Kettlebell Partner Passing

If you are new to kettlebells, the best place to start your KPP journey is learning your basic two hand swing, this a staple of the kettlebell world and it is what all other KPP exercises revolve around. If you have a strong back ground in kettlebells and you can safely swing a kettlebell, the next step is to start letting go of the kettlebell. Practice making the bell flip backwards, and having it land bell bottom down and handle straight up. Get really good with this one as it translates directly to the two hand pass with a flip. When you can get 10 in a row you are ready for the next step. Next Practice tossing the bell without a flip and making it land up right. This translates to a two hand straight pass in the KPP world. Work towards getting 10 in a row before moving on. You will know you are really ready when you can get them to land bottom down at will. After no flips, add in the forward flip, this does not directly translate to KPP passes as much as it teaches you how to control the bell and will help with the straight pass. Get 10 and move on to the next drill. Now alternate back flips and straight passes landing bottom down and handles up, you guessed it get 10 of each before progressing, so 20 total in a row. This is no easy feat and the more you practice this pass without a partner the better it will serve you when you have a partner in from of you. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. If you have any questions, ask here on the forum. Thank you and God bless!

The two hand pass is the most important pass of all, it is where the skills for all other passes are developed. Get to know the two hand pass, a wise practitioner will invest time and continue to return to this pass well after they have become proficient. People who tend to rush ahead miss out on many of the important lessons of two hand passing. I see it time and time again where someone learns the two hand pass and they rush to move on, it is very clear who has and has not put the time in. Perhaps people on instagram may think your passing is great but the reality is the quality of of your passes and movement show you have moved ahead before your time. Refrain from being a technique hopper and give the two hand pass its due respect and all passing patters for that matter, and let them teach you their many lessons. They are there for a reason and will make your life easier down the road. KPP is not just tossing kettlebells back and forth, that is the method used to deliver the information, just because you are hurling hunks of iron through the air doesn't mean you understand KPP. Get familiar with the system, it is designed to progress you in a way that is logical, safe and intelligent. Things to think about when you are passing the bell: 1. Focus on your follow through, when releasing the bell, it determines where the bell goes. Be patient with the follow through, when rushed the energy you are sending to your partner is dispersed too soon and leads to inaccurate passes. When you linger with your follow through too long you will interrupt the rhythm and throw off the timing making the return pass from your partner choppy. You should feel the bell sliding off your finger tips as the bell is being releases. The tips of your fingers are the rudder that guide the bell into your partners hands, this is the difference between turning the bell and flipping it. Turning the bell will give smoother entry to your partners hands as if you are handing them the bell and will also be less work for you. 2. When you complete the follow through, which is usually the moment right before the bell enters your partners hands, it is recommended that you relax fully and let your arms fall to your side as the bell enters their hands. This does a few things; 1) it takes the focus off of you and lets your partner fully focus on what's coming at them. 2) it sets you up for the next pass to be slightly ahead of when they throw the bell. You want to be slightly ahead of their pass so that you can come down to meet the handle of the bell when you decide, instead of trying to reach for it as its coming at you or even worse leaving your hands out as a target to get hit. 3) it lets you relax and catch your breath so that you are not holding excessive tension and wasting energy, think fast and loose. 3. When catching the kettlebell it is best to point your fingers up towards the sky so that you don't jam or break your fingers, after all we are throwing cannonballs at one another. Also a soft quiet firm grip is superior to an aggressive loud one. You can take my word for it or give it a try and see for yourself what the difference is. The passer, after letting go, should immediately return to a tall neutral position to prepare to become the receiver. The tall position gives the passer a consistent target to aim at. The receiver should remain as tall and relaxed as possible, hinging only when the hands and bell meet not a moment sooner. This will protect the back and engage the stretch reflex cycle making the return pass more reflexive and less reactive. The beauty of partner passing is that you will know when you give a shit pass because you will usually get a shit pass back. The idea is to give the best possible pass that you can and to work on improving each pass. Look at ever pass as an opportunity to improve, when viewed this way massive improvements can happen in a relatively short period of time. You will also know when you give a great pass, it will feel right and both you and your partner will appreciate it. The goal then becomes to give optimal passes every time. Perfect passes do not exist only greater degrees of optimal. You will, with practice, inevitably throw a pass that feels perfect, this is when the work begins. Now it becomes about duplicating it, refining it, getting more consistent, and honing it even further. Perfect is never the goal, continually progressing is. Thanks for reading and may you continue to progress and become increasingly consistent. We will talk about reading your partners body in the future. Peace be with you.

