Hi all! I followed the crowd, albeit a decade late, and I thought I’d document my experience here.
How It Began
It all started when @simo74 was making fun of me in my log for skipping conditioning, as I’m wont to do. I assume it was just language barrier, he not speaking the appropriate English, because everything I do is awesome. Anyway, I mentioned something about I needed to just pick a goal or challenge because I will otherwise always skip conditioning. Enter @T3hPwnisher: he casually dropped “just do 10,000 swings on top of your normal training.” I guess be careful what you wish for.
How It Went
My training, typically, is very much Mountaindog '90s bodybuilding style. The gauntlet thrown wasn’t to do Dan John’s program as written, it was to drop the swings on top of my normal training; I just started by doing 500 swings on the next day. My gym has a 55lbs. KB, rather than the recommended 53, so I’m 2lbs. better than everyone else on the planet
I had a bit of a false start to begin with. I did 3 days of swings, then traveled, then got super sick, so I missed like a week of the gym. I didn’t think it was in the spirit of the challenge to take weeks off, so I just started over when I got back. Around this time I was starting up Odin Force (a Meadows program) alongside @davemccright (but not listing my weights next to his because he’s a jerk), so it all fit really well. I did 500 swings every workout with the exception of the last two: I had 1500 swings left, and wanted to be done, so I just did 750 each of my last two sessions.
I did 500 swings every training day, and trained 4-5 days a week. At first I just did 25 swings after every set, which was some easy math, but then I started doing the 10 - 15 - 25 - 50 scheme recommended in the article. I preferred that second version, because it kind of scaled up with the sets as I was warming up. Typically the 50-rep set was right after I did my worst set of the lift, so I got to die all at once.
How I Felt
At first, I felt awful. I was not joking when I said I was neglecting conditioning. The first 3-ish workouts I seriously just had to get through them. I improved remarkably quickly, though; both at swings and in my condition. By the end of week 2 (so fewer than 10 sessions), it was just another part of the workout - that was incredible improvement.
Swings are “easy;” there was absolutely no learning curve. I got better at them over time, but it was a really natural movement to just fire the stupid KB up over and over. This seems trivial, but this was probably the key. I never really wanted to do these, anyway, so not having to think about how was huge.
I remember at one point I was crazy sore, and I thought it was going to be tough to get the swings in, but once I started moving they just started going. That was pretty critical to finishing the 10k - each day, I just had to start.
Pairing these with leg days was absolutely horrible, especially at first. Meadows always has you do something on leg press or hack squats that leaves you feeling miserable, and then adding a bunch of swings after that truly had me seeing heaven whilst simultaneously questioning its existence a couple times. This never really got a ton better, even as I got into better shape. I think I was able to take shorter breaks as I got better at the swings, so I just kept the misery level up.
My lower back and traps got sore, but didn’t take a crazy beating that debilitated me or anything. There were a couple days I subbed GHRs instead of RDLs, because my lower back was cranky, but that was about it. It was actually my grip that took it the worst. The forearm muscle right on top of my left arm below my elbow started hurting and cramping the first week of these, and never abated. It made the pull days paired with swings shockingly awful - it’s not like biceps takes it out of you, but man that forearm hurt.
How I’m Moving Forward
I took a few lessons away, that I’ll just kind of bullet point.
- I certainly got bit by the conditioning bug. Doing something hard and fast (I know, I know) was pretty addictive. That’s a keeper.
- I freaking hate KB swings. They aren’t in my near future.
- I liked using my rest breaks to do something. I don’t like taking up the whole gym with stupid circuits, but reasonable supersets is definitely there.
- I’m super-bored/ stale with what I’ve been doing. This throwback to a 4-6-week focus is exactly how I did it when I let Muscle & Fitness be my coach; that’s a keeper.
- I can out-eat anything! I didn’t lose any weight, because I ate whatever I wanted (and I wanted a lot).
- I slept better than I have in years. I’m just now making the connection, as I write this, that this could have been the variable.
- I liked just having someone else (even if it’s the site’s crazy person) just throw a challenge at me; very playground.
- These sucked, but you can literally always do another swing - you just have to grind it out. That return to just getting the work in, vs. stressing to beat prior performance, was kind of cool. I also think that’s the value of programs - you just gotta do.
- I liked not needing a mirror or calculator to gauge if I was doing what I’m supposed to do.
- I guess the summation of the above is I appreciated the return to simplicity - 90s me may have had it figured out after all.
Thanks to anyone that made it through this diatribe!
