In the last post I talked about how it’s a great way to end your year from a physical and training perspective with some nice personal records. Everybody loves new PRs and you should get one for the holidays. If you didn’t get one in your stocking work on getting one before the end of the year. I have two!
Two weeks ago I got a personal record in handstand pushups. 19 reps in one set at a bodyweight of 270. Very soon I’ll be over 20 which has been a long time goal. That actually came from a unique training style that’s a real surprise which we’ll be talking about soon. Last week I got 2,350 swings with a 24kg/53lb kettlebell in 60 minutes. That’s 56.5 minutes of work out of 60 possible and it was nasty! But that’s kinda the point – taking yourself where you’ve never gone before. Everybody oughta be looking for a new strength level as well as a new conditioning level. Finish the year strong and get ready for even greater stuff coming next year!
So we shot video of the swings. Now I don’t think anybody wants to watch 60 minutes of me or anyone for that matter, swinging a kettlebell. I mean – yes okay, I’m a powerful and attractive man LOL, but seriously – it’s one exercise over and over again for an hour. Therefore we shot what basically amounts to a time lapse. The first minute, then the 20th minute, the 35th, the 46th and the 59th minute. So you can see exactly what the swings look like and exactly the toll it was taking on me to do that work load. Part of the reason I did this is because someone brought to my attention questions people have been asking about exactly how I swing, if I use the GS technique or hardstyle, etc. This video will basically answer that. I use a hardstyle technique. Meaning the bell is carried by a straight arm away from the body, you lead with the bell instead of the elbow which would be the GS style. You’ll see that these swings sit between belt and chest height wihch is another question people have asked. Again a hardstyle, not what would be an American style swing which is a two handed swing all the way overhead, what some of Crossfit uses. You’ll also see the exact toll it takes on me how toward the 3rd or 4th minute in the video the swings are a little ugly. That’s because they were somewhere over the 1500th consecutive rep mark and they were getting a little tough. Now I know people are going to say, “Some of those swings are too low, blah blah blah.” I’m going to tell you this – I don’t think the height of your swing is terribly important as long as you have full body extension. For those of you who are worried about it I have a very simple way to correct that which we’ll be showing soon. The swing also because it is open chain, has no resting point. So sometimes when you push to the very top end it’s hard to keep them super pretty.
You’ll also see that my pace is between 41 and 42 reps per minute, which adds up for all you math guys out there who are calculating how many reps per minute it takes to achieve 2,350 in 56.5 minutes. Also because we’re looking to take strength and conditioning to a whole new level and thereby health and fatloss and all the other things you get – I decided to throw in a little moderately heavy dumbbell pressing at the very end just to see and prove that you can be very strong after maxed out conditioning, which goes against all the basic scientific literature but it’s possible. So at the end is a little piece with me doing a pretty easy press one-arm press with a 150 pound dumbbell that was done just a few minutes after the one hour of swings.
Ask yourself those questions: Are you getting in shape? Is your training giving you consistent results and personal bests in conditioning and strength? Are you still strong when you’re tired? Have you activated your hormones and metabolic processes to burn fat and create strength at the same time? In the coming days I’ll be talking more about our fat-burning/health-building blueprint which is some info you really want to pay attention to. Enjoy!
20 Comments
what a miserable way to spend nearly an hour
seriously though incredible work
wow, amazing! you are looking in great shape Bud
Wow, really impressive!
That was truly awesome and inspiring. Thanks!
Thanks fellas – I appreciate the positive feedback.
“Miserable” is in the eye of the beholder I guess. LOL
Great work to be able to do that.
What is the point of it thoug I’m not trying to be a smart arse but interested to know what the benefit of swinging for so long is.
It seems to me quite a limited range of movement.
I can see the point of pushing yourself, it was obviously hurting after 20 mins so you it was awesome to carry on through that.
Gavin
I am confused. I know you have a lot of strength and I have learned a lot from you, but how can it be considered a swing if there is not much range of motion? Once you tire, your ROM is no more than 1.5 feet. The whole time I have been doing swings, I have descended to the point where I am at a parallel squat depth and swang all the way up to my forehead every rep. I am interested to see how many you could do with that ROM. A lot more than me I know!
