Exercises
20kg Kettlebell Swing: 500 Total
Chin-Ups (BW plus 20kg): 12 Total - The last rep of these was an absolute grind, so I dropped down to bodyweight only.
Chin-Ups (BW Only): 18 Total
Time: 37:54
Knee Pain
My knee pain has been pretty constant (though relatively mild) since I resumed training properly and I really want to get it sorted out. I can think of two potential causes:
Some sort of hip mobility issue
Not being designed for squatting (inc pistols) due to extremely long femurs
Once I start Simple & Sinister I’ll cover both of these issues by doing the prescribed mobility routine and avoiding full squatting (knees don’t track in front of the feet in TGUs). Hopefully that will put an end to it, if not I think I’ll have to see a physiotherapist.
Handstand Push-Ups
I’m considering going back to handstand push-ups once I’ve finished this 10,000 Swing routine. This is mainly because I’ve been getting a lot of pec tightness where I previously had an injury and because of what Spar4tee said about balancing out overhead pressing with dips.
I think, once I’m doing S&S, a good option would be to focus on handstand push-ups for a month or so, then re-introduce ring dips as a secondary pushing exercise. Although this experiment into only pushing and pulling on one plane has been interesting I’m eager to get back to pushing and pulling on both horizontal and vertical planes.
I can see myself doing two upper body days per week: an inverted row/ring dip day and a handstand push-up/ring pull-up day. I think that would work nicely.
Rest Day
I feel pretty ill today so took a rest day. I should have listened to my body yesterday, I knew I was coming down with something. I’ve logged anyway just to note my calories/protein.
Nutrition
2399 kcal
181g protein
This week I’ll aim for around 2,500kcal and 175g protein, then adjust based on progress.
Sorry to hear about the knee pain, hopefully it will clear up soon.
It seems your pretty excited to get started on Simple and Sinister.
Do you feel a difference between your left and right side when you do the swings?
I ask because I tried it out and felt it more in my biceps insertion point into the forearm on my left side and I have a better mind muscle connection regarding packing my shoulder on right side than my left. Its nothing major that I would be concerned about, but then again I’ve built up plenty of asymmetries playing football throughout the years. So I’m holding off on S&S for now (and for a while.)
Only 5 more swing workouts to go. My hats off to you mate.
I’m thinking about doing the Swings workout/challenge myself.
[quote]young n wrote:
Sorry to hear about the knee pain, hopefully it will clear up soon.
It seems your pretty excited to get started on Simple and Sinister.
Do you feel a difference between your left and right side when you do the swings?
I ask because I tried it out and felt it more in my biceps insertion point into the forearm on my left side and I have a better mind muscle connection regarding packing my shoulder on right side than my left. Its nothing major that I would be concerned about, but then again I’ve built up plenty of asymmetries playing football throughout the years. So I’m holding off on S&S for now (and for a while.)
Only 5 more swing workouts to go. My hats off to you mate.
I’m thinking about doing the Swings workout/challenge myself.
Keep up the good work. [/quote]
Yeah I’m really looking forward to it! I’m really enjoying following an actual routine, rather than just making it up as I go along.
I haven’t noticed a problem with asymmetry, but I can’t properly comment yet because when I have done them it’s been with a relatively light kettlebell. I think if there are any issues they’ll probably emerge when I use my 28kg, and I’ll be sure to let you know.
I’m definitely finding packing the shoulder more difficult that I thought I would - especially on the TGUs. It seems to become loose quite easily.
I’d definitely recommend doing the 10,000 Swing routine, I’m really enjoying it. What sort of training are you doing at the moment?
[quote]RATTLEHEAD wrote:
Hope you get better soon, you need some tattie soup to see you through![/quote]
No, what you need is Bird’s homemade chicken soup.
Rest Day
I don’t think I’ll feel up to training for the rest of this week unfortunately, I’m not feeling good at all. I got my diet back on track a bit today, although the protein is still low.
Exercises
20kg/10kg Kettlebell Swings: 150/350 - I couldn’t stick with the 20kg bell, I was getting really dizzy.
20kg Goblet Squat: 30 Total
Time: 43:59
Nutrition
Too many calories
Enough protein
Bodyweight: 96.8kg
I actually feel worse today than yesterday, but decided I couldn’t be dealing with any more lying around. I had a lot of lucozade which really helped, but I still had to drop down to 10kg swings after the first 150 reps, and I had to do split the 20kg 50-rep set into 2.
