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Bill Esch: America’s Kettlebell Warrior (Podcast)

Written by David Tao
Last updated on November 11th, 2024

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Bill Esch is best known online as the Kettlebell Warrior. Starting with a background in Olympic weightlifting, Bill discovered kettlebell sport in his late 20s. After five years of training, he became the first American male to achieve the rank of master of sport international class in kettlebell sport. 

In today’s episode, we talk about the origins and history of kettlebell sport, what exactly it is that Bill competes in, and give some context on the extreme marks of endurance, strength, and mental fortitude his and other kettlebell athlete’s accomplishments really signify.

In this episode of the BarBend Podcast, David Thomas Tao talks to Bill Esch about:

  • The great kettlebell shortage of 2020 (2:14)
  • Kettlebell training (generally) vs. kettlebell sport (4:57)
  • The three main lifts in kettlebell sport (8:11)
  • Maximizing efficiency and mastery of kettlebell movement (10:10)
  • Community and camaraderie in strength sports (12:40)
  • “Masters of Sport” (15:00)
  • The ridiculous world record in Bill’s weight class (19:50)
  • How to get started training in kettlebell sport (21:10)
  • What it would take to grow kettlebell sport in the United States (and what CrossFit could do) (25:00)
  • Variations on kettlebell sport to make it more spectator-friendly (28:00)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA250dzhA_C/

Relevant links and further reading:

Transcription

Bill EschBill Esch

For the long cycle, which I compete in, which is the clean and jerk, you lift two 70-pound kettlebells for 10 minutes. Once you put them down, you’re done, it’s over. The set is over whatever reps you had, so you cannot set them down.

 

The snatch and the jerk traditionally were paired together. It’s two separate 10-minute events, and in the snatch, you only get one hand switch, and again, it’s one 70-pound bell. In the jerk, it’s two 70-pound bells, and you are jerking it basically from hips, chest area, to the overhead for 10 minutes.

David TaoDavid Tao

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast,” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I am your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

 

Today, I am talking to Bill Esch, known online as the Kettlebell Warrior. Starting with a background in Olympic weightlifting, Bill discovered kettlebell sport in his late ’20s. After five years of dedicated training, he became the first American male to achieve the rank of Master of Sport International Class in kettlebell sport.

 

In today’s episode, we talk about the origins and history of kettlebell sport, what exactly it is that Bill competes in, and we may get some context on the extreme marks of endurance, strength, and mental fortitude his and other kettlebell athletes’ accomplishments really signify.

 

Also, I want to take a second to say we’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend Podcast in your app of choice. I’d also recommend subscribing to the “BarBend Newsletter” to stay up to date on all things strength. Just go to barbend.com/newsletter to become the smartest person in your gym. Now let’s get to it.

 

Bill Esch, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I have to ask, you’re known for your caliber prowess, and you are known for the content you produce around kettlebell training. I feel everyone and their mothers is buying up kettlebell these days during the quarantine period. Have you seen an increase in interest in kettlebell training during the pandemic?

Bill EschBill Esch

Yeah, I have. Grounded during the pandemic, I have had more time to be on social media. In that five weeks, my following has gone up 5,000 people.

 

I would say people are definitely more interested in kettlebell training, for sure. I have some contacts over at Kettlebell Kings and those guys couldn’t hold on to kettlebells. They’ve been sold out every time they reload. It’s a great tool you can use to train anywhere with.

David TaoDavid Tao

Have people reached out to you asking where they can find kettlebells, do you have a hookup somewhere? Because they’re truly sold out pretty much everywhere at this point.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

They really are. I think they restocked at Kettlebell Kings…Yes, hold on. To answer your question, I’ve had people ask me if they could rent my kettlebells. [laughs] I refused because they’re my kettlebells. [laughs] There’s a definite need for them right now.

David TaoDavid Tao

Everyone has a price, everyone has a price.

 

What would get you to at least temporarily part with some of your beloved bells here?

