cardio training with kettlebells

High Repetition Kettlebell Swings

Kettlebell Training

The kettlebell swing is a amazing exercise that can build power, strength, improve conditioning and accelerate fat loss.  

Swings are packed with benefits.  

Kettlebell swings have been a staple exercise in my workouts for the past 13+ years.  

I started by swinging a 24kg kettlebell, and have since moving on to 28kg, 32kg and 44kg swings of varying intensities and volume.  

Within 4 weeks, I noticed the impact kettlebell swings had on my physique.  

And I wasn’t using fancy workouts, just a simple 15 seconds on/ 15 seconds off for 24 rounds.  That’s a 12 minute workout, with 6 of those minutes being dedicated to swings.   

Long story short, adding swings to my workout regimine helped to burn fat off of my body while building functional power, improving my posture and delivering a potent form of conditioning. 

Swinging kettlebells has also improved my running.

Kettlebell swings are a total body exercise.

In the beginning, I rarely swung my 28kg bell beyond the 15-20 reps in a work set.  

Overall, my workouts 

Then I started reading testimonials where people described how high rep kettlebell swing workouts (several days per week) was torching fat off their bodies. 

Who doesn’t want to burn a little more fat off their body?  I sure did, and still do, let’s get lean people. 

Of couse, nutrition is a crucial part of fat loss, so factor that in. 

Over the years, I’ve gone pretty far down the rabbit hole with swings.  High rep swing workouts might eclipse 300-400 reps in a session, using heavier kettlebells.  

Note:  Tread lightly using high rep swings too frequently.  Give your body chance to recover and avoid injury.  

—> Here is a short list of my observations and findings while using high rep kettlebell swing workouts <—

1)  High rep kettlebell swings builds grip endurance.  

2)  Might be a good idea to perform self administered soft tissue work on the forearms using a lacrosse ball or a percusion massager like the TheraGun. 

3)  I got lean pretty quick, which is predictable because kettlebell swings work a large number of muscles and burn a significant number of calories in these high rep workouts.  

4)  Take adequate rest between sessions.  Give your low back, glutes and hamstrings a chance to recover from the increase volume.  Foam roll, percussion massage, accupressure mat, active mobility training and long walks are a good idea.  

5)  2-3 high rep swing workouts per week is enough to create noticeable changes in body composition and conditioning.  

6)  Postural changes were interesting.  Standing position seemed like my hips were further forward and my shoulders pulled back.  

7)  15-20 minutes is more than enough time to accumulate a shit ton of swings.   

8)  Don’t be afraid to move up in weight and attack heavier kettlebells.  

I’d consider a high rep swing workout to be 100+ reps or more.  

Taking that number and scaling it for a beginner,  40-50 swings might be high rep for your experience level. 

If you’re advanced, 200+ swings might be your target for that day.  

It depends on your conditioning level and familiarity with the kettlebell swing.

Here’s a good kettlebell swing workout:

Baseline Kettlebell Swing Workout

Workoust like this are deceptively challenging.  

In the early round the rest periods feel long, but in the later rounds the rest periods don’t feel long enough.   

Fatigue is a hell of a drug.  

Using this workout, you’ll accumulate 100 swings in 10 minutes.  

That’s plenty to create a training effect.   

Choosing kettlebell weight.  20-24kg for men and a 16kg/20kg for women.

This is not the law however.  If you need to go lighter, do it.  Need to go heavier?  Do it.  Feel it out and make that decision as needed.  

This workout uses a fixed work:rest structure.  Wear a heart rate monitor if you have one.  A heart rate monitor can provide valuable information on work and rest periods, along with pinpointing how hard you’re actually working according to heart beats per minute.  

Using a heart rate monitor, I’ll perform the swings, finsih, then watch my heart rate monitor until the BPM decresases to 130bpm before starting the next round.  This method will make rest periods short in the beginning and tends to increase the length of rest later in the workout as fatigue accumulates and your body needs more time to calm down.  

Here are a few other workouts I’ve played around with. 

Other tips for high rep swing workouts

Don’t make the mistake of swinging too light of a kettlebell.  

The hips are powerful , size up the kettlebell and challenge yourself.  

If you have several different weights, you can start the workout with the heavier kettlebell and transition to the lighter bell as needed.  

It’s all based on feel.  

If you’re swinging super high rep marathon sessions with too light of a kettlebell, there’s diminishing returns.  

Instead of swinging 500 reps and feeling fresh at the end of the workout, lower the reps while increasing the weight.  

The increase in load will challenge your body plenty, and over time, the volume will increase.  

Repeat this process and you’ll be swinging the 40kg BEAST in not time.  I bet your body will reflect this progress.  

