Over the weekend Chris and I attended the International Kettlebell & Strength Training Academy Certification Course in Sydney. The course was run by world champion Girevik, Vasily Ginko.

Vasily is 7 times world champion in Girevoy Sport (the sport of Kettlebell lifting) and holds 2 world records. Vasily makes lifting two 32kg Kettlebells overhead for ten minutes look easy – and anyone who has tried will tell you it’s definitely not. In fact, Vasily makes everything look easy – from a complex juggling routine with the 16kg Kettlebell, right through to doing deep overhead jumping squats – he is an all round athlete, and mesmerising to watch.

The Course was hosted by Darius Alligan who has trained with Vasily in the past. Other Girevoy sport enthusiasts to attend included the very agile Jamie Douse from Western Kettlebells in WA, the very determined Mat Shields who runs the Albury Girevoy Sport Club and Girevik extraordinaire Paul Tucker from Hobart. We also had the pleasure of some entertaining circus stunts performed by Alex Hughes and Stoyan Shopov (using Kettlebells of course).

The course covered a very wide range of Kettlebell training techniques including Girevoy sport, power juggling, mobility exercises with Kettlebells and programming for a wide variety of athletes – from bodybuilders right through to Olympic weightlifters.

It really opened our eyes to the breadth of Kettlebell training and how it can be adapted to promote all facets of athleticism – not surprising, after all the Russians and other Eastern Bloc countries have known this for decades and have used Kettlebells to dominate in many sporting disciplines.

Until now, though, it has been difficult to get access to the secrets of exactly how they have done it; we were very lucky to have Vasily give us some insights into those programming methods.

We completed both the level 1 and level 2 certifications over three days. No mean feat! Each certification required us to pass a physical test. In particular, the test for level 2 was quite difficult and required all the skills required for complete and balanced mastery of Kettlebell lifting – strength, coordination, power, flexibility, agility, dexterity and power endurance.

With any luck, Vasily will come back next year to run certification courses.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and learnt more than we could have imagined.  We highly recommend this course for anyone who is looking to take their kettlebell lifting to the next level and for any trainers who want to make the most of their Kettlebells for all their clients.

Enough talk, though, you’ll get a better idea with some video clips:



Tags: Emily Friedel