Kettlebell ROP-J Half bodyweight press within a year?

[Beezie]

I'm currently running Right of Passage Jurassic at the 16kg bell, which is pretty easy because I've done Timeless Simple for some months now. I'm not in a rush, but I genuinely want to run this thing all the way to the 44kg and was curious if someone has worked it all the way up within a years timeframe. I'll still be putting some focus on snatch, swing, and TGU, but my main focus is the clean and press. I know everyone is different, but wanted to see if it is an absurd goal to put on myself or what is a realistic timeline in others experience.

A fun idea is to avoid processed sugar and alcohol until Half bodyweight press is achieved, but it could be years!

 

[John K]

I'm currently running Right of Passage Jurassic at the 16kg bell, which is pretty easy because I've done Timeless Simple for some months now. I'm not in a rush, but I genuinely want to run this thing all the way to the 44kg and was curious if someone has worked it all the way up within a years timeframe. I'll still be putting some focus on snatch, swing, and TGU, but my main focus is the clean and press. I know everyone is different, but wanted to see if it is an absurd goal to put on myself or what is a realistic timeline in others experience.

I'd say unlikely, but it is not impossible, depending on how old you are, what your training background is, etc.

A fun idea is to avoid processed sugar and alcohol until Half bodyweight press is achieved, but it could be years!

Why? Nothing wrong with it per se, but why do you want to cut it out? And why would you bring it back after 1+ years?

 

[mvikred]

I'm currently running Right of Passage Jurassic at the 16kg bell, which is pretty easy because I've done Timeless Simple for some months now. I'm not in a rush, but I genuinely want to run this thing all the way to the 44kg and was curious if someone has worked it all the way up within a years timeframe. I'll still be putting some focus on snatch, swing, and TGU, but my main focus is the clean and press. I know everyone is different, but wanted to see if it is an absurd goal to put on myself or what is a realistic timeline in others experience.

A fun idea is to avoid processed sugar and alcohol until Half bodyweight press is achieved, but it could be years!

When you are at 16kg, I would assume that you are relatively newer trainee. Also the fact that you want to get to 44kg, I am assuming that you are young enough to work towards heavier weights. Given the two assumptions above, I would rather pick traditional ROP (from Enter the Kettlebell) until you make 28kg your working weight and from there you can look at experimenting with ROP variants. I personally ran ROP Classic with the 24kg and after a couple of years ran ROP Jurassic with the 28kg. In retrospect I would have done the ROP Classic with 28kg as well. Right now I got to 32kg as 6-8RM and running different strength plans to get to heavier weights and that 1/2 BW press for my SFG2. All this spanning all the way from 2021 to now .. so ~3 years Unless your timeline is to meet a specific requirement, i would just take time to build up strength as you cannot expect linear gains .. especially when you get to weights above 28-32kg.

 

[Luis T. Gonzalez]

I don’t remember how long it took me to get to the 48kg. I think it was probably about a year with ROP but I did start it with 24kg around 2019/2020. I know it was about 2020 where I pressed 40kg for the first time towards the end of the year. I didn’t wait to be able to press 40kg 5-8x. I took a week off and began ROP ladders with 40kg. I treated doubles and triples as singles until I could do them and continued up the ladders until I completed the heaviest day with 75 rep. I did that on two different occasions and I’m currently running ROP after not using it for a couple years. I’m using 44kg for singles and doubles and reps of 3-5 with 40kg. I’d say realistically to go from 16kg to 44 if you stay focused you could definitely do it within a year. Either way even if you don’t, you will get bigger and stronger. I went from weighing about 175-215 with ROP. Here is a video of me pressing the 48kg then. It wasn’t the best press I’ve done but it went up.

 

[Bakker91]

Getting to the 1/2 bodyweight Kettlebell press is an elite feat. A lot of common posters on this forum are beasts in strength without them even knowing it. Kudo's to them but sometimes we do need to be realistic. A lot of people never get to the 1/2 bodyweight goal. I do however think it is possible.

Personally: Background. I've went to the gym for about 3 years before i started kettlebelling but i'm simply not blessed with proper genetics for physical activity. But now, i found my groove. Age: 32. Height: 186cm. Weight: 80kg

Started Simple and Sinister in 2020. It took me 327 days to got to the Simple standard. Once i got that standard i was able to press the 24kg 1 time and the 20kg 5 times.

After that I immediately went on the RoP programm. Because i had a classic skinnifat physique (its a bit better now) i missed the muscle mass to get anywhere. So i did cycles alternating Rite of Passage and some sort of musclebuilding routing (won't link specifics cause it isn't from the StrongFirst universe). Also, holiday's, a new home in a new city, a new pup, a new job, sickness, hangovers have all happened.

