Marcus Martinez: What Kettlebells Can and Can’t Do For You (Podcast)

I want to enjoy the process of getting stronger and not get so tied into, “Well, this is this camp, and that’s that camp, and if you go against that camp I can’t be your friend.” F that. Let’s have fun. Let’s enjoy the process. Let’s simplify things, and then we can add to it when we need to.

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

Today I’m talking to Marcus Martinez, better known online as @kettlebellexercises on Instagram. Marcus is a master kettlebell instructor, and the mind behind much of the content on living.fit. He’s on a mission to help people build better bodies with kettlebells, and that means tackling a lot of misconceptions along the way.

We discuss what kettlebell training can and can’t do for you, big and sometimes controversial differences in training methodology, and the most impressive strength feats Marcus has ever witnessed with bells.

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 start becoming the smartest person in your gym today.

Now, let’s get to it.

Marcus Martinez, thank you for joining us today. This is an interesting time for everyone with gyms across the country, even around the world, still closed, but I feel like for the kettlebell instructors amongst us, this is like prime time. You’re called up to the major leagues here, man.

I think there’s a conspiracy that this was started by kettlebell people, because this is kind of crazy. I’ve never seen kettlebells out of stock everywhere. I’ve never gotten so many messages from family and friends. I get messages from strangers all the time, but family and friends who are like, “Hey, can you help me out? I’m ready for kettle work.”

I’m like, “Oh, it’s taken you 15 years, but all right, cool. Let’s do this.”

You’re like, “Oh, it’s not like I’ve been doing this as a career and have worked every day to build a following and develop systems for training around kettlebells.”

[laughs] It took a pandemic to get them to do it, which, whatever it takes. I’m happy to help.

All right, here’s a question I got to ask, and I asked this of Bill Esch, who we also had on the podcast a couple months ago. He’s @kettlebellwarrior, someone I know you’re very familiar with, an accomplished kettlebell athlete and coach like yourself. He said that as soon as gyms went into lockdown, people started reaching out to him to try and rent his kettlebells. Has that happened to you?

That happens weekly. Do you have any kettlebells you have to buy or to purchase? I owned and operated a kettlebell gym for about eight years before I sold it. Then started working with Onnit, and so I’ve been around the kettlebell world for well over 10 years.

People just assume I have them stocked up in the closet and in a cupboard in the garage. I’m like, “Oh, these are these are gold now.” You can’t just get them anywhere.

You should shake out your couch cushions, you might find some like 16 kettlebells in there.

Probably some in my car, just rolling around, that I forgot about.

[laughs] I do have to ask what is your home setup? You produce a lot of content, and I see a lot of that you record in your home gym, right?

Yeah.

You have a beautiful-looking setup. We have a similar studio at BarBend for kind of fitnessy filming. What does your setup look like, and what is your equipment setup look like that you’re using these days?

The bulk of my training is obviously kettlebells, but I love dumbbells. I love dumbbell bench. One of the things I remember when I first started training — I was 15 — I was dumbbell benching 50-pound dumbbells, and I was all excited because I hadn’t done that before.

I look over, there’s this jacked dude. He wasn’t huge but he was freaking jacked. He picks up the 95-pound dumbbells and just starts repping-out like nothing, knees up off the bench. I’m looking at like, “Oh shit, you can build strength and power with kettlebells or with dumbbells. Awesome.”

I fell in love with dumbbell training, and that led me to kettlebells. It’s really minimalist in that sense. I do have a line of competition bells so I can’t say truly minimalist. Kettlebells, dumbbells, trap bar, bench, and then suspension trainer. I love all the suspended trainer ring work; love that control that you need for calisthenics.

I love that you mentioned the dumbbell bench press because I talk to a lot of strength athletes across sports. I talk to Olympic weightlifters, power lifters, kettlebell athletes, CrossFitters. Everyone loves dumbbell bench or incline dumbbell bench. It’s just such a fun movement.

