turning my toes inward (engaging obliques more fully), helped me to do strict military pull-ups (neck to the bar with pause) with 24 kg on the feet. To see the hollow position in action, watch any gymnast on rings: The tail is tucked in and the body looks like a dish. Pavel’s tip: Try to bring your tailbone and your navel closer to each other.
“Strengthening your midsection and your grip will automatically increase your strength in any lift. With the abs, the effect is partly due to greater intra-abdominal pressure and partly to improved stability. With the grip, you are taking advantage of the neurological phenomenon of irradiation—tension ‘radiates’ from the gripping muscles into other muscles.
“The most direct route to elite grip strength is IronMind’s Captains of Crush Grippers [which are available up to 365-pound resistance]. Among effective midsection exercises are ‘power breathing,’ hollow rocks, Janda sit-ups, hanging leg raises, and ‘hard-style planks.’ To do the last, hold a plank for 10 seconds under max contraction, not for several minutes. Hold it like you’re about to be kicked and breathe ‘behind the shield’ of your tensed midsection. For a challenge, consider putting your feet on the wall, a few inches from the floor.”
For reps and sets, do 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps in dynamic (moving) exercises or hold ~10 seconds for static exercises. Take 3 to 5 minutes of rest in between sets for both.
Or, as Pavel would say, “Better yet, grease the groove.” That leads us to the next principle.
“To increase your pull-up numbers, start doing half the reps you’re capable of (e.g., sets of 4 if your personal best is 8) in repeated sets throughout the day. Simply accumulate reps with at least 15 minutes between sets, and adjust the daily volume to always feel fresh.”
Using GTG for several months, Pavel’s father-in-law went from 10 to 20 strict pull-ups at age 64—and he could not do that many when he was a young Marine. The minimum of 15 minutes’ rest is necessary for creatine phosphate hypercompensation.
“Whereas most strength-endurance programs work by training one to tolerate more lactic acid, GTG instead trains one to produce less acid. It increases the quantity and quality of mitochondria in fast-twitch muscle fibers and makes them more aerobic.”
If you are “greasing the groove” for a maximal strength movement, do not exceed 5 reps per set. In this case, the method works through a different mechanism (for the nerds: synaptic facilitation and myelination). Let’s say you’re working up to a single perfect rep of a one-armed push-up. In your progression, you might do one-armed push-ups with feet on the floor and hands on the edge of a table or counter. If 6 reps is your max, you would do GTG sets of no more than 2 to 3 reps.
Kettlebell windmills (or “high windmills”) are incredible for hip rehab and “prehab.” The standing position is similar to yoga’s trikonasana, but you support 70 to 80% of your weight on one leg while you keep a kettlebell overhead. YouTube is your friend.
From Enter the Dragon: “Sparta, Rome, the knights of Europe, the samurai … worshipped strength. Because it is strength that makes all other values possible.”
This is another of Pavel’s favorite quotes. Here is an elaboration from a speech by Rorke Denver, former Navy SEAL commander:
“A master chief, the senior enlisted rank in the Navy—who was like a god to us—told us he was giving us an invaluable piece of advice that he’d learned from another master chief during the Vietnam War. He said, ‘This is the best thing you’re ever going to learn in SEAL training.’ We were excited to learn what it was, and he told us that when you’re a leader, people are going to mimic your behavior, at a minimum…. It’s a guarantee. So here’s the key piece of advice, this is all he said: ‘Calm is contagious.’”
• Most-gifted or recommended book
“Most people exist between the on and off switch. They are unable to turn on and put out high power, and they are unable to turn off completely and enjoy true rest. To learn how to control your on and off switch, read the book Psych by Dr. Judd Biasiotto. He is one of the most successful power lifters in history, having squatted over 600 pounds at a bodyweight of 132 … drug free, at the age of 44, after back surgery.”