Ross Bell | Owner of Armor Fitness LLC, Kettlebell Sport athlete & coach, Highland games competitor

Welcome to the platform podcast. I'm your host Jordan Kunde-Wright, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club, and I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable healthy habits. I know how hard that can be because I've struggled and succeeded to varying degrees throughout my life, but I've lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for over a decade now. The key for me was discovering my passion for lifting weights in Kettlebell Sport. On this podcast, we'll talk to athletes, coaches, experts, and everyday people about Kettlebell's fitness programming, nutrition, mindset, making an impact, and generally striving to grow and leave a legacy of positive change. Please join me. All right. Welcome into the platform podcast. My guest today is Ross Bell. He is the owner of Armour Fitness in Mason, Michigan. He is a competitive Kettlebell Sport athlete, as well as a Highland Games competitor. Ross, thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. I'm very excited to talk to you. How are things in Michigan today? For those of you who are recording this on November 4th, which is obviously a bit of a fun time to be recording and talking to someone in Michigan, so how are things going there? Things are good as far as I can tell. I haven't been outside yet, so I don't know if there's a simple unrest happening out there or anything yet. So far, things are pretty good. We're still adjusting just like everybody else to the new state of the world and how things are happening and these crazy times with COVID, but for the most part, things are good. Yeah, good. That's good. How's the family doing? Family's good. We have a nine-month-old baby that we're trying to learn how to handle that, so that's always fun. Yeah, that's a fun adventure, man. The young ones are always a little bit of a challenge, and this is your first one, right? No, we actually have a nine-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and no one is our first, you know, not to get too deep into it, but our first successful pregnancy that we have been able to have with my wife. That's congratulations, man, that's awesome. So it's not your first time handling a nine-month-old, so it's been a minute. It's been a hot minute. That's good. Are you getting any sleeper? Is it still a challenge? Sleep is getting better. We went from getting our stretches to multiple our stretches, so that's good. Oh, nice. Good for you. It definitely makes training interesting, keeping up with work and daily life interesting. Yeah, for sure. So let's tell me a little bit about your athletic background and how you ended up getting into kettlebell sport. First, we'll start with that, but what's your athletic background growing up? Not. I was not into sports. Not an athletic kid. I didn't do anything physically active. I was the kid that sat on the couch watching cartoons or playing video games. I played outside regularly, but you know, that wasn't athletic. I didn't do sports, and then my sophomore year of high school, I was going to go and hang out with a friend of mine, and he said, well, the only way we can hang out is my mom's going to pick us up, but we got to go to the weight room after school, and she's going to pick us up after the weight room. We had to open lifting time after school. So I went with him, and that first day I got bit by the bug, and ever since I've been just obsessed with lifting and anything and everything fitness related. And that kind of started my athletic side, I guess. Got involved in football my junior year, started wrestling my senior year, and then left and went to college, kind of fell off track, like most freshmen did, and you know, gained a whole bunch of weight, because food was essentially free, and beer was aplenty, and Bell, food was included. It was included in the cost of tuition, it wasn't true. Bell, we're going to say it was free in my mind, because I eat like it was my job. There you go. And then about, let's see, about eight years ago now, nine years ago now, I had the unfortunate instance of going through a divorce, and through my life off track, and thanks to my wife, kind of got back on track, and really started taking fitness seriously, and that's what led me down the path I'm on now, owning a gym and getting in that world. And then I got into kettlebell sport, shoot 2014, I was just getting into personal training, and a good friend of mine that kind of gave me my start, suggested I get certified in kettlebells. And I was at that time, I didn't know what a kettlebell was, like most people that aren't familiar with our world, it's a kettlebell. So I said, oh shoot, all right, well, what do I do to get certified? And he put me in touch with Ken Blackburn, and I actually had the fortunate instance of doing a one-on-one certification with Ken, and that kind of started that whole other, getting bit by a bug, and getting sucked into that world, went through my level one, shortly after that, my level two certification through the IKFF. And then he kind of encouraged me to start competing, and playing with kettlebell sport a little bit more. And so I did a couple of competitions here and there, real minor stuff, wasn't very good at it, but I was starting to kind of get the technique down. And then about 2017, I started taking it seriously. Nice. That's kind of it, man. Yeah, and so the highest rank you've achieved in kettlebell sport is CMS, right? Unfortunately, yes, the CMS. I missed master of sport by three points last year at the IKFF Worlds, and since then have gotten within arms reach of master sport multiple times, but yeah, highest I've reached the CMS. But I'd hit CMS in 32 kilo long cycle, 32 kilo by Athalon, 24 kilogram marathon, and 32 kilogram half marathon. Okay, okay, wait a minute. What possessed you to start doing marathon and half marathon? Bell, I did not know that. I knew about all the other ones. I didn't know you started doing half marathon and marathon sets, too. Yeah, so let's see, it was at the Kettlemania competition in Chicago at the Evo fit. Yeah, at that, I dabbled with the idea of doing a marathon set, and I talked to Shannon Pigden from Australia, who was happening to be in the United States for that competition, and he