[Blarg]

There is a big kettlebell thread that was started in OOT a couple years back. Strongly recommend looking it up. I think something about Drink the Kool-Aid or however you spell it was in the title.

Enter the Kettlebell is fine, but get it at Amazon, where it is steeply discounted, not from Pavel's site. The RKC book has more variety. I also highly recommend Steve Cotter's DVD's. Check his website for some video samples of some of the cool and really tough stuff he does with them, like duck walks, dragon walks, towel swings, and doing multiple things at once! Really inspiring.

The 1 pood(35 pounds) KB is a must for learning tricky overhead manuevers like the windmill that you will find as you go through kettlebell materials of various sorts. It is also very good to have to learn things that are trickier than basic presses, like the clean and jerk, the swing, etc. You will benefit from using heavier weights with these latter exercises, but there is a knack to kettlebells(that is actually very fun to learn), and a light one at first will help you feel and learn it.

A man of virtually any strength level will quickly outgrow the 1 pood. The average guy gets along well with the 1 1/2 pood, the one that weighs about 53 pounds. This should last you a while.

One important note: dragondoor KB's aren't the only ones out there. They are nice, but very pricey. A smart way to buy from that source is to go to e-bay, where they have their own store. You can sometimes get them 1/3 to 1/2 off, which is pretty significant when it comes to stuff this pricey. I'd advise starting to watch the auctions daily for a week at least to see where the good prices are. There will always be some numb nuts who pays top dollar, but it doesn't have to be you.