The Entrepreneurial Father's Fitness Journey: Mastering Kettlebells and Life

Ever found yourself at a crossroads between your health and your hustle? Buckle up for a rollercoaster narrative with our guest Aleks Salkin, who metamorphosed from a non-athletic knife salesman to a Muay Thai master and kettlebell virtuoso. His story isn't just a tale of physical transformation; it's a blueprint on how health forms one of the six pillars of a balanced life, particularly for the entrepreneurial fathers among us. Join us for laughs, life lessons, and a bit of tough love as we navigate the intricacies of health, humor, and high kicks.

Think your busy schedule exempts you from peak fitness? Think again. Aleks breaks down the myths of time-consuming gym routines with the "grease the groove" method, proving how dads and business entrepreneurs can integrate fitness into their jam-packed lives. Dive into our spirited chat where Aleks shines a light on kettlebell marvels and the power of bodyweight training, offering a fitness manifesto for the time-strapped and ambitious. And if you're curious about the whimsical origin of "The Hebrew Hammer," your ears are in for a treat.

As we explore the sinewy world of disciplined strength and skill, our episode morphs into a coaching clinic. Aleks's specialized approach to fitness is not just for the elite; it's for anyone ready to redefine their boundaries. Whether you're prepping for a kettlebell recertification or just looking to up your push-up game, you'll find wisdom and wit in our discussion that could very well be the catalyst for your next breakthrough. Come for the transformative insights, stay for the camaraderie, and leave with a fresh perspective on what it means to live a strong, balanced life.

You can find Aleks at his website: www.9minutechallenge.com
Follow Aleks:
https://www.facebook.com/alekssalkintraining
https://www.instagram.com/aleksandersalkin/
https://www.youtube.com/@alekssalkinrkc/videos

You can join over 350 other Dads like you by joining The Balanced Business Dad's Facebook group here: dadupgroup.com

Check out our website at: thebalancedbusinessdad.com

Socials:
RJ on Facebook at facebook.com/arjay3rd
RJ on Instagram at instagram.com/rjcampbell3rd
Dustin on Facebook at facebook.com/dustin.charles.718689
Dustin on Instagram at instagram.com/dustin_hoog

Transcript

Voiceover: 0:01

Dads, do you want a thriving business that doesn't control you, a passionate marriage and kids that adore you? Do you want to grow deeper in your faith, be healthier both physically and mentally, build more meaningful relationships with your friends? Welcome to the Balance Business Dad podcast, where, in each episode, we dive into balancing and optimizing the six pillars of life Faith, health, marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood and business. And here are your hosts, pioneers of the Balance Business Dad movement Dustin Hoag and RJ Campbell.

Coach Dustin: 0:37

Welcome to another episode of the Balance Business. Dad, I'm your host, Coach Dustin with me, as always, the very distinguished, the very seasoned Mr RJ Campbell. Rj, what did you learn this week? Oh, we're going back to that old question.

R. J. Campbell: 0:51

Damn, I was prepared for that one. I know what did you learn this week? I learned that the seven habits of successful people, whatever that book is.

Coach Dustin: 1:02

You totally butchered that name but go ahead.

R. J. Campbell: 1:03

It's something about seven habits, though, seven habits of highly effective. There it is. I just finished it. By the way, great book, but, dang, you can tell that's an old book man. That's long, he uses a lot of words. He definitely has 21 words where seven would have worked in a lot of sentences. So that's my critique of an otherwise very good book.

Coach Dustin: 1:22

Great book, yeah, awesome. Well, guys, we are in for a treat today. We have, I guess, with us, that is, I'm going to say, a health and fitness expert that can really help all the business dads out there, because, as we know, the second pillar of the Balance, business Dad, is all about health. We really always have time for it because we know time stands for that is my excuse, but we're just going to jump right into it with Alex and just hear Alex's story. I'm sure we're going to dive into his nickname, like we were just talking about. It's going to be a lot of fun. So, alex, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, awesome. So I guess just start kind of who you are now and then also where you came from, right now.

Aleks Salkin: 2:04

You know it's very interesting because I would say that if young me, even 10 years ago, but certainly 20 years ago, were to be told you know, this is what you're going to be doing when you're 37, I would be shocked for sure, because it is quite a bit different from how I was back then. It just it would never have occurred to me. So just to give you a little bit of, I'm going to give you, like the cliff notes version and I hope people remember what cliff notes is, because that's what you know got me largely through a lot of classes and before.

R. J. Campbell: 2:35

Yeah, me too, yeah exactly.

Aleks Salkin: 2:36

This is before. You could go like the Wikipedia and just look everything up. But I grew up scrawny, unathletic, weak, uncoordinated, goofy. So far, so good.

Coach Dustin: 2:48

A lot of confidence, yeah absolutely Absolutely.

Aleks Salkin: 2:51

You know, one of the things I will say is that it's kind of like that Johnny Cash song a boy named Sue where he gets like my fist got hard, my wits got keen. Well, I didn't really have the coordination for my fists to get hard, but my wits did get very keen. So I ended up with a good sense of humor, like snappy repartee when people would make fun of me, but I was, you, usually not picked exactly last in gym class, but it was like pretty close to last, it's like. By the time that I got accepted under like a group, any sort of like a team, that we had to pick sides for, I was like all right, I know that like there's there's scrape at the bottom of the barrel. I'm not the guy on the bottom, but I'm pretty close. So it was really not.