When I first came up with the idea of the hour passing session I thought it was insane but I liked the idea. I worked with my friend Brandon for 6 weeks training him and getting him up to speed, and building our capacity as a team for the hour. We built up to 20 minutes and then 30 and eventually 40 minutes of continuous passing. It was an exciting experiment and the whole reason I even conceived of the possibility was from a passing session with my friend Harinder. Harinder and I started passing a 16 kg bell on a sunny afternoon and we casually started talking about the things we were excited about in our lives, what we were building and the future. The bell finally dropped, we high fived and checked the time, to both of our surprise, 50 minutes had passed in what seemed like 15 minutes. This gave me the Idea of passing a bell for an hour as a test or right of passage, however I thought a 24kg bell would be a better weight to use for the test Fast forward to training with Brandon, we practiced different styles of passing to prepare in addition to the two hand pass. We practiced single arm passing, and freestyle to mix it up so as not to get too repetitive and to build up the durability of our hands and the strength in our tendons and ligaments. Right around the six week mark we were both feeling good and decided that we would do the hour test just before sunset at Ponto beach in North County San Diego and that we would film it in time-lapse. There is noting like standing in front of your partner for an hour and showing up for each other moment after moment. The struggle is real and both of you are dealing with it but neither one wants to be the person to let the other down. Truly an accomplishment of magnificent proportions. Each person is running the spectrum of emotions as the time slowly ticks away. In some moments it feels like time is cruising right along and other moments it feels like time is standing still. The feeling of appreciation and love that I felt at the end of the hour is like no other I have felt before. To know that you or he could have given up at any moment and did not, that we both chose to show up for ourselves and each other speaks volumes about the character of the person in front of you. In a sense when you walk in to the hour test you are going into battle with your inner demons and so are they. You may not realize it when you walk into the hour, quickly it becomes apparent. The opportunity to bear witness to your partner while battling your demons is a powerful way to initiate a deep healing process that requires you to do it on your own but not alone. We are social beings and there are things we can handle together and some must handle on our own, to have someone bear witness to your healing and to create an accountability to finishing the process makes the situation more real. Many gems of wisdom have come from the hour of passing, more on that in later post, now I would like to focus on how I got to where we are with the hour of passing. Once we completed the hour and knew it was possible I wanted to see if other people could do it. Chris Hook and Mike Scott of L.a. Golf fitness were perfect candidates. I had run into Mike at a Strong First event and he and I passed bells briefly. He invited me to come visit him and his partner Chris at there studio in L.a., so I did. We passed bells and I shared with them the idea of the 1 hour test. I had devised a 90 day training program for them to follow to prepare for the test and to get them familiar with the basic level 1 passing patterns. They sent me video every week to critique and they would implement my suggestions to get better with passing. At the end of the 90 days they were both ready and passed there test. I was excited to implement the 90 day protocol and get people to start testing to be certified KPP instructors. As exciting as it was it proved very difficult to get people to commit to 90 days and even harder for them to find partners who could match them. I had a few people who were working towards completing the 90 day protocol and the hour passing test but is seemed to keep getting derailed by one thing or another. Toneflowreal wanted to get certified as a KPP instructor and he had been training with me directly. Because Tone is a Flowmad, I knew it would be next to impossible for him to get a consistent 90 days with a consistent partner, I made a deal with him, get his 90 days in whatever way he could and that I would test him as his partner for the hour. Meanwhile Mike Visscher who is a beast of a man was going through partners like hotcakes and couldn't seem to find someone that could match him to complete the 90 days. I truly thought the right person would show