Tag: kettlebell

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Just before my summer trip to Amherst, I got a Covid booster—even though the new Covid shot was just about to come out—because I wanted to minimize the chance of catching Covid on a plane or at an airport, and bringing it to my mom or brother.

Since then, I’ve been waiting for four months to pass, so I could get the new shot, now that it’s available. (It turns out that now you only have to wait two months, but nobody told me that.) Anyway, the four months are up, so I got my Covid booster and a flu shot this morning.

Me with two band aids on my left arm, where I got a Covid shot and a flu shot
Flu shot and Covid shot

My left arm is now moderately sore. In fact, it roughly matches my right arm, which has been sore for months now. (I think originally dog-walking injuries to my right elbow and right shoulder, exacerbated by sword fighting, and exercise. I’ve recently started walking the dog left-handed, cut my sword fighting practice to just once a week, and cut the weight way down on my kettlebell clean&press. Oh, and I have a modest bruise on the right bicep where yesterday I took thrust that just missed the protective plate on my fencing jacket. The jacket is also padded though, and the thrust wasn’t that hard, and the sword was nicely flexible to make it safe for sparring between friends.)

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I recently bought a new adjustable kettlebell. I got it specifically because the adjustable kettlebell I already had has a rather large gap in weights: It goes from 25 lbs to 35 lbs (11 kg to 16 kg).

I’d been doing clean and press at 25 lbs. (I do a reverse ladder, where I do 5 left and 5 right, then 4, 3, 2, and 1, then put the weight down. That’s one set.) I started at 4 sets, and over a few weeks worked up to doing 10 sets, at which point I figured it was time go up in weight.

Sadly, it turned out that I couldn’t make the jump. After a failed attempt, I cut the reverse ladder down to start at 3 (rather than 5), and started at just 3 sets. I managed one workout like that, but when I tried to do another workout, I didn’t even make it as far as I had the first time.

So, I bought a new, more adjustable kettlebell: the Wildman Athletica competition adjustable kettlebell. It will allow me to make ½ kg jumps, if that what it takes to be able to go up in weight successfully.

A Wildman Athletica adjust-able weight kettlebell

It starts at 12 kg, which by happy coincidence is right where I need to be for my clean & press workouts.

The downside of the Wildman kettlebell is that it isn’t so easy to adjust the weight. Whereas my other adjustable weight kettlebell can be adjusted with a quick click of a dial, the Wildman adjustable kettlebell has to be opened up with a hex wrench, and then have weight plates added (or removed), and then tightened back up again. This is no big deal if you have to do it once or twice a month as you finish one cycle in an exercise program, but is pretty tedious if you have to do it every day or two as you switch between exercises—and 12 kg is rather low for lower-body exercises (for me). My other adjustable bell goes to 40 lb (18 kg) and my fixed-weight bell is 53 lb (24 kg)), and either of those is a much for appropriate weight for, let’s say, kettlebell swings.

So, I was trying to think of a lower-body exercise I could do with just 12 kg, and still get a reasonable muscle-building stimulus. I thought about hand-to-hand swings, which would work okay for the upper body, but wouldn’t make much difference as far as the lower body goes. Then I thought of single-leg Romanian dead lifts.

If I were doing regular (2-legged) Romanian dead lifts (RDL) with a barbell, I’d be able to use close to 135 lbs. You might assume half of that would be about right for a single-leg RDL, but the SLRDL turns out to require a much higher level of skill, because it’s a tricky balance exercise, as well as a strength exercise. In particular, it really works the smaller muscles of the feet and ankles—needed to keep from falling over.

All of which is to say that I think SLRDLs will turn out to be a very fine exercise for my purposes, at least for a while. I started at 5 sets of 5 left / 5 right, and just like with the clean & press expect to be able to run it up to 10 sets. Then, just like with the clean & press, I should be able to go up in weight. At some point—when I get the skill component nailed—I’ll probably see the weight I want for the lower-body exercise go up faster than the the weight for the upper-body exercise. But at least for a little while, I think I’m all set.

