Contents HOW TO “PRY” YOUR WAY INTO A SIDE SPLIT ...........................................Page3 By Pavel How to work smarter, not harder— and make spectacular gains in your stretching and flexibility. Dragon Door Publications presents SECRETS OF THE SHOULDER REVEALED ..................Page6 By Brett Jones, Senior RKC Hard-Style www.dragondoor.com How to avoid future injuries and restore lost performance using this scientifically-tested protocol Publisher & Editor-in-Chief John Du Cane WITH KETTLEBELLS YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO GET STRONGER . .Pages 12—13 Editorial By Dan John Training Editor Pavel Tsatsouline One of the nation’s leading coaches tells us— Editorial Assistant that if you want results with your kettlebells—then “Keep It Simple Stupid” Dennis Armstrong THE RKC AS A STAND ALONE SYSTEM . .Pages 20—21 Contributors By Mark Reifkind, Senior RKC Mark Cheng, Kenneth Jay, Dan John, Why with kettlebells, you’ll never have to step into a gym again Brett Jones, Geoff Neupert, Mark Reifkind, Phil Workman DEPLOYED FITNESS FOR THE ARMED FORCES . .Pages 30—31 Art Direction & Design By SSgt Adam T. Glass Derek Brigham Are American troops falling behind in their physical preparedness for combat? www.dbrigham.com Here are some brutally effective strategies to right that wrong Internet Architect INOSANTO ACCEPTS A CHALLENGE! . .Pages 37—38 James McConnell, By Dr. Mark Cheng, RKC [email protected] World famous martial arts authority Dan Inosanto goes toe-to-toe with Pavel’s Russian Kettlebell Challenge Dragon Door Corporate Customer Service A Dennis Armstrong, Tammy Drury, HOW TO OVERCOME YOUR PLATEAUS . .Pages 39—40 call 651-487-2180, By Kenneth Jay, Senior RKC [email protected] Dynamic-Isometrics and Shock Training could be the keys you need to finally bust through difficult training plateaus Orders & Customer Service on Orders: call 1-800-899-5111 FROM “PUMPERS” TO PARTY MEMBERS ................Page48 By Phil Workman, RKC Dragon Door Publications corporate address: How a grizzled training vet—and national powerlifting champion —whipped his nephews into fighting shape the Party Way Dragon Door Publications 5 East County Rd B, #3 MOBILITY TRAINING FOR STRENGTH .....................Page54 Little Canada, MN 55117 By Geoff Neupert, RKC Team Leader Why range of motion training and attention to mobility should be a key component of your strength training 2 HOW TO“PRY”YOUR WAY INTO A SIDE SPLIT FROM BEYOND STRETCHING:THE SEMINAR DVD SET BY PAVEL few years back my wife Julie and I and out of the stretch and “post prying” side to side. Once you succeed, you may add an advanced bought an old house. Given my Mix the two for best results. prying variation. Loosen up each hip by internally A handyman experience, or rather lack A stretch that will drive this principle home while rotating it, squeezing the glutes, and pushing your thereof, that was a mistake. I grew up in an bringing you closer to a full side split is the “tactical pelvis into the floor.The groove is similar to the Thai apartment and my father was a senior army officer frog”. boxing roundhouse kick. who would pick up the phone and call a trooper when my mother wanted him to hang up a picture, Assume the frog position on a surface that does not to mention for a major honey-do. When I served not irritate your knees. Put your weight on your in the military myself the skills I acquired that would elbows and start moving back and forth. be most useful to a homeowner were shoveling snow and sweeping the driveway. In other words, I was completely unprepared for the “pride of home ownership”. One of the few tasks I thought I could handle was demolition. The house had a deck on the northern, mosquito-infested side, and the deck had to go. Ripping off the boards was the easy part, the At an advanced level, Super Joints and Relax into concrete posts were more work. I had to dig. Stretch training often merge. Here is how to apply it to your side split training. My memories of digging foxholes “from this As you go forward push your knees apart, pull telephone pole to dinner” were not fond and I your hips out of the sockets, and lengthen your decided to find a shortcut. Laziness is an essential spine. Use your strength. Use rhythm. gene in the Russian DNA. I dug a little around a Pry Your Way into Side Splits post, then tied a nylon rope around it, wrapped the • The bodyweight squat –1 set rope around a crow bar, and pulled a sumo deadlift • The “Cossack” –2 sets lockout. Alternate for 3 sets: The rope broke and I found myself on my back in • The tactical frog a pile of dirt. Undeterred, I doubled up the rope, and • The kneeling