I had an aha moment in the first 3 seconds watching you swing, thankyou!
Gavin and Leon,
Because the swing is an open chain exercise, i.e., it doesn’t have a finishing point like the lockout of a press, etc, other than body extension there really is no proper height it has to go to. Now I’m not saying that obviously when I got higher up in the reps that it wasn’t a shorter range of motion – it was. I said that in the lead up. There are different ways to perform the swing and different heights people consider okay. For me the height is much less relative than the body extension. Now also for me it’s kind of a mental mistake – you can force the height, but you get so lost in the pain that sometimes you don’t. I don’t swing higher than shoulder because I believe if you’re going to do that you’re smarter to snatch and just finish the movement.
The point of the really long set is a much different form of combined muscular and cardio effort. It’s kind of equivalent to running a marathon and your stride gets a little shorter as you near the end, but you don’t stop running just because you can’t run as fast. Hopefully that answers your questions and makes sense.
Thanks,
Bud
That’s one tough workout. Good job.
Great Job Bud, Man I’ve been doing some high rep (for me) swing workouts and my grip gets rocked I usualy find it more my hands and forearms limiting me more than my cardio (at this point) and then you made that dumbell look like a toy! Very immpressive. I noticed you tape the handle dose that help the hands? I would have thought the rougher texture of the tape would be more abrasive on the hands? But despite my wife saying other wise I might have girly hands.
Your the man….I shoot for 100 then hit my ab wheel for sets but this blows me away…
Hi Bud,
In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance(from Wikipedia).
In the swing you need a force to move a weight over a certain distance. The higher the swing, the more distance your kettlebell will travel. As the weight stays the same (as long as you do not change kettlebell in the middle of the exercise), only the distance will determine the amount of work you do. If you swing the kettlebell say 1 m high you will do the double amount of work (kJoules) as if you only swing it 50 cm (half the distance) high.
My everyday swing practice shows me exactly that: the higher the swing, the more effort I need. Or in other words: I’ll be smoked in much less time, when I swing shoulder high instead of hip high.
And another thing I notice: In a higher swing I need much more (explosive) force at the beginning of the movement. On the way down I need to generate more power at the end of the (higher) swing to slow the kettlebell down.
Cheers
Reinhard
Aaron,
Thanks for the comment and questions. Yeah I do tape the kettlebell handle. Only for swings and for specific reasons. I explain all of this in the upcoming book and video but I’ll give you the short version here:
The real reason is sweat. In that video I was sweating you can see but it was a pretty cool room, but normally when I’m training it’s very hot here and I’m pouring sweat like I’m standing in the shower. Because I’m doing long continuous sets with no stopping chalk is just useless. The bare handle gets very wet so the tape tends to help keep it a little more dry and more traction to grip. It is rougher on the hands at first but mine are used to it now. Obviously however you cannot do it for snatches or it will destroy your hands.
Reinhard,
Thank you and I understand the physics behind it. However I would refer back to the running analogy I made in the other post and I’m not counting workload in that number based, quantitative way. I understand the physical load of a longer range motion, but I don’t really think it’s that big of a deal to be honest. Because I am doing continuous sets without slowing the pace, it’s equivalent to shorter stride. Yes you need more force, but the difference in distance and force is not enough in my opinion to make a big difference. You’ve also have to realized that 1,500 reps in so – yeah it was shorter than the others.
You probably also know that it’s easy to throw extra height into the swing by changing body position or changing muscles used and I’m trying not to do that. i.e., you can overact the shoulder and arms to force the bell to go higher or change the angle, but that’s not the point. I think the big point of th swing isn’t so much the height as is the direction of force and body extension/hip hinge movement.
To each his own and thanks again for commenting.
Bud
Bud, I think you should consider running a marathon. It would be an incredible testament to you training. I doubt you’d have anybody questioning your ROM.
