Tsatsouline Pavel - Easy strength: how to get a lot stronger than your competition - and dominate in your sport

EASY STRENGTH

How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competitionand Dominate in Your Sport

Dan John and Pavel

How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competitionand Dominate in Your Sport

Dan John and Pavel

Copyright 2011 Daniel John and Power by Pavel, Inc.

A Dragon Door Publications, Inc production

All rights under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions.

Published in the United States by:
Dragon Door Publications, Inc
P.O. Box 4381, St. Paul, MN 55104
Tel: (651) 487-2180 Fax: (651) 487-3954
Credit card orders: 1-800-899-5111
Email: dragondoor@aol.com Website: www.dragondoor.com

ISBN 10: 0-938045-80-6 ISBN 13: 978-0-938045-80-9

This edition first published in October, 2011

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

Printed in China

Book design, and cover by Derek Brigham
Website http//www.dbrigham.com Tel/Fax: (763) 208-3069 Email: bigd@dbrigham.com

DISCLAIMER
The author and publisher of this material are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any injury that may occur through following the instructions contained in this material. The activities, physical and otherwise, described herein for informational purposes only, may be too strenuous or dangerous for some people and the reader(s) should consult a physician before engaging in them.

Dedicated to the memory of John Faas, Christian, warrior, American.

SOC (SEAL Operator, Chief) John Faas KIA 2011, Afghanistan

The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their suggestions about this manuscript:

Boris Bachman
Thomas Fahey
Steve Freides
Marty Gallagher
Rob Lawrence
Jeremy Layport
Chip Morton
Jeff OConnor
Jack Reape
Mark Reifkind
Barry Ross

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Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1997. My eye was caught by a series of brash ads in the local seminar-companys catalog. For $25.00 per three-hour class, a young migr, Pavel Tsatsouline, was promising to challenge many of our Western Worlds most cherished fitness beliefsand replace them with a rack of more practical, more scientific and flat-out more effective training protocols. Billing himself as the Evil Russian, this mysterious ex-Soviet Special Forces physical training instructor offered a giddy set of powerful new Iron Curtain Secrets for rapid strength gains, dramatic stretches and iron abs.

With my 26-year background in Kung Fu, Chinese internal martial arts, yoga, qigong and traditional weight training, I was intrigued, to say the least. An eternal seeker for the Holy Grail of supreme fitness, how could I resist?

What if even 10% of Pavels wild claims were true? Id already be in like Flynn. And imagine if it was more?

When Constantinople fell in 1453 and its scholars fled across Europe, the resulting wisdom-blitz helped fuel the Renaissance of Western Culture. With the advent of Glasnost and the Fall of the Wall in 1989, we appeared to be witnessing a similar storming of the barricades of ignorance. The original vision of AK-47-wielding Russkies scything across Europe, morphed into a more stealthy invasion. Secret training-wisdom carriers, clutching tattered Cyrillic scripts, were spied snaking through the ripped Iron Curtain. Their objective: the Western Fitness Citadels and their deluded denizensthose woeful worshippers of ferns and mirrors, of aerobics, of Nautilus, of dieting and repping to failure.

And no such infiltrator brandished his promised secrets with more panache than this expat from the Evil Empirenow a self-declared running capitalist dog and proud of it.

So I signed up and showed up for the Evil Russians Flexibility Training seminar. The room was packed with a startling spectrum: gnarly, tattooed gents of dubious pedigree were rubbing shoulders with petite ballerinas, soft-handed but quietly lethal martial artists, recovering bodybuilders, lil ol grandmothers and out-of-shape desk jockeys. Oh, and who was that man in black, in the corner, with shades and a frozen jaw?

But whoever they were, their attention was riveted on the colorful, charismatic Russian athlete who upbraided them for their current ignorance but promised them great and glorious gainsif they would only heel to his barked commands. Comrades, it is not that you will stretch five more inches, it is that you shallor else! Not even the tattooed, scarred bikers or the grim Man in Black appeared ready to take on the Or Else part. 100% allegiance was demanded and secured.

The Evil Russian proceeded to lead his excited and obedient flock to a veritable Promised Land of flexibility and stretching breakthroughs. Everything the man said made senseand everything he ordered us to doworked in spades! How about that? The promises were real! 10% real? How about 110%?

Yet, for all his charismatic delivery and astounding results, I could see that the Evil Russian did still have one weapon missing in his bid for World Domination. The seminar handouts consisted of some shorthand hieroglyphs and chicken-scratch diagrams.

Hmmmnnthis needed to be remedied. With some diffidenceyet with a rapidly developing sense of kinshipI approached Pavel at the end of the seminar and asked him a set of three simple questions:

Do you have a publisher?
Would like to have a publisher?
Would you like to have Dragon Door as your publisher?

The rest is historynot to mention the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Dragon Door collaborated with Pavel on a series of landmark titles that have contributed to a seismic shift in the Western Worlds fitness landscape: Super Joints, The Naked Warrior, the great strength classic Power to the People!, and finally one of the most influential fitness titles of all time: The Russian Kettlebell Challengewhich launched the modern world-wide Kettlebell movement in 2001.

Why has Pavelthe Evil One of yorebeen SO successful? Well, I have many answers to that, but here are the most significant points:

Pavel has a remarkable ability to cull through the most arcane research and make glorious, practical sense of it for us lesser mortals. Pavel goes wide, to take us deepvery deep. He does the work for us, like a Master Chef, culling the best of the bestand he serves it to us on fine china, impeccably presented.

Pavel is a sponge for anything that truly works and has an uncanny eye for a method that can be tweaked and refined into a world-class, world-beating technique. Give Pavel the right ball and hell run a mile with it. Ive seen it over and over and over.

Pavel is a master of style: mixing succinct, brilliantly crafted text-play with superlative insight, extensive wisdom and unassailable research.

Pavel honors the masters of the past and pays generous respect to the modern greatsso, with him, we may stand on the shoulders of giants.

All of these qualities make Pavel the great teacher and author that he is. However, to me, his most admirable quality remains his generosity with peers and colleagues. Pavel is the Keith Richards of his mtier, ever-eager to jam with like-minded artists of the strength gamewhile quick to acknowledge and give acclaim to those who have influenced him. And it is undoubtedly this admirable quality that led to the birth of Easy Strength.

At Pavels invitation and prompting, many stars have been encouraged to shine more brightly from the Dragon Door firmament. They have included greats like Gray Cook, Marty Gallagher and Ori Hofmekler. And they have included Dragon Doors elite cadre of RKC Masters and Seniors, both past and present. Well, as big a star as any in this Dragon Door pantheon, has got to be Fulbright scholar, National Champion athlete and coach-extraordinaire, Dan John.