Just remember, the rules of progressive loading apply to kettlebell swings also.  

Again, this is a basic progression with loading, similar to what you’d use with traditional resistance training.

Heavier kettlebells will require greater effort to move the kettlebell through the arc of motion.    

Kettlebells are amazing for building power, improving posture and fat loss.  

Swings, while not the best for building lean muscle, are known to and can build muscle.  

Don’t count kettlebell swings out for building SOME muscle.  Just know there are better exercises.  

Deadlifts, squats, vertical pulling, rows, horizontal pressing and overhead pressing are best for building muscle because muscles will spend more time under tension through the full range of motion.  

Kettlebell swing are great for fat loss, if…   

… you’re in a caloric deficit.    

It doesn’t matter if you’re getting into a  caloric deficit via the swing workouts, or you’re a badass and entering workouts already in a caloric deficit.

You cannot out-swing a calorie surplus and expect to lose fat.  The math will work against you every time and you’ll go insane.  

People fight the calorie deficit thing all the time, like there’s some other secret sauce that can only be found by spending $97 on a fitness guru’s fat loss product.  

The caloric deficit is NOT EVERYTHING when it comes to fat loss, but it does play a HUGE role in burning fat.  

Huge.  

Sleep, hydration, protein intake, eating whole foods over processed foods (as much as possible) will deliver “best” results.

If you found this article wondering if high rep kettlebell swings are a good idea… 

… yes, they are.  

Just make sure you approach these workouts with some common sense, making sure you’re familiar with the swing itself and not overdoing the volume out of the gates. 

Increase the reps gradually, find the sweet spot with the weight, attack the workout. 

Integrating several high volume swing workouts per work alongside decent nutrition will deliver awesome athletic and aesthetic results.  

Cheers to high rep kettlebell swings!

KG

It’s Just a Kettlebell Workout: Adjusting a Brutally Effective Kettlebell Complex

Quick Tips

I added a few new elements to what I like to call a staple kettlebell complex that seemed to fit the bill just right.

The original kettlebell complex was structured like this:

Kettlebell Complex Training

First let me say that if you have the physical know-how and ability to train like this, you won’t regret it.  If you’re short on time, its pure gold.  If you’re looking to lose fat, its pure gold.  There is so much happening in a condensed total body work capacity-style training session like this, it’s definitely going to create a large training effect.

And that is what you should be after… A large training effect while keeping safety in the front of your mind.

So, as much as I love the above training session, it was time to re-organize some things.

Boredom in training sucks.  I aim to avoid this without straying too far toward the radical.

Using the above kettlebell complex, my rest periods had decreased to nearly 40 seconds in between complex rounds, and my total number of complex rounds had increased to 6.  I felt as though I was spinning my tires.  Would adding another round or decreasing the rest periods  the 40 second mark really provide any benefit?  I really had to ask myself what there was to gain from adding more, or resting less.

My options seemed to be: increase the loading or change the stimulus.

I chose to change the stimulus and see what happens.

My first experience with the modifications was promising.  Here is how it looked:

kettlebell complex training

Alternating the double kettlebell swing and the double kettlebell cleans added significant work time to the beginning of the complex.  I should clarify that “significant time” is really only 15-20 extra seconds, but when the entire complex round clocks out at 2min11sec total, 15-20 seconds of extra work begins to look a lot more challenging.

Other areas of the complex that seemed to increase the working time were the overhead presses.

Exploding out of the last rep of  squats, I immediately transitioned into a double overhead press.  Upon bringing the kettlebells back to the rack position, I then pressed the right hand bell up and back down, followed by the left hand bell up and back down.  Pressing a single kettlebell while holding the other in the rack position is draining, but this is what I was aiming for.

Lastly, the implementation of the alternating reverse lunges added working time to the entire work set.  In the original kettlebell complex, sumo-style deadlifts were used.  The cadence of a sumo-style deadlift is commonly much quicker than alternating between reverse lunges.  The training stimulus is also altered by changing the movement pattern.  I quickly found out how much I had deprived myself of lunge work.

As far as rest periods go, I suspect that 45-60sec of incomplete rest will remain adequate to receive the training effect that I am after (lean, conditioning, maintenance of strength qualities).

I refer to the rest periods as incomplete anytime my heart rate doesn’t recover to 130 beats per minute.

In the later rounds of the workout, my work periods begin higher and higher heart rates.

My goal is to be a perfectly golden marshmallow.

If you’re proficient with kettlebell training, give this workout a shot.  You may have to adjust some things to suit your abilities, scale up or scale down, but you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results you’ll get from training like this.

At the very least, it’s a different angle on working out.

 

 

 

Cheers to shifting the complex to create a new training effect!

 

Kyle