Do you have any idea what your heart rate is during these swing bouts? I’d be very interested to know…
Hi guys,
I saw this post and related comments a few days ago and have wanted to add my experience to the conversation. I’ve finally got a free moment from work, so here it is…
I credit Bud for getting me to take high rep KB swinging seriously. Before talking to him, I saw all of the courses and so called experts pitching their instructional books and videos, and I honestly thought it was a lot of hoopla. My initial reaction was, “’here we go, these guys are taking something that’s been around for over a century which fell into obscurity, and they’re trying to tout it as the newest super-secret cure all.”
That thinking lead to my overlooking the tremendous benefits of KB work…
When I first starting doing them, I just couldn’t get anywhere near the number of reps Bud recommended in the allotted time. After some back and forth with Bud, I told him that I was standing on cinder blocks to increase my range of motion. When asked why, I said that I find I keep hitting the ground with the bell. Before the end of our conversation, Bud had me ditching the cinder blocks, and explained the best he could how I should swing the bell for what we were looking to achieve.
When I was on the blocks, my range of motion was HUGE. That bell was going so far back between my legs; it was almost catching me in the gluteus maximus. Using that form gave me a terrific back workout, but that wasn’t what I was after. Whenever I tried to really push the reps, my back would tire out from the poor leverage being used.
The goal was building up strength- endurance. We wanted some serious panting, puffing, and perspiring going on, to use one of Ol’ Hoffman’s favorite sayings…which leads me to my next point…
Another problem was a lack of demand on my cardiovascular system. When you use a ‘normal’ KB swing, raising up to head height or greater, you actually get more time to ‘rest.’
If you’re wondering if I’ve lost my marbles, let me explain…
The longer the range of motion, the fewer reps you can get in per period of time. You’re essentially operating at a lower RPM. And while Reinhard’s right when it comes to physical load of a longer range motion, all things being equal;, it does take more ‘explosion’ to lift the bell higher, but there’s something else at play here…
My experience has me agreeing with what Bud has said. The difference isn’t all that great between popping it up to chest height and getting to head height, especially when you consider doing it for high reps, and the next point explains it a little more…
To get back to what I was saying about ‘getting more rest with a greater range of motion.’ The explosive part of the swing at the bottom of the movement is probably the most demanding part of the exercise. That’s when you’re muscles fire to get the bell moving. Once moving though, your muscles get to relax and ‘take a break’ of sorts.
When you shorten the ROM, you get many more ‘explosions’ per period of time, i.e. you increase your RPMs. This leaves less time for ‘rest’ while the bell is in motion and really gets your heart rate up.
While the force required to get the bell to head height or higher might be more than what’s needed to get it to the height of your upper abs/solar plexus, it’s not that much more. And the cardiovascular demand of doing twice as many reps, if not more, to upper abs height compared to head height or higher is much greater, at least it has been for me.
Thanks for reading, and get out there and put this stuff to use
Train Smart, Train Hard
Ray Toulany
Talk is cheap, so here’s a little ‘Testimonial/field report’ of sorts…
I’ve always done heavy lifting and had decent cardio, but Swings and sprawls have taken it to another level, and I’m only getting started…
Once I got things figured out, I worked my way up to 400 reps swung to upper abs/solar plexus height with a 70 pound bell in just over 10 minutes. (The goal is to get it in 10, but I’m having a hard time with getting more than 380 reps in 10 minutes. It’s not my conditioning, the time required to swing the bell to that height for that many reps makes it difficult to get in that many reps in 10 minutes. But I’m going to keep working it. A shorter guy might not have that problem.)
My family owns a meat packing facility, and my father, who runs the daily operations of the business, went away from mid-May to October. Other family members went away during that time too, with some still being away. I took my father’s place while he was away, and the fun began.
It was our busiest season to date, and with my other family members gone away, too, I was basically on my own with a few of our employees. During that time, I introduced some new products, renovated our place of business, was, and still am, enrolled into intensive courses, dealt with equipment malfunctioning from stifling heat and humidity, and more. I managed all of this on an average of 4 hours of sleep a night, sometimes less, a few times with zero sleep. And lugging 60 to 80 lbs boxes and buckets of beef all day long… Did I mention it was busy?