said, oh, do a marathon set with me. Just do 24 kilo one on long cycle marathon set with me. I thought, okay, why not? Famous last word? Yeah, sure, why not. I could do that. That sounds easy. And so it just kind of happened. Over a course of a week, I just decided to try it and talk to a couple of the marathon athletes that are from Ken Blackburn's team. Got a couple of tips and then just went with my stupidity and pacing and ended up clenching CMS by a long shot. So let's talk about that a little bit for people that aren't super familiar, because for as niche as kettlebell sport itself is like kettlebell sport marathon is even more niche. So what were some of the techniques and tips that you got and how did it change your approach versus traditional 10-minute set for biathlon or long cycle? Bell, it kind of goes down to even more niche as to whether you're doing a single bell marathon or a double bell marathon, which I've done one of those and I won't probably ever do it again, because it was awful. Being the single bell or the double bell, you mean? The double bell is terrible, because single you can switch hands as often as you want, as many times, whenever there's no rhyme or reason to it, double bell, you're just stuck. There is no escape. You're locked in the cage with the bells. But the tips I got were to make sure you have somebody to help you with chalking, with water, with a towel, if you need it, because believe it or not, you're lifting for an hour. You're going to sweat a lot. It's weird how that works. You'd be something for an hour non-stop. Especially if you're a sweaty Yeti like me or you're well, you too. Yeah, very much so. So having somebody there that can bring you chalk whenever you need it was huge key to it. And then the other side of it was not and I didn't listen to this very well, but not going max pace for the entirety of the set and kind of planning ahead to what a comfortable pace is versus what you're actually capable of doing. So my first time out, I started at 14 to 16 reps per minute of one arm long cycle, which is way too fast. That's way too fast for your first time out. And I made it about 30 minutes in and my hands were just destroyed. Yeah. And so did you did you continue on even after the hands were destroyed and just had to slow way down or did the hands, did they stop you? So that's the fun part of marathon is if you don't finish, you don't get a score. If you don't finish the full 60 minutes, your score is zero. So I looked at my, yeah, I looked at my judge after I looked on my hands and realized that all of the pads on my hands were flayed open and bleeding. And this is where it gets gross. And I looked at my judge and said, Uh-oh, that's not good. And she said, Hey, bud, you got to finish or your score is zero. At about 42 minutes, I said, Bell, looks like I'm going to need some more chalk. So yeah, I finished the full, the full 60 minutes and ended up with 700 and or no, what was this? I think like 734 or something like that. Wow. That is insane, but also very impressive. So good on you. Bell me a little bit about the mindset there. Like I'm impressed with that. I mean, when I tear, when I tear a callus, I'm kind of like, That sucks. And you know, I've got maybe a minute or two left in my snatch set or my long cycle set. And I can, I can usually got through that. But if I've also had a tear stop my set before. So how does, you know, tell me a little bit, what went through your mind when, when you, when you got that news from the judge, wall on the platform, holding the weight after having just flayed your hands and being, you know, not, not close to the finish line yet. I'm going to tell you right now, ego gets into it quite a bit when you hear, if you don't finish, you fail. Not you, if you don't finish, it's okay. It's all right. You might not have gotten the number you could have. You just, you're done. You fail. The ego kind of got into play a little bit. Plus I had Shannon lifting right next to me. And he was nowhere near stopping. So I just kind of said, screw it. Let's just keep going. The benefit of being able to change hands at will, whenever you want helped. Yeah. I pulled back on pacing considerably. And dropped to I think like eight to 10 reps per minute and switched much, much more frequently. But yeah, you just, you kind of just suck it up. And that's when that crazy switch that all of us, I think, kettlebell athletes have, that's when that crazy switch flips into overdrive and you just kind of forget about it. I don't know. Yeah, I think the, the whole thing of it being so binary, whereas either you finish or you get zero is, I think that I'm really interested now in my head. I'm like, I wonder if they, if they made that change on 10 minute sets, how many people would finish to 10? How many more people would finish to 10? Because with a 10 minute set, you get however many reps, you get in the 10 minutes. And if you stop at minute three, you still get all of those, all of those reps. If you stop at minute seven, they still all count. But I wonder how many more people would, would, would achieve more and, and suffer longer if they knew like, oh, if I stop early, it's a zero. Because then it's like, well, then it's like, well, fuck, I put all this work in like, you know, like, right, I, I wonder about that. That's super interesting. I did not know that about marathon. What, what are your thoughts on that? And that's actually the exact reason why when I train one of my athletes, you know, they say, oh, well, I can do a five minute set. No, five minute sets are off the table. You don't have five minutes set. You have a 10 minutes set. And the, the reasoning behind that, what I have to explain to them is, if you hit five minutes, you have to put the bell down, no matter what. So if you hit five minutes and you could have gone 30 seconds more, you could have gotten 30 seconds more worth of reps, but because you chose to do a five minute set, you're done. Like, that's it. So I think that same mentality would kind of kick in that in an inverse reaction of saying, well, you have to make it to 10 minutes. If you don't make it to 10 minutes, you don't get any points. And it would, at a minimum, teach people to control their pacing a little bit better. That's what I was just thinking. I think you would see people come out