It feels good. You get that blend of strength and power. It’s much more accessible than a barbell and a rack, just from a range of motion standpoint, and just from an equipment standpoint. You can’t beat it.

You can also do it without a spotter, fairly safely. You know what I mean? It’s something you can do in a home gym with some regularity there.

Exactly.

Tell us a little bit about that. I’m interested in your background in strength and how you become a kettlebell specialist. In the grand scheme of things, at BarBend we cover strength sport. Strength sports have increased in popularity by a factor of like 10, 20x — I don’t even know what it is — over the past decade. A lot of that’s due to the growth of CrossFit.

Kettlebell Sport and kettlebell training, while we’ll see kettlebells in more gyms than ever, it’s still considered the niche within the niche, so to speak. How did you come across it? What is your evolution working with kettlebells been like as a coach and an athlete?

It was purely accidental. In this day and age of social media, people see something, “I’m going to be this. I’m going to go do this.” At the time, it was like “All right, I want to be a better athlete. What’s going to make me a better athlete?”

I just happened across kettlebells. My sports were all non-contact sports, but they were all rotationally based, so it’s baseball. Then I got very into tennis. Because I didn’t make baseball in high school, I jumped into tennis. Got really good at that fast, and then played college tennis and started teaching tennis.

Everything I did was how can I get stronger and more explosive rotationally with tennis. I just came across an article by Mike Mauler on kettlebells back in 2005.

At the time, I’m like, “F, I’m not spending $200 on this little weight that doesn’t look any different than anything else. No way.” I tried to do the workouts with dumbbells. That’s my first experience with these full-body, explosive, weightlifting-style of movements with a dumbbell and incorporate them into a circuit.

I’m like “OK, I like the way this is.” At the time, I was just doing bodyweight workouts or maybe some traditional lifting. Finally bit the bullet, got a kettlebell, and it was like “OK. I’m fairly strong. I’ll get a 53-pound kettlebell. I don’t want to buy more than one of these things.

The first time I took it, I’m probably like, “What the hell.” Just the anatomy of the bell, the way that it pulls you, and how it’s so asymmetrical, that 54-pound bell felt like a 100 pounds. Immediately I’m like, “All right, this is unique. This is different.”

I started going down the rabbit hole of all of Mahler’s articles; loved all the stuff he had put out. Going down Pavel, went through RKC, went through Steve Cotter, went through IKFF, went through Steve Maxwell, Jeff Martone, Jason Dolby, Buckley, from Kettlebell Sport to hard-style; everything in between.

It was like I want to see everything that this tool has to offer, and then I’m just going to pick and choose what I want to use for my clients. I was in love with it, but then in my gym, people didn’t give two shits about kettlebells. They’re like, “You just got to be stronger.”

My passion for it, I had to water down a little bit and add more variety to make sure that it had more mass appeal, and it was still delivering the results that I was getting from doing just swings, and snatches, and cleans.

It was that blend of how can I get something that is very powerful, very useful, very simplistic, and then expand on it so it doesn’t completely dilute what it is, but it is interesting to everybody has a fresh approach to it.

Adding the rotational stuff was the first thing. I started doing them, like OK, this is definitely much, much more different. Then just training my pro athletes. The pro fighters was the thing that I saw the biggest transformation with kettlebells — grip strength, hips speed, that coordination awareness, structural integrity of the shoulder and hips. Things that you don’t necessarily do with other tools.

When did you start realizing that you were becoming like, “There are a lot of kettlebell experts that’s just cool, and a lot of smart people in the kettlebell space. Some of them have different takes. This is not a podcast where I’m going to come on and say, ‘Marcus, your stuff is so much better than Steve Carter’s,’ probably because I’d get a text or a call from Steve.” No, I’m kidding.

You are a kettlebell guy. People know you as this. When was the point where you thought, where you realized like, “Oh, this is what I’m becoming known for”? When did you start building content around kettlebell training that maybe was outside of the scope of your day-to-day work or one-on-one work with clients?