ROP	Date	Weeks to complete	Specifics
ROP 20kg: classic	22-02-2021 till 23-05-2021	13 weeks	With 24kg Bent over Rows
ROP 24kg: classic	13-12-2021 till 17-04-2022	18 weeks	With bw chinups
ROP 24kg: classic	15-08-2022 till 27-11-2022	15 weeks	With bw chinups
ROP 24kg: 2,3,5,10	28-11-2022 till 01-01-2023	05 weeks(unfinished)	2,3,5 chinups, 10 squats
ROP 28kg: classic	11-02-2023 till 28-05-2023	15 weeks	With chinups
ROP 28kg: Jurassic	11-09-2023 till 09-10-2023	05 weeks	Chinups only last set # of total reps
ROP 28kg: week 11,12,13	16-10-2023 till 12-11-2023	04 weeks	Chinups only last set # of total reps
ROP 28kg: 3,5,7	13-11-2023 till 11-12-2023	02 weeks(unfinished)	Unfinished
ROP 30kg: classic	20-11-2023 till 10-03-2023	16 weeks (unfinished)	Till week 12. Could make it but sleep deprived because new dog

So far: i'm working 1120 days to the half bodyweight press

Also working on the Snatch goals. but i'm WAY off the SSST goal. Thats going to take another year at least.

What really helped me it to make a really long term approach. Don't get injured but keep pushing yourself! Most people just don't work hard enough. On hard and medium day's I do watch the rest times and try to limit it. On Light days however i try to do the eccentric as slow as humanly possible and squeeze. That gives one hell of a pump.

Once i have made the 1/2 bodyweight press goals and the SSST goal i will make a bigger post with some more specifics and learnings along the way.

Also diet and sleep are completely in check and fixed. Especially sleep is crucial for recovery.

 

[Beezie]

I just want to say thank you so much for the thoughtful responses to my first post. It's awesome and exactly what I was looking for. I also looked over the ROP Support group thread and it's become clear it's a patient pursuit. My meandering journey with S&S was interrupted by interstitial breaks of training for trail runs and ultras that resulted in my Achilles wanting to detach and eventually I broke my foot as well. I got serious with S&S and ended up doing it with the 24kg everyday for 140 something days because it was my first workout on 75 hard.

Without this becoming my S&S journey post, I will say I did feel pretty comfortable with the 32kg towards the end of last year and started ROP after attending the 201 course. I AM ALL IN on the 1/2 bodyweight press goal. It just feels right. Simple, but hard on the straight and narrow. I've done some barbell in the past, but mostly trail running, OCR, and backpacking. Kettlebell feels downright spiritual to me.

I have to inquire if anyone will indulge me: I was under the impression Jurassic was sort of the new standard since it's in the 201 deliverables. Maybe it's a copyright issue or they wanted to simplify the approach (honestly I have the kindle version of Enter the Kettlebell and I found it quite confusing). And it seems in ROP-J you don't re-clean before each press. Is this true? Thanks.

 

[Luis T. Gonzalez]

And it seems in ROP-J you don't re-clean before each press. Is this true?

I'm not sure about recleaning in Jurassic it is more of a longer drawn out version. The original ROP is 5 weeks of ladders. And Pavel mentions to clean before each press for a certain time then go to one clean per set as you get better at the clean. I like the 5 week ladder because I pretty much know I will press a heavier kettlebell after five weeks of ladders and pull ups.

 

[John K]

And it seems in ROP-J you don't re-clean before each press. Is this true?

This was not my understanding. You can chose to run it with clean and press or just press. You can also run it with doubles or singles…

 

[John K]

I AM ALL IN on the 1/2 bodyweight press goal.

The main factor is consistency. Don’t get distracted, keep the goal the goal. Get coaching when you start to plateau. Good luck.

 

[Brett Jones]

Setting the foundation with the classic ROP is recommended before progressing to the ROP—H.

 

[Bakker91]

I just want to say thank you so much for the thoughtful responses to my first post. It's awesome and exactly what I was looking for. I also looked over the ROP Support group thread and it's become clear it's a patient pursuit. My meandering journey with S&S was interrupted by interstitial breaks of training for trail runs and ultras that resulted in my Achilles wanting to detach and eventually I broke my foot as well. I got serious with S&S and ended up doing it with the 24kg everyday for 140 something days because it was my first workout on 75 hard.

Without this becoming my S&S journey post, I will say I did feel pretty comfortable with the 32kg towards the end of last year and started ROP after attending the 201 course. I AM ALL IN on the 1/2 bodyweight press goal. It just feels right. Simple, but hard on the straight and narrow. I've done some barbell in the past, but mostly trail running, OCR, and backpacking. Kettlebell feels downright spiritual to me.

I have to inquire if anyone will indulge me: I was under the impression Jurassic was sort of the new standard since it's in the 201 deliverables. Maybe it's a copyright issue or they wanted to simplify the approach (honestly I have the kindle version of Enter the Kettlebell and I found it quite confusing). And it seems in ROP-J you don't re-clean before each press. Is this true? Thanks.

I did exactly the same. I think i've read the whole ROP Support Group thread twice. I've posted these once in 2021 with what my progression plan was and i mostly stuck to it.

The most importand part is, find your groove of what you can sustain. For me its going back and forth on ROP and a hypertrophy programme and seeing the progress i made so far, i would say it is working. For me. For others its just ROP over and over and over again. Good luck and i'll look forward to your "I made the 1/2 BW Kettlebell press, here is my story" post.