Bonkin
Level 3 Valued Member
Hey y'all. I'm Bonkin (also known as Mike). I'm pretty new to the forums and have already learned quite a lot in the couple weeks or so just lurking and reading. By day, I'm a 50 year old software developer (6'0" 220#). By night, I'm trying to lose weight and get stronger.
For some history, I mostly only played video games and the occasional beer-league softball team with friends from work. When I turned 40, I was tired of being a fat sloth and went on a diet and started walking. This quickly turned to running and I ran my first marathon 9 months later. I went on to run a few more marathons and then turned to ultra marathons - mostly 6 hour, 8 hour, 50KM and eventually a 50 miler - at which point I felt burned out, quit running, and got fat again. After this I had a brief foray into things like Starting Strength and really developed a liking for strength training. Somewhere along the way, I learned about kettlebells and bought and read Pavel's books: ETK and S&S. I bought some bells, but never really went far with it and they ended up somewhere in the garage.
This year, I started out around 245# (not really sure exact weight as I'd stopped getting on it after I hit 240) and was surprised to find that my wife had made a doctor's appointment for me. I usually don't go to the doctor unless something's wrong and almost cancelled the appointment. But I went just to "shut her up" because I was "fine". Well, when the doctor told me I had high blood pressure and I came back with BP prescription, I had to admit to her that maybe I wasn't fine. So I started walking and listening to her and my doctor. When my blood work came back, it turned out I also had high cholesterol and was pre-diabetic. So I continued walking and started cutting back on the calories (but continued eating crap). I lost 15# along the way, so I was pretty happy when I went in for my most recent checkup. The doctor informed me that while the medications and walking had improved my BP and cholesterol numbers significantly - my pre-diabetes had turned into diabetes. I left his office in a shock and frankly I can't recall a moment when I've been more scared. He knows I'm not the biggest fan of being on medication, so he gave me a glucose meter and gave me three months to clean up my diet and lose more weight. The long term goal is to get down to 185# - but the doc wants me to be at 205# by the end of the year.
I've never been one to mope around - so I went home that night and cleaned out the pantry and fridge of the crap I used to eat. I also wanted to improve upon my now-irregular walking and get back to a little running and make use of those cannonball shaped dust collectors that were out in my garage somewhere. I re-read S&S and decided to clean out my garage to reclaim my workout area and dusted off the kettlebells. The 16KG that felt sort of light a few years ago felt heavy to me now. So I swallowed my pride - even though I probably didn't need the extra calories - and found the 8KG and 12KG. The 12KG was perfect for swings - enough to leave me in a giant pool of sweat on the floor. I used the 8KG to relearn the TGU. I wanted to do it everyday, but I managed 5 days the first week. Over the next few weeks, I just kept doing it 5 days a week.
I'm down another 10# (220) and can easily hit the time standard for swings and TGUs with the 12KG. This week, I've started using my 16KG for a few sets of each and I've already started shopping for my next kettle bell. A lot of what I've read leads me to believe that many folks go up 8KG at a time (i.e. from 16KG to 24KG), I feel like it may be better for me to go up 4KG at a time and get a 20KG for my next one. Would definitely appreciate any input on this.
I also have a question around the times. For some reason, I thought every workout should be aimed towards hitting the 5 minute swings and 10 minute TGUs with a 1 minute rest in between, but at some point today or yesterday I read that maybe I mis-interpreted and I should chill out and just do the workout day to day and test my times occasionally. Am I missing something here? At the moment, I'm going for the time targets every workout. And while I feel pretty good and am able to do it 5 times a week - I don't feel recovered enough to do it 7 times per week. Also note that in addition to the S&S workouts, I'm walking or riding my bike (easy) for 45 minutes to an hour 5-6 times per week. I'm also cutting 500 calories per day and not eating my exercise calories (if you follow me) - so probably more like 900-1000 calorie deficit.
I've also found that there are a lot of SFG I and II people not far from me and will contact one soon to check my form and correct any issues before the weights get heavier. I'm also considering a SF Kettlebell class but the nearest one (I'm in the DFW area) is a 9 hour drive - so we will see.
Anyway, any advice or input is welcome. I hope to learn a lot from this great community and look forward to interacting with you all. Thanks for "listening" and if you felt like you just read a marathon, I have some spare medals you can have.
P.S. The simplicity of S&S also attracts me strongly to PttP (which I also just read). I love the power lifts and want to eventually work on improving on my old bests. My monkey brain wants to do S&S and PttP at the same time, but for now I am attempting to keep things super simple - so I will wait and just work on S&S.
