OUR TRAINING APPROACH
Ithaca Kettlebells offers an efficient, effective approach to total fitness in a friendly, welcoming training environment. We offer both group classes and personal training options.
The philosophy behind our approach to training is the same whether you’re in a group class or a 1-on-1 personal training session:
First move well, then move strong.
There are three main pillars to our training approach — kettlebells, Original Strength, and the Functional Movement Screen.
Kettlebells
Kettlebells are the ultimate tool for total fitness. Although we incorporate a wide variety of bodyweight and other types of training, kettlebells are always at the heart of our training programs. We’ll teach you how to use a kettlebell correctly to reinforce good movement patterns, build strength and stability in your whole body, burn fat, skyrocket your conditioning, and push your fitness to a whole new level. No other training tool can match the versatility, efficiency, and effectiveness of the kettlebell.
Plus…kettlebells are just more fun than anything else!
Original Strength
You were made to move. Original Strength is the fastest, simplest, and easiest movement restoration system on the planet. Learn how to “press reset” on your movement operating system and regain the natural, reflexive strength and mobility of a child the same way you developed it in the first place — through a progressive series of simple exercises based on the human neurodevelopmental sequence.
And once you’ve reclaimed your original strength, you can continue progressing the OS movements as far as you want to build astonishing levels of strength, athleticism, and resiliency.
Learn more about the Original Strength system at https://originalstrength.net
The Functional Movement Screen
The FMS is a proven system for identifying and correcting the restrictions, asymmetries, and faulty movement patterns that are making you more susceptible to injury and holding you back from reaching your potential. The seven-movement screen gives us a snapshot of your movement quality at a given time and guides us in designing a corrective exercise program that will get you moving your best.
By the way, don’t think that "corrective exercise" is necessarily going to be easy. Overcoming long-standing movement issues can be some of the hardest work you’ve ever done, with a very high metabolic cost. And corrective work can often be done in combination with more fitness-oriented training, so you can still get a good workout while improving your movement.
To learn more about our training programs, check out our Group Training or Personal Training pages.
Our training approach is based on the following basic principles:
1. Good movement is the foundation for all fitness.
All exercise begins with movement. Exercise is basically either loaded movement — movement with added resistance — or movement repeated to the point of fatigue. (Or both.) If the underlying movement is dysfunctional, then loading it or pushing it to the point of fatigue is just asking for an injury. Read more about this here.
We’ve got some of the best systems in the world for improving movement quality, and we incorporate them into every aspect of what we do.
2. Don’t just work out…train.
Ask a lot of people what they want from their fitness program, and they’ll answer, “a good workout.” But we want to do more than just make you tired — we want to help you reach your fitness goals. That’s what training is all about. Training involves purpose, planning, and progression. A training program starts where you are and progresses in a logical way towards where you want to be. We incorporate a lot of variety into our workouts, but that variety is contained within a larger progressive structure. That way each training session is different, but each one helps move you toward your goals.
3. Train for total fitness.
Too many exercise programs focus on only one component of overall fitness — aerobic conditioning, or work capacity, or whatever. But true fitness encompasses more than any one quality. One of the most useful definitions of physical fitness we’ve ever come across is: “the ability to handle the ordinary and unexpected demands of life without undue stress.” Exercise should be training for living life effectively.
So what do you need in order to do that?
Let’s start with:
- healthy and functional breathing
- appropriate levels of mobility in all joints
- the ability to reflexively stabilize at the hip, core, and shoulder
- good biomechanics in fundamental human movement patterns
- strength to spare on any task you might encounter
- development of all three of the body’s cellular energy systems
- the capacity to move in any direction with speed and agility when necessary
- resilience — being able to do what you want or need to do without getting injured
- and perhaps above all, feeling good in your body.
So that’s what we train for.
We can help you work toward specific training goals if you have them, but we believe it’s important to balance a targeted focus on those goals with attention to the broader spectrum of fitness.
4. Base training programs and practices on the state of the art in exercise science and the accumulated experience and wisdom of the best coaches in the world.
Our training programs are not random or based simply on what we like to do. We’ve studied the research on what works and what doesn’t, we’ve spent years learning from the best coaches and trainers in the industry, and we’re still doing it. We continue to learn and study so that we can get a little better every day — and help you do the same.
5. Form follows function.
We know a lot of people start exercising because they want to change the way they look. But we encourage you to focus first on how you feel and what you can do. If you make yourself strong and fit and follow a good nutrition program, how can you help but look and feel great?
We can help you lose weight if that’s one of your goals, but it will be in the context of a total fitness program designed to make you strong, fit, and healthy.
To put it another way: we want you to train to become what you want to be, rather than to avoid what you don’t want to be.
To learn more about our training programs, check out our Group Training or Personal Training pages.