a lot slower. Yeah. And, you know, starting the slower, the slower pace, but at the same time, also working that fixation hold a lot more. I know when I transition from just normal stateside competitions to competing at a higher level in an international capacity, fixation is way, way more intricate. They, they look at it substantially more demanding, as far as your fixation. Yeah. So let's go through the checklist. You know, I'm, I'm a certified judge. I think you are as well. Yep. What's the, what's the checklist for people that aren't familiar and from an international standard, what are people, what are they looking for on a, on a lift? So the one that got a lot of people that I noticed and I don't train this play and I don't train any athletes this way is off the floor, you go right into your first rep. There is no swing to start. And I know a lot of stateside competitions, they let you get away with that once in a while for snatch where you can get a swing in and then do your first rep of snatch. That's the first thing that gets next right off the bat. Minus one come off the floor. Exactly. You come right off the floor and you go right into your rack or you go right into your overhead. And then from there, they really focus on complete stop and fixation in your rack positioning with as close to knees locked as possible is zero movement with the bell, zero movement with the torso before you can go into either your first jerk or your first long cycle jerk. And then with snatch and then your overhead fixation, there is 100% stopped movement. So you get a lot of people with knees extended, with elbows extended. When you get going on snatch, especially you get a lot of people that come up in that bell kind of gets a little torque going around to the backside of the hand. Especially when grip starts to go, they won't even count it until the bell is stopped moving. So you notice most lifters in stateside competitions, they'll have maybe one second or half second pause overhead. I'm watching high level athletes that I watch and have admired since I started doing this that are pausing for a full breath or two overhead just to make sure that they get that full rep count. Because there's nothing more gut wrenching than you're in the last minute of your set. You're like, you know, you got nothing left in the tank. You throw that bell up there and come down a little too early and you wasted all that energy for them to say no count. And then you do it again and they're like, set's done. You know, yeah, it's the mental, the mental anguish of a no count. I think is one of the, is one of the things that doesn't get talked about enough. It's, I don't know about you, but I've not had no counts in competition. But I've seen it happen and you can just, you can just see the defeat on someone's face and and how much it changes mindset sometimes. You'll see somebody that was cruising at a nice smooth pace. Like, you know, long cycle, they're doing a nice steady seven RPMs. And they get a no count. And then they're like, shit, you know, in the middle of their set and they're like, shit, I got to get caught up. So then they go a little bit faster to try and make up for that rep to try and get it in that minute. And then they get their heart rate too high and then their scramble and then they end up crashing at like minute eight. I've seen, I've seen that happen. You know, just like, and I was the judge and I felt bad, but it was like, you didn't fit, you didn't fix it. Like, you know, it is what it is. Like, you didn't fix it. It's got to be a no count. And, you know, how do you, how do you coach your athletes to handle that? I mean, the size from obviously coaching them to fixate. But if that happens, mentally, how do you, how do you approach it? So usually I take whatever their rep pacing is for that minute, let's say that's what we'll just use for an example, saying that they're, they're eight reps a minute. And on rep three, they get a no count. Bell, they want to make that up. And I say, nope, you forget it. Now you're rep pacing for that minute is six. So I want you to just completely disregard that first rep that you missed and then take what would have been the next rep and recollect yourself. So bring the bells back up into the rack, bring them up into the overhead, whatever your lift is and take enough breaths, kind of recenter your CNS, recenter your mind and just forget it happened. And you just drop a rep off that that map completely. Yeah. And usually, usually, if I don't have somebody that's just in that zone, it's enough to kind of get them back on track. And then what I notice is if they make it to the end of the set, that sprint mode that everybody engages in, they say, I want to get that rep back and they do. Yeah, that was what I was going to say too, is you can usually make it up on the back end if you don't get rattled in the set. But if you get rattled in the middle of the set, you're kind of fucked. Yeah, I know all too well how that works. I don't know if you've been made aware of the incident, quote unquote, that happened to me. I've only had one no count rep in my competition career and it was devastating and it's well documented all over social media to where I brought the bells up into the rack. Went overhead, this was double kilo, or excuse me, double bell long cycle 24 kilogram. At rep number 75, I brought the bells up, went overhead, came down a little bit too fast to shake in. I got a no count and it got in my head, brought the bells up the next time and my heart rate was through the roof. I was trying to come back and I ended up actually passing out on the platform. