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Kettlebell Alactic + Aerobic

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comparison of snatching 40kg 5rx20, exactly 13 months in between:

View attachment 7554 from 12-05-2017: snatch 40kg - 5rx20 - 31:30min - 125avg hr/141max hr

View attachment 7556
today: snatch 40kg - 5rx20 - 20minutes emom - 122avg/140max

slightly lower heart rates today but completed the work more than 11 minutes faster. It is my second 40kg 5rx20 emom lately since a short period in September last year. It is my most "relaxed" effort with this scheme so far. Looking at longer time frames can be very pleasing to do. These things seem to be going quite well, so I want to accumulate further.
Really awesome report, Harald!!!
 
congatulations, 5rx20 in 20 mins is insane with a 40kg!
mid September last year I just had the idea of going on the minute. Until then I did my snatching pure A+A with full recovery before a repeat. Rest got a bit longer with the length of a session which is normal. Usually a snatch session with 40kg 5rx20 was 25-30 minutes.

the first session then looked like this:
09-12-18.PNG
09/12/2018: snatch 40kg - 5rx20 emom - 139avg/157max

ten days later when I did a good handful 5x20 emom sessions the hr looked almost like yesterday's session:
01-05-19.PNG
01/05/2019: snatch 40kg 5rx20 emom - 122avg/140max

At first it was kind of hard, yesterday it was a medium effort. I think doing some emom stuff or "incomplete" recovery from time to time is a good option. Usually when I let my hr rise with work accumulation I do it around 148bpm, it is where my yellow zone begins. I find emom with just the right intensity interesting as I kind of "force" myself into relaxation for the next repeat, as far as relaxation can be forced or not, but deeper focus can be on breathing in and out

But as the base of all "harder" stuff A+A can't be beaten. With this I learned some lessons of what it means to "practice" interpreting sensations autoregulation.

Really awesome report, Harald!!!
It's is my pleasure to do it from time to time.
 
comparing snatch performance in that time frame with 40kg:
View attachment 3772
07-08-2017
1h snatch - 40kg - 5reps - 22repeats - 36min - 131avg/147

View attachment 3773
09-01-2017
1h snatch - 40kg - 5reps - 22repeats - 29min - 133/146

7min less with 2bpm on average more.

In the last month (August) I did snatches only once a week, but did s&s therefore on most days of the week.

Training aerobic running makes aerobic running better, that is obvious. I am confident enough to claim that aerobic running makes snatching better. Maybe that's all newbie gainz, but along the lines what @aciampa predicted anyways.
This is exactly my goal. Working on Vo2 Max snatches and it’s affect on my running. I’ve been datalogging my workouts with HR monitor as well!

Like run days; long medium and short. I am using the same principal with my snatch protocol. Heavy, moderate, and light KB snatch intervals.
 
this is an example of today's longer session of how an A+A can look like on a rower. There are quite some possibilities to make it same but different.
View attachment 6772 rowing 100min 22km 8hard pulls emom for 45total

I haven't been following this thread and saw this today. Are you still doing these sessions?

I have recently been experimenting with the fartlek concept doing clusters of 5x swings every 30 seconds for 5 sets with 3,5, or 7 minutes on an elliptical between clusters for 50-75 minutes. I'm curious of where these fartleks of yours have progressed to if you've continued doing them.
 
I haven't been following this thread and saw this today. Are you still doing these sessions?

I have recently been experimenting with the fartlek concept doing clusters of 5x swings every 30 seconds for 5 sets with 3,5, or 7 minutes on an elliptical between clusters for 50-75 minutes. I'm curious of where these fartleks of yours have progressed to if you've continued doing them.

It has been some time I did these. Like you are doing it was a bit of experimenting. I just put together some concepts of A+A and StrongEndurance. The short explosive repeats are alactic work, the easy moving between repeats and series are aerobic work which is active recovery and replenishes ATP and gives additional time for CP re-synthesis. This schedule is a great change of pace in practice, especially for those who find LED monotone. Power work and easy aerobic work can be combined nicely, I don't think they are mutually exclusive, as long as the aerobic element is done easily. This kind of work can be done quite frequently.