Needless to say, my training started to migrate to the back burner, and for a little while, was nonexistent… (and yes, this made Ray a cranky camper.)
Why do I mention all of this?
To get your pity?
To tout my horn as The MAN for handling all of this?
To have you cheer my conquering this beast of a summer and coming out the other side alive?
No, not at all. It’s to give you a give you an idea of the physical demands put on me, not to mention the mental stress of running the business and my schooling so you can see how powerful proper training really is. (if you insist on sending me fan mail, I mean who wouldn’t, right, PM me and I’ll give you my mailing address… lol)
As ‘undesirable’ as these circumstances were, I still could ‘work like an animal.’ And here’s an example…
When you run a facility like ours, 18 wheeler sightings are an everyday occurrence. And when you don’t have a proper loading dock installed (it’s on the way) so is unloading them by hand…
More often than not, we’d have to unload pallets filled with 60-80 lbs boxes of beef and surprisingly heavy boxes of spice.
I would normally take the position of ‘R.O.B.’ (named after the 8 bit Nintendo robot peripheral) This required me to put one foot on the back end of the trailer, and another on our makeshift loading dock, which happened to be about a couple of feet lower than the trailer.
From there, I would grab a box, and essentially toss and stack it onto a cart that would be wheeled off and unloaded, and another one would immediately take its place. This would be done for multiple pallets and would last the better part of 20 nonstop minutes, if not more.
To give you an idea of the pace I was keeping, it took 2-3 people on the trailer to keep up with me and ‘feed me’ boxes, and 5-6 of our employees to keep up with carting away the boxes and stacking them up. Oftentimes they’d trip on each other trying to keep up with me.
I would essentially twist from side to side while straddling and balancing myself between the trailer and our doorway. When they fell behind, I’d yell out ‘FEED ME,’ which earned me the name Audrey, the name of the massive man eating Venus fly trap from the movie, Little Shop of Horrors, (gotta love the 80’s references)
When we’d finish, the guys would be sweating buckets and panting for air, and while they put some effort in, they were not doing as much ‘lifting’ as I was considering that I was lifting each and every box. That same workload was divided between the 5-6 guys stacking them.
I’d would barely be sweating or breathing hard, even though the heat was and humidity was killer.
This type of work was very similar to the high rep KB work. It would get very rhythmic and I’d zone out, relaxing while at the same exploding the boxes onto the carts.
Anyways, I got carried away with this comment; it’s more like a book…
Last point in closing, when I first sated doing swings, 20 seemed like a long set. And when I did them back to back with sprawls for the first time, I was almost embarrassed at how difficult it was. But I stuck with it, and within a few short months, I overcame a ‘glass ceiling,’ and noticed huge gains…
Swinging higher than Bud is in his videos obviously has HUGE benefits, and so does doing it the way Bud is. Give them an honest shot, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Train Smart, Train Hard
Ray Toulany
Dan,
Thanks brother! I actually wanted to run a marathon but I don’t think my knee could take the pounding. I intend to do a 100 mile bike and a marathon ergometer row hopefully sometime this summer. I think that the other endurance work I’ve done shpuld testify to the efficiency of this swing training as it is the “base” for me.1000 rep sprawls, snatches, push presses, dumbell lifts, clubs’ battling ropes, 2000 rep sledgehammer swings etc. The swing because it is “open chain” will unfortunately always have a height debate.
Ray,
Thanks for posting and telling that story. That work capacity is what were trying to get! Also bringing up a great point about the rpm’s and the explosive move from the bottom being the most important point. Well talk soon.
Bud- love the fact that you have lost lots of weight and you will go down in history as one of Americas Strong man,but the swing video from a trainers viewpoint can give people the wrong idea. I am more apt to agree with Reinhard and his comments.All i see after minute 20 was loading,and not a lot of release, and then bracing with the opposite hand on the leg. I know you know people in the loop.Go to the softer style gs sport swing,you will develop greater mobility,and still be able to do the hour,much more pain free.