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. I heard of that happening. I've seen it once or twice, but I did not know that that happened to you. I remember you saying something before about like if you get to a certain beats per minute, that you just hit, you just hit like it's like, it's like a kill switch for you. Like if you get to like 189 beats a minute or something like that and it's just like, so out. In 2017 when I started taking sport a little bit more seriously, that's, that's when it happened. And my coach Ken at the time was just a good friend, he was just kind of advising me from afar, not really helping me with programming or anything. He saw me pass out and I went down and it was a big spectacle and you know like I said, people recorded it and posted it all over social media and it was really embarrassing but super funny looking back now. It's kind of dangerous too. Luckily I was safe. Nothing happened. I ended up kind of catching myself on the way down a little bit and I was okay. But what we what we talked about after it was he said, let me help you with programming. Let's figure out why this happened. And it was really cool to kind of jump into that whole world of heart rate control and looking at where my heart rate is depending on what I'm doing. And it got to the point where long cycle was my specialty. I could tell you within probably two to three beats per minute what my heart rate was at any given moment without a heart rate monitor because we were just that meticulous with keeping track of it. And if I get to 194 beats per minute, I blackout. It's like like you said, it's a kill switch. It just happens. Wow. How how how were you training before you got to the point where you like you knew what you were at all the time? How were you training in practice? Did you have your heart rate visible to you on on a monitor while you were training or on a clock while you were training or how do I know? I never I never did. This I was programming, quote unquote programming for myself. And like most athletes, I wanted to do insanely hard and aggressive workouts every day. I didn't think, you know, oh, hey, let's take a light day today or let's do something that's not quite as aggressive. You know, I'd mix my pacing up and I'd mix the durations up. But there was no rhyme or reason to it without that knowledge of heart rate control. And once once Ken took over my programming and kind of force those easier days in there, it helped us get a grasp on how hard I can push to know where my heart rate is going to be. Where were you seeing the heart rate data? Were you looking at it post-hoc or were you looking at it during the session? So like I miss it. Like so when you were working with Ken, did he say I want you to be in, you know, whatever zone to for. I see what you're saying. Yeah. A period of minutes. Prior to working with Ken, I never used a heart rate monitor at all. That was the first thing he had me do is go get a heart rate monitor. So I had to chest strap on and then a polar I used polar beat, I think, was the program I used and had it set right next to my platform that I was working on on my phone so I could see it in real time. What my heart rate was actually at. Okay. And was he prescribing you RPMs or was he prescribing you heart rate zones? RPMs actually. Okay. So RPMs to kind of get an idea of where it would land. And what we noticed is my RPMs would slowly over the year, my RPMs would would increase and my heart rate would stay the same because I was able to work at a higher capacity. Once we got that like okay, once I hit 194 sets down, I got to stop or I'm going to pass out. Yeah. It gave us a lot of data to work with. But most of it was just kind of looking at not maximum work capacity, but increasing that work capacity through a reciprocal cycle of, you know, sprint day versus a shorter day. And then the next day would be something like a controlled breathing cycle. So that was the thing that really helped the most. And that's what I prescribed a lot of my athletes now is, you know, three breaths in the rack, three breaths overhead with an extra swing in there. And, you know, it's the goal is to go as slow as physically possible and still maintain that long set duration. So I might do a 10 to 12 minutes set three times a month. But it's the rack count is so obscenely low that it's almost like I was doing a two minutes set or three minutes set. Yeah, we do some do similar. It doesn't, it sounds like you're still doing the traditional movement just at a slow pace. We do the slow long cycle or the slow jerk where you'll, you'll hold the different positions, you know, to build the, to build the static strength. But it sounds like you're doing a long duration set just at a really slow control, the RPM. Yeah, as part of that. We noticed that the strength is there. I, not to, you know, go load or say anything. I just, the strength is there. Yeah, you're a big gorilla man. You're a strong dude. But the heart rate and the endurance was the struggle for me. So we would do, for example, like an eight minute set and he would have we do three to four breaths in the rack and two to three breaths overhead. And I would average two to three reps per minute because I was breathing so slow trying to get my heart rate to stay low. And I would average like three or four reps per minute for eight minutes. But it was just all working on endurance of heart rate. That's awesome. Yeah, that's, that's, I love it. And I almost, I almost pee. We hermit you when you, when you said, you know, that we had so much data to work with. I, you know, I almost like you said the word of the day. Yeah, because I'm, I'm a big, I'm a big data nerd. I love, you know, I love having data points to, data points to work with. And the heart rate training, the heart rate training component is something I need to, I know a lot about it from outside of kettlebell sport. And I know all the energy systems and I just, I just need to take the time and do the diligence of mapping. And I have the same thing. I have a polar h10 and I have all my heart rate, you know, I just need, I just need to track it so I can start correlating it and see and see how it, how it relates. The thing that I noticed like last night, for example, when I was stressed out all day was my heart rate at one point, I was at 95 or 96% of my max heart rate on a, on a snatch set, you know, we were doing four minutes times three, you know, the, the, that old, that old trope. And in set two, like I was at 90, I was at 97% max heart rate. And I was light, light headed at the end of that set, you know, took me, took me a good two minutes to get back down to zone one, which is a slow recovery for me. Yeah, but I noticed those things when I, when I take the time to look at it, they're like, oh, stress, a lack of sleep, lack of hydration, whatever, like any of those things, you can see the, the slope of the line becomes a lot more severe, but I, I need to, I need to systemize it more and look at it, look at it in a