Aleks Salkin: 3:33

Until I was like 19 years old, I discovered Muay Thai, a friend of mine, and I just got really into it because we saw this, this movie from Thailand called Ong Bak, the Thai warrior, and it was just awesome and it's like a martial arts movie par excellence. And, as it turned out, there's a gym in my town, omaha, nebraska, where the owner was like a two time world kickboxing champion and a fourth degree black belt Muay Thai, an immigrant from Ireland named Mick Doyle, like super tough. I mean you would never know that he could just wail like wail on you eight ways from Sunday because he's like super nice guy but he's very, very talented. And so that kind of kicked off my interest in physical fitness and it was like finally I found something that sort of resonated with me and then I was very fortunate, just a few years later to stumble across the kettlebell. I had this friend in college who was always talking about the kettlebell and how it's super cool and you know how.

Aleks Salkin: 4:29

This guy named Pavel, who was like this super soldier from the former Soviet Union and he was a spetsnaz physical training instructor which is basically their Navy SEALs essentially and came to the United States, started teaching about kettlebells and I really wasn't interested at first. I thought, okay, this kind of sounds like, you know, like the sort of old school training you would expect from Russia. But he invited me over to his house one day this might be late March or early April of 2008,. I want to say, and despite my previously not being all that interested, I agreed to go over and try a kettlebell workout, because I was just like. You know what am I going to do? Like homework, you know, get ready for an exam. Why would I bother with that when there's time to kick a can down the road? So I went over to his place and everything we did I am shy.

Aleks Salkin: 5:20

I wish I had a video of it because I am certain the technique was so bad, like everything we learned was from a book, like there was. Again, youtube was not the force that it is now, and even if we could, I mean it was still existed, but there weren't like loads and loads of kettlebell videos. It was just like we had to look at the pictures and and try to like put two and two together. But even if I was doing everything wrong, if something felt really right about it, because everything I had done up to that point was more like you know, the glossy magazine bodybuilding type of stuff which is good, by the way, there's nothing wrong with it but it didn't resonate with me the same way as this kettlebell did. And then he did like the ultimate friend thing and he loaned me two of Pavel's books and a kettlebell and so I started training to the best of my ability. I got really into it and, you know, it became a hobby. This became the sort of a thing where I was like, okay, now I feel like I've got an understanding of how to exercise in a way that's effective. And it wasn't until I guess you want to say, but it was 2010, I finally decided you know what I want to become a kettlebell instructor, and with a funny thing about why I decided to do that was because I had like a mental shift that never expected previously. You know you joked about the sort of like not having a great deal of confidence with all of the way I described myself earlier, and that really is true.

Aleks Salkin: 6:42

I got a job selling cutco in 2009. And in my opinion, if you have kids, you should absolutely. I mean, by the time they get to like high school or like a roughly college age, let's say post high school, they should absolutely get a job selling cutco. I don't work for them anymore. I have no financial, you know, incentive. I don't own any stock. I don't think they have stock or they get to publicly traded company.

Aleks Salkin: 7:06

But it was such, within the three months that I worked there over the summer, that I worked there 2009 to 2010,. I did it to save up enough money for a five month trip to Israel, where I wanted to improve my Hebrew and I'm kind of a geek, so you know I love foreign languages and I took a semester off of school so that I could go study somewhere else. You know, usually people take a semester off and they just goof around. But because I'm a, I'm a dweeb. You know, I decided and I think it's a great thing to be a dweeb, honestly. But I had this newfound confidence from selling cutco and you know, I think what happened was I came to the realization, you know, if I can get a complete stranger over the phone to allow me again a total stranger to come over their house with a bag of sharp knives.

Coach Dustin: 7:54

Really, good knives, yeah, the best, really I.

Aleks Salkin: 7:56

There's no reason I could not do something physically as challenging as the, the Russian kettlebell certification, which was Pabble's certification, you know again like the head honcho, and he was going to be there teaching it himself and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. So I, so I signed up, I did it, and originally it was meant to be like a kind of a, just a, we'll say like a physical challenge for myself. I didn't expect it to become a career move because I hadn't yet finished my bachelor's degree. My degree is in English, with a focus on writing and linguistics. And it wasn't until I completed my degree and I started to think about, you know, further education. I was like I just don't want to do this anymore. It's, it's cool.

Aleks Salkin: 8:43

But I like, essentially, the career path is you're going to end up deeply in debt, writing articles that no one will read, for journals that nobody reads. And I thought, man, what is probably not the best use of my time? I should find something else. So I did what any good English major did, and I got a job as a waiter, and so I was waiting tables for a while, but I started getting requests as a kettlebell instructor. I had some. I had a profile on a website that was affiliated with Povles company and people started emailing me like, hey, do you offer private lessons? And I was like, yeah, so I started doing like in-home lessons for people and I just loved it and I was like, okay, you know what, maybe this is what I need to do, because I want, I want to do something that is gonna leave the world a better place, and Lord only knows.

Aleks Salkin: 9:31

I struggled like crazy to figure out this whole fitness and exercise thing. So if I can help shorten people's path and Kind of help them reach, I wouldn't say the finish line, but like the smart path for them, without all the stumbling and bumbling that I had to go through for you know, better part of close to two decades, maybe this is what I should be doing. And so eventually I became a. You know, some people become a starving artist. I became a starving personal trainer because I was driven by passion, did not yet have business sense. That was a sort of a thing that you know I would have to develop as time went on.

Aleks Salkin: 10:03

I sort of embodied that idea of jump out of the airplane and then figure out how to build a parachute on the way down, and as time went on, of course, my business acumen improved because it was something I was very serious about and I thought this is this is gonna be my path to helping people, the way that I want and and here we are today. So I'm. I've been doing this for a great many years. It was in October of 2010 that I got certified. We are now in 2024 and Still going strong. As a matter of fact, as of the time of this chat, next week, I'm slated to go to Australia to teach some workshops on bodyweight strength training specifically. So things have gone in the right direction and I'm very pleased that those humble beginnings have gotten me to where they are.

