EDIT January 22, 2022. on july 2, 2012, i began a review of bud jeffries’ book, I Will Be Iron. i never finished writing that post and, eventually, forgot about it, though it did spawn a private conversation between bud and i regarding kettlebell training with clients who are blind. bud jeffries died yesterday, during a light training session in his yard. i am so very sad. the fitness folks i am connected to through social media are reeling with this news. i recalled reading his book and writing about it and went looking for my old blog post only to find i had never finished the review. i am publishing that unfinished post today, in honour of this amazing man. you will see it as unfinished, with jotted thoughts and crazy formatting toward the end as it has waited patiently for me to tidy it up and polish it off. i think it is, as is, finished. Bud was kind and strong, a maverick with a compassionate heart who creatively challenged himself constantly. you need only check out the unreal videos he posted on his social media sites to understand the fortitude and lateral thinking of this person. he was a family man; a good father and a doting husband. he persevered despite a myriad of challenges in his life, and he did so because he knew his path and could not be swayed from it. he blew my mind so many times over the years; quick to respond to personal contact and honest in addressing those who challenged his style of strong.
in honour of this man among men, here is my unfinished thoughts about Bud and his book from 10 years ago.
many times i’ve remarked that swinging a kettlebell can change your life.
for strongman bud jeffries this is, indeed, a path he choose; to swing a kettlebell. he shares his powerful story of change in i will be iron.
i liked this book. a lot. mainly because bud’s values and his philosophy for living life are well aligned with my own. our lives look nothing alike, but what we do and how we do it and why we do it are connected at a basic level.
bud’s delivery is a straightforward recognition and account of the transformative power we can bring to our activities. body and mindheart are separate only as words in a limited vocabulary. otherwise they are one and the same.
bud chose the kettlebell swing as his transformative tool. combining focus, endurance, determination, execution, creativity, progression, mindfulness, strength, consistency, and persistence, bud took 120+ pounds off his bigstrong body without losing strength or
bud is a strongman and found at an early age that he perffeats from an early age, bud has spent a lifetime training in ways most of us would deem superhuman. as a big guy,
fitness which transforms body and mind, vitality, qigong
a simple program
that anyone can use. A program
that can fit your life.
believe that when a
man or woman launches his
whole self into the performance of
a simple thing and that simple
thing takes him or her to a height
of control of the body, of expression
of power, of emotion, of mental
strength, and faithfulness to
just that small simple thing, it has
a transformative power across, not
just his or hers physical medium,
but the whole life.
To train with the savage
…if you would get everything there is out of life, if you would be everything that you could be, then you must be remade into the image of iron into living steel, into a being who has absolute vitality, a being who cannot be dissuaded by the toughness of life or the toughness of any immediate physical situation or task.
/ENGAGE WITH THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE KETTLEBELL SWING-AND
NEVER LOOK BACK./
The Swing is the mother of all kettlebell exercises. It exerts
muscular and aerobic effort on every area and system of the body. The
explosive snap of the swing builds hip, hamstring, back, quad,
abdominal, and shoulder strength. It works grip strength. It works
explosive speed. It spreads the focus out onto the body so that many,
many muscles, if not all the muscles of the body, are activated at one
time. In doing so, it allows you to push further, harder, and faster
than almost any other exercise and with a simple movement. The Swing
allows you to literally drive the body as hard as you can without
localized fatigue becoming the stopping factor.
Why wouldn’t you use the most effective tool, exercise and system to
get the most change and advancement into Iron-strength and your best
life?
Why indeed would you not? Jeffries lays down an inspirational
challenge and illustrates the challenge with his own immensely
powerful story. Whether you are a longtime kettlebell practitioner or
a complete newbie, Jeffries offers you a complete blueprint for
utterly transforming your body-by making the Swing the center of your
training universe. The Bud Jeffries story is undeniable. Supply the
fortitude and the perseverance, follow Bud’s plan-and the sky’s the
limit for your future development of strength, endurance, power and
speed.
the earth, the fields, the sky, the trees, me. all smelling so loudly beneath the cloudy cloche. loamy, terpenic, grassy, grainy, astringent, sweet, petrichoric. corn stalks pushed up to waist height and green wheat serenely stationary in the early air, potato fields densely green and awaiting blossoms. black flies a baby’s breath halo around my head.
running over the last couple of weeks has been an undulating unfolding of flora. rusty clover blossoms now in the shadows of stately queen anne’s lace, ditches lined with brown-eyed susans and bright white mallows. wild rose bushes in various stages of disarray. clouds of st. john’s wort, the spikey reaches of mullein, the darlingness of fleabane. stripey pink morning glories nestled in hot summer entanglements. it has been a splendorous orgy for the eyes and nose.
landing on these wee beings in bare feet is a most unpleasant sensation; their demise underfoot saddens and nauseates me. at some point, their migration becomes so populated that my timewarp running pattern cannot save them, or me. so, i head out eastbound and return westbound instead of the reverse.
i checked this morning’s temperature and decided long pants and long sleeves might be in order for the run. halfway down the driveway, in the still close air, it became quite clear that i was well overdressed for my distance run.
it took about 13.8 billion years of confluences for me to run this morning. this run, indeed, a miracle. a modest, quiet miracle of motion at .002 km/s.
we have all lived amidst a wellspring of uncertainty, perhaps finding fear and darkness at the source, perhaps finding opportunity. i have traversed all the points along and beyond this lockdown acquifer choosing largely to create and live my own covideology.
i also picked up some virtual studio training with Flow Shala at the end of march and have been having a good deal of fun-bathed-in-sweat learning to work with the steel mace.
on weekend past, i headed out for a leisurely run. i roll my eyes when i say that; there is nothing in my experience that feels ‘leisurely’ when i move in a running sort of fashion. the morning was one in a series of lovely days we’ve been blessed with.
amplification
on this day, a short, faster run in anticipation of 7 hours of a steel mace vinyasa conditioning course later in the day.
when we walk like (we are rushing), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. we have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth… be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.
each year, father’s day is a bit differently nuanced for me, especially in these recent years of living with mom and her shifting memories of him, their relationship, our family. the man she remembers, or perhaps more accurately re-members, bears a kernel of resemblance to the man i recall growing up with, but the stories she tells have evolved, or devolved, dramatically in recent years. in some ways, her alzheimer’s dementia has done more to remove him from my life than it has removed her.
the whole way 