more systemic fashion to train myself. Absolutely. And I think a lot of that comes into understanding how those outside forces affect everything, not just your training cycle, but you know, for example, I've got a nine-month-old baby. So my sleep is sporadic and broken and not restful. And so yeah, you feel tired, but what you don't account for is all of the movement that you're doing at night, you're, you're not an arresting heart rate the entire time. Your heart rate is elevated through your sleep. So when you get up, you didn't have that baseline super low heart rate, and it's just you're living at a much higher zone. Yeah. A lot of the time. Do you track HRV? No, I, I actually don't wear a heart rate monitor at all anymore, which may or may not be a good thing, but we've gotten to the point where timing for me to be able to account for all that data doesn't exist. I have a very limited schedule, and I have to fit my training programming in in a very short period of time, and I don't always have the time to kind of keep track of that. So it's been a lot more of a guessing game than anything. We'll say it's an intuitive. Yes, and not a guessing game. It's it's all very linked slightly. You know, I mean, to me, it's it's actually, to me, it kind of reminds me of how it goes on the nutrition side, right? Which is you have people track their macros long enough that you get to a point of comfort with it, and it becomes muscle memory, it becomes old hat, like you're like, oh, I know that that's half a cup of rice. I've measured enough, I've measured rice enough times, you know, half cups, that I know that that's a half cup of rice or whatever, right? You've just done it enough times where it's like, okay, I know, I know what that looks like on my plate, and I know what that, you know, and it's kind of that same thing. I think when it comes to training too, is that at a certain point, if you've put in enough years, you've put in enough reps, and you did it diligently with a guy, you know, somebody like Ken who has a wealth of knowledge to help teach you the right way to do it, right? Then at a certain point, you're like, okay, I can do it intuitively, and is it absolutely as effective as if you were tracking everything? No, but it fits your life better right now because you've got a nine month old, and you own your own business, and your wife is taking her boards, right? There's a lot of commitments for you, so that's fantastic. How is your training going with all of those externalities going on? It's going okay. I just did the IKFF world's virtual meet last two weeks ago, excuse me, two weeks ago, and was attempting to break the North American record for 24 Kilo by Athalon, and I just came out, came out to get way to aggressive on snatch and burned out too quick, so I kind of tossed it in the trash there. But now I'm actually going in a completely different direction. You and I have kind of talked about this off air a little bit. I am training for training. I did my first day of prep yesterday, training for a 12 hour ultra kettlebell marathon. Yeah, let's talk about that. Why? Why would you do that crazy man? I get that a lot. Every year, I do a charity kettlebell competition, and I pick a different charity every year, and we try to do just a fun competition to raise money for whatever the cause is, and usually it's always in person competition. We have a great turnout. We raise a lot of money, help something out. This year, obviously, with COVID, we can't do an in-person competition, because usually I would average somewhere between 40 and 60 lifters at each of these. It's just there's no place that I can do that safely right now, or do I want to be responsible for that many people at a time in one spot. So we went the virtual route, and we're doing a virtual competition this year, which is super cool. But to me, it wasn't enough to really drive people to open their wallets during this tough time and help an organization out. So I got this stupid idea watching a video of Andreas Jacobson doing a 12 hour ultra marathon, and I thought I could do that, right? Yeah. That sounds great. Let's do that. So I got this stupid idea to do a 12 hour tandem ultra marathon for charity. So I had one of my one of my good friends is going to jump in with me, and we're going to basically trade off for 12 hours so that at any given point, the bell doesn't touch the floor. That's awesome. For 12 hours, one of us will always be lifting. And it kind of got a little traction and a friend of mine that happens to be very well connected in the Jackson, Michigan area said this is a cool idea. You should come do it live at the restaurant. And he manages the kitchen at Grand River Brewery in Jackson, Michigan. So on November 21st, we are going to do a 12 hour ultra marathon live at Grand River Brewery. Fantastic. And are you going to be streaming it on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram, any of the socials? The goal is to stream it live on the Facebook through my Facebook business page. As long as I can get the tech to work, I'm probably the least tech literate person in the world. So hopefully there'll be somebody that can get it set up for me, but we're going to try nerds of Michigan unite. Exactly. I have a friend in need. They have they have a marketing and a social media coordinator that will be there. So hopefully between the two of them they can get it figured out. Nice. Nice. And people can join in as well, right? You're raising you're raising money through people want if they want to join in, they can do it wherever they're at, right? Yep. So the competition side of it will go from the 15th to the 22nd. All standard your voice sport competition rules and competition sets are allowed. So five minute, ten minute jerk long cycle, one arm long cycle, all of them are allowed. And I have gotten enough certified coaches to be able to allow rank up to CMS in most organizations. And then we're also doing marathon sets. Because I have a couple of marathon judges that are willing to help out with judging sets at at any of the traditional marathon levels 30 minutes, 60 minute hour, excuse me, two hour, so on and so forth. But the cool one I'm also doing is team lifting. Since I am doing a team 12 hour marathon, I thought it'd be cool to tell people, Hey, if you want to get two or three