R. J. Campbell: 10:49

Well, that's pretty cool and I think I wish I'd have written it down. I remember seeing, probably on your bio, that you've you've instructed in multiple countries right Travel around a lot of places.

Aleks Salkin: 10:59

I've been do a. I've been do a good couple. You know, I actually, a couple years ago, I had plans to add I think it was Spain, england a couple of other places, but that year happened to be 2020 and so all of that stuff got inevitably postponed. So I'm hoping that I can Rekindle that at some point, because I would certainly like to add a few countries to that list.

R. J. Campbell: 11:22

No pretty cool.

Coach Dustin: 11:23

So I have a question or so, because this whole like people Inviting you to different countries and paying you to teach a kettle ball class Mm-hmm, I have to expect that you're a really good Kettleball or kettlebell instructor, like. I don't see the guy at my gym being flown to Australia by any means to do this. So I Guess what is the excuse? My English, what is the difference? Like, to me, a kettlebell is a kettlebell and how you work it is how you work it, but obviously You've done something tremendous there. So what? What is that? Well, there are a couple things.

Aleks Salkin: 12:01

You know, a lot of the times when I have traveled, it actually hasn't been for the kettlebell specifically. I have. I have done a good number of kettlebell workshops, but I also this is a part of the story that I left out because it's just sort of after the the process of becoming a personal trainer, I got really interested in calisthenics, like old school strength focused calisthenics. So I did my. I still remember it was very, you know, sometimes people remember the first time they met. You know they're there's, there's future spouse. You know I was like, oh, it was June 18th of whatever, so for me I think it was like June 9th 2011. I did my first one-armed push-up and it's such a funny anniversary?

Aleks Salkin: 12:40

I think I don't. Your coach Dustin is laughing for a good reason, but for me was a monumental event because I had got I one of the books my friend drew, loaned to me by Pablo, was called the naked warrior, and you know, definitely not about nudity, right? It's about, you know, being able to strengthen yourself even with no external equipment, so just with your body only, and it really focuses on two movements as a A way of building up some really incredible strength, and one of them is the one-armed push-up. And, try as I might, I just Couldn't figure it out and I finally broke down and I bought his dvd on the topic and there was a tip in there that was not in the the book itself, for whatever reason, and I found that I had the strength to do it. I just didn't have the right technique to do it. So I did this one-armed push-up super excited, you know, I just couldn't wait to show it off, and you know, and then I I got obsessed with bodyweight training as well, and to this day, you know, bodyweight training has become a lot more common.

Aleks Salkin: 13:38

People treat it as more of a skill that they want to learn, and I mean stuff like single leg squats. You know, pull-ups are, I think, obvious. Everybody's relatively familiar with those one-armed push-ups, handstand push-ups, leg raises, back bridges, things like this. Um, so I, but I in my group, let's say, the kettlebell crowd I became known not only for my, my kettlebell skills, but also for the fact that, you know, I was really diving deeply into the, into the bodyweight world as well, and Bodyweight training, you would think, because we all have a body. It's all for, unless there is some sort of an accident, most of us only have two arms and two legs you know, um.

Aleks Salkin: 14:16

So how hard could it be to figure it out? But because a lot of it has to do with stuff that is not necessarily Intuitive in terms of how you position your body, the processes that go on to generate the proper tension in, let's say, poor leveraged, poorly leveraged positions. A good example would be like the one-armed pushup You're moving the same amount of weight as you would with a two-hand pushup. It just happens to be like orders of magnitude harder, and so there are things that you can do to learn how to get a lot stronger with that, and so my understanding of these things and, of course, my curiosity about deepening my understanding of not just how to do them but then also how to teach them to people Maybe people who were like me, who grew up scrawny and athletic and you know they want to use their adult years to make up for lost time gave me Insight that I think a lot of my fellow coaches didn't have, and so that a lot of people were very interested in the, the, the effort that I put into learning these things, and so it's a long answer to a short question, but what I can say.

Aleks Salkin: 15:17

There are a couple of things why they reached out to me. One of them is certainly my, my knowledge in the topic. You know, like I, I don't think that I know everything there is to know. I feel like I'm only beginning, you know, and this has been already been a good many years. But then the other side of the coin is that my business and this isn't gonna be the case for everybody's business, but my business is very self-aggrandizing. It's like I'm the product essentially, and I have a certain way, I have a certain method, I have and you know, and again, it's all very effective stuff. But because I'm also out front and center, people associate me with the stuff that they are learning from me I'm. When they try it out for themselves, they really like it. They find that and not everybody likes it, you know, because what I do, I don't do anything with barbells or dumbbells. I think they're great pieces of equipment. I just don't feel like I have anything to add with barbells or dumbbells that others couldn't do better than me. So I leave that for people who I think can do it better. When people ask me and they do, could you write me a program to improve my deadlift, I'm like no, I mean I could, but it's not. I feel like you, your money would be better spent but with somebody who is more of a Specialist in that right. So I wouldn't feel right taking your money for that, you know.

Aleks Salkin: 16:29

But when it comes to kettlebells, calisthenics and natural human movement, I've sort of created a, we'll say, like a method or an approach that that really resonates with people. And so it's not about kettlebell, it's not even about the body weight or just the movements, because those by themselves there are certainly other people who can teach those things it's about the combination of those things as well as the approach that I take in helping people to shorten their path toward things. So the difference I would say between me and, let's say, the average trainer at the gym some of them this isn't the case for all of them, but probably the majority is something. There's something like 18 to 24 months is about the extent of most trainers careers. It's it has a very high turnover. It's very difficult to make a good living doing it, which is unfortunate, but it's just. You know, it's a fact and I think part of that has to do with a lot of people get into it for the same reason I did. They want to help others. It's something that they feel like pulled to. But when they start to realize, you know, the hours aren't very great, at least initially, the pay isn't particularly good and they don't know how to separate themselves from the other trainers. You know, if you can't do that, it makes it more difficult to charge more to have more favorable hours and things of that nature.