hip flexor stretch repeated the drill. Another back flip. Because, I am Alternate for 3 sets: not very bright, I repeated the experiment for a third • The isometric road kill split time with the same, predictable result. My wife • The split switch walked by at that point and shook her head. “Why • The waiting out the tension road kill split don’t you try to pry the post?” “Squat horizontally,” make sure to go back far Indeed, why not? Trying to go straight from point enough to flex your knees and hips as much as you In squats match the reps with your A to point B may seem like the shortest way to your would if you were parallel squatting. age, in the rest of the drills listen to your body and stop a set when you goal but sometimes it isn’t. You will achieve much are no longer making progress. better results in splits and other stretches if you “pry” your way into it instead of forcing yourself straight down. In Beyond Stretching: The Seminar I cover three Try this routine tonight. If you master principles of stretching and three secondary like the results I promise that principles. One of the latter is “Pry Loose”. The you will enjoy the Beyond “Pry Loose Principle” views your joint capsules and muscles as rusty door hinges or a cement post stuck Stretching: The Seminar DVD set. in the ground and prescribes rhythmical movement. (See pages 4—5 of this issue.) There are two types of prying, “hinge prying” into I repeat: keep your weight on your elbows. isit the Hard-Style website today to take advantage of free author e-newsletters, product updates, cutting edge fitness articles and a highly-active 3 Discussion Site. A goldmine of advice from leading experts, constantly updated! Are you frustrated by your lack of stretch and flexibility? Are you losing your range of motion? Is your performance suffering? Are you sick and tired of freezing up and crashing like yesterday’s useless software program? Then Discover How Pavel’s 5-Step, Neuro-Software Upgrade System Can Rapidly DEBUG the Hidden Blocks That Are KILLING Your Performance— RESTORE Your Lost Freedom and REWARD You with Newfound Power, Strength and Speed emember the last time you got SuperGeek’s software was brilliant in But fortunately, you don’t implementing just a few simple but deep that nasty little whirling symbol relentlessly restoring every valuable have to fear anymore that and far-reaching Master Principles of R on your monitor—signaling an function on my computer—and then you’ll be faced with this Stretching. imminent freeze or crash? Remember the some. When SuperGeek was done with inevitable decline in your frustration and fear as you watched and me and my computer, we were ready to physical capacities… You’ll see… when you download this waited to see if all your hard work and conquer the world. neuro-software of Pavel’s into your eager effort was about to be zapped—perhaps because the work has been done for you, cells and punch the appropriate irretrievably? Now, I never did hear the details of what help is at hand, the complete system you Command key, then, boom!... your bugs and overloads and insufficiencies need to protect your most precious body’ll start releasing and unlocking itself Well, not so long ago a very nasty thing caused my computer dysfunction in the commodity is now available: like crazy—EVERYWHERE YOU WANT happened to me and my computer. A first place, I probably wouldn’t have IT TO! freeze, a crash, a dead screen… In fact, it understood anyway—and it doesn’t really Welcome to Pavel’s masterly body- was the kind of crash that had my local matter. software program for debugging, It’ll seem like magic, but of course it’s service store shaking and scratching their unblocking, unlocking and completely based on rock-solid, (yet little-known) heads. If they’d been undertakers, they What mattered was that restoring your body’s capacity to stretch scientific principles that have been proven would’ve been pulling out their casket there was a Master Software and flex the way it was born and meant time and time again. brochures… Program available that could to do! restore my computer to But what’s really magical is the SYSTEM The SuperGeek at my friendly optimal functioning. Since his early days when he honed the that Pavel’s figured out for you. And that’s computer rescue station physical fighting capacity of the legendary what all great software does—take the wasn’t about to offer hope. And, of course, our bodies are amazingly Soviet Spetsnaz, to his current incarnation most powerful functions and formulate similar to computers in some crucial as a bestselling American fitness expert, them into the ultimate winning code.