0:00 What's up, guys? Welcome back to the channel. Today, I'm going to give you four reasons why kettlebell long cycle is one of the best exercises you can do for longevity and health after 30. And I'm showing you guys a kettlebell sport session I did recently. I did long cycle with double 30 kg bells, and I did 10 sets of 1 minute of work and 1 minute of rest. Let's go. Reason number one is that long cycle trains your power and strength. And those two are very closely related. They both involve the fast-twitch or type two muscle fibers and the corresponding motor units. And those are the first that start to
0:45 degrade even starting to some extent in your early 20s, and especially after 30. And the only way to maintain it is to train it. As you can see, especially the jerk part of the long cycle is an explosive power movement. It's basically like a loaded jump where you use your lower body to project the bells overhead, and then you catch them in an athletic position. So, it's basically a loaded plyometric and demands those fast-twitch muscle fibers. Reason number two why it's great for longevity is that it trains hypertrophy. So, it will maintain your muscle mass because one
1:30 thing that also tends to decline in everybody after 30 is your muscle mass. And the only way again to maintain it is to train it. And kettlebell sport long cycle really involves all the major muscles of the body. So, you have your whole posterior chain in the clean, your back, your glutes, your hamstrings. You have your quads and your upper body in the jerk. And you won't really find a muscle that isn't working in long cycle. Reason number three why it's a fantastic exercise is because it trains your VO2 max, and this is an important one because VO2 max is the single most reliant predictor of longevity if we
2:17 look at a large enough sample size. And again, VO2 max declines rapidly after 30, and the only way to maintain it is through endurance training. Of course, you want to do your zone one, zone two cardio, like your long walks, long easy jerks, etc. But you also need high-intensity training, and specifically high-intensity interval training is one of the best, most scientifically proven ways to improve and maintain your VO2 max. And here I did 1-minute intervals. That's a little bit more strength-focused, a little bit more power-focused, but you also can do
3:04 two, three, and four-minute intervals, and that's really going to increase your VO2 max. There's plenty of studies on that, so you could do, for example, five sets of 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off, or four sets of 3 minutes on, 3 minutes off, or even very brutal three sets of 4 minutes on, and 4 minutes off. And if we look at kettlebell sport competitions, the competition distance is 10 minutes, and that's exactly the duration where we express, where we work at VO2 max intensity. So you don't have to compete, but the competition training is very good for building VO2 max
3:49 because kettlebell sport movements are cyclical exercises. It looks like a strength exercise. Yes, there is a very large strength and power element to it. But, it's actually a cyclical exercise similar to rowing, similar to running, where we go through cycles of tension and relaxation. And that really allows the blood to flow and allows us to express a high VO2 max. And one of the very cool things about long cycle compared to, for example, running is that it involves, like I said in the beginning, all the muscles of the body. And that means we not only train our fast twitch muscle fibers, who are responsible for power,
4:34 but we also train the mitochondria across the whole body. And mitochondria are also a large part of maintaining a high VO2 max and just healthy aging and a healthy metabolism in general. And since we also involve the upper body, involve the back, involve the core, all those muscles contract and relax cyclically, we are going to build a lot of mitochondria there. So, that was reason number three why it's great for longevity. Reason number four would be that it also maintains your flexibility to some extent, right? Because that's like everything like everything unfortunately declines with age, but your flexibility is also one of those things that
5:19 just tends to deteriorate. And in kettlebell sport long cycle, we use a lot of we need a lot of flexibility. So, during the backswing in the clean, right? You notice the legs are straight and we are in a perfect hinge position. So, we need some pretty decent hamstring flexibility for that. And then, in the clean, in the rack position, right? We extend the hips. So, the more flexible your hip flexors are, the better your rack position. And at the same time, we have good thoracic flexion. So, that means our lower back is really rounded. And then, as we extend into the jerk, we get the opposite. We reach full shoulder flexion, that means the arms go straight up overhead, and we extend the thoracic spine. So, we're really training the
6:06 motion of the spine. And that's something I especially observe in people as they get older. They have really big problems getting their arms overhead and extending that thoracic spine. And that's really something you can observe. Young people or kids or have no problem at all having a perfect overhead fixation, as we call the finishing position in kettlebell sport. And the older people get, the more their arms up bend, the the more they stick out to the side, the more the shoulder mobility and flexibility and stability tends to go. So, that's also something we can train with long cycle. And one kind of concept I want to talk about is
6:51 the idea of power endurance. And it's closely related to the things we talked about, like the fast-twitch fibers and VO2 max. And that means the ability to maintain power over a longer period of time. So, endurance is just the ability to resist fatigue, right? And when we're talking about power endurance, we're resisting fatigue while also moving powerfully. And that's one of the hardest things to do. And that's something that's very specific to youth. So, if you think about strength, yes, strength degrades, but you can still be strong as you get older, and that's very typical. You even see like the expression old man strength, right? And that's
7:37 the like the one end of of the of the of the spectrum. And then, you have endurance. and again, endurance, yes, everything declines as you age, but it's very like reasonable to maintain a decent level of endurance. You see people in their 60s, 70s like jogging everyday, jogging marathons, and it's very reasonable. But like the combination of strength and endurance, and especially when we combine it with power, if you think of like a mile run, like how many people can run a good mile in their 60s, 70s? Very few people, and those are the literally the fittest people on Earth, because not only do they have still have the aerobic capacity, they also have the structural integrity, because you have
8:25 to run pretty fast in a mile run, right? And they have the speed and the motor units to that go with it, and that's where kettlebell sport long cycle over 6, 7, 8, 10 minutes is very similar to a mile run, for example. So, that concept of power endurance is really something to keep in mind. Now, of course, if you train long cycle, you're going to train and maintain a lot of those capacities to some extent. That doesn't mean that that's the only thing you need to do. Here I'm already doing the 10th set. I did seven reps per minute throughout the workout and nine in the last set. So, I'm training myself to accelerate towards the end, to really
9:11 like hit that anaerobic capacity as well. So, you can use long cycle, of course, to train all of those things, but it's also a diagnostic tool, because when you train, you see what is lacking. Is it my power? Is it my endurance? Is it my flexibility? And it really exposes your weaknesses. In my personal case, like it's the flexibility, and it's the endurance mostly and I see okay what do I have to tweak? Do I have to do more zone two cardio? Do I have to stretch more? Do I have to do more strength work? And you can be assured if your long cycle is good, all of those other things are going to be good also. Is it the only thing you need to train as you
9:56 get older? No, you also need to train more like rotational patterns, like lateral speed, right? Because you're not only moving linearly. There's a lot of things you need to cover, but it's a good base. And here I'm showing you guys also a squat set I did right after long cycle. Typical kettlebell sport training. I did 100 reps with 55 kg. I know my depth isn't great. It's just slightly above parallel. That's like kettlebell sport specific. Ideally, I would like to go a little bit deeper, but that's also one great way to train that strength endurance and power endurance. So, I hope you guys found that interesting. I hope it gave you some insights. I hope you learned
10:42 something new that you can apply to your training and I'm going to talk to you guys soon. Take care.