Aleks Salkin: 17:46

So, to answer your question, would what gets people to? You know, pay me to go to Europe or Australia, or you know, timbuktu not yet I've one of these days. Timbuktu, yes, is In part it's, you know, my personality and the, the methodology that I've put out in the various social media channels and articles and podcasts that I've been on and things of that nature. But I also do think that a part of it has to do with Understanding what it is that people really want. Because, as I've told people before, you know, like if there were a pill that could give you all the benefits that a kettlebell could give you by doing certain Exercises, most people would take the pill because they want. They want the end result. They don't necessarily want the path to get there. Once they're convinced that the path to get there is the best way to get to that end result. That's a different story. So I'm convinced that my path is particularly good for particularly for men, but a lot of women also follow the.

Aleks Salkin: 18:46

The approach that I take definitely more skewed toward man. I would say probably 75 to 80 percent of my Customers and clientele, or men, mostly in their mid 30s to maybe mid 50s, somewhere around there, usually have a professional job. Maybe they're entrepreneurs and they want to. They want to do what I do specifically. So they, they want to. They want to follow the approach that I take for their training because they want it to be something that's gonna get them stronger as well as keep them from getting hurt, because that's an ever-present, you know, concerned as people get older and they're lifting. You know it's like having a car that, if you don't know what's wrong with it, all of a sudden something breaks or snaps I don't know where. It's a real inconvenience. It's far worse when it's your body and you can't just go to O'Reilly and you know I got, I need to pick up. This is a new ligament.

Aleks Salkin: 19:38

You know, for my shoulder or whatever you. So I think my focus on on those things is one of the One of the reasons why I've been able to build up enough interest in what I do where people would actually pay decent amount of money to bring me abroad.

R. J. Campbell: 19:54

So if it's, if we're not bringing you abroad. So we're talking about business dads. You know, we obviously focus on entrepreneurs. Busy Making one in office talked about that may work from home by a lot of them, work from their house. But health is so important and we hear it all the time when we're talking to these dads that are part of the data council or in our Facebook group Is I just don't have time, I don't have time, I never have time. That's of course. We all use that excuse for a fitness. We never have time. We have time for the hospital later, but we don't have time now. So you, is this something that fits right into that scenario for business? You know, busy business dads, entrepreneurs.

Aleks Salkin: 20:33

Big time. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why I think a lot of it is they're very sincere when they say they don't have time, but that's because what they've been led to believe and you know they haven't been deceived necessarily. It's just I don't think anybody ever sat down and said you know, if you can't work out for one hour, you'll be better off just sitting around and doing nothing. You go to a gym and it's like you buy a training. You know a package of training sessions with a coach and it's typically 45 minutes to an hour. Or likewise with classes it's 45 minutes to an hour.

Aleks Salkin: 21:07

And the real issue, more than anything, has more to do with, I would say, presumptions or presuppositions about what it means to actually get strong and fit, and so people's idea of that has to be a gym, there has to be equipment, there has to be 45 minutes to an hour, it has to be done three to five days a week. There's no question that if you have access to those things, you're definitely stacking things in your favor. But you know the other side of the equation I always point this out because to me it just seems so absurd is that a lot of my colleagues, great people, I mean, I'm talking about people who work in gyms they'll be like well, you know what Fitness is like. Brushing your teeth, you know, this is something that's really important. They're like okay, but how many people go to their dentists three times a week to have him brush their teeth for an hour? It's like the analogy is correct, but the prognosis of what they're supposed to do to get fit, it doesn't fit. Because it's like okay, you brush your teeth two minutes, three minutes, you know, a couple of times a day at home and you get reasonably good dental health, provided that you're not doing super lackadaisical about it and you know a variety of other things.

Aleks Salkin: 22:16

But the same is very much true for fitness. You know for what? One of the things people don't understand is that even a very minor amount of extra movement throughout the day really really adds up quite a bit. So you know I'll go back to Pavel, because he's one of my mentors. There's a technique that I learned from him that I don't know if it originated in Russia or not, but it was certainly. I mean, he's the first person I ever heard talking about it, but it's become a concept that, at least among my colleagues is pretty well known and it's called greasing the groove, and you know. By the name it doesn't seem like it would have anything to do with fitness at all, but what it essentially means is that you take a movement and it could be really almost any movement and you practice it throughout the day in doses that are small enough, where you don't build up fatigue, you don't run out of breath and you are not trying to get in a workout.

Aleks Salkin: 23:09

What you're trying to do is practice that movement, and so I'll give you an example. Let's say you want to get better at pushups, so, and let's say, you can do 10 good, solid pushups, like even the most you know, surly you know grizzled fitness veteran like me, you know, would say, okay, those are good. So what you would do is you would do, let's say, between two and five, you know, maybe every hour, every two hours, something like that, and your only goal is to make them look perfect, so that if I were to turn around and I were to see you, I'd say those are picture perfect pushups. They don't have to be completely perfect. The idea is that the goal is to make it so that your execution of them is focused solely on the technique. It's not focused on, you know, breaking a sweat, not focused on anything like that. But let's say you do that. We'll say just eight hours a day, like every hour. You get up from your desk, you drop down, you do between two and five pushups. Let's start with just two, okay, for eight hours. It's a total of 16 pushups in a day. That's a whole lot Okay. But if you do that six days a week really starts to add up and then eventually it goes to three pushups and then four and then five. And so you know by the time let's say you're doing on the hour, just five pushups, really strict, focused, slow, controlled, and you do that eight hours a day. Let's say just even five days a week. So five pushups every hour for eight hours. It's 40 pushups a day. Then you do that five days a week. Well, eventually you're really building up to a pretty sizable volume or a total number of repetitions and your body remembers it.

