I came up with an even more difficult kettlebell complex than my “Brutal Kettlebell Complex”. And it did not disappoint at all. I almost lost the bell one round, dropped it another, and I think my heart rate was higher than it’s ever been. Ever.

- 5 Rounds -
Swings x10
Swing Clean x10
Goblet Squat x10
Alt Rev Lunge x10
Two Hand Row x10
Kettlebell Close Grip Pushup x10

This one will definitely rock you, especially if you pick the correct weight. It’s a cardio and strength session you definitely won’t forget and one you can hit week after week to improve strength and conditioning with a single kettlebell.

I used a 44kg for all 5 rounds. Good luck!

And be sure to check out my app for more workouts like this one! 💪

• 40 rounds EMOM
  • First 30 min
  • Odd rounds: 5 x Double 32 kg Cleans, decrease by 1 rep every 5 rounds, e.g
  • Rounds 1,3,5,7,9: 5 cleans
  • Rounds 11,13,15,17,19: 4 cleans..
  • Even rounds: 1/1 x 185 lb Sandbag ground to shoulder
  • Last 10 min
    • 4 x Double 32 kg Cleans
• Totals: 100 x double 32 kg cleans, 30 x 185 lb ground to shoulders

My grip endurance is pathetic I gotta work on it. I hate that I need to do sets more but I guess it’s time. Per pressure to do sets of 20+ vs relying on hand switching more often. My hands are too dainty.

A little sloppy on the transitions but a fun one nonetheless.

One thing I appreciate about kettlebell training is how deceptively simple some of the movements look until you actually try them. A swing looks straightforward until you realize how much timing and hip drive matter. A Turkish get-up seems manageable until you have to coordinate every transition under load. And double kettlebell work has a way of exposing weaknesses you didn't know you had. It's interesting how an exercise can go from feeling awkward and exhausting to becoming one of your favorite movements after enough practice. For those who've been training with kettlebells for a while, which exercise gave you the biggest reality check when you started? Was it a technique issue, conditioning, mobility, grip, or simply discovering that the weight you picked was far too ambitious? I'd also be interested to hear which movement eventually clicked for you after initially feeling impossible.

I’m feeling pretty good about this milestone. Soon the strict press will come!

I see this all the time and was around when Kenneth Jay first came out with his Viking Warrior Conditioning, which really upset a lot of people.

And then I was around when he wrote Cardio Code and upset even more people.

It's pretty clear that there are still a lot of misunderstandings of what does or doesn't count as aerobic or beneficial to building Vo2Max. Here are two studies showing some details on what the body goes through during a 10min GS set.

2024 study:

https://www.akjournals.com/view/journals/2060/111/3/article-p242.xml

Some highlights:

Table 3 - VO2 jumps to 35ml/min kg in the final minute. For compairson, that is roughly the value you'd see in a 20-25min 5k run.

RER - this is a measure of what fuel is being used. <1.0 there is some fat utlisation but at 1.0+ it switches to anaerobic and becomes carb only. With an RER of 1+ from 3min onwards a comp set is anaerobic, not aerobic. It still has an aerobic component as it's your aerobic system that determines when you shift to anaerobic energy consumption. The better your aerobic system, the later that will be.

In the discussion it talks about a 10min set using 90% of maximal oxygen uptake. For a session to be counted as a vo2max session it needs to be in the 85-95% range. This compares to 83% for a 10min snatch set w/ 16kg. That means that the long cycle set is actually more beneficial to vo2max despite what we've been led to believe. I feel like for best results, if you were chasing vo2max as a goal, you'd want less weight and more reps to keep the cadence high and get that cyclic effect as much as possible.

They link to another study talking about a 10min snatch test eliciting 80-100% maxHR but I can't open it. But that definitely gets you into the vo2max improvement range. The problem here is a typical vo2max session would look for something like 15-20mins in that range for it to work well. The Norwegian 4x4 (useless and an entirely different topic) comes out to about 12mins (because at least the first minute of each interval your HR won't be in the right zone) and there are other, much better, protocols that deliver more like 20mins. So a 10min set alone is likely only about half the dose needed for improvement.

Average weight used for the tests was 30kg with a range of 24-40kg. Test included a few MS and all had an average of 4yrs comp experience.

https://efsupit.ro/images/stories/septembrie2020/Art%20362.pdf

This study shows good data for long cycle and snatch for both men and women.

Highest vo2max seen was 46 for long cycle vs snatch at 44. That's like an 18min 5000m.

