Thanks to Rick at Australian Kettlebells for bringing Steve Cotter to Australia once again.
The owner of Full Kontact, Steve is a renowned physical culturist with lifelong background in marital arts such as Kuo Shu & internal Kung Fu such as Xing Yi.
An ex senior RKC instuctor, Steve has since travelled to Russia to become more familiar with the traditional Girevoy Sport methods used in the Eastern European competative arena. These techniques were the focus of Steve's Workshop: Work Capacity using the primary kettlebell movements .
- kettlebell swing
- kettlebell clean & press
- kettlebell jerk
- kettlebell snatch
Steve is an absolute expert communicator & instructor: Clear, explanatory & providing enough rationale without being cumbersome with technical information. With an extensive initial mobility session & ending hte sesssion with qi gong (taken from the "little nine heaven system" I think...), Steve frequently stressed:
"Fitness is a subset of health & should contribute, not detract from your overall wellbeing".
The focus on work capaicty & relaxed tension was a great lesson "why make things difficult? was an important lesson from the workshop with emphasis on lasting the distance. Steve has a knack for taking you beyond your limitations, mental & physical.
10 min sets? I'd never focused on the GS side of things in my kettlebell training to date, but after my first 10 min set of swings I was surprised I last the duration. "It's about making it through".
Steve took sus through the techniques, safety & best practice of the core drills, introducing may corrective excercises to hone our form. Steves efficient skills at troubleshooting & movement screening quickly came into play:
- face the wall squats
- windmill form with a stick
- cleans standing near the wall
- overhead squats with a stick
The GS focus is economy of energetic output, cadence, lasting the distance of the prescribed time & building both volume & weight over time. I was amazed I came out the end of 7 mins of swings, 10 mins of snatches etc as I haven't practiced kettlebell lifting for some months due to a shoulder njury.
I was damn chuffed.
After 4.5 hours, the participants were smoked. Steve began wrapping up with some misc drills - windmills, get up situp s& squats before brining us back down to earth with a great qi gong sequence ot charge the betteries and balance the yang like nature of the workout.
Overall, it was a great workshop conducted by a world class pro.
Thanks to Rick at Australian Kettlebells & Steve Cotter for making this possible.
Videos from the Australian Workshops
Australian Kettlebells
Full Kontact
Levity Health