Aleks Salkin: 24:45

So the mistake that people make is they think you got to go 110%, give it your all, go hard or go home. It's not that these things don't work, it's that for many people they're not convenient to do. There is an element of the need for recovery from really hard efforts. That gets a little bit more difficult as we get older because our recovery capacity tends to decline. You've got a 22-year-old wet behind the ears personal trainer telling you no, no, no, sure. You're a 39-year-old dad who got four hours of sleep last night because his daughter woke up puking and he had the comforter to get back to sleep. And then he got another hour and a half of sleep and he woke up and drank two pots of coffee just to be able to focus on what he did.

Aleks Salkin: 25:29

You need to work even harder. You need to push yourself into the ground even more. Again, it's not that it can't work, but it's not the only thing that works. Number one and number two it may not be appropriate for what your goals are, you know. So if your goals are that you want to build more muscle, you do have to push it a little harder for a variety of reasons that are not germane to the to the discussion.

Aleks Salkin: 25:50

But most people are better served by just being consistent, and I try to get people to understand in terms of consistency. Well, think about this if you started eating packet of just one container of Twinkies every day. Just, it's not a lot, but it's just enough extra calories that over the course of a couple weeks, a couple months, you're gonna start to feel a little bit softer around the middle. Maybe you're not gonna look as lean as you did before. You didn't have to sit down for 60 minutes and, you know, try to pull a. You know, like a hot dog eating contest, we got Joey Chestnut from years past. You know he would just fire down like a hundred hot dogs, like you know like as his warm up for his competitions. So people need to understand that the same mechanisms that change your body in ways that you don't like, such as just eating a little bit extra when you shouldn't, and things of that nature they also work For changing your body the way that you do want.

Aleks Salkin: 26:46

The time is going to pass anyway. So if you can learn how to use that time, as we discussed earlier, what was the acronym that you use? This is my excuse. Time. That is my excuse. That is my excuse. Yeah, you can make an excuse to succeed as well. So it doesn't have to be. I need to.

Aleks Salkin: 27:03

If I can't train for 60 minutes, I can't train at all. But rather, how can I make the most out of five minutes. I mean, this is one of the things I've done most commonly with a great deal of my students, Because what that does is it teaches them to make it a. It's a must. It's, like you know, it is really like brushing your teeth, but in much the same way you can be very efficient with brushing your teeth and in a couple minutes You're done and you've done what you need to do. You can do the same thing with your exercise, especially if you're going from zero.

Aleks Salkin: 27:30

Zero to five minutes a day is gonna have an effect, and particularly if you're doing exercises that are convenient, that you're able to recover from, that are not going to have a negative impact on your joints and you know things of this nature. The sooner that people can understand that and I think particularly entrepreneurs, who are always Strapped for time the faster they're going to start to see some results without a huge Investment in their time. It's just a matter of taking just a few minutes that they've got here and there and Saying this is my time, even if it's just five minutes, or okay, every hour I owe it to myself to do X number of push-ups or squats or something along that line. Before you know it, a couple weeks have gone by. People are starting to notice that you look different. You know wife compliments you. Oh, you know, chest is looking pretty jacked. I mean, she's probably not gonna say jacked, because that's really more like bro terminology, but you get the idea, people will start to notice my wife calls me bro.

Coach Dustin: 28:30

So that is, bro. That is so interesting. I mean there there's so much going through my head right now. You know I've done well again. We mentioned my journey a little bit and that was. That was all in 110%. You know I'm a big Not for the fitness and the health aspect of it, but a big proponent of the 75 hard challenge actually get ready to start that again in March. But what I really like about this is a. Anybody can do this. But who is this ideal for? Is it somebody just trying to get muscle or someone you know? So we got the scrawny version over here, rj, and a much larger version. Who I need to lose weight? Who is this better for, or does it work for?

Aleks Salkin: 29:09

both types of people, I guess it works for both types of people. The other thing that is important to keep in mind is similar to business. You know you're gonna be a part of a niche. You're ideally. You know You're going to have maybe a certain niche carved out that you in particular are good at, like I mentioned. For instance, if somebody says I want to train with barbells or what have you, you know I I understand the principles of strength training well enough to be able to point someone in that direction. But there are nuances to each tool that you know. It would be better off Maybe finding somebody who's really good with you know, let's say, powerlifting or barbell training in general. But the approach that I'm referring to, it is Depending on the goal, because, again, the goal is really what's going to determine what you have to do Absolutely useful for everybody, not necessarily all the time. So I'll give you an example.

Aleks Salkin: 29:59

We mentioned muscle building. Now you can build muscle doing this, but you can't really optimize building muscle. Those are two different things. Like if you were to say, okay, summer is coming along, I want to put on 10 pounds of just solid muscle, not just 10 pounds on the scale, but like 10 actual pounds of muscle. This approach wouldn't work. You would have to just buckle down, and you would have to, you know, I would say, maybe not necessarily go to a gym, but you're gonna need certain equipment that is going to allow you to optimize the process of building muscle. And I would say, similarly, like if you did want to do powerlifting which for people who are not familiar with it, it's a bench press, squat and deadlift and let's say, you want to do a competition or you just want to get better at those specific movements, you, of course, you're gonna need a barbell. If you don't have one, you would need to go to a gym or you'll need to invest in one. So the the but for most people, the goal, is that they want to, whether they'll admit it or not, they want to look better naked, they don't want to get hurt and they want to get stronger. They want to have a certain sense of physical prowess and self-confidence that they did not have before, and you can definitely do that with just kettlebells and bodyweight training. Now again, if your goal is that you want to bench press 315 pounds, well, you're gonna need a. You need a barbell. If your goal is that you want to get stronger, fitter, healthier, look better, be able to train at home, enjoy your training. You know a wide variety of different variables.