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Back in 2020 I bought a set of gymnastic rings, and used them for pull ups, dips, and inverted rows during the period that fitness rooms were closed due to the pandemic. More recently, I’ve been doing a lot of club and kettlebell swinging—using equipment that was unavailable during the pandemic, but that I’ve purchased since.

I like the club and kettlebell stuff. However, probably because I’m not programming the workouts as well as I might, I don’t seem to be making progress. In fact, in some ways I’m backsliding. So, now that the weather supports getting outdoors and putting my rings up again, I’m going to do more of those workouts.

Today I did a circuit with three rounds of:

  • Jump rope (x110, x120, x120 jumps)
  • Dips (sets of 1 full dip + 5 negative dips)
  • Wall sit (1 set of 30″ left/right legs, 2 sets of 45″ two-leg)
  • Inverted rows (x7, x9, x9)
  • 3-way core (30″ each of hollowbody hold, inverted plank, shoulder taps)

This picture has nothing to do with my workout. I took it while walking the dog at dawn.

A tree in the foreground with the sun rising beyond it.

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Although I haven’t quite achieved my aspirational goal of doing all the workouts I want to do, I have been getting workouts in, and they’ve been going pretty well. Last week I did my club swinging workout twice, my kettlebell clean & press workout, my kettlebell swing workout, and my HEMA practice all once each.

I’ve gotten this week off to a good start by hitting the fitness room and doing a bodyweight circuit (jump rope, negative pull ups, Hindu squats, Hindu push ups, and my 3-way core circuit) for three rounds, plus some incline press and some dead hangs.

The negative pull ups, in particular, were better than I’d expected. Something I’m doing—probably the kettlebell swings, but perhaps also the club swinging—is working the lats and biceps more than is obvious while I’m doing them.

A Field Notes notebook with a top corner chewed off by the dog

I’d gotten my workout log notebook out for writing this post, and failed to put it away, with the (dog induced) result visible above.

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Based on the ideas that I talked about in Training for everything, here’s my latest cut at a personal exercise program. (My first cut was derailed by circumstances, and then I adopted a dog which derailed everything except dog walking. Then I got West Nile fever.) See my no-longer-particularly-recent Starting to rough up a new training plan for more information about the specific exercises and how I organize them into sets, reps, and progressions.

I have a set of exercises that I want to do, ideally twice a week each:

  • Kettlebell swings
  • Kettlebell clean & press
  • 1-handed heavy club swinging
  • Bodyweight gymnastic rings circuit
  • Run

That’s five things, so if I did each twice, and gave everything its own day, I’d have to have a 10-day week. That isn’t impossible. In fact, I’ve seriously considered planning my workouts in a longer cycle than weekly in the past, it but is unhandy in various ways. Fortunately, I think I can double-up several of these exercises in a way that will let me fit them into 7-day week.

The 1-handed club swinging isn’t particularly intense cardiovascularly, so I’m thinking I can combine it with the clean & press. The KB swings is intense cardiovascularly, but because it’s very different, I’m thinking I can combine it with the gymnastic rings bodyweight circuit, doing the KB swings as a “finisher” after the rings workout.

My HEMA (sword fighting) practice is three times a week, and I can’t adjust that schedule, except by skipping workouts, so I have to work that in when it actually happens.

A heavy club, a fencing mask, two pairs of fencing gloves, two translations of Meyer's text of sword fighting, a kettlebell, and a sword

Of course I also want to get one day a week of complete rest. I’d normally make that Sunday, but there’s a HEMA practice session on Sunday so it’ll have to be on Saturday instead.

So here’s a quick stab at a possible weekly plan:

DayMorningMiddayEvening
SundayRings circuit / KB SwingsHEMA
Monday1-H Heavy Club / KB C&P
TuesdaySprintsHEMA
WednesdayRings circuit / KB Swings
Thursday1-H Heavy Club / KB C&PHEMA
FridayLong run
SaturdayRest

I’ve omitted a “warm-up” block, because I already do my morning exercises, my ridiculously long warm-up routine, nearly every day. I’ve also omitted my dog walking, which averages something over 6 miles a day.

