I did it as of Monday, April 5, 2021!
Started back in March of 2020 working with just the 16 kg, and that was after doing 10K swings and ETK ROP with the same weight. So, started KBs for real in October/November of 2019 or so.
47 y.o. man, toddler at home, working as a physician in the US during this plague year, I needed an anchor every morning, and S&S was perfect for that.
Immediately prior to this bout of using KBs, my weight had crept up to around 215 lbs (98 kg) I'm 5' 11" (180cm) through inactivity, eating whatever I could reach, and enjoying beer and cocktails w/o considering weight implications at all for a few years.
Previous fitness experience has been running (cross-country in HS, trail running in college, one marathon during medical training- never again!), cycling (road racing once upon a time), and fooling around with weights for a few weeks at a time before losing interest, including the 16 kg budget KB I bought in around 2010. Well, there was a while when I did Starting Strength for something less than a year in my 30s - that was the most serious strength training I ever did. Max DL was around 300 lbs at a body weight around 180.
I would go according to the book, with a 10 minute mobility sequence to limber up the thews and sinews at 0445 each morning, and adding sets at the next weight up every 4 weeks or so, then when I could do the next weight all timeless, would compress until I could do it in the time limitations. When able to do this with the 24 kg, I took a detour and did 10K swings again with that weight. A couple months later, took a flier and tried to do 100 burpees in a day (starting from none). That was a Very Bad Idea and forced about a week of rest. Up until around then, I had also been doing indoor rower workouts 3-4x weekly also. Weight got down to about 180 lb (81 kg). I have since dropped the cardio (but starting to pick some up again - see below), and went from calorie tracking with Noom to calorie and macro tracking with the Carbon app to not tracking at all now, with current weight at a comfortable 185-190 lbs (c. 85 kg).
24kg to 32kg went slower, I got the 28kg bell as intermediate, and spent about 2 weeks (sometimes more) with each increment. Somewhere along 28-->32 I got a mace to mix up my warmups, but was over-enthusiastic with that, which slowed my progress down. Back to the usual warmup as written after that.
After getting 32 kg Timeless about a month ago, I tried to switch to 4 day/week schedule (from 6 d/week pretty religiously) as suggested with heavier weights in the book (adding a round of 36 kg, increasing that way), but found I couldn't floor press 36 kg safely, so instead compressed the time from EMOM for swing sets/90 s for TGUs, dropping 10 seconds weekly until I felt confident I could do the Simple Standard earlier this week. And I did.
Here's a photo of my tally sheet. Each mark is 10 swings; I kept count of my TGUs on my own. After #262, I was using a timer for the last few weeks, so didn't mark those one. I guess maybe 20 more total workouts before hitting Simple.
What's next is I plan to keep up S&S 3 days of strength work, one day speed work as described in the book until I can do 40 kg Timeless and bang out Simple Standard crisply and easily any day of the week. This Monday's test was completed in time, and w/o any unsafe breakdowns in form, but could've been prettier. Prettier is the goal for now. Mon-Tues-Wed strength, Thurs and Sat will be Tabata Burpees (much fewer than 100!), pistol squat progression and pull-up progressions. Friday will be S&S for speed. Hope to get a little leaner with this approach, but main goal is still strength first.
After that, back to ETK ROP with whatever I can manage it with at that point. I expect it'll be a 24 kg bell. Work that until I hit that standard (one-hand press 1/2 body weight), then go for Sinister standard.
Biggest long term goal for now is Beast Tamer. I've been at this KB thing with some regularity for about 15 months total now. I expect it to be something like *at least* 4 more years until I hit that goal, but I feel pretty locked into KB work for now, in a good way. Can't see myself dropping this habit any time soon.
After Beast Tamer, who knows? Might mess around and switch to KB sport!