of your friends together and just trade off intermittently through that set, you can do a team set as well. All of that is available on my Facebook page, which is armor fitness LLC on Facebook. And yeah, you can sign up and register for that. A hundred percent of all funds raised goes directly to the Jackson Foster closet, which is an organization that helps foster kids and underprivileged kids all year round. But more specifically right now with having a holiday season, because you know, with everything happening with COVID, a lot of people are out of work, a lot of people have the money to actually have a Christmas. So they partnered with the angel tree. And they're doing gifts for kids that aren't going to have a Christmas holiday meals for families that can't afford to do so. And then the other side of it foster kids that maybe don't have a home so they won't have coats, blankets, warm weather clothing, food and supplies. They they help provide all of that. Awesome. That sounds that's a great that's a great cause. I love that you're doing it locally too. That's you know, in your in your community. That's that's fantastic. So that is that is awesome. I'll make sure we put the I'll make sure we put the info in the in the show notes. So so people, if you want to follow, if you want to follow along participate, you want to sign up for the competition or you want to do the the tandem or the team lift. You can you can do any or if you just want to make a donation to the charity. We'll we'll make sure all those things are available in the show notes. That's that's awesome, man. So I want to I want to pivot a little bit because you're the only person I know of that does Highland games. So tell tell tell me a what that is. I know what that is, but you know, tell the people, you know, all 12 of them that listen to the show. What what that what it's more than that now, but tell them tell them what that is. Yeah, you know, well, I got I got my dad to start listening in addition. There it is. There it is. So the Highland games is kind of a Scottish based competition. If you ever seen the crazy dudes that were the the kilts and pick up the giant trees and throw them. That's awesome, the gamers awesome, the game. That's what it is. So it's usually a traditional competition is 10 events and everybody participates in all 10. It's all weight objects. So throwing various weighted objects, very similar in akin to like track and field shot put hammer throw, similar ideology to that, but the weights are substantially heavier and the distances are far shorter. They're much more awkward too. I mean, how long is a cable? A traditional cable. Generally about men's are about 12 to 16 feet, depending on what the the cabers made out of the the thickness of it. And they'll weigh anywhere from 115 to 160 pounds. It just depends. The high level guys will throw the big the big monsters and then the newbies will throw a lot of the smaller lighter cabers. But that one's a little different. It's not about distance. It's more about I guess you'd call it accuracy. Yeah, you're going to get the flip. That's the first step is once you can turn a cable and over end you can start to score and then it's based off of your path of travel versus how the cable lands according to that on like a clock dial. So if you are walking a straight line, you turn the cable completely end over end and it lands directly straight in front of you. That's a 12 turn, which is the best you can get. If it lands left or right of that, they'll go based on the 10 o'clock, 10, 30, 11 o'clock, so on and so forth. Nice. Bell, what are some of what are some of the other events? I know that you mentioned that I came to the shop, but basically tossing a rock, right? What are some of the other ones? So those are the stones. There's an open stone, which is a lighter stone that you have a little bit more movement you throw. And then there's what's called the Braymar stone, which is a much bigger heavier stone that's a stationary throw. The weights for those for men's is the little guy is 12 to 16 pounds I think. And then the Braymar is like 22 to 26 pounds. And then there's the weight for distance. You have a lightweight and heavy weight, which is basically a steel mass on a small chain with a handle that you throw out of the box that you throw from. And let's see. Then there's the hammer throw, which is similar to a hammer throw for track and field, but instead of a rotational base, you stay stationary. Your feet are planted in the floor. And you have a steel ball on a stick that you spin around and you throw over your shoulder. And then weight over bar, which is the same mass that you throw for weight for distance, but instead now you're throwing it for height over a bar overhead. And then the fun one is the sheath throw, which is a bail of hay that you throw with a pitch fork. Nice. Yeah. And so this kind of begs the question, we're not in Scotland. Now how the fact did you get into this? So a good friend of mine that I met actually through kettlebell sport who no longer competes is one of the master's guys in Michigan. And believe it or not, Michigan has a huge following for highlands sports. There seems like a very Michigan thing to me. Yeah. That's on brand. There's 13 current scheduled competitions in the Michigan area, which is really a lot. That's a lot for a season. Anyway, he suggested I try it out. He's like, oh, yeah, you'll be great at this. You should try it. I was not great at it, by the way. And I'm still not great at it, but it is a lot of fun. And the community is second to not. And it's very similar to the kettlebell community and all that everybody knows everybody. And they're all kind of close friends. So I went out to his place and just played with some of the implements and threw a couple of things. And I kind of said, you know, this is super fun. Let's give it a shot. So I went out and bought a kilt because you have to wear a kilt to compete. And did my first competition three years ago now, two years ago, something like that. Yeah, three years ago. Nice. Yeah. And so you said you're you said you're not good at it. I'm putting back the rain. No, I'm not great. What what is the I mean, how do you win? I guess is the do you do the person that wins the most events or do you win individual events or like a little bit of