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Oh boy, that’s tough to say, man. If I put this out there, I’m going to get that offer, that’s the thing. I hate parting with them. It’s one of my favorite tools and you feel like you break them in, but I do have a price. Of course I do. They can rent them for 50 bucks a day if they like. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

I was going to say, don’t put the price on air, they have to reach out to you [inaudible 4:12] …

Bill EschBill Esch

 

I know. You know what, by the time this airs, someone will have restocked.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

 I was going to say, you also don’t want to set a floor, right? You want to have them come to you with an offer…

…because what if someone’s like, “60 bucks a day”? Obviously, I don’t think we’re going to get to that point. I don’t imagine you starting off a kettlebell rental service, but it is cool that people have been…One potential silver lining out of this is that it’s increased interest and awareness in strength sports and modalities of strength that can be explored in more confined spaces.

It can be explored in your backyard or at home. We’ve seen, at BarBend, interests go up across the board. But when you say training with kettlebells, most people think of something different than kettlebell sport, which is actually how I first came across you on the Internet.

Tell us a little bit of your background, if you don’t mind, about how you first got interested in kettlebell training, and then how that became an interest in, and in many ways, mastery of, kettlebell sport.

Bill EschBill Esch

Great. When I was younger, I was introduced to Olympic weightlifting. This is back in…it would have been ’92, ’93, that I started Olympic weightlifting, and competed at one collegiate nationals. Did a number of state competitions and things like that, and I loved it.

 

I loved the aspects that it was a sport. You were not just out for a pump but you’re really trying to master something and that there was this learning to control the kinetics of the bar not just be strong but actually you had to react to the bar. There was almost a patience like once you got under the bar to wait for the inertia to help bring you up.

 

I am not that powerful of a guy and I have a crazy amount of endurance. I was always a good distance runner and had a really good amount of strength and endurance. Everybody saw Pavel in the early 2000s with the bell, and he really brought it to the United States.

 

I started going down this YouTube wormhole and I came across all these Russian guys doing what looked like endurance Olympic weightlifting with kettlebells and I thought to myself I thought, “I thought I would be all right at that.” It’s the same principles of clean and jerk, snatch and jerk.

 

I looked up guys in the US that were doing it and Steve Cotter was one of them. I contacted him in 2009 and went off to San Diego and trained with him for a week. At the end of the week, he was like, “Hey, you know, we’re holding a IKFF,” which was his kettlebell certification organization, which is fantastic if anybody is looking for a certification.

 

It’s a great one, and he’s like, “We’re holding nationals out in Michigan, why don’t you get ready for that?” So that was the first one I got ready for.

David TaoDavid Tao

Well, Steve is a friend of BarBend’s. He has actually been on our podcast before, so it’s really cool to hear about these connections in the strength world going back over a decade.

 

Kettlebell sport is interesting because it is like Olympic lifting, endurance Olympic lifting with kettlebells, and there are a few different weight categories. There are all different disciplines you compete in, there is the snatch, the short cycle, there is long cycle. The jerk, the clean and jerk, different time domains. What was the first one you decided to start training for?

Bill EschBill Esch

The three main kettlebell sport lifts that traditionally are competed in and internationally are competed in is the 10-minute snatch, the 10-minute jerk and what they call the clean and jerk is the long cycle.

 

Just to give a background on this for people who might not know what it is, if you’re lifting at a professional level, you’ll lift — for the long cycle which I compete in which is the clean and jerk — two 70-pound kettlebells for 10 minutes.

 

Once you put them down, you’re done. It’s over. The set is over, whatever reps you had so you cannot set them down. The snatch and the jerk traditionally were paired together so it’s two separate 10-minute events and in the snatch you only get one hand switch. Again, it’s one 70-pound bell and in the jerk it’s two 70-pound bells and you are jerking it from your hips, chest area to overhead for 10 minutes.

 

There is usually, I think, a 30-minute break, a 20- or 30-minute break, between for those two events for the competitors.

