Beyond The Basics: Kettlebells #

Kettlebells, when following the hardstyle guidelines and rules, is the kind of sports that can fit in anyone’ schedule and the results far outweigh the time invested in the daily practice. It has a very small, although rock solid, foundation of swings, cleans, presses, front squats and snatches, that once you learn it stays the same forever; your technique will improve over time but the exercises will stay the same.

At first, it is hard to imagine how is it possible to get results with only five exercises and keep progressing over time because we are so used to all the ads selling the secret technique to grow X or Y muscle, how to get results that take years but in 5 minutes and so on that many of us keep chasing in the beginning that we forget that we have to move past the basic movements and exercises and get into the structure a practice and then the planning of the practices in order to get the results we want.

The structure of an individual practices can be boiled down to learning what should go first and what should go last for a duration, per practice, between 20 and 45 minutes in order to have the optimal experience:

1. the explosive exercises, swings and snatches, performed with a medium heavy kettlebell at high intensity
2. the heavy exercises, cleans, presses and front squats, performed with a heavy kettlebell at medium intensity
3. the steady exercises, swings & complexes of cleans, presses, front squats performed with a medium light kettlebell at medium intensity

Now, regarding the planning of practices a few days or a few weeks ahead, first we have to establish how many days a week we want to do our practices - I personally do 6 days and then rest on Saturdays, any other schedule I end up procrastinating on it because there is always another day in the future to which I can move today’s practice; then we have to find our personal rhythm that works for us, some want to push harder during the week, others during the weekends. 

An often overlooked part of planning is the amount of effort that goes into the rest of our days and how much more energy we have left to work with the iron. This is because for the majority of the influencers treat their fitness schedule as sacred because it is actually their primary activity but for many of us sports is just a support activity that has to fuel the rest of our life and take energy from it. For this reason, planning our kettlebells practices should take into account the amount of energy that you might have left in a given day and should allow for tweaks here and there because it is better to do half a practice than not doing it at all.

Moving past the introductory phase to the next one of how to learning how get the most out of the basic exercises will result more and better results than learning “the ultimate secret X movement” every other day.