Honestly, from the get-go, my original business partner and I, we were putting out videos on YouTube because there was nothing out there. The goal was how can we reach out to as many people as possible? This was in the infancy stages of YouTube. It was 2008.

Just doing a bottoms up get up with a 32 kg, which is insanely difficult, and people are looking at like, “Oh, cool. Whatever.” Nobody even knew how hard this was.

I can’t even comprehend just a bottoms up press, and then you add the get up, too. It’s insanely difficult. I want to include a video [indecipherable 9:49] this podcast’s about.

That was old school me. I was putting videos out there, and it was just I wanted to show people what you could do with this tool. I’ve saw how powerful this tool was. I saw how fun this was.

You could take it anywhere, the portability of it. I could take it to the park. I could take out 40-kg kettlebell, 88-pound kettlebell to the park and get a better workout than an entire gym full of equipment with everything that you need. I just love that.

Just taking it to the park would be a better workout than most people get.

That’s true. I was ready to leave it half the time like, “I’m done. I don’t want to bring this thing back to the car.” I was consistent with posting. I was consistent with YouTube. I was weekly on YouTube.

Then Instagram, when they started doing the videos, the 15-second videos, that’s when I’m like, “You know what?” On a whim — I remember exactly where I was — I’m like, “I’m going to start kettlebell exercises.”

2013 or ’14, whatever it was, I was like, “I’m just going do this little clip of an exercise.” It was more for a clients because I had a website. I had a subscriber site. I had everything, but even that was too much of a step to get people to get into it. So I’m like, “OK. What’s the easiest thing to get them to see what I do? Let’s go to kettle bell. Let’s go to Instagram.”

In the first week, I went up like 2,000 people. I’m like, “Holy shit. OK, this is something.” Then just kept going along with that, kept going along, and it continued to grow. I still don’t see myself as an expert. In 2011, I got reached out to to teach a certification, and I’m like, ” Yo, I’m learning this stuff. I don’t teach this stuff. I’m not a certifier.”

They just hounded, and hounded, and hounded. I finally thought, “OK. I’m going to build something.” It was for this gym down in Argentina called Tuluka. They’ve exploded since then. They are all over Argentina. They are getting into the US.

It was the fact that I just kept putting out content based on what was useful to me, what was useful for my clients, and it just snowballed. I didn’t set out to be the kettlebell expert. I definitely set out that I wanted to teach people and help people.

The deeper I got down the rabbit hole, the more I worked with these coaches, the more that these coaches that I looked up to became my peers, and the people that I got to…Content, like Steve Cotter. I looked up to Steve Cotter for years and years. then being invited down to go work out with him. It was like, “Holy shit. This is awesome.”

There are moments that every coach has or every strength athlete has. In weightlifting, it might be the first time you see someone clean 400 pounds, 182 kilos in person. Powerlifting, it might be the first 800-pound deadlift you ever see with your own two eyes. In CrossFit, it might be the first sub-two-minute fran or whatever. There’s so many benchmarks.

Are there moments in your exposure to kettlebells, working with a lot of people who are very smart, working with a lot of athletes who are very accomplished, any moments that stick out where you’re like, “Wow, that’s pushing the boundaries of what I thought this tool could do and/or that’s pushing the boundaries of what I thought a person could do with this tool”?

There’s so many. I don’t know if you’re familiar with John Wild Buckley of Orange Kettlebell Club. This dude picked up a 32 kg on his thumb and a 24 kg on his pinkie, and took that thing overhead. I’m like, ” [indecipherable 12:52] .” He’s got hands the size of a freaking Kodiak bear. It was still insane to see this dude pick up that much weight with one hand.

Then the stuff that I saw Jeff Martone doing from hand-to-hand, the juggling. That, to me, was this is what makes the kettlebell unique. If you’re just going to farmer walk it, and row it, and deadlift it, go pick up a barbell, go pick up a trap bar, go do something else. What makes the kettlebell so unique is the ability to move freely through so many different planes.

The more I saw stuff like that, Steve Maxwell doing the lateral swing. First time I saw a lateral swing I’m like, “OK, this is something unique. This is something you can’t do with other tools as easily.”

