Pavel Tsatsouline Popularized Kettlebells in the US | Joe Rogan

I've been following your work for a long time, man. I mean, I was first introduced to you and your methods by Steve Maxwell, who was a, you know, a huge proponent of the kettlebell. And then I started getting into your videos. A very smart coach, yeah. Yeah, very good. And I started getting into your videos and I've read your books. And so for me, it's an honor. My pleasure. How long have you been teaching and practicing with kettlebells? Since you're a little? I don't like that medium. Since you're a medium. It's kind of like baseball, you know. In Russia? In the Soviet Union. Yeah, it is. Why didn't they catch on here until you came over here? You know what? I don't think people really tried. I don't think people really understood that it would catch on. And I did not think it would happen either. So I'm sitting with my friend, Marty Gallagher, having stakes years back. Marty is a former coach for Powerlifting Team USA and coach of some top lifters. And you were just trading all the worst stories talking about stuff. And I told him about kettlebells. He says, well, you've got to teach Americans how to do that. And I said, Marty, you don't understand. This stuff is too hard. Nobody's going to want to do this. And he said, you don't understand. People want to do this. And I wrote an article for, based on Marty's suggestion for Milo. So Milo was a publication, niche publication for strange guys who lift rocks and bend things and break things and so on and so forth. And so that was the start of it. And then after that, I told my publisher about it. And he said, well, come on, let's just make kettlebells and teach people. I told him the same thing. You don't understand that people will not want to do this. This is too hard. But he convinced me and they convinced me and the rest is history. Why did you think that it was popular in the Soviet Union, but wouldn't be popular in America? You know, this is something that you just see. It's very common thing though. So you just see this. You don't think much about this. Who knows? Yeah, but it was popular over there. Yeah. And it's at least since at least 1700s or possibly before that. But this country is so performance oriented and so sports oriented and so competitive. Why wouldn't you think that that would be sort of a natural training modality that would immediately adopt it? You got me there.