It resembles a cannon-ball with a kettle-handle, a relic of the late-nineteenth-century-strongman lore when all barbells and dumbbells were black, spherical and arcane, and there were no racks, pulleys, machines or even benches. And certainly no women messing with any of this stuff -which made it all the more surreal, one Friday evening, to pass through the bright rows of the latest high-tech body machinery at a top local gym to a far corner, where a young lady swung this anachronistic piece with studied deliberation.
Pamela's twenty-four, an IT specialist for Siemens, and she does photography on the side. Sturdily-built, serious behind small-rimmed steel glasses, she listens as her instructor, a tall young ex-Marine named Will, exhorts her: "Make it float!" She does it again, this one-arm snatch, dipping her hips as the cannon-ball arcs toward the ceiling, and swings her arm to hold it straight overhead. Another minor correction, and she does it again. And again, because she didn't lock her arm or flex her hips to Will's satisfaction and he's not going to count it. Two more times and he's pleased. "Put it down," Will tells her. "Time for active rest!" Pamela, drenched with sweat, knows what this euphemism means, but doesn't bat an eyelash. For the next few minutes she'll be doing shuttle-sprints up a stair-well as Will stands above with a stop-watch. That's one form of "active rest." Another is "hand-to-hand," a continuous passing of the kettlebell from hand to hand between the legs. Either way, it's as close to a respite as she'll get before the next drill.
According to Russian literature, the kettlebell or "girya" dates back to before 1700, and were a popular staple of physical culture in Tsarist Russia. Since then they've been the mainstay of conditioning for the Russian Special Forces and other military elite. According to Pavel Tsatsouline, a former physical training instructor for the Soviet Special Forces and currently an advisor to the U.S. Marine Corps and other US military and law-enforcement agencies, Soldier, Be Strong!, the official Soviet armed forces strength-training manual, declared kettlebell drills "one of the most effective means of strength development" representing "a new era in the development of human strength-potential." Pavel, a lean, wiry guy who's made himself something of a legend, seems to have cornered the market on this odd import.
In addition to his advisory/training positions, he's established himself as the chief guru and purveyor of all things genuine-Russian-kettlebell through his site. His adherents, many of them physicians, military and law-enforcement guys, martial-artists and other competitive athletes, delight in documenting the superiority of kettlebells over all other training (especially bodybuilding), regaling each other with anecdotes of accomplishment and mishap. All the while, they address Pavel and each other as "Comrade." They number in the thousands (there are kettlebell competitions (see side-bar) and even a Kettlebell Convention in Vegas). They're hardcore, and male or female, take their toughness seriously. And some of them will even tell you they don't want the public to discover these things.
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