Now, I also want to talk about Kettlebell Sport. That’s something that I’m really big on getting more content on with BarBend. At BarBend we cover a range of strength sports. We’ve dropped the bell, so to speak. I almost said drop the ball, but ha ha, what a terrible joke.

We’ve dropped the proverbial bell in that this is a strength sport, truly a strength and endurance sport that we haven’t covered as much as we should, relative to how impressive it is, and how impressive the accomplishments of all these athletes are.

What was your initial exposure to that part of kettlebell training? How has your relationship with Kettlebell Sport evolved? You produce content that is a little bit more, I’d say, generalist than for Kettlebell Sports normally, but I know you do have a relationship with that community.

 Absolutely. There’s so many through lines between Kettlebell Sport, hardstyle, all these different styles of training, and you really can benefit from all them. I incorporate aspects of Kettlebell Sport into my training at times. There’s times where I know Kettlebell Sport athletes will incorporate more hardstyle type of training.

Kettlebell Sport, the first time I got introduced to it was through Steve Cotter, through the IKFF. Went through that course, was like, “Wow. This is really unique.” I love the efficiency of it. I love the output, how exhausting it was, but at the same time, you’re building some massive grip strength, shoulder strength, hip speed, all that.

Then I worked with Jason Dolby. [laughs] He’s Orange Kettlebell Club as well. Did a 90-minute session with him, thought I was going to die. He had me doing [laughs] bumps, he had me doing jerks, he had me doing racked walks, just all Kettlebell Sport. I was like, “This is such a unique animal in any fitness world, let alone in the specifics of the kettlebell world. This is so unique.”

Then again with Aaron Guyett, who’s the Battle Rope master coach for living.fit. He was a very accomplished Kettlebell Sport athlete. Watching this dude just jerking 32 kg, short cycle 32 kg for minutes, and minutes, and minutes, I’m like, “Oh my God, how is this possible?”

Every now and then I’ll get a bug to start incorporating more of it, and then I’m like, “I like my body too much. It’s too hard.”

It is a sport for masochists because Kettlebell Sport is built around doing things for increments of generally 10 minutes. I guess there are some that are in five, but you never put the bells down.

That’s the thing that took me a while to wrap my head around. It’s like max kettlebell clean and jerk for the long cycle or max kettlebell jerks for the short cycle. That’s fine. It’s like, “Wait, you can’t set this down. Your rest isn’t a rest. You’re still holding the bells.”

Woah. [indecipherable 16:12] doing 32 kgs for 10 minutes. Doing double freaking snatches and I’m watching going, “He’s resting with two 32 kgs overhead. What the hell?”

It is really impressive. You mentioned something earlier in this part of the conversation that I want to dive into. If you go down the rabbit hole of online strength communities, which I literally do for a living, you’ll find these little disagreements, and you’ll find dueling factions. It’s a lot of fun. I love…It’s like sometimes people argue over big things, little things.

Look, it’s the Internet. People love arguing. There’s Kettlebell Sport, which is max efficiency with these movements tested over a set time domain. Popular internationally; there are many federations, not maybe as big in the US as a lot of other strength sports, but arguably growing. Then you have something called a Hardstyle Kettlebell Training.

What is the difference? Because if we mentioned one of these incorrectly on an Instagram post on BarBend, man we will hear about it. For our listeners, the difference between Kettlebell Sport and hardstyle, what is that?

To be very specific, hardstyle is a term from a company. RKC started the term Hardstyle Kettlebell Training, and that was to combat the Kettlebell Sport fluid, high-efficiency type of training. This was high impact, high tension, low rep, high volume, max effectiveness.

You are not trying to be efficient in any way, shape, or form. You’re trying to take the lightest bell you can and make it feel as heavy as possible. You’ll see people swinging a 16 kg, and just [indecipherable 17:51] there as much tension as possible, they’re trying to wring out any bit of tension.

