Originally Posted by
Bill Been
Many are thinking exclusively "swings" when they think of kettlebell work. I'm an instructor in the same organization as the men mentioned a few posts ago. I learned how to swing, did swings with enthusiasm and increasing weight until I could do 100 swings in 5 minutes with a 106lb bell. Despite the rhetoric I often heard about "getting strong" with swings, I've never really been comfortable with that definition of "stronger". Will you move better? Yes. Will you see novice gains in strength? Yes. Will you increase your work capacity? Most definitely. But I see why few here view any of that as "strength training" or even "training" as opposed to "exercise". Swings, snatches, and cleans are "ballistics" inside that system and are, as has been said, often done for higher rep conditioning work. However.....there are also grinds. Presses, Get Ups, and squats. If your definition of "training" requires a goal, progressive overload, and a roadmap, any of these three can be defined as "strength training". Will they take you as far as a barbell? No. Is incremental loading possible? Yes, but in such big increments it requires increasing volume at one weight then a jump up to the next. In the Biggie Boy bell sizes from 28ish kilos up, 4 kilo leaps are to be dealt with, but they're also a smaller percentage leap than from 12 to 16. The best programming for low reps with heavy bells comes from Geoff Neupert who uses double kettlebells almost exclusively in his programming. His double clean and press (re-cleaning after each press creates an effect a bit like Press 2.0) program with two 32s is my all time favorite. If I did it again, I'd do it with double 36s. Dave Whitley programmed my work up to a Get Up with a (106 lb) Beast, moving me up from a 32 kilo PR to the 48 in just over two months and just in time to do it on my 50th birthday. I never did more than 1 rep per side then rest 5-10 minutes. I test drove a single-bell pressing program for Pavel in June and July - 8 weeks of nothing but heavy single kettlebell presses in what I can assure everyone was a goal-driven, programmed system. It moved my 1RM from 36 to 40 on my left arm and firmed up my one-day, best ever 40 kilo with my right.
So while swings may not fit the definition of "strength training", there's a good bit more one can and should do with a kettlebell - preferably a pair of kettlebells. Hell, I'm an instructor and I haven't done a swing since I made the goals of Pavel's "Simple & Sinister" book - 100 one-arm swings in sets of 10 in 5 minutes; then 5 Get Ups per arm in ten minutes, each with the 32 for males. The swing is outstanding for noobs, deconditioned humans, people intimidated by barbells, etc. But I'd be lying if I omitted my opinion that these guys doing these 10,000 swings in a month challenges are wasting their time. If you already deadlift 2x BW....fine. If you can press half your bodyweight in one hand....fine. If you can press a pair of Beasts....okay. Knock yourself out with swing challenges. This is one area where I think Mr. John went badly off the rails when he Pied Pipered a bunch of Impressionables into spending months on this questionable activity.