Aleks Salkin: 31:26

This is definitely a very, very good approach and I think the reason that it works so well for entrepreneurs and very busy people is that kettlebells and bodyweight training in particular really lend themselves well to what are known as compound movements. And the compound movement is just a movement that involves multiple different Joints and muscle groups. So we might call and these are generic terms will use, but like an isolation movement might be something like a bicep curl Excellent movement. Particularly if you want to build bigger biceps. It's definitely a must, but it's also not going to have the same impact, let's say, on your back muscles as like a chin up. So chin ups will work your biceps, but they also work your back and you know your midsection will get a certain amount of work done if you do them properly as well. So, learning how to do movements that engage multiple muscle groups at the same time so you don't have to think about, like, how I'm gonna fit 10 exercises into this training session I've only got, say, 15 minutes. Well, if you pick exercises that hit a number of different muscle groups, it's a bit more time, efficient and Generally builds a body that looks like it knows what it's doing, let's say, because we've all seen, you know.

Aleks Salkin: 32:34

Let's say, bodybuilders have incredible physiques and some of them are very, very strong, there's no question about it. Like a great example would be Michael Herne, who's think he's in his mid 50s Maybe you've heard of him, dustin, he's like. I love following him on Instagram because the guide is like. I mean he's inclined pressing 450 pounds, you know, just like for fun, at Gold's gym, and but you know he spends probably a good couple hours a day in the gym. I would bet I don't know for sure it spends a lot of money on nutritional supplements and, you know, very a particular eating regimen, because that's his job.

Aleks Salkin: 33:07

He's been parties a fitness model and he's an actor and so he's got a look in a certain way it so it wouldn't necessarily be the sort of a thing that is going to be very time-efficient for a lot of other people.

Aleks Salkin: 33:17

You know it's. It's excellent for him because that's what helped with it helped him to maintain that body, which is what he makes his money off of and most people, even if they would love to spend three hours in Gold's gym, you know, hanging out with the bros and Clanging and banging the iron. I'm sure that their spouse would have something to say about that, such as sleep on the couch tonight. Their kids might be like why weren't you at my baseball game? So you need to think about it in terms of what is going to get you what you want with Both effectively and efficiently, meaning it's actually going to do what you want it to do, but it's going to do it in something that's not going to require you know, 45, 60, 90-minute workouts necessarily. If you can get them done in 15 to 20 minutes, you know that's great ride that horse as long as you can.

R. J. Campbell: 34:04

So with all the people that listen to this podcast and that are in our, in our groups they're not all in Omaha, Nebraska.

Aleks Salkin: 34:12

Unfortunately, center of the universe. I love Omaha, by the way.

R. J. Campbell: 34:17

I've been there a lot, so how do you help people that are outside of Omaha?

Aleks Salkin: 34:22

Well, you know it's funny. You should mention this because most of the people that I help are outside of Omaha. As a matter of fact, it's a rarity if I hear somebody from Omaha or hear from somebody from Omaha. I have done some in-person training sessions with people in Omaha, but the entirety of my business has been online since about 2019, which was really good timing. You know, I just happened to work out like that. So the majority of what I do is it's online. I have, like, for instance, a daily email list where I have tips and stories and stuff like that, and there's, of course, always an opportunity to buy like a course or a program or a challenge or that sort of a thing.

Aleks Salkin: 35:02

But I do online coaching and consulting. Coaching is more for people who are like okay, I have a very, very particular goal. I don't know how to get there and I want you to help me get there Versus consulting, which is like I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. I'm just not exactly sure what, how to do it. So we'll sit down for an hour and we'll kind of track out the things that they need to do. So I'm just kind of whittling away at the rough edges of what their plans are, to give them an idea of how to move forward. And then, for people who are interested in going it alone and they are like, just give me the roadmap, I will follow it.

Aleks Salkin: 35:38

That's when, like a course or a program or a challenge or something like that, something that's like an you know, we'll use just very basic terms like an information product, so something that could, a term that could, apply to a wide array of disciplines.

Aleks Salkin: 35:50

I have the very same thing, and the goal with each of these things is try to help them move in a certain direction. So, for instance, right now we're at the very tail end of February, and at the end of every month, I always have a challenge which is designed to be something that can be done in conjunction with your regular training, so it's like training sessions that will last typically no more than 10 minutes on average, and so the challenge for this month is called February and it's just loaded carries, or you're carrying kettlebells around in a variety of different positions to help you to get stronger by engaging all your muscles at once by walking, Because walking involves, you know, some effort or role for every single muscle group. And then when you add weight to it, it's like great way to just get very strong very quickly without a whole lot of technique.

Coach Dustin: 36:35

So that would be one great example of Interesting, so not just like a farmer carry is what I'm going to call it where you're holding and walking, you're like holding these in different positions.