This is exactly my goal. Working on Vo2 Max snatches and it’s affect on my running. I’ve been datalogging my workouts with HR monitor as well!
The snatch work I've done and I am doing is not VO2 max work like "Viking Warrior Conditioning" is designed to increase it via supposed heart wall increase.
 
This schedule is a great change of pace in practice, especially for those who find LED monotone. Power work and easy aerobic work can be combined nicely, I don't think they are mutually exclusive, as long as the aerobic element is done easily. This kind of work can be done quite frequently.
Yep, started because of the monotony and find 3 days per week to be working well.
 
Can the A+A protocl (with swings or snatches) be considered the same ?

Do you mean, the same as a MAF pace easy running session in the recovery activity aspect? No, not at all.

True A+A is a brutally hard effort. People tend to forget this and just focus on the pattern of a brief set of movements, repeated many times, with plenty of recovery between repeats. But really if you're just repeating something light or moderate, it's not A+A. (Note: It can be another form of AGT or Strong Endurance, but not the A+A subset.)
 
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Do you mean, the same as a MAF pace easy running session in the recovery activity aspect? No, not at all.

True A+A is a brutally hard effort. People tend to forget this and just focus on the pattern of a brief set of movements, repeated many times, with plenty of recovery between repeats. But really if you're just repeating something light or moderate, it's not A+A. (Note: It can be another form of AGT or Strong Endurance, but not the A+A subset.)
hello Anna, "light/ moderate" interm of effort or load? if someone swing/ snatch a normal kettlebell ( 15- 20 RM) powerful, will it be A+A?
 
hello Anna, "light/ moderate" interm of effort or load? if someone swing/ snatch a normal kettlebell ( 15- 20 RM) powerful, will it be A+A?

@Al Ciampa is the definitive voice on what is or isn't A+A. But in my opinion, no, that would not be A+A. Probably a <10 RM bell would be A+A. For example, my snatch-test bell is 16kg, yours is 24kg... neither of these is heavy enough to be A+A snatches. My A+A snatch bell is 24kg. Yours probably 32kg. It takes a lot of practice to be able to even do that... You have to have a good amount of time doing light and then regular snatches to even begin to take on a heavy snatch. Same thing with swings. My 1H swing weight for A+A is 32kg (video). For swings it's even harder to find the perfect weight, because you can go too heavy and end up not being as explosive, or too light and not use enough alactic energy per repeat. For that and other reasons, snatches turned out to be better A+A than swings. So the correct weight seems to be easier to dial in with snatches, but you have to work up to being able to do it with that right weight. Hope that answers your question without too many words. :)
 
snatches turned out to be better A+A than swings.
2H swings included? I find grip strength limits my explosiveness with both 1H movements. Double 24kg snatches are more explosive than a single 32kg for me. It may simply be my tiny carny hands as an anomaly though.
 
2H swings included? I find grip strength limits my explosiveness with both 1H movements. Double 24kg snatches are more explosive than a single 32kg for me. It may simply be my tiny carny hands as an anomaly though.

I think they can work. It is somewhat of a moving target. I'm just rambling here, but thinking back to the extended time I used it for my training approach (with Al's guidance), and how things changed over time. In the beginning it's about teaching your body to do a hard effort and recover and repeat. So I think when you start, many different movements can work, and monitoring breathing and heart rate and things like that are really useful to monitor. Even before that when you have no idea what to monitor, using the clock for OTM or on-the-1:15 or -1:30 is sometimes the best way. After a few weeks you get to where you feel the senstations a little better, you feel when your breathing recovers, your heart rate comes down, and your muscles are fired up and ready to go again. Then after a few weeks of this you can start to actively use your breath to recover better and more quickly, using a deeper diaphragmatic recovery breath and deliberately taking fewer breaths between repeats. You also find other active rest strategies that are best for you to help recover faster (grip recovery opening/closing the hands, shaking the limbs "fast and loose", walking, etc.) Your body starts to get really good at recovering to go again. Then you can really work the muscular endurance aspects to do more repeats. With more repeats comes more overall reps which means you fine tune your technique and become more efficient. THIS (in my opinion) is when it becomes much more important and effective to use the snatch as opposed to 1H swings, 2H swings, or anything else. You can really dig in here and do some solid work with many training adaptations occurring. As you continue to work this, the effort gets easier with this efficiency and eventually you increase the weight (just like with S&S) to do the same thing with the next heavier weight, slowly working in the heavier weight to a greater number of repeats.

