Kettlebell Too fast, or too old?

[Pavel Macek]

@Boosh32 "It is a journey, not a race." Excellent! Keep us updated.

 

[Keep Lifting]

to the original post, it goes back to the old adage ... it depends. We are all different, the number of years you have been around is much less important than what you have been doing during those years. As a 50 year old who has been practicing with kettlebells for a few+ years and was a barbell junkie from the age of 13, i have found a daily practice of swings and getups to be extremely beneficial to my well being - it's a great way to start each and everyday. Now, i will say as i moved through my S&S practice from bell to bell and as I took time to incorporate KB Strong into my practice, on some days i would need to drop back a couple of bell sizes and take a "day off", performing light swings and getups and maybe modifying volume. I happen to really enjoy these two exercises, so I use them as my base, staple, go to movements. When I choose to go through a particularly heavy session where I push my self through heavy swings/getups/C&Ps/Dbl Front Squats, I will also schedule a complete day off, where I dont look at the kettlebells for a day or two. But typically I enjoy doing something daily, and I will adjust weight and volume depending upon how I feel - in my case, I feel better doing an abbreviated or light session over doing nothing at all, unless Im totally cooked and I try not to get to that point more than once a month.

 

[Bill Been]

to the original post, it goes back to the old adage ... it depends. We are all different, the number of years you have been around is much less important than what you have been doing during those years. As a 50 year old who has been practicing with kettlebells for a few+ years and was a barbell junkie from the age of 13, i have found a daily practice of swings and getups to be extremely beneficial to my well being - it's a great way to start each and everyday.

This post makes a point that too often gets overlooked in the "do more swings" paradigm. This Keep Lifting athlete has a strength base. It is entirely appropriate for an individual with a pre-existing strength base to do.... whatever the hell he wants, actually. Once you go through a period of concerted strength development that has brought you much closer to your potential, the trajectory of your physical capability is forever changed. You de-train, surely. But you will never regress back to the level you would have been had you never strength trained. The slope of your age-related strength loss may be shallower and will certainly begin from a higher platform. The same cannot be said for cardio respiratory and metabolic training. Those will revert all the way back to pre-training levels, and they'll do it in a helluva hurry. These are not theories. The nature of the strength adaptation and that of the cardiorespiratory adaptation are well understood. The reasons are pretty simple: the adaptations forced on your body by strength training - progressively, methodically adding pounds to the bar - are structural, architectural. New bone matrix, more muscle tissue, thicker tendons, more acute hormonal response, active defense against the metabolic syndrome, possibly even local expression of trophic factors for cartilage. Conditioning adaptations are almost entirely chemical, enzymatic. Mitochondrial density, capillarization, ATP generation/use/waste disposal. With the exception of capillary density, it all reverts to baseline quite quickly. Facing the significance of "all that" is what I'm repeatedly encouraging when I suggest doing aerobics with a kettlebell for a flippin' year in the absence of a strength base is, to put it diplomatically, suboptimal.

 

[Marlon Leon]

@RWolfe Reduce the frequency to 2 -3 sessions per week and then see how you feel and recover. If you've adapted try four sessions and so on. Give yourself time to adapt before you increase the frequency, but then also look if you still recover enough to improve.
I made a similar experience that I don't improve well with very frequent i e daily training. Then the question is do you do the training to get better or because you want to work out?

 

[ali]

This post makes a point that too often gets overlooked in the "do more swings" paradigm. This Keep Lifting athlete has a strength base.

Yes Bill but for some S&S gets them their strength base.

If you start S&S able to do 500lb deadlifts then getting to simple will be a breeze.....kind of what you are implying. That the greater your strength base the better you will be at everything, sport wise, health and into a long life. Couldn't agree more. And thus being strong will make S&S a whole lot easier. And by easier, you imply, quicker to attain the goal(s) and then continue forging ahead getting stronger.

You could argue therefore that doing S&S less and a pure strength plan may be better, in terms of addressing strength rather than aerobic kettlebell swings. Maybe so, Pavel gives that approach the thumbs up doesn't he? And that being said, the S&S goals may be attained quicker than 'just' S&S, maybe? For some, perhaps. We've also seen of late some posting of strength successes doing Al C's A&A swings testing protocols. Some pretty good results....strength results training alactic and aerobic kettlebell swings.