The idea is that through radiation, you will get stronger through that max output of that specific weight, of that specific exercise. You will get stronger and you won’t need anything else.

They’re very minimalist, so hardstyle is a very minimalist style of training. You’re using five or six movements, and you’re doing it over, and over, and over. I have mad respect for both sides of this, for the soft style, the Girevoy Sport, and hardstyle because these guys and girls can do five or six movements forever. I’m like, bro I don’t have that kind of patience. I got to expand on that.

That’s the main difference, Kettlebell Sport is a sport. You’re trying to be as humanly efficient as possible. If that means breaking your form to make sure…I mean even from an anatomical standpoint, it’s not going to going to be good for you, but it’s for the sake of the sport. Whereas hardstyle, it’s not a sport, it’s just high, high impact.

Let’s talk about your programming and the kind of content you put out. You put out workouts and workout programs.

We’re not just talking a single workout here. We’re talking about periodized programs over weeks and months for people of all different goals — getting stronger, building muscle, building rotational strength, sport-specific performance, fat loss. You name it, you’ve probably developed, over time, protocols and programs for this.

How do you approach kettlebell training from a programmer’s standpoint? I feel like there might be decision fatigue. There are so many movements you can do. It’s almost an infinite range, and people are inventing new movements all the time. I see you post things, I’m like, “I’ve never seen that kind of flow before.”

How do you even start picking things off the whiteboard to assemble a program when you have so much to choose from?

Decision fatigue is so real. That’s something that I’ve gone through myself. When I make the programs, I’m the worst, and then I’m like, “This is going to be the best program. This is like the program.” I keep doing that over, and over, and over.

Then I had to finally tell myself, “Look. There’s going to be more programs. I don’t have to put everything into this stew. I can make another stew.”

Obviously, I take the basics of movement pattern, vertical push/pull, all the basics. That way we have everything covered, making sure I’m rowing more than I’m pushing. I’m horizontally pulling more than I’m vertically pulling. Incorporate all that stuff, so that way there’s balance

Then from a kettlebell standpoint, I have to look at what is going to fatigue someone. The thing is you’ll see a lot of these programs, people incorporate front squats, and then a lot of pressing, and then a lot of snatching. They’re not taking into account grip strength. They’re not taking into account shoulder fatigue. Even just holding the bell in the rack position is going to tire you out.

I try to look at everything from a user standpoint. What is going to get someone stronger, not just exhaust them? What is going to keep things fresh enough, add enough variety, but not be gimmicky and just add things for the sake of it. Then, how can I incorporate some flow into that?

Take 80 percent fundamental, foundational, progressive overload, and then 20 percent how can I add in some flow where we start to get kind of outside the box, and we can strengthen patterns that we don’t typically train?

If I’m going to do a rotational snatch with a lunge, where the hell does that fit in the movement pattern set up? I try to incorporate bits of that. That way there’s that neurological benefit that you get from flow. You get that connection. You get that awareness. You get that kind of experiential piece of it.

Then, basic movement patterns to make sure we’re getting stronger, more powerful, and not just wasting our time in the gym.

This seems incredibly complex. The more you talk about this, the more I’m like next time I program for myself it’s just going to be three by five. Three movements and I’m out of there, with a barbell.

This is a little bit like making music. All the different parts have to flow together. You can’t just pick four movements and say do these for 10 reps each. For a lot of reasons, there has to be the physiological adaptation standpoint, but also people are doing these because kettlebells are fun. It’s supposed to be fun, right?

That’s a thing that I feel like has gotten so lost in training. People have gone to be such scientific experts, which is great. We’re diving deeper into training than we’ve ever had, but I love the old-time strongman. I love the golden era bodybuilding where it was you just train intuitively. I love Tom Platz.

This is part science, part art. This should be experiential work. We’re creating something. We’re not just looking at a book, getting percentages. I’m not training Olympic athletes to put one more pound on their snatch.

I’m training people to just want to be stronger and enjoy the process. This should be fun. People take this stuff so seriously. Going back to your rabbit hole of arguments online, I fucking love that because I so don’t care.