So through all that, the prevailing theme is -- do something very hard and explosive that uses a lot of your muscles, for reps, for about 15 seconds, fully recover, and repeat.

Back to the 2H swing question, to relate to my examples above where I said 24kg was my A+A snatch weight, 32kg my A+A 1H swing weight, I would say that 40kg is my A+A 2H swing weight. And 7 might be the sweet spot for number of reps in a repeat for 2H swings. I don't think there's enough data on 2H swing repeats to say for sure, but that would be my guess. If you do a set of, say, 15-20 heavy 2H swings and focus on being very explosive, you can feel when that explosveness goes away. You can still swing for more reps, but the alactic power has already been depleted and the energy is more glycolytic at that point. (If you do swings that are not explosive, or do this when you're not fresh, you are less likely to be able to feel this point.) Try it and see. If it's at swing 8 or 9 for example, then 7 swings is probably the sweet spot for repeats.

And like I said, 2H swings can probably work for a while as can many other things, but I don't think they have as much potential in the long run for continued adaptations. Snatches, on the other hand, seem to have no limit to how long and how well they can work. Harald and Neal and Al and others have been using them for several years now and are still pushing forward into new territory.
 
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You can still swing for more reps, but the alactic power has already been depleted and the energy is more glycolytic at that point. (If you do swings that are not explosive, or do this when you're not fresh, you are less likely to be able to feel this point.) Try it and see. If it's at swing 8 or 9 for example, then 7 swings is probably the sweet spot for repeats.
This is an interesting thing, once you get a feel for it. I'm doing a 6-10 week cycle that goes a just little beyond the "alactic" margin, in that I'm doing sets of 10 heavy snatches. Reps 1-6 are great. Rep 7 is pretty good. Reps 8-10 are a totally different experience. Not bad, just different; requiring more mental focus to maintain good technical execution, and noticeably less powerful. Every set of ten is the same, with the same transition through reps 6, 7, and 8.
Looking forward to when I drop back to sets of 5 (or maybe 6) and get to just feel strong and powerful all the time. That requires me to buy a new kettlebell, though. Such is life :)

It may simply be my tiny carny hands as an anomaly though.
Comp bells? When I went up to 32 kilos for snatches, I got a new 32 kilo 'bell . My old one had a pretty thick handle, even for a traditional 'bell, and it was frustrating the hell out me. I got one with a normal size handle and was off to the races. Not to suggest that someone take the easy way out, but if your hands are small, a smaller handle might be warranted.
Not to say that everyone needs to do A+A with single arm snatches. As @Anna C said, they seem to be exceptionally well suited to A+A work, but in my opinion, if A+A isn't a big part of your program, it probably doesn't matter much if you every progress to that point or not.
 
Reps 1-6 are great. Rep 7 is pretty good. Reps 8-10 are a totally different experience. Not bad, just different; requiring more mental focus to maintain good technical execution, and noticeably less powerful. Every set of ten is the same, with the same transition through reps 6, 7, and 8.

Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about. You can still do it, but the zip is gone.

I can feel it on an Airdyne, too, when going all-out for a 20-second HIIT interval -- I'm good for full power for about 16 seconds, then it's a miserable push for a few more seconds to finish the interval. With full recovery it's almost the same every time, but with less than full recovery this starts to drop to about 12 or 13 seconds.
 
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