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Kettlebell Dividing Simple and Sinister

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Eric Stone

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Hypothetically speaking, if one doesn't have enough time to do a full Simple & Sinister routine each day, what would be the best way to spread it out? I recognize it equates to slower progress.
The two options I see are a full routine every other day or TGUs one day and swings on the alternate day.
Any other ideas and/or thoughts on advantages and disadvantages?
 
Hypothetically speaking, if one doesn't have enough time to do a full Simple & Sinister routine each day, what would be the best way to spread it out? I recognize it equates to slower progress.
The two options I see are a full routine every other day or TGUs one day and swings on the alternate day.
Any other ideas and/or thoughts on advantages and disadvantages?
I would do it every other day. Simple and Sinister is as frequently as possible and if that's only a few days a week, so be it.
 
I've done that plenty of times... I would recommend increasing the volume on both get ups and swings slightly... maybe 150-200 swings and instead of 5/5 on the get ups probably closer to 8/8 instead
 
Hypothetically speaking, if one doesn't have enough time to do a full Simple & Sinister routine each day, what would be the best way to spread it out? I recognize it equates to slower progress.
The two options I see are a full routine every other day or TGUs one day and swings on the alternate day.
Any other ideas and/or thoughts on advantages and disadvantages?
Those two options have worked well for me. I have also done something like Monday - Wednesday - Friday - Saturday or Monday - Tuesday - Thursday - Friday. For a while I was doing swings one day and get ups the next and I really enjoyed that, although that's when I started to play with waving the volume.
 
Hypothetically speaking, if one doesn't have enough time to do a full Simple & Sinister routine each day, what would be the best way to spread it out? I recognize it equates to slower progress.
The two options I see are a full routine every other day or TGUs one day and swings on the alternate day.
Any other ideas and/or thoughts on advantages and disadvantages?
Do what you can.

I treat Swings and Getups as seperate events, most of the time. For example Swings in the morning, and TGUs while cooking dinner. Or on seperate days. Or together.

I got the idea from Stength shortcuts 2.0 by Geoff Neupert which advocates micro sessions for better recovery and more flexibility.

It works great!

You could also try shorter sessions here and there, like 2 warmup rounds, 8x10 swings and 3 TGUs.
 
I too am a fan of splitting swings & getups to either am/pm, or alternate days.
If this doesn't work, it's possible that it just isn't the right program for life circumstances right now. Not worth it sticking a round peg into a square hole; pick a program that DOES fit well. I recommend Easy Strength for people with <15 minutes a day. Alternatively, GTG for 2-3 different exercises.
 
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I think I had far better progress with doing full session every other day compared to doing swings and get ups on separate days. I really enjoyed the latter option though...

But after dividing the exercises on a separate days for a few weeks, an actual full session felt a bit overwhelming. I feel like I should have gone a bit heavier if doing them separately.
 
I think once you get to a certain threshold strength wise you really have no choice, but to separate them... especially if you're running a more advanced version like SE plan 260
 
you could also do a grease the groove approach.
I've actually been meaning to bring up how to GTG in this context. I see you're recommending lowering the reps as opposed to lowering the weight. However, I've understood GTG to involve about half the usual loading, at least from a very brief explanation Pavel gave in an interview.
 
But after dividing the exercises on a separate days for a few weeks, an actual full session felt a bit overwhelming. I feel like I should have gone a bit heavier if doing them separately.
I've also felt like I'm fresher when I do TGUs on a different day, which makes me think I wouldn't perform as well when combined. I actually kind of like reversing it too and using TGUs as the warm-up to the swings.
 
I've actually been meaning to bring up how to GTG in this context. I see you're recommending lowering the reps as opposed to lowering the weight. However, I've understood GTG to involve about half the usual loading, at least from a very brief explanation Pavel gave in an interview.
The definition of Grease the groove is a small amount of sufficiently intense work sprinkled through out the day, which means complete rest before the next set. So the extremes of the criteria are something like this.

Heaviest weight
Fewest reps
Longest rest
Most sets

The weight doesn't have to be a 1rm , it just benefits most loading schemes to err on the heavy side when the reps are lowered, keeping stimulus high.

Taken a different way - bodyweight modality grease the groove is 50% max reps , performed with perfect technique, with similarly generous rest periods. The point is sufficient loading to induce the training effect, with recovery and adaptation ending there after.

So, given the case of simple and sinister, there are several ways to look at breaking it up.

You could divide the session by 5 and do 20 swings and 2 getups per visit.

You could split getup practice from the swing practice and conduct them separately.

You could even do each increment separately 10 swings at a time in 10 visits to the bell. And then ten more visits for a getup each visit.

In my experience with kettlebell and my strength goals and demanding schedules, I'd be interested in a heavier bell, 5 reps each arm , 3 visits, 1 getup each arm. And the getup side I would wave the weight going all the way down to bodyweight getups just to dig into the slowness some days.

The overall volume will be a rudder on the overall training effect.

In general smaller more frequent bites at the apple with complete recovery between sets is the epitome of greasing the groove. How you wanna slice it is gonna be a personal decision based on many factors.

My practice was largely composed of heavy 5s or fast 10s , swings , snatches , or press. Capped at 100 reps per day. One lift per day.

Goal was 5x5 at most intense, and 10x10 with the lightest loads. But many days were off. 6 sets here. 8 sets there. Some days as little as a 3x3.
 
Hello,

When I reached timeless simple, I purposely switched to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule as my grip needed time to recover when I introduced the 32kg. It worked like a charm.

I also used the 24kg on fridays (or sometimes on saturdays) to do timed sessions as per the book.

I reached timed simple with this weekly volume.

I would personally not split the sessions throughout the day. 3x30min a week seems to be the sweet spot for a lot of programs.
 
Yikes, 30 min is about how long it takes me to do 10 TGUs!
Have you tried one rep on left then one on right, more or less straight away?
I find the systemic load of two sets back-to-back then means I can recover nicely with talk test and do much faster.
I appreciate this isn't necessarily strictly meeting the talk test but the muscles are principally opposite on the body (in contrast to the 1H SW which is always loading the posterior chain).
I only do this when I own a weight or am trying to compress the time, e.g. Friday S- session or a test.
 
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