I’m pretty happy with this. It has my HEMA practice sessions in at the correct times; it leaves open the time slots where I have Esperanto, and meeting friends for lunch; it has a full rest day.

I don’t show it here, but I’ll definitely do a de-load week every 5 or 6 weeks.

I should be very clear that, at this point, this is entirely aspirational. I’ve been doing each of these workouts individually, but the only combined workouts I’ve tried so far are the heavy club swinging and the clean&press workouts. I’ve also been taking more than one rest day per week. But the progress I want seems to depend on doing something like this workout schedule, so I’m going to give it a try.

I’ll report back regarding my success or failure.

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I’ve had a draft post that was originally called my “fall workout plan,” and then called my “late fall workout plan,” but that I never posted because while I was sick I couldn’t work out at all, beyond walking the dog. I will post it. Perhaps not until it makes more sense to post a “winter workout plan.”

25 lb dumbbell and 45 lb kettlebell in front of some weight plates.

In the meantime though, I am, finally, back to doing workouts, and thought I might talk about what I’m doing, because my workout plan is to do workouts very similar to what I’ve been doing over the past week or so.

  • Two weeks ago, Sunday November 11th was a HEMA practice session.
  • Monday I did some kettlebell swings with my adjustable kettlebell adjusted to 40 lb. The previous week I’d done 10 x 10 swings emom (every minute on the minute), so I went ahead and did 10 x 11 swings emom. I’ll continue bumping that up until I hit 10 x 20, and then I’ll go up in weight and drop the reps back down to 10. (There’s a 45 lb kettlebell in the fitness room, and I own a 53 lb kettlebell, so I have a couple of options.)
  • Tuesday I did a 1-handed club workout with my Adex adjustable club at 10 lbs, doing 9 x 5 L / 5 R outside circles, shield cast, and inside circle. That was pretty easy, so I did one more set with the club adjusted to 12.5 lbs. That worked okay, so I decided I could use that as my working weight for a while.
  • Wednesday and Thursday were rest days.
  • Friday I went back to 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R with the new, higher, weight of 12.5 lbs.
  • Saturday was a rest day.
  • Sunday was another HEMA practice session,
  • Monday and Tuesday were rest days.
  • Wednesday I did kettlebell clean and press, with the kettlebell adjusted to 20 lbs, doing 6 x 4L / 4R in a reverse ladder. (That is, I did 4 clean & press with the left hand, then 4 with the right hand, the 3 left and 3 right, then 2 left and 2 right, then 1 left and 1 right. Then I put the weight down and rested a couple of minutes. That was 1 set. I did 6 sets.) After that I bumped the weight up to 25 lbs and did one more set, which went okay. I think I can carry on with 25 lbs going forward.
  • Thursday I did 10 x 12 kettlebell swings emom with the 40 lb kettlebell. Then I did some 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R. I’d have expected that I’d have done 6 sets, but 5 is what I wrote down in my notebook.
  • Friday was a rest day
  • Today, Saturday November 25th, I went to the fitness room and did a (mostly) bodyweight circuit. I did 3 rounds of 5 exercises, each for 30 seconds, then with 15 seconds to rest and move to the next exercise. I did jump rope, negative pull ups, goblet squats ( with 20 lb and 25 lb dumbbells), push ups, and hollowbody holds. That’s pretty close to what I was doing during the pandemic, except the fitness room was closed, so instead of dumbells for the goblet squats, I had to just do more reps without weights.

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During the pandemic I followed something of a training plan—a mostly bodyweight exercise plan with minimal equipment beyond a pair of gymnastic rings, based largely on Anthony Arvanitakis’s Bodyweight Muscle books and YouTube channel.