Aleks Salkin: 36:45

Exactly so. Farmers carry is definitely one of them, where you've got just two kettlebells down by your sides, essentially Like you've carried a couple of bales of hay, but then also in what's called the rack or kind of like by your chest, okay Overhead, if you have the mobility for it. I've got there's one that I really like, called the tango carry, where you take a light kettlebell you can't really be heavy, it's really got to be light, and then you sort of move it to the side but you keep your hips forward, so it looks kind of like you're doing the Argentine tango, with less dancing and you know, and no music. I mean, you can listen to music if you want to, but but yeah, that's the. That's. The theme of the month is February.

R. J. Campbell: 37:23

I love it. That would be intense. So I did this some. This is really fast. So I think I saw a guy in the SPN, an athlete talk about it and I did the 400 pushup challenge.

Voiceover: 37:32

Oh yeah.

R. J. Campbell: 37:32

So you started 50 a day. So what's what you mentioned? You can just do two of them, you know, three every hour until you get to 50 every day, and then every week you add 50 more. So you're doing 100 a day and 150. But me, I did it. Yeah, just by that, my clock went off top of the hour, dropped down to four pushups or five pushups, and it's amazing, you know, after eight weeks you're doing 400 pushups in a single day. You don't even realize it. And yeah, of course I didn't do that. Keep doing it, you know, god forbid, I just tickled something, but it did. But I mean, it makes an immediate difference in the way you look.

Aleks Salkin: 38:06

And isn't it interesting too, I bet you found that you got a bit leaner. Obviously, your muscles got a bit better defined. You maybe had better stamina, and it wasn't the sort of a thing that required you to do, let's say, 90 minutes in a row on some sort of a machine.

R. J. Campbell: 38:21

Again, not that that came over, I did them in my form in my office, yeah, I mean literally at the top of the hour, dropped down to eight pushups, absolutely.

Aleks Salkin: 38:28

And a lot of people underestimate what they're able to do in just a less than a minute. But if you were to just do a mental experiment, okay, try to do as many squats as possible with good technique in like a minute. Well, you'll notice right off the bat, like you know, your heart and lungs start pumping a little bit, your thighs are burning a little bit, so, and you don't even have to get to that level where your heart and lungs are pumping or your thighs are burning. Your body starts to get used to that movement in much the same way that it gets used to the posture that we get from sitting behind a desk all day, you know.

Aleks Salkin: 38:59

So people have this sort of rounded forward posture. You know, it's just little doses of just sitting like that for prolonged periods of time, and then even when you stand up, you kind of start to look like that. Well, the same thing would go if you're doing certain exercises on a routine basis, even less. Then the amount of time that it takes to, you know, sit all day, hunch over a computer or whatever the case may be, makes a big difference in a very short amount of time. And, like you pointed out, you know you just hit the deck, do some pushups and before you know it, you know you're getting. People are like what? You're walking on the street and people are like, damn, this dude's jacked.

R. J. Campbell: 39:33

I'm not a lot.

Aleks Salkin: 39:35

What, what up bro?

R. J. Campbell: 39:36

Yeah, your wife's like what's up bro, You're looking pretty pretty swole.

Coach Dustin: 39:41

What's your supplement stack looking like Nice. So I have two questions and we'll wrap this up because this is really interesting stuff. So the first one is what does Alex's workout look like? What is your?

Aleks Salkin: 39:55

routine? It's a very good question. Well, it's a little bit different right now because I'm training for my level two kettlebell re-certification and I'm also, as I mentioned, I'm going to Australia next week to go teach about some body weight training. So I've got to kind of dust off some of my body weight skills that I may not have practiced, you know, in a little while. So right now what I'm doing is I'm kind of trying to do it all in a certain sense, but I'm doing a daily, just kind of a let's say, a more organized version of what I referred to earlier is grease to groove, and I'm doing just 10 total reps a day, usually two sets of five, but sometimes I might do a set of five and then a heavier set of three and then a heavier set of two, but that's about it in four different exercises A single leg squat, the pull up, the hanging leg raise and the one arm, one leg pushup, an elevated version, so that I can build up the necessary volume for it, and then, in addition, I'm also doing some some kettlebell training so that once I've finished the workshops, I can go all in on the kettlebell training. So I'm maintaining a decent amount of strength, my level two re-certification.

Aleks Salkin: 41:05

It's not like a theory thing where you're like, oh, I'm going to fill out this test and, you know, dot all my eyes and cross all my T's. It's like a very, very physical, very physical exam. Let's say so for the level two, men have to have one arm, military press half their body weight. So for me that's going to be an 88 pound kettlebell. I've got to bring it from this position on my chest to overhead with one movement, can't use my legs to bump it up or anything like that. And then I've got to demonstrate proper technique in about 10 other different kettlebell exercises. And then the conditioning test is what's called the snatch test. Snatch is an exercise with kettlebell where you would swing the bell in between your legs with one arm and then you stand up very quickly and then you sort of catch the kettlebell overhead. And I have to do that with a 53 pound kettlebell 100 times in five minutes Shit.

Coach Dustin: 41:59

So it was a pretty easy task, yeah.

Aleks Salkin: 42:00

So I mean I could do that. I usually roll out of bed at two in the morning to take a whiz and then I do the snatch test and then I go back to bed. That's kind of like a routine, you know, just to maintain it. It is a tough test. It's something that is certainly doable with enough practice, but you know that's a big part of it is.

Aleks Salkin: 42:19

I've just got to make sure that I don't want to try to cram, because in the past I've crammed for these tests, as it were, and it can work to a certain degree with physical activity, but the body tends not to be able to keep up with the willpower. So there's always a willpower to do just one more rep, but you know, if the structures of your body have not been conditioned for it might be just a bridge too far. It's kind of like overdrafting at your bank account, Like, yeah sure you know you, you've got all the will in the world to spend money on this. That's the other thing that you overdraft your bank account and you know you're gonna have to pay the piper eventually, or the bankers in this case.

