47 y.o. male, 66kg bodyweight, 177cm tall (145lbs and ~5'10"), about 14% bf according to DXA..
I just read the new Kettlebell AXE book early this week, which states that you should achieve the Timeless Simple standard before embarking on the AXE protocol, so... I decided on Tuesday that I should finally summit that peak, and successfully did so today (Saturday). This was an overnight success, years in the making…
Backing up to the beginning of story, I first learned some basic KB skills back in the early 2000s, working with a trainer from the RKC system. However, I could never really do a full TGU due to a lower-leg muscle neuropathy and loss of dorsiflexion function if my left leg, which made it nearly impossible to perform the windshield wiper leg movement and to keep my toes tucked to be set up for the lunge. Swings were no problem, though I rarely touched anything heavier than a 20kg bell. Overall, kettlebells were only a small part of my training for a long time, and strength training in general wasn't a high priority, as I was more interested in endurance cycling and rock climbing.
Fast forward to early 2020, when COVID hit and the gyms closed, I bought myself a 16kg bell and went all-in on at-home KB training. Around this time, I discovered the modified TGU that avoids the windshield wiper movement and instead has you rotate your body, and this was a game changer for me for this exercise. At first, TGUs were still pretty hard with my left leg back, as my mobility and stability weren’t great, and I often needed to use my free hand to steady myself. But soon, I got solid with the 16kg. At this time, my training wasn’t specifically S&S, but rather I was doing varied circuits incorporating many different KB movements.
By late summer of 2020, I started incorporating a 20kg bell into my practice, and eventually got solid at 20kg TGUs and swings. End of year 2020, I was thinking about goals for 2021, and I decided I to make S&S my main focus for the year. At this time, the idea of eventually being solid at 32kg TGUs and swings seemed like a bit of pipe dream, since I was starting the process at 45 years old and with a bodyweight of only 62kg.
January of 2021, I kicked off my S&S journey, starting with 20kg as my “owned” weight and 24kg as my next weight. Every two weeks, by the book, I switched one left/right set to the next weight, and eventually owned the 24kg bell. Then went from the 24kg bell to the 28kg bell, which seemed so heavy at first, but week by week, it got lighter and lighter. By mid-to-late summer, I started incorporating the 32kg bell, which seemed nearly impossible earlier that year, but was now only “hard”.
I was within a few weeks of achieving Timeless Simple in the fall of 2021, when disaster struck. I think the single-arm 32kg swings, at a then bodyweight of 64kg, combined with muscle imbalances due to my left-leg muscle issues, overloaded the right-side of my back, and I started developing back pain with muscle spasms. I would rest and do other things for a while, then attempt to restart S&S, but every time, the back pain returned, and I had to put my journey to Simple on hold.
Around this time, I started working with Chris Lopez, who helped me get stronger working on different lifts, such as C&P, Snatches, C&J, DFSQ, etc., but I had to avoid heavy single-arm swings. The back pain would come and go over the next year of training, seemingly at random, so I periodically had to change up what I was doing to work around that. Later, I moved on to doing some of
@Geoff Neupert ’s programs, such as The Giant, and the Kettlebell Maximorum beta test, and I also returned to and mastered 32kg TGUs, but I never returned to heavy single-arm swings out of concern for my back. I also just preferred heavy snatches to heavy swings, and I got really solid with 28kg snatches using Geoff’s awesome Maximorum program.
Then, two years after halting my S&S journey, Kettlebell AXE comes out and tells me I should really achieve Timeless Simple. On Tuesday, I tried 10x10 swings, using the 32kg for sets 3 and 4, and the 28kg for the rest, and I felt good. Did the same with the TGUs, which was no problem. Thursday, I was going to use the 32kg for sets 3-6, but felt good enough, I just stuck with the 32kg for all the remaining sets. At that point, I knew that I could do the whole session with the 32kg, and this morning, I did just that. Despite not training heavy single-arm swings in two years, a steady diet of heavy snatches (up to 28kg), heavy two-hand swings (up to 40kg), and heavy double cleans (up to 2x28kg), made it possible to do 10x10 single-arm swings with the 32kg.