Post-pandemic (once my local fitness room reopened, and exercise equipment became available again), more activities became possible. As they did, I added some in. With extra stuff to fit in, I let the program go. Instead I began exercising more intuitively—simply trying to fit in my strength training and my running as best I could. Each day I’d decide what to do influenced by how I felt, and what I’d done (or hadn’t done) the previous day or two, trying to cover all the bases, while allowing adequate time for recovery.

It has worked pretty well, but not as well as I was doing with an actual program. However, I don’t want to go back to the bodyweight rings program, because I feel like I’m getting real benefits out of the kettlebell and heavy club activities. So, I’m working on roughing up a training program that includes all the stuff I want to do.

Goals

It probably doesn’t make any sense to talk about the activities I do without thinking about the goals I’m trying to achieve.

Of course, I want to feel fit and healthy.

In the spirit of Peter Attia’s Centenarian Decathlon, I want to not only be capable of all the activities of daily living, but have enough reserve capacity now that I’ll still be able to do those things when I’m eighty, ninety, or (as I like to joke, except I’m totally serious) eleventy-one.

Among those things are the obvious—be able to hike a few miles on a rugged trail, climb a steep hill or several flights of stairs, carry a heavy bag of groceries home, put a suitcase in the overhead compartment, get down on the floor and back up again, etc. Besides those, I also want to be able to do well at longsword, which requires the ability to stand and walk in a low lunge, hold the sword with my arms at full extension (both forward and over my head), etc.

Fitness Activities

I figure the first step is just to document the activities that I think will support these goals, so that I know what I want to fit into the week. Here’s my first pass at a list. (Note that I already do an extensive warm-up every day, because it makes me move and feel better all day, whether I do a workout or not. I also walk my dog, and she rather insists on at least 6 miles a day.)

HEMA practice

My group has 2-hour meetings three times a week. They’re mostly skills training, so not too intense, although now that I’m approved for sparring the intensity has gone up.

Running

I want to go for two runs per week. One is a “long” run, in the 6–10 mile range (although I may want to work up to half-marathon length). The other is a “fast” run, which might include sprints, hill sprints, or just a hard run in the 3–4 mile range.

Kettlebell swings

This is primarily to work the muscles of my posterior chain, which needs a regular workout to keep me functioning well. In particular, I learned the hard way what happens if I don’t work my glutes. Currently I’m doing a heavy/light cycle, where I alternate between swinging an 18 kg (40 lb) kettlebell and a 24 kg (53 lb) kettlebell.

For the light kettlebell I’ve worked up to 10×19 swings emom. For the heavy kettlebell I’ve worked up to 10×12 swings emom. I try to add one swing per set every week.

Somewhere around sets of 25, I’d no longer get any break at the end of a minute. I don’t yet know if that’ll mean I’ll be able to do 250 straight swings.

Heavy club swinging

This is one of my newer additions, and I have already seen it do great things for rotational strength, plus grip, arm, shoulder, and core strength. As the weight has gone up, it has started hitting the legs as well.

I do three exercises (outside circle, shield cast, inside circle) in sets of 5 left and 5 right, and I work up from 5 sets on each side, adding one set every workout or two, until I get to 10 or 12 sets on each side, and then go up in weight. I’m up 8 sets with a 13.75 pound club. Soon I’ll go up to 15 lbs.

Kettlebell clean and press

This one seems especially useful for longsword, where you often need to hold the sword over your head, with your arms near full extension.

I do these as a reverse ladder, starting with 4 reps on the left and 4 reps on the right, then 3, then 2, then 1 rep on each side. Then I take a short break and repeat for some number of sets. Each workout (or every other workout) I add one set.

I just did 7 sets. I’ll work up to 10 or 12, then either increase the weight or else start the reverse ladder at 5 reps left and right, and go back to workouts of 4 or 5 sets.