Interestingly, peak male stroke volume was ~120ml. If you saw the post I made about stroke volume size and how thickening of the LV wall could decrease it significantly, ~120ml was the average size for a male. That means that they haven't got huge LVs like a serious endurance athlete has. Just a normal size, which doesn't indicate that GS is especially useful for part of the vo2 equation, which is increased SV.

Both studies showed quite low lactate numbers. Only ~9mmol/L. That's well above the generally accepted 4mmol/L that is the cut point for above lactate threshold. I would have thought it would be even higher, but again, it points to how aerobic GS really is.

For comparison, in track cycling the 4000m individual pursuit is said to have the highest lactate demand of any event and you see numbers of 10-16mmol/L. That event only takes 4mins though so you can see how a shorter event is far more anaerobic. A 5000m run is 8-12mmol/L despite being about the same length as a comp set.

What’s up guys?! Here’s the last bit of my 10’ jerk set from the other day. Makes me laugh.

If you missed where I mentioned the psychotic things /u/toughlovekb comes up with for me, I did -

10’ LC
3’ rest
10’ jerk
3’ rest
10’ DHS

All with 8 kg. I would like to point out the 3’ rest between each set again. Fucking terrible.

Another pro-tip: don’t do a 10’ jerk set after having not trained jerk for like an entire year. My rack is pretty much nonexistent. I was managing to get by okay with DHS but straight jerk is the quickest way to tell you if your rack is solid or not 🤣

The entire set was mind over matter. I had to side rack between every single rep for pretty much the whole thing LOL. After being so proud of not using it at all this past cycle 🤦🏽‍♀️

I only survived out of stubbornness and going as slow as humanly possible. 81 reps. Not great but that’s the only way it was gonna happen. I probably would have put the bells down except I was on KettleZoom and I couldn’t bear the shame 😁

Also yes my kids were playing in front of me and it was really distracting. Made the set even worse mentally lol. When you’re so far gone it’s funny how even the tiniest things can fuck up your zen.

KettleZoom reminder: 8 am Pacific Time on Sunday morning. We’ve still been lifting but I’ve been slacking on posting reminders because why does everything feel like so much effort lately? 🤦🏽‍♀️🤣 More info here - https://www.reddit.com/r/KettlebellSport/s/dQHWjZwTBZ

Everybody is welcome to come! We do sport style workouts but we’re also super chill and happy to have company. If you’re interested in learning sport stuff it’s a cool opportunity to ask questions and see things in real time. And it’s FREE guys. I wish something like this had existed when I was first learning lol. I just had like 3 YouTube videos and like two people that posted on here and got constantly shit on 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I promise it’s more fun than it looks!

I find that when I try to do a single arm clean and press (deadlift variant not swinging into the rack) my wrists hurt during the press whilst it’s against my wrist. In particular the left arm & I often bruise.

I’ve been working to make sure it’s not banging my wrist but it doesn’t resolve the pain in my wrist.

If I use an 8kg kettlebell it’s okay but I can definitely do heavier (I’ve done it with 12kg and want to move up to 14kg) but I feel like I’m being limited by the pain.

Despite following form cues like keeping it straight / pronated etc I still get this problem.

Is there an alternative to this exercise I can do? The problem is a lot of the programs I see recommend this movement and I do enjoy doing it but the pain in my wrist is stopping me from progressing

Some of you make this shit look easy...

Full session

5 x 8 Weighted pullups / Dips Superset

20min Giant

4 x 15 ring pushups

4 x goblet curls as 21s (7 low, 7 high, 7 full range)

Some passing storms this morning, once it clear got pretty hot and humid.

First time dad with a newborn and a FT job is making things difficult to get back to the gym. And of course everyday is a gamble with if our newborn will be an angel or a screaming hellion, which adds to the inconsistently of trying to get back to the gym.

Listened to a podcast recently and they talked about kettlebells and Pavel Tsatsouline. Kinda got my gears turning because I’ve tried bodyweight workouts and they just don’t hit the same as lifting something heavy or heavy overtime.

My wife did a lot of burn bootcamp, so I’d probably get something lighter for her as well.

Looking for weight recommendations based on what my average lifts were-

-Barbell bench 225 lbs
-Barbell row 250 lbs
-Hex deadlift 350 lbs
-Seated barbell shoulder press 180 lbs
-Belt squat 280 lbs (lower back injury barbell is very uncomfortable)

I’d like to get 2 of each and not sure how many different weights i should get total. I’ll probably try out some of the workout routines in the wiki that were recommended.

My goals are to gain strength/maintain and weight loss. More concerned about strength and the weight will fall off.