David TaoDavid Tao

That is an immense amount of work, even holding on to the 70-pound, 32-kilo, two-pood, however you want to call it bells for the men for 10 minutes. Most seasoned strength athletes can’t hold those bells in the front rack for 10 minutes.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

No, it’s crazy amount of time. It’s painful. The thing that I love about kettlebell sport is that you have to really learn to calm yourself down. It’s about how relaxed can you stay under a great amount of duress and how much work can you produce while staying relaxed.

And so, it’s funny. It’s so much about like how you breathe, and not getting overexcited, only put in the amount of work that needs to be put in to get that next rep. It’s that’s the mastery of being able to do. Otherwise, if you try and muscle it, you’re done. No one ever last.

David TaoDavid Tao

Efficiency is the name of the game and tension sounds like it’s going to be a killer there, especially if you have to. You can’t put them down. You know what I mean? You can’t take them out…go as hard as you can for a few minutes and take a 30-second rest because you’re done.

 

I’m curious. The first time you competed in long cycle with the 70-pound or 32-kilo bells, how many reps of the clincher did you get in 10 minutes? Then how did that evolve over the course of your competition career?

Bill EschBill Esch

 

The first competition I went to was the IKFF Nationals and I think it was still 2009, and I competed with 24s. They have…

David TaoDavid Tao

 

That’s 24-kilo bells…

Bill EschBill Esch

 

24-kilo bells. The two 24-kilo bells and I did 92 reps which set an American record for the 24-kilo bells.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

In your first competition, not bad Bill.

Bill EschBill Esch

Yeah, and I couldn’t move my arms for like a week. [laughs] I’m so sore. I was wrecked, but it was so great. The sport itself is so humbling. I’d never competed. I didn’t really have a coach. Steven helped set me up and he is just like, “You should go to this,” and I was like, “Great.”

 

So, I went. I didn’t know you’re supposed to wear a belt because it helps with your rack position. There’s a whole bunch of different chalking of the hands techniques, even wet the shirt, so it helps your elbow stick to your shirt better. I didn’t know any of this.

 

I’m standing next to Shawn Armistead, and I didn’t know Shawn at all. Shawn looks over at me and he can clearly tell I don’t know what’s going on, right? We have about four and a half, five minutes before we both need…We’re going to compete against each other. He’s like, “Let me help you out.” He helps me chalk my bells.

 

Shows me how to like water my shirt and we couldn’t find a belt in time. This guy couldn’t have been better. It couldn’t have been a better representation of the sport and gets me totally set up. Then he literally like 30 seconds is like, “All right, good luck,” and he gets on the platform right next to me. [laughs] We get set, then we go.

 

It might have been that aspect of it that if there’s a real — in those small strength sports — community and camaraderie. You understand the torment of what you are about to undergo. It becomes humbling because, one, you’re on a platform. Usually there’s about 10 of these platforms, and each platform has a person competing on it, and you’re standing in front of a crowd.

 

Essentially, you’re really alone, like a track meet. At a certain point, there’s just this question. It’s not question of when the agony is going to come, but it is going to come. Can you push through and can you calm yourself? Having Shawn next to me that very first meet, a guy that I didn’t know at all, and completely, just like…He took time out of getting himself mentally prepped.

I know he had been training for that and to help me and…

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s just these people, 10 people roughly…

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Yeah.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

 …standing stationary on a small platform with two bells and the pain just builds gradually over 10 minutes. If that’s not a way to build camaraderie between two strangers, I don’t know what is.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Yeah. That got me hooked. I probably did like one meet a year after that. In 2010, was that my first time competing with the 32s…

David TaoDavid Tao

 

70 pounds for those whom might not be…

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Yes, 70 pound bells.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

…used to the pound/kilo conversion and the strength sports community, you get pretty used to that pretty quick. [laughs]

Bill EschBill Esch

Right. I will make sure…The 70-pound bells and that’s when you start competing professionally, or what they call it. In Russian sports, they have a master-sport system. I’m sure you’re well aware of this, but a lot of people I don’t know if they are.

 

They have it works anywhere from — in kettlebell sport — the top is going to be like an honored master sport, or an honored international class master sport. That’s someone that has actually built the sport and taking it to the next level, not only have they achieved international level of competition.

