03 Feb A Simple Way to Improve Your Technique

No matter what skill you’re working on, here’s some really simple advice to help improve your technique with kettlebells, barbell training, or any other training tool, for that matter.

For example, let’s take a look at the Turkish get up.

The Turkish get up is actually a combination of many mobility and stability movements, so the easiest way to learn this is to break it down into small bits or chunks.

“Chunking” things down makes it much easier to learn.

This an extremely effective way to learn this exercise or any new movement skill you’re having difficulty with.

Here’s how you do it:

1.) Ask yourself what is the smallest single piece of the skill that you can master?

With the Turkish get up, it may be just the first movement or two.

This would be transitioning from a roll to press position (step 1) and then maybe going to a press to elbow position (step 2).

Step 1 and step 2 are the chunks here.

Own those movements.

2.) Then, once you can safely and effectively perform this chunk or series of chunks, build on top on that with another.

In the get up example, you would then add the elbow to hand position (step 3).

Keep working on the smallest elements (or chunks) of an exercise until you have each “chunk” of movement down really well before moving onto the next.

3.) Finally, combine the chunks you’ve been working on until the entire movement is strung together in a movement pattern.

Here’s the simple formula again, no matter what skill or movement pattern you’re working to develop.

• Look at the entire movement or skill
• Break it down into small, simple chunks
• Work on the chunks independently
• Start to put the movement back together again

This will require some critical thinking to break things down, but it can be applied to any lift or exercise, especially the ones that require skills and technical proficiency, like kettlebell training, Olympic weightlifting, basic barbell lifts, bodyweight exercises, or anything else.

If you think about any of these areas, you can break them down the same way.

I’ve been using this exact formula for some time now and it works extremely well, so apply the model and see how your technique improves.

When you’re struggling to learn an exercise or want to continue to deepen your skills, just “chunk” things down.

Break them down into the smallest components and own those movements.

It’s very simple.

To see “chunking” in action, this is exactly what I did in the Bent Press video tutorial series.

Thanks for reading and if you got value from this, please share it.