Vodka at night. Pickle juice in the morning (the best thing for a hangover).
Throwing some kettlebells around between this hangover and the next one. A Russian’s day well spent.
The ‘kettlebell’ or girya is a cast iron weight which looks like a basketball with a suitcase handle. It is an old Russian toy.
As the 1986 Soviet Weightlifting Yearbook put it, “It is hard to find a sport that has deeper roots in the history of our people than the girevoy sport.”
My ancestors played with kettlebells—when they weren’t skirmishing with the Germans, Turks, and many other neighbors who wanted a piece of Mother Russia.
Later, it was the key to forging the mighty power of dinosaurs like Ivan ‘the Champion of Champions’ Poddubny.
Poddubny, one of the strongest men of his time, trained with kettlebells in preparation for his undefeated wrestling career and six world champion belts.
Thanks to K-bells, Poddubny would toy with much larger opponents, lift them over his head, and slam them into the ground! On one amusing occasion, in 1907, at London’s Pavilion Theater, Poddubny destroyed the referees’ table when he tossed another famous wrestler on top of it.
Always the joker, Poddubny made himself a16kg cane—so he could amuse himself watching pencil necks at coat checks drop it on their toes.
Pyotr Kryloff, another top gun during the early days of the iron game, was nicknamed ‘the King of Kettlebells’, in honor of his favorite strengthening tool.
He was known for his stunt of jerking two beefy soldiers over his head, while they sat inside two hollow spheres on the ends of a specially made barbell.
Russian professional strongman, Moor Znamensky, would do a handstand on two 32kg kettlebells, after which he would jump back on his feet, lifting the bells over his head at the same time.
Then he would drop back in a handstand, and repeat the drill ten times! So popular were kettlebells in Tsarist Russia that any strong man or weightlifter was referred to as a girevik, or ‘a kettlebell man’.
A century ago, European and American iron-legends like Arthur Saxon favored kettlebells as much as their Russian colleagues.
Then the West got prosperous and soft and the hardcore kettlebell faded into history—along with many other of our grandfathers’ manly pursuits.
That is, everywhere but in Russia, a rugged land that never knew easy living.