R. J. Campbell: 42:54

So did you have another question? Well, how?

Aleks Salkin: 42:56

do we find you.

R. J. Campbell: 42:57

Well, first I have to tease it before we find you.

Coach Dustin: 43:00

We teased before at the very beginning. He really likes this. You're a killer nickname.

R. J. Campbell: 43:04

It's a great nickname. I feel like you have to tell I don't want to steal your thunder. Okay, so I almost said it. What is your nickname?

Aleks Salkin: 43:12

first, my nickname is people will find you by this they will, they will or they'll find the movie of the same name which, ironically, I've never seen, believe it or not.

R. J. Campbell: 43:20

Oh, I didn't look that up?

Aleks Salkin: 43:22

Yeah, there was a. My nickname is the Hebrew hammer and I got this nickname, obviously you know, in part because I'm Jewish. And then the other part is that there was a popular movie at least was popular with some people. I never saw it. It's supposed to. It's a movie about this like Jewish superhero. Evidently, lee really leans into some funny stereotypes and stuff like that.

R. J. Campbell: 43:45

There was. That's a niche group right there.

Aleks Salkin: 43:47

Yes, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. But the funny thing is, it's like the two people who, well, I guess no one of them actually was Jewish, but two people called me the Hebrew hammer this was early on in my Kettlebell career, one of whom was not Jewish and one of whom was and but they did it separately from each other. They weren't, we weren't like all hanging out and like, hey, you know, one of them says you should go, you know, go by the Hebrew hammer, and the other one agrees, and it was like completely separate occasions. They were like oh, there's Alex the Hebrew hammer, you know, because they had seen this movie and they found it enjoyable. And I was like you know what that's got to be my nickname now, because yeah, yeah, the stars aligned on that one.

Aleks Salkin: 44:24

Exactly, they've given me the nickname. I haven't tried to assign it to myself. If I did have to assign a nickname to myself, I also thought that the Mazel Tov cocktail would be great as a nickname, but somebody else would need to call me that, you know, and the Hebrew hammer has stuck for the last 12 years. So I'm sticking with it, I think. But that's the story, it's a great name.

Voiceover: 44:45

I love it.

Aleks Salkin: 44:46

Yeah two of my friends called me the Hebrew hammer, that's who we are.

R. J. Campbell: 44:49

So how do we find you? How do people find you? Well, the best way to find me.

Aleks Salkin: 44:53

I'm definitely on the major social media networks, with the exception of like Snapchat, because I don't see the point. Tiktok, it's like you know what? Facebook steals all my data anyway. I don't need China stealing my data, so not on TikTok Great one, but you can find me on those.

Aleks Salkin: 45:10

But the best place to find me for sure would be if you go to my website, which is my name spelled kind of funny. You can go to alexsalkincom and it would take you there. Otherwise nineminutechallengecom also reroutes to alexsalkin. It's easy to remember nineminutechallenge versus, you know, rk and RK expelling of alexs and then solving. Nobody knows how to spell that. But the other nice thing is that you can get my nineminute kettlebell and body weight challenge there, which is based around very simple movements, full body movements that I found work really well with my clients and customers. Stuff like loaded carries, which we talked about briefly crawling, which is, believe it or not, an amazing movement to get the entire body working together. So, essentially, movements that are based around what's called the gait pattern or your walking pattern, the sort of a thing that engages every muscle group the way that it's supposed to be engaged in, one of the most foundational movements of all and with focus on strength specifically. And because it only takes nine minutes, you know, nobody's got an excuse, they don't have nine minutes to themselves.

Aleks Salkin: 46:12

And there's no big learning curve for the exercises either. There are definitely kettlebell exercises and body weight exercises with like a very long learning curve, but these are the types of things you can learn in like 30 seconds. So if you're serious about you know, at least wanting to kind of move in the right direction to get in better shape, even if you decide, you know, maybe the gym bro route is better. For me this will at least get you started. Like Norman Schwartzkoff used to say, it's better to get people moving in the wrong direction and then change course than just not moving at all, hoping for the right time. You know, from the perfect direction.

R. J. Campbell: 46:44

So maybe you'll find it Our first Norman Schwartzkoff reference, for sure Not the last, not the last.

Aleks Salkin: 46:49

He was Norman Norman man, I'm still a fan of his. Yeah, but yeah. So, in any case, 9minutechallengecom would give you a chance to get my three challenge.

Coach Dustin: 46:57

Awesome, yeah, I'm going to sign up for that email. I'm excited to look into this.

Aleks Salkin: 46:59

Yeah, me too I think.

R. J. Campbell: 47:01

I'll dig it.

Coach Dustin: 47:02

This is awesome, alex. Thank you so much. Dads, there's no excuse. No excuse, none whatsoever. So remember, join us at the Facebook group. We can talk more about this. Obviously, the website and everything will be in the show notes. You can find us at the Balance Business Dad on Facebook. You can join the free Facebook group there. Alex, I'm going to invite you there. We'd love to have you there as well. And for all the other dads out there guys, just remember to dad up, because the people who love you the most deserve it.

R. J. Campbell: 47:29

And I want to say dad up groups right.

Coach Dustin: 47:31

Dadupgroupcom. Dadupgroupcom.

R. J. Campbell: 47:33

That'll take you to the Facebook group to sign up. Yep, alex, you're an invited member officially. I can't wait.

Aleks Salkin: 47:39

I'm going to go in there and drop the hammer, the Hebrew hammer. Yes, let them know.

Coach Dustin: 47:46

Dad joke, I love it All, right, cool.

R. J. Campbell: 47:48

Thanks, thank you, we'll see you next time. Thanks guys, thanks guys.