up for him at one of our Rancho Cucamonga KPP courses. To both our dismay no one ever showed up that was an appropriate match for him. We were coming to the close of 2018 and Mike was really wanting to become certified so I extend the same offer to him that I extended to Tone. the weekend of January 26th 2019 Mike made his way out to Albuquerque to help instruct the NM KPP workshop at Charlie's Sandbox. I had casually mentioned to Mike, before he came out, if he wanted to test while he was in ABQ, I would be happy to test him. He said "lets see how I feel when I'm out there." Mike arrived on Friday and we taught the workshop on Saturday, it was a great workshop and we all had a good time. As per tradition we went a played pinball to the wee hours of the night and didn't get to sleep until well after 3am. Exhausted from the 4 hours of KPP and late night pinball we woke up late in the day. Having forgotten my offer, to my surprise, Mike said he wanted to test. After a couple of quick phone calls we secured Firebellz in Albuquerque owned by Zar Horton, and Charles and Dez Bustos as a venue to do our hour. At the house before we headed over I told Mike to make sure he kept his arms straight when he received the bell for the duration of the hour so as not to pop a tendon. His eyes perked up and I could see that he realized that shit was about to get real. We got to Firebellz and took about an hour to get things set up. We had to get the mat we were passing on set up, our heart rate monitors adjusted, the cameras set up and hooked up to power. After all the commotion of getting prepared we stood on the mat facing each other with a 24kg bell. I was errantly assuming that it would be like the first hour I passed. From the moment we began I realized that this was a different situation with a different person and a whole different set of demons to face. At around 20 minutes, Mike feeling good and thinking we were much further in than we were, suggested that we throw for two hours. To which I replied "let's get one first." The hour was not an easy one and without it's own set of challenges. We were able to make it through and Mike and I both had profound experiences passing with one another. He will go into greater depth of his experience in another post. This hour passing experience helped me to realize that the first wave of instructors will be hand picked tested by me or one of the currently certified instructors. What I saw from there is a maximum of 12 instructors all of whom have passed for an hour with one another. The data from the hour passing was interesting to me and made me curious as to what we will find as we continue to get data each hour that we pass. I am excited to get additional data on KPP as well like what is going on neurologically during the course of a sustained bout of flow. Ideally every hour of passing that occurs we will minimally collect Hr data and the data that comes with monitoring the heart rate and ideally collect data that is more telling of what else may be going on. The next hour event is set for February 16th with Toneflowreal in Aptos California. He will be putting on one of his magic flow buss events and at the end of the flow bus weekend he will pass his hour test. I'm excited to see where this hour directs us and what the experience of passing with this flomosapien is like compared to the other two that I have experienced the hour of passing with. Thank you all for your support I love and appreciate you and look forward to growing, flowing, passing and getting to know you better. God Bless you and all of yours .

The thing that stands out to me today is that we all have a deep desire to be seen. It is unlikely to walk away from a KPP workshop or session feeling unfulfilled and unseen. I often forget that being seen is not a common experience for most of us and I am often surprised at how good it feels to see and be seen. It may be vulnerable and uncomfortable at first but when I move through the discomfort it always feels natural and right, leaving me feeling more human and more connected to my fellow humans. In a world where we are not encouraged to see each other for the divine children of God that we are, or to show are true nature for that matter, it can be quite unusual to step into a KPP session and set our masks down, as the person across from us does the same. This mutual act of vulnerability is what allows for authentic connection and relating that so many of us unknowingly are craving. I have learned that most people are uncomfortable with this experience for the first few times and eventually learn to embrace it and thrive from and welcome the healing and connection that is facilitated by passing with one another.