Dragon Door: I didn’t realize you began developing the Ultimate Sandbag after becoming involved with the RKC and kettlebells. How were you first introduced to kettlebells?
Josh Henkin: Because of my background in Olympic lifting and many of the other iron sports, I knew a lot of coaches. John Davies in particular—probably one of the original people involved with the RKC—told me that I had to check out
kettlebells. At the time I just thought kettlebells looked a lot like a dumbbell. I didn't understand why I had to use a kettlebell, when I thought I could do the same things with a dumbbell. But, he was very emphatic about the methodology and insisted that I check it out.
Since I respected him as a coach, I decided to try it. But, I did what most people probably do, I bought a kettlebell and a
DVD. But as soon as I started watching the DVD, I started realized I didn’t know what I was doing. Even though I had a background in the iron sports, kettlebell training just felt different. I knew that if I was going to implement it, I really needed to learn how to do it right. I’m one of those people that if I want to do something, I’m going to do it 100 percent. So, that’s why I went to the
RKC in 2003.
Dragon Door: What were some of the biggest ideas you learned at your first RKC Workshop?
Josh Henkin: One of the biggest things I learned was the difference between a movement and an exercise. In the past, in fitness as well as strength and conditioning, we were all very fixated on specific exercises. That was the biggest idea I took away—really emphasizing that we are trying to achieve a specific movement with every exercise. Being really specific and detailed about what the specific movement involves lets us optimize the performance of that movement.
In the past I had focused on just performing the exercise instead of getting really good at the movement involved. I didn't really understand all the dynamics or details of a given exercise. We simply did certain exercises because that's what had always been done. After the RKC, I understood how to integrate the body more efficiently. It gave me a broader scope of looking at all movement patterns differently.
Dragon Door: What were some of the benefits you've experienced from kettlebell training?
Josh Henkin: With my history involving a bad back injury, kettlebell training taught me what I was doing wrong in movement. After the back injury, there was always a point in all lifting where I would definitely start to feel my back.
Going through the RKC helped me understand what I was doing wrong in my training, and why I injured my back in the first place. With kettlebells, I started finding a lot of my weaknesses, charting my imbalances, and learning the benefits of good movement patterns.
What I love so much about the kettlebell is how it's accessible to so many different people. It's a beautiful tool, because most people are using the kettlebell to achieve another goal. A colleague of mine said, "You don’t need to make people Olympic lifters for sports." Unfortunately, many times we want our athletes to get really good in Olympic lifting along with playing their sport—even though Olympic lifting is a sport in of itself.
Kettlebells allow people to train the same qualities as Olympic lifting, but they get the benefits so much faster.
One of unique benefits is the ability to work with unilateral instability even when you’re using two kettlebells. There’s a lot of self-formation that happens by using two independently moving weights. With a barbell, the independence of movement is lost while many of the kettlebell movements become anti-rotational.
When we hold the kettlebell in front, we’re obviously building a lot of anti-flexion strength—basically a standing plank. This not only takes away a lot of spinal compression, it also builds up real functional core strength that most people wouldn't otherwise possess.
The layers of progression that you can build with just a few kettlebells is really immense. This allows us as coaches to be more successful and selective in building very specific individual programs for our clients. We can use the same basic kettlebells for completely different reasons and different levels of progressive movement.
Dragon Door: Absolutely. Is movement also at the core of your Ultimate Sandbag Programs?
Josh Henkin: Yes, the new Ultimate Sandbag Program uses these concepts and expresses them in different ways. The biggest difference in using a Ultimate Sandbag is that a kettlebell is still a relatively static resistance, but the Ultimate Sandbag has a more dynamic resistance. So they're great complements to each other and we use both for that reason.