 

It’s like being an Olympian. You had to compete at a very high level. The honored class master sport is given out by like the Russian government or a sports system. What I achieved was the level below that which is master sport international class. They have rankings and numbers for these. To be considered for that in the long cycle and I weighed 85 kilos, I had to do over 74 reps.

 

So, I set the American record in there or I guess I broke my own American record in 2014 at the OKC World Championships in California and at 81 reps.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

t basically took you five years to reach that nearly peak level in the sport.

Bill EschBill Esch

Yeah. I started when I was 29, and so I did it I was about 34. It was a euphoric experience for me. It was a really big kettlebell meet and I received the Sergei Mission award. I think I was the first person to receive that.

 

Sergei Mission is this kettlebell hero. Like if you read enter the kettlebell. He’s the first story in there, that Pavel refers to. Levy’s a 10-time world champion. He is an honored master of sport international class. I personally received it from him. [laughs] It was really just almost a euphoric experience for me.

David TaoDavid Tao

 Now, you were the first American to achieve mastery sport international class in the sport. Is that correct?

Bill EschBill Esch

 

The first American male.

David TaoDavid Tao

 First American male, OK, yeah.

Bill EschBill Esch

Lauren [inaudible 17:33] , I believe she was maybe the first it was either her, I think, or Donica Storino who are two…Listen, the women in the sport are way — no disrespect to men — more badass than the men. I mean, infinitely more. They did it first.

 

Then for a long time, they didn’t let women long cycle with two bells. This Kim Fox came around, and she broke the world record. I think she did 63 reps with two 24 kilogram bells in the long cycle. She’s held that world record for three or four years now. It’s just so tough, but I was the first male to do it.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

You still compete in the long cycle. Have you ever thought about competing in the short cycle of the snatch?

Bill EschBill Esch

I have competed in the biathlon, which is the snatch and the jerk, and I’ve thought about it. I was thinking about trying to compete in all three this year in September, coming up at the Olympia, but I don’t know if we’re having that. It’s always been so much kicked around. It’s a lot to train for. [laughs]

 

Honestly, with my wife and kids and things like that, I’ve only just kind of bounced around like, “Well, how far can I take the long cycle thing?” I’ve always had this in the back of my head, wanting to do 100 reps in 10 minutes.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Well, how close are you, Bill?

Bill EschBill Esch

 

81. 81 is the closest I’ve got and that’s it. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s still close as you’ve got. OK.

Bill EschBill Esch

It’s been six years. It’s surprisingly hard to even add a rep a minute at a certain point.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Has anyone ever achieved 100 reps in a long cycle?

Bill EschBill Esch

Yeah. Denis Vasilev who’s in my weight class has done 101. He was the world-record holder when I broke the American record, and I believe at that time he had 87 reps was the world record. I was feeling really good about myself.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

 

You were like, “Six reps up, I can maybe make up some ground.”

Bill EschBill Esch

 

 I can maybe do this, right? This is as realistic. Then two months later, he did 101 reps. [laughs] I was like, “Oh. All right. You just buried me.” [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Just did 25 percent more work than you, roughly.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

That’s all. This guy, he’s an animal. Again, going along those same lines, couldn’t be a better guy, couldn’t be nicer or more humble. If anybody’s interested in kettlebell sport, he has a great Instagram page. He gives out really great little tutorials and information. You can watch him lift. He just has a great site.

David TaoDavid Tao

When you are approached — as I’m sure you are — by people who are interested in training in kettlebell sport, what is a good way to start off?

 

I will say, as someone who has done a few sessions under the tutelage of a coach in kettlebell sport, having a background in other strength sports, it’s humbling. It’s certainly very humbling, especially if you already think you’re a pretty strong person. How do you recommend folks get started off?

Bill EschBill Esch

I definitely recommend a coach because the positions and the technique are so much different than a lot of other strength sports. Holding the rack position, you have to be relaxed. That unto itself is a technique to learn. It takes time. Besides that, I would start off with learning how to lift with one bell first. Practicing with a weight.