I want to enjoy the process of getting stronger and not get so tied into, “Well, this is this camp, and that’s that camp, and if you go against that camp I can’t be your friend.” F that. Let’s have fun. Let’s enjoy the process. Let’s simplify things, and then we can add to it when we need to.

Do you have people who criticize you or come at you on social media because of certain posts, certain movements, certain approaches to training?

Not so much on my play. I’ll get it every now and then. Someone will be like. “Oh, building calves.” I’m like fuck, does this look like a calf exercise? I’m doing kettlebells. I’m not working on my calves. Fuck my calves. Every now and then I’ll get it.

I will notice if like “Men’s Health” repost it or something like that; something a little more traditional. If they ever repost something rotational, like I did a rotational snatch windmill. Oh, my God. It just got blasted on the first like 10 comments where it was like, “What’s the point of this? Why would you do this?” Yeah, why would anyone need to get stronger rotation? That’s stupid wild.

It just shows how narrow-minded most people are in training because they only see things as a certain way. They see this is how you get stronger. This is how you build muscle. This is the only way to train. This is what I’ve done, and anything outside of that challenges what I know and challenges what I think I know. Instead of asking questions about it, it’s like immediately just say that’s useless.

What is a movement methodology or training methodology maybe, that you’re really interested in but haven’t been able to explore as much as you would have liked to?

That’s a good question. I would say a lot of the calisthenics kind of group. There’s so many factions of the calisthenics world. I just love, first off, the minimalism of the training.

I love the fact that these guys and girls — I’ve had some of these guys in my gym — how freakishly strong they are. Like freakishly strong. One-arm muscle ups. I’m looking at it going, “How the hell are you even doing this?” [indecipherable 24:44] levers where they’re doing all kinds of crazy things.

It’s something that I really got into for like a hot second, and then I got away from it because I was trying to build the business and all that. But the more I looked at that I’m like, man, every time I see it I’m always attracted to it, just gymnastics and calisthenics. I love that.

One question — I actually stopped asking you this on the podcast — but because we’ve touched on it a little bit I do want to ask you specifically. What misconceptions do people have maybe in the fitness community, maybe outside of the fitness community, about what you do and your ultimate goals with the content you’re producing?

I’d say one of the main misconceptions with kettlebells is that it’s just a conditioning tool. This is all you can use. You do swings. It’s kind of a finisher or you use it as a traditional…Like I just use it for farmer walks or deadlift, so it’s such a basic thing.

I’d say that would be the first misconception of kettlebells in general. That’s why what I put out is let me show you what’s possible with it.

For my stuff specifically, I [indecipherable 25:45] because I have the education standpoint where I’m teaching certifications and teaching…I have all my certifications. I want to get coaches better at this.

But then I’m putting out stuff that is user-friendly from like a mass appeal. I think there’s sometimes there’s kind of a dichotomous like are you coaching? Are you giving me programs? Which one is it?

The thing is they both go hand in hand. If I get you to be a better mover, then you’re going to get so much more out of this program that I’m delivering you. You’re going to be stronger. You’ll be more efficient in that movement pattern. You’re going to see better results.

All right. Marcus, I got to ask where’s the best place for people to keep up to date with the work you’re doing, the content you’re pushing out? Where can people find you?

All my programs, everything is on living.fit. It is a website that we started through Kettlebell Kings. I’ve been working with Kettlebell Kings, creating the certification for them, the content and everything. Then on Instagram, @kettlebellexercises. That’s the way to go. That’s where I put my stuff. I basically live there when I’m not actually living life.

Just a reminder to folks listening. You can’t rent Marcus’s kettlebells. You have to get your own. They’re not available for rent or lease, even though clearly in demand right now.

For the right price. I mean, everybody’s got a price, so maybe.

He’s open to offers. He’s a slide to the DMs. He’s open to offers.

A slide to the DMs. That’s the best [indecipherable 27:06] .

Marcus, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate getting to chat a little bit.

Likewise. I appreciate you having me on.