both. So there's classes much like a lot of Olympic level lifting and throwing stuff. You have an A class B class C class and then a novice your first time ever on the pitch. You're in a novice class. C class is usually right where I sit even though I throw at a B class level because I don't care. I just want to have fun. And your your class determines kind of who you're you're matched up against. And then you you all throw all 10 events. And then whoever wins each event, you know, top three of each event get a certain number of points in whoever has the highest points at the end of the meet is the winner. There's a second third for each class. So everybody kind of has their strong suits and and everybody sort of has their one event that they detest and are terrible at. And that's you just kind of play your favorites. But which one is that for you? I hate the sheath. I am terrible at throwing that stupid bail of hay. I'm awful at it. That's that that one seems out of place. But yeah, it's not for distance. You throw it for height. So the goal is to throw this bail of hay which weighs men's is usually right right around 20 pounds. You throw it as high as physically possible. And currently like the the top that you see the A class throwing is like 28 to 30 feet. I feel like all of these things had to come about in a drunken stupor. I just I just feel like that's exactly right. I mean, I'm not going to say that there's not alcohol present at the Highland Games. But there definitely is. Yeah. Is it is it is it afterwards or during? Because some of these things you would need to get a few you would need to get a few in me before I would think that I'm going to try it. Sure. If I get I'll try. We're going to not comment on that for legality purposes. And do you and this is legitimate question. Do you have to do it in a kilt or do some competitors do it not in a kilt? You have to do it in a kilt. You're not even allowed on the pitch without a kilt on. Oh, that's I did not know that that's interesting. So everybody that competes, everybody that judges all have kilt on. But the only person that does and I think is a photographer. And usually they do too, but they don't I don't think have to. That's I mean, that honestly, that sounds super cool. I hear about it. I'm like, ah, that sounds like something I would like. It's a lot of fun. But I'm crazy like you are too. I don't think that a marathon sounds fun. I don't think a 12 hour marathon sounds fun. But you know, some of the other things I'm like, yeah, that sounds that sounds pretty fun. So it's it's definitely a good time. So you know, we've only got a few minutes left. I want to give you I want to give you a couple a couple final questions. Absolutely. What would be what would be your top tip for a new kettlebell lifter? We'll say first and foremost, like what would be the what would be the things that you wish somebody had told you when you were first starting? Oh, God, I love this question. Put your ego aside. Get rid of the idea that even if you're a big guy, you have to lift big weights. I made the mistake of probably starting too heavy. And that's what led to the the quote unquote incident of 2017 where I passed out. So keep your ego in check and lift the light weights until your form is 100% where it needs to be. Don't worry about hitting a certain number, hitting a certain goal, worry about making every rep as good as possible. And those numbers will will come quick. That's the probably the biggest thing that I would say for most people, they try to go too heavy too quick, especially men. Women like, like, yeah, you know that I'm right too. I did make that okay, I can't even see the straight face. That's probably the number one thing. It's just to stay light and tell your form is on point. And I think Americans especially have this problem where they try to go too heavy too quick and they burn out or they they aren't able to stay at a competitive level, which is why you don't see a lot of American men working at the pro level internationally. It's just there's not a lot of us. Yeah and I think a lot of us start a lot later than some of the international that's a hundred percent true. I shoot I didn't even find out about kettlebell sport until I was almost 30. But that I think I think you're 100% right there. That is that is definitely definitely something I notice as well. What were you saying you were saying some the difference with women though that you see? Women are much more okay with staying light longer. At least I've noticed in my coaching experience, they're real hesitant to move up to a heavier weight until they feel like they've completely mastered that lighter weight, which can sometimes be a little bit of a struggle when you've gotten an athlete. I've got a couple of them that should be at a higher weight than they are, but they they I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet when they perfectly capable of it. So you throw it into a training set and just say all right I want you to work on this this bell weight for today. Oh I don't know if I can do that most of sudden they've done a five minute set at you know a reasonably competitive rate reps per minute. Oh I guess I can do that. Yeah you can. So maybe we should bump up. Yes that is that is always the the the joys of coaching you know when you have the managing the various personalities and how do you how do you either push or push people forward or pull people back depending on the nature the nature of their of their personality. Yeah that's always a fun that's always a fun challenge. Bell how about for you personally once you're done with the marathon and the 12 hour marathon are you going to continue doing marathon sets or are you going to go after or are you going to go back to pursuit of master of sport or you know or do you have a do you have a goal that you're that you're focusing on next after you after your charity event. So I kind of go back and forth on this a lot of it's going to depend on what the state of competition is going to be for 2021 to be honest. Yeah I hate virtual competitions. I think it's just not conducive to to hitting the numbers I want to hit. I feed off the energy of the other competitors in the crowd. But marathon stuff other than this 12 hour one marathon stuff for me is just it's kind of a play thing. I