[quote]furo wrote:
I actually feel worse today than yesterday, but decided I couldn’t be dealing with any more lying around. I had a lot of lucozade which really helped, but I still had to drop down to 10kg swings after the first 150 reps, and I had to do split the 20kg 50-rep set into 2. [/quote]
Might take a few days to get back into the swing of things.
[quote]furo wrote:
I actually feel worse today than yesterday, but decided I couldn’t be dealing with any more lying around. I had a lot of lucozade which really helped, but I still had to drop down to 10kg swings after the first 150 reps, and I had to do split the 20kg 50-rep set into 2. [/quote]
Might take a few days to get back into the swing of things.
tweet[/quote]
Yeah you are right, I’ll just ease into it. Tonight I’ll do my 10 and 15 rep swings with 20kg and my 25 and 50 rep sets with 10kg. Then I’ll take a rest day and then I plan on hitting the final 3 sessions at full speed.
Have you been to Melbourne before? I’m going there in a month or so and started a thread on things to do and see, I’d really appreciate your input. I understand you’re in Perth though right?
Exercises
10kg/20kg Kettlebell Swings: 375/125 (lower rep sets with 20kg, higher rep sets with 10kg)
Ring Dips (Bodyweight Only): 30 Total
Time: 32:45
Nutrition
2343kcal
183g protein
Bodyweight: 97.0kg
I feel about the same as I did yesterday. I think I’ll go for a light run for the next 2 days then I’ll do the last 3 days of this routine back to back and (hopefully) at full speed.
I think I’m going to leave my nutrition as it is for another week and re-evaluate. Ideally I’d like to have lost a little more (I haven’t really lost anything) but I haven’t been training much and I don’t want to cut the calories too quickly.
The last two days I’ve just taken completely off as they’ve been really hectic, but I’m not bothered as I was planning on taking them easy anyway. My hips got a bit tight so this evening I’ve done the Simple and Sinister warm-up and a bunch of hip circles and now I feel good.
Bodyweight: 98.3kg (not fasted)
I’m really fed up with the fact I’ve made zero progress with getting leaner. I thought dropping to 2,500kcal and doing a routine designed for fatloss would get me headed in the right direction but clearly not. I’m feeling the need to make things more extreme - perhaps 2,200kcal plus morning cardio? Any advice would be greatly appreciated at this point - my sole objective is fat loss. For the first time in my training career I’m genuinely prioritising it over everything else.
I feel a little negligent just throwing ideas out there, but perhaps you should consider increasing your fat intake for a bit to and monitoring it to see how that affects you. In pure broscience fashion, “to get your body used to using fat as a fuel”. You could either keep carbs stable, or keep total calories stable and go from there.
Other options to consider is increasing the load with heavier kettlebells, OR taking a HIIT approach, OR taking a complexes approach using some combination of TGUs, snatches and presses. I vaguely remember Mahler wrote some stuff about KB complexes years and years ago.
For me, and me personally, 3x weekly 20 rep breathing squats (so 3 minutes or so per set) actually had me at my leanest while I was pretty much eating like crap. I was winded and collapsed for a few minutes every time I did that. I think there’s something to this idea of the whole-body lifting a heavy load in a cardio-intensive manner… e.g., complexes, sandbag carries, prowler pushing.
Since you seem to be grasping at straws a bit, I thought maybe there’s something you’d missed or forgotten about there. Good luck.
This may sound stupid but if I had total control over your training for the aim of fat loss, I would add 3-4 days of actual structured strength/size work.
Group nutrients around those and continue kettlebell workouts as your cardio rather than add more and more cardio to the equation.
[quote]RATTLEHEAD wrote:
This may sound stupid but if I had total control over your training for the aim of fat loss, I would add 3-4 days of actual structured strength/size work.
Group nutrients around those and continue kettlebell workouts as your cardio rather than add more and more cardio to the equation.[/quote]
In my very limited personal experience (but I’ve watched it work for people I know in person), I agree with this.
Alllllsssooooo, if I had to suggest what to do I would say do a 3 or 4 day variation of 531 and do bodyweight movements as your accessories to keep in line with your current goals, burn more calories and build/maintain muscle and/or strength.
[quote]furo wrote:
Any advice would be greatly appreciated at this point - my sole objective is fat loss. For the first time in my training career I’m genuinely prioritising it over everything else. [/quote]
I find that 400 meter sprints, twice weekly make me lean as I have ever been. Or even once a week 400 meter runs(trying to build up to 4-6 runs with about 2 minutes rest), and then maybe once a week do 80 meter sprints(try to build up to 10 sprints, walking back for rest b/w each sprint).
Also maybe consider cycling your calories/macro’s maybe?