Geoduck
Level 1 Valued Member
Here's the basic background. I'm out of shape and have spent years doing randomly thrown together training routines. Never stuck with much, never felt focused or knew what a good program could actually do for me. I found myself interested in kettlebells this year and through that interest I fell in love with the idea of S&S and Pavel's concepts of strength and health. I grabbed the book and a 16kg kettlebell and though I picked up on the warm up easy enough aside from the squats being a little difficult I found myself hitting a wall with the swings that I expected to be easy. They made me feel like an uncoordinated wet noodle.
I instantly got frustrated and questioned if I would be able to ever do it right. Pretty quickly I shook that off and began doing deadlifts with the 16kg for a while to get my body more in tune with the hip hinge. Through this period (all of this being in the last month and a half) I grabbed an 8kg kettlebell thinking that I'm just too weak to swing the big one. I was pumped to finally get into S&S properly with this one. First day using it I had the same situation as with the 16kg but a little worse considering the 8kg didn't have the same pendulum effect.
At this point I'm feeling physically and mentally drained, questioning why I can watch a million YouTube videos, read over StrongFirst descriptions of the swing, focus on doing it all with the kb in hand, and proceed to have the technical ability of an inflatable car dealer prop. It's something I just can't pin down, even when I recorded myself trying it once. Everything goes wrong, I follow the kettlebell down, I don't get proper hip extension, the timing is a miss, I feel like I have to contort to get the proper back hike preventing proper shoulder form.
First off apologies for the rant. This is something I desperately want to achieve and it has my confidence and emotions all scrambled. I just thought it may be best to post here and see if anyone has gone through similar problems or at least could offer up some advice that may help me.
I instantly got frustrated and questioned if I would be able to ever do it right. Pretty quickly I shook that off and began doing deadlifts with the 16kg for a while to get my body more in tune with the hip hinge. Through this period (all of this being in the last month and a half) I grabbed an 8kg kettlebell thinking that I'm just too weak to swing the big one. I was pumped to finally get into S&S properly with this one. First day using it I had the same situation as with the 16kg but a little worse considering the 8kg didn't have the same pendulum effect.
At this point I'm feeling physically and mentally drained, questioning why I can watch a million YouTube videos, read over StrongFirst descriptions of the swing, focus on doing it all with the kb in hand, and proceed to have the technical ability of an inflatable car dealer prop. It's something I just can't pin down, even when I recorded myself trying it once. Everything goes wrong, I follow the kettlebell down, I don't get proper hip extension, the timing is a miss, I feel like I have to contort to get the proper back hike preventing proper shoulder form.
First off apologies for the rant. This is something I desperately want to achieve and it has my confidence and emotions all scrambled. I just thought it may be best to post here and see if anyone has gone through similar problems or at least could offer up some advice that may help me.