Gymnastic rings circuit

Versions of this were my main workout all through the pandemic, when fitness rooms were closed and kettlebells impossible to come by. These were push/pull/legs workouts preceded by a starter and then ended with a core exercise. I had at least a couple variations of each exercise, so the starter was often jumping rope, but sometimes some sort of quadruped movement, push generally alternated between dips and some version of a push up, pull alternated between pull ups and inverted rows, legs was often air squats, but sometimes hindu squats or lunges or wall sits, and core was often hollowbody hold, but sometimes planks or reverse planks or V-ups.

I’d set the number of reps of each exercise at what I thought I could carry through for 3 rounds, and the 3rd round I’d aim to push to technical failure.

Toward a schedule

Putting all these things into a weekly schedule has proven to be difficult.

Me standing in zornhut

One issue is that my HEMA practice sessions occur at specific times, so there’s a certain lack of flexibility in the schedule there.

Besides that, there’s simply more stuff I want to do than fits easily into a week.

One solution to that would be to abandon the idea that “weekly” is the right structure. I could fit things into, let’s say, a 9-day cycle—but there are enough inconveniences with that, that every time I’ve considered it before, I’ve ended up sticking with weekly.

I’m pretty close to having a first cut at a weekly schedule ready to post. Look for it here in a day or two. (Update: It took much more than a day or two, but you can now see my Personal exercise program for winter 2023-2024.)

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If I’m serious about training to get better at everything—and I am—then I need to think seriously about how to fit in, and recover from, all that training. This post is my first cut at documenting some of my early thinking on how I might do that.

A plan to fit in everything needs to start with eliminating having whole days devoted to just one particular kind of exercise: strength days, running days, etc. Instead, most days will have to have at least two (hopefully complimentary) exercise activities.

I had already started work on thinking about the best ways to combine exercise activities in ways that would reinforce one another, based on the ideas of Adam Sinicki (aka The Bioneer). But more recently the work of Mark Wildman has provided what may be the solution: What he calls “the Tetris of training.” (That’s a link to the first of a series of videos where he talks about program design in those terms.)

The basic idea here is that you divide your workout into pieces: Maybe a kettlebell squat piece, or a single-arm club-swinging piece, maybe a running piece, etc. Then structure each piece as a specific block that can be done in a specific amount of time, and organize those those blocks into a sequence to make a workout that can be done in 30, 60, or 90 minutes (including a warmup at the beginning and a cooldown at the end), and lay those workouts out on a weekly timeline, with appropriate rest days.

Another key part of the idea is that each of those pieces should be its own progressive program, running on its own schedule, but arranged with the others so that they’re not all progressing upward at the same rate.

Me swinging an Adex adjustable club (adjusted to 10 lbs). Here I’ve just caught after an outside circle and have rotated back to center to prepare for the next swing.

This can (and probably should) get pretty fancy, because there are all kinds of considerations. You want to:

  • Cover all the basic movement patterns (walk, run, crawl, lift & carry, climb, throw & catch, etc.)
  • Hit all the large muscles in your body (glutes, quads, hamstrings, pecs, lats, traps, etc.)
  • Work all the basic directions of movement (Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Heave, Sway, Surge)
  • Avoid working the same muscle patterns two days in a row (to allow for recovery)
  • Make sure the important muscle patterns get hit at least twice a week

Besides all that stuff, I particularly want to include some “skills” training, where I’ll work on things like parkour, HEMA, rock climbing, fencing, etc.

I roughed out a plan along these lines, and gave it a try last week and this week. I have a couple of external constraints that I’m working around. One is that I want to be able to join my tai chi group in our Monday/Wednesday/Friday practice sessions. Another is that I want to include time each week for both a long run, and a long hike with Jackie—and both of those activities require flexibility related to the weather. Last week I ditched two of the tai chi sessions, but got in both a hike with Jackie and a long trail run. This week I couldn’t do one tai chi session because of rain, plus I had to take two unscheduled rest days because I tweaked something in my hip.

Today my hip seems to be recovered. I’ve done my heavy club swinging for the day, and I’ve gotten in a long run. Now I need to look at my draft schedule and see how to restart my workout plan, given all my many constraints.