 

There’s a sweet spot in weights. If you go too heavy, it’s going to crush you. If you go too light, it doesn’t give you the feedback of…It gives you distorted feedback of that you think you’re stronger than you are and you don’t have to be as relaxed. To say what that weight is, it’s hard to say until you start lifting it and learning those lifts.

David TaoDavid Tao

ill, kettlebell sport is hugely popular in Russia. There’s a lot of debate actually. We have an article in BarBend about the history of kettlebells. It’s debated as to where exactly kettlebells were first developed. Was it Germany? Was it Russia? Was it somewhere else?

 

Kettlebell sport is hugely popular in Russia. We’ve seen some of that lead over into the United States. You found it in 2009. Steve Cotter has done a ton to popularize kettlebell sport throughout the world, particularly in North America.

 

But it still hasn’t quite caught on in the same way that, say, Olympic weightlifting caught on in the past 10 years. You walk into a CrossFit gym, you’ll see people doing snatches and clean and jerks. It’s arguable that that created an increase in popularity for weightlifting in the United States. You also see kettlebells in CrossFit gyms.

 

I don’t feel kettlebell sport has seen the same incredible exponential growth as a result of CrossFit in the functional fitness movement. Would you agree with that assessment? If so, why? If not, why not?

Bill EschBill Esch

I definitely would. A lot of it is because people try and use the kettlebell like a barbell. When you’ve traditionally been taught, there it’s like you’d take an overhand grip, correct? Let’s just say the snatch. Let’s take the snatch, for instance.

 

You have an overhand grip and a lot of people are taught the pull-and-punch method where you pull it back, and as the bell starts to turn over, you punch the hand through and bring it up. Man, that’s your traditional RKC style of lifting. People are taught to get really tight, which is fine, especially at first, but it becomes a very awkward tool to use.

 

Traditionally, in kettlebell sport, so much of it as the bell is spinning, it’s never flipping end over end. It’s spinning laterally. If you’re banging the bells, you are not doing it well.

 

I don’t think that you never saw the actual sport aspect of kettlebells brought into CrossFit where you saw the sport aspect of Olympic weightlifting brought in. With that sport aspect of Olympic weightlifting…

 

You know CrossFit way better than I do. I remember there being debates of just different techniques of, “If the bar is further away, you have to work harder.” You’d see this on different forums people arguing, if it was further a way to work harder and therefore it made it a better exercise, [laughs] all different types of stuff.

 

Once it got into sport and you had people that had to compete in sport in Olympic weightlifting understand it more than just watching it on the Olympics, but they had experienced lifting 95, 100 pounds, whatever it was, couple hundred pounds, they then understood when they saw an Olympian do it at that super high level, what that took.

 

That it took this high degree of skill and it started sparking this interest like any sport does. CrossFit brought that to light, but no one has brought the aspect of kettlebell sport into CrossFit, say, or NDA outside of it being a fringe thing on its own.

 

If it did get brought in and people did start experiencing that in different workouts, or different walls, or things like that, it would bring a little more popularity to it.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Is that something that you are ever interested in doing over the course of your career, is working to inject some more visibility into the kettlebell sports space in America?

Bill EschBill Esch

Yeah, I’m hoping to. That’s a little bit of what I’m hoping to do with my Instagram page. On that page, I have a lot of straight kettlebell exercises’ accessory lists, just exercise stuff. Then I try to incorporate some kettlebell sports stuff, and my technique is all pretty much kettlebell sport.

 

Even when I’m doing different swings and different exercises, there’s a different fluidity to it than if you were watching the…I’ll just call it the classic, like RKC or strength’s first techniques, which I’m not knocking any of it because it’s all good. It’s just different.

David TaoDavid Tao

Do you think there’s a spectator sport aspect here? Olympic weightlifting, it’s objectively cool to see people lift massive amounts of weight as much as they can once.

 

It’s why powerlifting is gaining in popularity. It’s why weightlifting is gaining popularity. At least it’s why I enjoy watching those sports. I’m biased though. I’m a strength sports journalist.