TLDR - Old fat guy fell in love with kettle bells and is saying hello.
For some history, I mostly only played video games and the occasional beer-league softball team with friends from work. When I turned 40, I was tired of being a fat sloth and went on a diet and started walking. This quickly turned to running and I ran my first marathon 9 months later. I went on to run a few more marathons and then turned to ultra marathons - mostly 6 hour, 8 hour, 50KM and eventually a 50 miler - at which point I felt burned out, quit running, and got fat again. After this I had a brief foray into things like Starting Strength and really developed a liking for strength training. Somewhere along the way, I learned about kettlebells and bought and read Pavel's books: ETK and S&S. I bought some bells, but never really went far with it and they ended up somewhere in the garage.
This year, I started out around 245# (not really sure exact weight as I'd stopped getting on it after I hit 240) and was surprised to find that my wife had made a doctor's appointment for me. I usually don't go to the doctor unless something's wrong and almost cancelled the appointment. But I went just to "shut her up" because I was "fine". Well, when the doctor told me I had high blood pressure and I came back with BP prescription, I had to admit to her that maybe I wasn't fine. So I started walking and listening to her and my doctor. When my blood work came back, it turned out I also had high cholesterol and was pre-diabetic. So I continued walking and started cutting back on the calories (but continued eating crap). I lost 15# along the way, so I was pretty happy when I went in for my most recent checkup. The doctor informed me that while the medications and walking had improved my BP and cholesterol numbers significantly - my pre-diabetes had turned into diabetes. I left his office in a shock and frankly I can't recall a moment when I've been more scared. He knows I'm not the biggest fan of being on medication, so he gave me a glucose meter and gave me three months to clean up my diet and lose more weight. The long term goal is to get down to 185# - but the doc wants me to be at 205# by the end of the year.
I've never been one to mope around - so I went home that night and cleaned out the pantry and fridge of the crap I used to eat. I also wanted to improve upon my now-irregular walking and get back to a little running and make use of those cannonball shaped dust collectors that were out in my garage somewhere. I re-read S&S and decided to clean out my garage to reclaim my workout area and dusted off the kettlebells. The 16KG that felt sort of light a few years ago felt heavy to me now. So I swallowed my pride - even though I probably didn't need the extra calories - and found the 8KG and 12KG. The 12KG was perfect for swings - enough to leave me in a giant pool of sweat on the floor. I used the 8KG to relearn the TGU. I wanted to do it everyday, but I managed 5 days the first week. Over the next few weeks, I just kept doing it 5 days a week.
I'm down another 10# (220) and can easily hit the time standard for swings and TGUs with the 12KG. This week, I've started using my 16KG for a few sets of each and I've already started shopping for my next kettle bell. A lot of what I've read leads me to believe that many folks go up 8KG at a time (i.e. from 16KG to 24KG), I feel like it may be better for me to go up 4KG at a time and get a 20KG for my next one. Would definitely appreciate any input on this.
I also have a question around the times. For some reason, I thought every workout should be aimed towards hitting the 5 minute swings and 10 minute TGUs with a 1 minute rest in between, but at some point today or yesterday I read that maybe I mis-interpreted and I should chill out and just do the workout day to day and test my times occasionally. Am I missing something here? At the moment, I'm going for the time targets every workout. And while I feel pretty good and am able to do it 5 times a week - I don't feel recovered enough to do it 7 times per week. Also note that in addition to the S&S workouts, I'm walking or riding my bike (easy) for 45 minutes to an hour 5-6 times per week. I'm also cutting 500 calories per day and not eating my exercise calories (if you follow me) - so probably more like 900-1000 calorie deficit.
I've also found that there are a lot of SFG I and II people not far from me and will contact one soon to check my form and correct any issues before the weights get heavier. I'm also considering a SF Kettlebell class but the nearest one (I'm in the DFW area) is a 9 hour drive - so we will see.
Anyway, any advice or input is welcome. I hope to learn a lot from this great community and look forward to interacting with you all. Thanks for "listening" and if you felt like you just read a marathon, I have some spare medals you can have.
P.S. The simplicity of S&S also attracts me strongly to PttP (which I also just read). I love the power lifts and want to eventually work on improving on my old bests. My monkey brain wants to do S&S and PttP at the same time, but for now I am attempting to keep things super simple - so I will wait and just work on S&S.
TLDR - Old fat guy fell in love with kettle bells and is saying hello.