There are times when I feel content to remain in my training comfort zone, and in the closing months of summer, much of it was singularly focused on triathlon-specific training.
Feeling my training was becoming routine, I decided it was time to break out of this pattern and decided to take on a month-long workout challenge.
I don’t know if you are like me, but sometimes I need a new physical challenge to spark a new focus in training.
So, this past October I decided to perform 10,000 kettlebell swings.
I became a kettlebell instructor in 2006 and have used them in my own training and with clients over the years. Like anything new at the time, I was all kettlebell, all the time. Though as time passed, the kettlebell became another tool in my training toolbox and it wasn’t until the pandemic and ensuing lockdown that my focus returned to kettlebell training exclusively.
For much of my pandemic era workouts, the kettlebell workouts focused on a mix of movements. These workouts consisted of swings, snatch, cleans, presses, and the occasional snuster (which is a combination of a snatch followed by a thruster). And while these are effective movements for much of these workouts, I felt like I was just going through the motions.
It was time to shake things up.
Therein comes the swing challenge.
Now, if you look it up online, there are a few different variants of the swing challenge – each valuable in their own right. Except, I wanted to go back to the root of my early kettlebell training and focus on the swing.
As a movement pattern, the kettlebell swing is brutally effective and packs a one-two punch as a conditioning method to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and as a strengthening exercise to improve maximal and explosive strength.
For triathletes and runners, this is worth taking notice of. Meaning, if you could buy a single piece of equipment to supplement your strength training for triathlon, it would be hard to argue against the kettlebell.
During my October challenge, I broke down the 10,000 swings into 21 workouts with a goal of completing 500 swings per workout by the end and spread them out over a 4-week period. I chose a three-day on, one-day off pattern which ensured I had adequate rest days throughout the challenge. The volume of swings in the initial workouts was purposely less to provide a gradual progression up to 500 swings. For almost all the workouts, I used a 16kg kettlebell and performed a hand-to-hand swing versus a two-handed swing. This allowed me to focus on building grip strength and midline stability by resisting excessive counter-rotation movement during each single-arm swing.
Over 21 workouts it took 7 hours and 21 minutes to complete all 10,000 swings. The median workout duration was just under 20 minutes (19:45). There were two workouts over 30 minutes because I took an extended recovery period, but the rest were completed as EMOMs (every-minute-on-the-minute). 50% of the workouts were 20 rounds of 25 swings, which meant at the start of every minute I performed 25 swings and had the remainder of the minute to rest. On average 25 swings took about 42-45 seconds to complete, giving me 15-18 seconds of rest between rounds.
For those of you not familiar with kettlebells, one of the key principles of training is the preservation of momentum. In the swing, for example, the goal is to keep the kettlebell moving. As you can imagine, over the course of hundreds of swings during this challenge, you develop an efficient swing pattern and eliminate any wasted energy. In kettlebell lingo, we call this soft-style, or endurance weightlifting, where the effort is placed on keeping a steady pace and effort throughout.
The endurance aspect of kettlebell training is what’s important for triathletes. Over the course of the workouts, my heart rate average settled around the Zone 1/Zone 2 mark. Now, with 20 minutes of effort on average, I wouldn’t say these workouts challenged my cardio, however, the lower intensity of soft-style kettlebell training provided other benefits; like improved recovery times and increased posterior strength.
By keeping my heart rate between Zone 1 & 2, the lower intensity effort doesn’t overload the autonomic nervous system, which positively affects heart rate variability. And because the kettlebell swing is a hip-hinge movement, the glutes, and spinal erectors are under constant load which helps improve not only running posture but also running power.
In practical terms, this kettlebell swing challenge was a great reminder of why kettlebell training will be a staple of my regime and I would encourage you to consider adding kettlebell training to your program if you haven’t already.
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Edited Life 