 

Kettlebell sport, it’s someone standing still, moving the same way for many reps. If you’re not watching the whole thing, it’s a little tougher to keep track of. Maybe most importantly, it’s not Instagrammable. You can’t distill it down to a single lift in a single 10-second clip.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

You’re absolutely right.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Do you think that is holding the sport back?

Bill EschBill Esch

I don’t know if it’s holding. They’ve experimented with trying to do shorter lifts. They have different competitions. Like at the Arnold, they have an event that I believe the IUKL puts out to you is the people that run the Arnold.

 

It’s a shortened triathlon, I think they call it, where I believe you lift for a minute and you go from long cycle to snatch to jerk. I might not have that order correct, but it’s obvious it’s much faster, and you do head-to-head competitions. Some of it is just the understanding of the sport. The most exciting part of any of it is to watch the end. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

 

It’s the last two minutes when people are having to dig deep. It’s almost better to watch the expressions on their faces than it is to watch the bells at that point.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Yes, you’re right. It is. The last two minutes are what is the most exciting, but you need those first eight to see that [laughs] last two. Otherwise, it’s not nearly as grueling.

David TaoDavid Tao

Well, CrossFit has addressed this in an interesting number of fashions as far as making that into a better spectator sport. Rep-counters, athletes advancing down a field of play as they get to progressive sets on certain exercises where it might be otherwise difficult to keep track.

 

There is room for experimentation even within the most mundane workout or test of endurance. There is a way to make it exciting. Some of that is through color commentary. Some of that’s through rep-counters or other effects. There is a way to up the production there, I feel.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Yeah, you’re 100 percent right. I don’t have an answer [laughs] to that, but there is a way to do it. There’s a potential for the sport to grow. Part of it is because you can train anywhere. Most of my mates that I trained for, I trained in my garage. A lot of times it was just with bells.

David TaoDavid Tao

That’s more than enough room. You don’t even need a garage. A lot of people are training in their apartments, in a small backyard. I’ve seen videos of people training kettlebell sport in their kitchen.

 

It’s certainly something that if space is at a premium, it might be the sport for you because you can also get all the equipment you need with a few sets of bells.

Bill EschBill Esch

Yes. The other advantage of it is, as opposed to training for, say a triathlon, or CrossFit, or a number of things. Your training sessions, they’re probably an hour like any other training session, but the work with the bell is almost never more than a half-hour of time.

 

You have a 15-minute warm-up. You have your bells work whatever sets and things that you’re doing with those. You have some conditioning, and then a cool-down.

 

It’s so much more manageable if you…For me, the reason I chose it was because I had a family. At the time I had a gym and a number of other responsibilities, but I wanted to compete in something.

 

It being set up the way that it is, that it’s a 10-minute event and that you have one skillset to learn, you can do it. You don’t need any space. If you have a yoga-max amount of space, you can definitely get ready for it.

David TaoDavid Tao

Certainly, something that a lot more people are considering during a difficult time when folks are stuck at home and a lot of gyms are closed.

 

It’s interesting to see your platform’s growth during this time. Potentially, that could translate into some more interest, not only in training with kettlebells but in kettlebell sport itself.

Bill, where’s the best place for people to follow along with the work you’re doing, and the best place for them to get in touch if they have any questions about kettlebell sport, or just want to drop a line and say, hey?

Bill EschBill Esch

On Instagram, my tag is Kettlebell Warrior. If they put that in, they can find me there, or kettlebellwarriorfitness.com.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Excellent. Bill, I very much appreciate your time. Best of luck. Maybe this conversation reignites the fire to get to a hundred reps in the long cycle.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

Thanks, man.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Yeah. Don’t blame me if that causes a whole world of agony though.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

This has been great. Thank you so much. I love your show.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

All right. Thanks for tuning in.

Bill EschBill Esch

 

All right. Thanks.

About David Tao

BarBend's Co-Founder and CEO, David is a veteran of the health & fitness industry, with nearly a decade of experience building and running editorial teams in the space. He also serves as a color commentator for both National and International weightlifting competitions, many through USA Weightlifting.

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