Update: It’s been 8 days and I’m still at it!(100 swings)

[dkeefe]

@livi_dreams Aww, this was cute to me. I definitely will keep swinging, no plans on stopping!

 

[lauratoday]

@dkeefe Awesome. I did this year's ago, and built up to 10,000 swings a month. Good target to have.

 

[dkeefe]

@lauratoday Oh wowww THATS INSANE. What type of differences did you see in your body from that?

 

[lauratoday]

@dkeefe Much better posture, bigger shoulders, forearms... Nothing huge but you will definitely feel abundantly fitter and more capable physically.

 

[dkeefe]

@lauratoday That’s great to hear. I can’t wait to get to that point! It honestly sucks being out of shape and knowing your physical disadvantages. I wanna push it to the limit

 

[lauratoday]

@dkeefe You'll get there quickly - another thing I noticed with KBs is that you can progress quickly if you are consistent. More so in my experience than lifting heavy weights.

 

[dkeefe]

@lauratoday Cool! What’s the weight you use currently and how quickly did you get to that weight (kettlebells)?

 

[lauratoday]

@dkeefe Started with 16kg, then 28g, 32kg... And then 50kg.

I can't do 10,000 swings with 50kg though. I like it for squats and smaller rep swings.

I think progress was over a year or so - it was during the pandemic when we were all stuck at home and had lots of spare swing time lol.

 

[vigilant]

@dkeefe Swings are great, but imo you might want to take the time/effort you would’ve invested in adding another hundred swings to either add weight or learn new a couple exercises.

someone else has already mentioned S&S; it’s a good beginner routine that only requires adding one new exercise in TGUs (albeit it’s fairly technical). plus the book walks you through really solid principles for progressing up weight levels.

if you’ve got swings down, clean or snatch have a pretty small/intuitive learning curve.

so i’d suggest just paying attention to your body and your mind, and deciding what’s next for you! if you feel there’s some kind of movement missing from your routine, find an exercise that fills the gap and start doing that. if you just want to focus in and grind on something simple, feel absolutely free to stick with swings or add in TGUs to do S&S (i benefited greatly from the simplicity; no decisions, nothing fancy, just work).

 

[dkeefe]

@vigilant Thank you so much for the advice. I’m glad you brought up adding weight. I’m not sure at what point to upgrade? I guess I’ll find that out by buying the book!

 

[prosedorothy]

@dkeefe I've been playing with kettlebells for a long time. Some of my best overall progress has come just after swing exclusive or swing heavy programs. I think it's a great movement all around.

 

[dkeefe]

@prosedorothy What type of progress have you noticed with kettlebells?

 

[prosedorothy]

@dkeefe Sounds foolish but the first thing that really stuck out years ago was far increased stability at rowdy concerts, I'm a large man anyway but getting knocked off balance became non existent. I'm old now so I don't do that much anymore.

After I had been doing kettlebells and bodyweight for 5 years ish I decided to take a stab at bench/squat/dead and found not only was I more stable on the squats and deads, I hadn't regressed a lot in my max lifts. My deadlift form greatly improved on its own, I had always tended to hump my back a bit prior to kettlebell training and post I've found I can keep a very straight back and posture.

Last year I was very focused on s&s the first part of the year, and then decided to hop back into the Highland games. My numbers didn't get back to when I was active(mostly due to being out of practice), but I felt really good and aside from a bicep repair over the winter I'm expecting more improvements this year. Especially on weight over bar and hammers. This is basically on swings, cleans, tgus, and presses, with some erg rowing.

 

[dkeefe]

@prosedorothy Doesn’t sound foolish at all and I’m glad you shared that. I’ve always wanted to be in a moshpit at least once but with how small i am (5’2) plus out of shape, i know my fate lol it’s good to know that not all hope is gone in that regard lmao

I have to look up what highland games are as I’m not too familiar with the fitness community as a whole but wow that’s amazing that it helped you in different facets! What happened to your bicep if you don’t mind me asking? Also are you still able to use kettlebells the same way you did before the bicep injury, did you have to make some adjustments or completely drop it?