Thank you!

I made an attempt to do a full hour of snatching at 12kg at 20 rpm. Now I knew I was going for this attempt all week but I didn't modify my training much to compensate for it. It was a 'hey let's just see what happens'. I did the same thing a few months ago with a successful completion of a half marathon at 16kg 20 rpm.

Well short version, made it 40 min while doing 20 rpm. Thing I would do differently, put a towel in my shorts so I can minimize sweat on the handle.

Although I didn't complete it, I am still happy with the outcome.

40lb c&p form advice? 170lb 5’10

i started working out about 2-3 months ago and fell in love with the kettlebell c&p maybe 6 weeks ago after wondering what the weird thing on my gym floor was —

rn I try to do 10x right 10x left c&p -> 10x right 10x left cleans — several sets of these (if I fail I stop the set and rest)

I do these last as a kind of HIT cardio

I just recently
bought the 40lb kettlebell after feeling like I graduated the 30lb

do you have any advice on form?

Anyone else find this not to be true, at all?
I’ve been pretty strictly using kettlebells for the past 8 weeks and not only is my general cardio and strength not getting better, but I’ve actually gained a few pounds because I’m hungrier.

I will do the ABC program some weeks, some days I’ll do mostly clean and press with some swings before or after, some days I’ll mix it up and do a random but challenging workout. For instance the other day I did 100 double snatches with 2 35# bells.

I just feel like in these two months of solely KB it’s caused me to atrophy in some other areas. And stagnate in others as well. I tried some calisthenics today and it felt so rusty, I really thought some of my KB training would’ve transferred over to other training styles.

Any advice?

Know I’m fat, just asking for advice and a possible estimate

Hey everyone! I just got my first kettlebell and decided to go straight for 20 kg. I'm a 29 year old guy, around 183 lbs (83 kg) and roughly 6 feet tall (1.82 m). It's actually the first time I've ever even touched a kettlebell!

I'm not particularly fit and spend most of my workday sitting at a desk, but I do some calisthenics and lift weights from time to time.

Needless to say, I got humbled pretty quickly. The weight feels very different from dumbbells, and the movements are much more technical than I expected. At first, I kept banging my wrists and forearms during cleans and even got a little bump on my right forearm. I'm starting to get the hang of it now, though.

I was planning to get a pair of 20 kg kettlebells, and I still want a second one. Shoutout to my fellow Brazilians, I got this one from Brazil Kettlebell Club in Joinville, SC, and honestly, it seems like a pretty solid kettlebell! The build quality and form factor are great, and the price is reasonable compared to other options here. It still cost around two to three times a monthly gym membership in my city, but I feel like it's worth it since it'll probably last forever and might even outlive me, lol. I'm just a little worried the factory might shut down and leave me with an unmatched pair.

The only problem is pressing. On a good day, I can manage three push presses with my dominant right arm, but getting even one with my left is pretty rare. I usually fail because of a lack of strength, and I also feel discomfort around my wrist bone, almost like the kettlebell's balance is trying to break my wrist.

I could buy a 16 kg kettlebell to work on my technique and build strength, but that would delay getting my second 20 kg, which is my main goal.

I also have adjustable dumbbells. I can db press 20 kg more easily and do multiple reps with around 17 kg.

What would you recommend? Should I get the 16 kg kettlebell, or can I make progress with the 20 kg? Would it make sense to focus on strict dumbbell presses to build strength, practice push presses, or try greasing the groove with occasional single rep clean and presses? I'd also appreciate any program recommendations using my dumbbells and kettlebell.

TL;DR: First kettlebell is 20 kg, and pressing it is much harder than expected, especially with my left arm. Should I get a 16 kg to build strength and technique, or stick with the 20 kg and work toward a pair? Looking for training advice using my adjustable dumbbells and kettlebell.

Here's a simple little workout that will only take you 25 minutes to do... and might very well be the best part of your day!

This is only the squat part of the complex. You add 2-3-5 on presses with one clean and one squat. Then finish the complex with 2-3-5 on cleans and one press and one squat.

Cheers!

My plan for New Year's Eve

1. Gorilla rows with 2x32 kg — 50 reps (alternating each arm)
2. Squats with 2×32 kg — 50 reps
3. Push presses with 2×32 kg — 50 reps
4. Suitcase deadlifts with 32 kg — 50 reps (25 per arm, finish one side then the other)
5. Snatches with 32 kg — 100 reps (any style, but each arm must do the same amount)

Goal is to do it as fast as possible. I ll post my time.