In the words of The Floyd:

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

And of equal importance to us older types is health.....if there is one thing we can agree on is that you can get away with a whole lot more when younger!! So strength and health. So we should therefore not focus on one to the detriment of the other, or not? If being strong makes you more healthy, then we are heading in the right direction but as soon as that balance shifts, the very practice we undertake to improve our health actually harms it. And sitting in this state of awkward, precarious balance is each and every one of us, with a lifetime of knocks, ailments, idiosyncratic movement oddities, messed up livers, botched surgeries, periods of inactivity, obesity, crap jobs and misspent youths. If you have been fortunate in your life, remained active, healthy and have had no major problems or upheavals and you are strong now, have been strong most of your life, getting stronger and remaining so isn't going to be as hard as someone starting out at square 1. Or even going along nicely and has to take a step back from the usual activities because of tweaks that appear to take a whole lot longer to recover from than they used to......age, maybe.....as in the original poster, who is doing S&S, btw.

So ditch S&S? Or do it differently? Heavier or lighter? More intensity or less? I'm not sure you refer to me, as it took me a year to do the simple. This with a break doing Dan John's 10,000 swing challenge. I could have done it in 6 months, actually probably less and moved on a long time ago. Maybe. I was pretty close to the goal before switching it up, or down as the case maybe, to more of a focus on breathing and heart rate. I can see your arguments.....no really I can, I'm not just saying that, more to the point I agree with them in general.....but you are not me, and I am not you. We are all different and that is the beauty of S&S. It is what it is and the structure of it allows for all our individual quirks. It isn't structured by time. There are no cop outs due to age.

In the words of, ahem, Oleta Adams:

I don't care how you get here
Just Get here if you can

If I'm honest with you, I got to a point with S&S where I just wanted to thrash it out. I had the conditioning to do it, really I am a tabata king but i would have done so at the expense of my form. And my grip was dodgy. Yet changing it all up was the best thing I've ever done. You know, 100 solid powerful swings. 10 smooth solid get ups. I would have made the goal probably with 75 solid reps and 25 piss poor lumbar spine wrecking glycolytic thrustings. And 6/7 good get ups with 3/4 skull crushing accidents waiting to happen in an omni-shambles of a movement train wreck. So I think I did well spreading it all out for a bit longer. Could have cheated but didn't. And, I hope I did the programme justice and did it as it was set out to be done. Eventually. Rightly or wrongly, you know.....but yeah, age, what a scam. I now have a strength base where I didn't have one before, so there.........I'll be quicker the next time!

 

[RWolfe]

Wow, that will teach me to spend a few days away from my PC... Wish I could respond to all but I would be here for weeks... but thanks for all the great feedback!
So for now I am taking a few weeks to work on mobility, especially for my hip hinge (using FMS exercises), and have gone back to slow, unweighted getups to dial that form back in as well. Plan to ease back into a every other day S&S in a couple weeks... see how I feel. Thanks again for all the feedback... will let you all know how I progress.

 

[RWolfe]

We cannot speak to another program - I recommend you find yourself one of our instructors. (The next question is usually, "Are your programs really that different?" and the answer is, "I don't know - I don't know what they do in the other program.") You are welcomed to post a video here for comment as well.

Internet diagnosis is worth what you pay for it but I'll hazard a guess - perhaps your form, whoever and whenever it was checked out, isn't consistent and you got hurt when you weren't tight enough for whatever reason. Consider a bit of supplementary abdominal training and see if that helps you - it's well documented that strong abs help back health.

Ultimately, one can't just decide to increase training volume; one has to be mindful of good form and stop before you lose that, even if it means not completing the planned session for the day.

-S-

Thanks Steve, I am dialing it back, getting in some more mobility work, and will start again in a week or so... btw the instructor I mentioned is also SF and FMS certified.. he's good. But I last saw him over a year ago, and it is quite possible I got sloppy.

 

[Bam]

You know, 100 solid powerful swings. 10 smooth solid get ups. I would have made the goal probably with 75 solid reps and 25 piss poor lumbar spine wrecking glycolytic thrustings. And 6/7 good get ups with 3/4 skull crushing accidents waiting to happen in an omni-shambles of a movement train wreck.

The last two sentences are hilarious, I laughed out loud. "lumbar spine wrecking glycolytic thrustings" (LSWGT) and "skull crushing accidents waiting to happen" (SCAWH) are going to describe poor swings and TGUs for me here on out, too funny. I keep picturing a Crossfit class doing an S&S session...

I'll take the solid powerful swings and smooth, solid get ups. S&S, solid and smooth, not spine wrecking and skull crushing!

 

[banzaiengr]

I would have made the goal probably with 75 solid reps and 25 piss poor lumbar spine wrecking glycolytic thrustings. And 6/7 good get ups with 3/4 skull crushing accidents waiting to happen in an omni-shambles of a movement train wreck.

 

[ali]

@Bam, thank you but I feel I must apologise to the forum for my avoidance of the edit function. What can I say other than: red wine.