just do it because it's different and it's kind of fun. I know it sounds like it's not fun but it's different so it makes it kind of fun. But yeah I'm always always chasing that that master of sport and I think I probably will be for a long time. 2020 we we pulled back considerably on my my goals for hitting master sport. I was getting burned out because of working under the 32s for as long as I did. I was only on 24 kilo from 2017 to 2019 and then from 2019 to 20 to now excuse me 2018 from 2018 till now I've been on 32s and it just burned me out. Kind of goes back to what I'm saying that you know get your form correct to get everything correct before you bump weight. You didn't decide to do a dance on the 28 you just went straight from the 26th to the 32s. I competed once on the 28th hit CMS and then that was it. I did a 10-minute long cycle set at the Midwest Kettlebell Championships in Jackson, Michigan hit CMS and said you know my coach I said so what's next you go well you ready to jump to 32. Oki doki. You know I've been playing on them for a while anyways just for training purposes and decided screw it let's just go for this did the 32 kilo long cycle as my main event and then when I went to Ireland to compete literally on the last minute I said screw it I'm going to be over an Ireland I'm going to be doing this competition I'm I'm going to do as much as possible inside up for 32 kilo by Athalon having never done by Athalon before. Okay go wrong. What a what a stage to jump onto that right? I love it though and I think part of it I can understand the jump to 32s because you can't get any higher than CMS on the 28s right you can't you can't achieve master of sport unless you're on the 32s at least in our weight class I don't know if that's true for all weight classes but um well not that you're are you are you in the heavy are you in the heavy weight are you you're light heavy right? I'm way heavy okay we're way past heavy yeah yeah so the 105 the 105 plus competing with you know Ivan Denysov for best in the world or even Markov uh yeah we're right there uh yeah yes I've just posted a video doing double 50 kilo jerks good for good for him yeah good for him yeah if you're if you're cyborg you can do that I have competed next to him a couple times now and I can definitely say it is not we're not on say it actually had the conversation with him when I walked off the platform in Ireland I said hey man you got me but I'm coming for it he's like no we're on two different levels there's there is no and he's a hundred percent correct he's been doing this so long and so passionately for so long that it's he's on a different level yeah he really should be like there's a whole other like Ash pro and then there's like super pro like yeah like I don't even he's he's a whole like him and you know some of it some of the great Russian lifters I'm just like you know like like Dennis Vasiliv too in the in the lighter in the lighter categories I'm just like he's so far ahead of everybody else like everybody else like if he shows up for a competition you're just like all right who's competing for second today because and that's that's right you know crazy thing is he's such a humble guy I don't know if you've ever talked to Dennis such a humble guy Dennis Vasiliv yes oh yeah he was my coach for okay yeah yeah yeah he's fantastic like just nicest human beings I've met in this sport it's unbelievable oh yeah he's great he's a he's a great great great dude oh yeah I love Dennis he's fantastic so um yeah yeah uh but it ended up working out okay we went to uh went to Ireland and I actually placed better in biathlon than I did in long cycle oddly enough that's that's awesome yeah well I think uh if you if you decide that you're gonna go after it in 2021 I could see you hit master sport in 2021 but I can also understand uh I'm like you the the online competitions are a bit of a struggle it's yeah it's hard to because you're even though at a competition you're on the platform alone you know how much different is that than being in your garage on a platform alone well it's quite a bit different because there's no energy in the room it's just you know you filming it feels a lot like a training set and it's just hard to have that same uh to bring that same energy to the platform so but uh you're also you know a mentally tough dude who can you know finish a marathon set with a flat open hand without stopping so you know if you decide you want to do it I think you could do it but I I understand the the challenge there to get up so well I really appreciate you coming on man I know you I know you've got a tight schedule so I want to be I want to be respectful of your time um how do people follow you are you on Instagram I know you're on Facebook at armor fitness LLC are you also on on Instagram or YouTube or any of the other socials out of people follow you how do they hire you uh all of those things uh Instagram armor fitness kettlebell all one word uh and then uh I have a YouTube channel but it's basically just for posting training videos for my clients um everything else is done through Facebook or uh Instagram awesome yeah well Ross thank you so much man I really appreciate it and we'll make sure that we put the we make sure I'll make sure that we put the the links into for in the show notes for people to donate to the the jack the jacks and foster foster family closet was that right jacks and foster closet foster closet okay so we'll make sure that people can can donate or sign up to to be part of the uh be part of the event and which all the proceeds are going to that charity so thank you for doing that that's that's super awesome and I'm I'm looking forward to it so I hope I hope it goes well man good luck on your on your 12-hour uh your 12-hour adventure yeah should be fun should be good thanks thanks so much Ross have a good one take it easy thanks Jordan bye bye thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast I'm Jordan Kunde-Wright if you have a question please email me at twinsidyskettableclub at gmail.com follow us on Instagram and Facebook at twinsidyskettableclub on Twitter at tckvclub online at twinsidyskettableclub.com and please help us grow our reach and give us a review on apple podcast spotify stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts until next time