If you haven’t had the chance, please check out the recent interview with Carolyn Taylor Harris, RKC I conducted for Dragon Door. Carolyn has made an inspiring transformation and continues to add more tools to her toolkit to help others. One of the things I loved hearing about (and there’s many things to celebrate in what she shared in our conversation) was a favorite drill she had for preparing for her RKC. Frankly, I had to try it right after our call… then I added it to my workout a few days later, and then for an advanced client’s workout a few days after that.
Fair warning, it’s brutal. It’s also a fantastic way to get a lot of use out of an otherwise light kettlebell… While Carolyn did this with the 16kg and then an 18kg (MUCH RESPECT), I first tried it with a 10kg and that was just fine with me.
So… what is “it” well… It’s setting a timer for 5 minutes and doing continuous get-ups on one side. In my example, I grabbed the 10kg kettlebell on my right side and for five minutes, did strict and slow get-ups for the entire 5 minutes without setting the kettlebell down. For “rest” on occasion I would stay in a position for a couple of seconds (windmill for example) but would continue the movement.
After a short break, I did the same on the left side, again, not setting the 10kg kettlebell down for the entire 5 minutes. It’s time well spent, even with a smaller weight or even no weight. It’s a time to focus on exactly what is happening with each nuance of the movement. Right around minute three, I noticed the get-ups were really dialing in in terms of efficiency.
The next time I practiced a single get-up a few days later with a heavier weight the whole movement was improved. You may need to work up to the full 5 minutes per side, but that’s ok too! Give it a try! I finally made a playlist of get-up videos and tips, scroll to the end of this post to check it out! 🙂
An intermediate-advanced client was “thrilled” to try it with the 8kg as an extremely demanding “warm up”. It’s the kind of drill where you learn about the movement, and you also seem to learn some things about yourself as well! 🙂
Ok, enough babbling, here’s the VERY SHORT kettlebell workout I did:
Joint mobility warmup then…
- 5 minutes continuous 10kg kettlebell get-ups on the right side
- Short break
- 5 minutes continuous 10kg kettlebell get-ups on the left side.
- Short break
Next was just a short simple very Dan John inspired mini circuit:
- 10x 24kg two hand kettlebell swings
- 5x 24kg goblet squats
- 5x slow motion super strict pushups
- 10x 24kg two hand kettlebell swings
- 4x 24kg goblet squats
- 4x slow motion super strict pushups
- 10x 24kg two hand kettlebell swings
- 3x 24kg goblet squats
- 3x slow motion super strict pushups
- 10x 24kg two hand kettlebell swings
- 2x 24kg goblet squats
- 2x slow motion super strict pushups
- 10x 24kg two hand kettlebell swings
- 1x 24kg goblet squats
- 1x slow motion super strict pushups
Finally, I spent 4 whole minutes of “quality time” on the Assault Bike which was more than enough time, thank you very much. That was 8 rounds of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds “rest”. I gave it a dumb name: High Tech Burn Out! Because I wore my new Bose Quiet Comfort 35-II headphones. While I “love” the Assault Bike (fan bike) it gets wind in my ears and is noisy. The headphones I bought for air travel fit the bill (I also like them for annoying household chores like vacuuming… go away bad noises, it’s podcast, standup or music listening time!). I can even listen to my obnoxious tunes and HEAR them for those intense 4 minutes. Hate to admit it, but it made the whole thing a lot more and a heck of a lot faster… or so it seemed. What do you think? Do we have a new “fitness craze”? Fan Bike and Noise Cancelling Headphones? Why not!
In other news, I’ve been playing around with “mindfulness meditation” for the past week or so, and according to the Dan Harris 10% Happier app on my phone, I’ve managed to log a total of 84 “mindful minutes” over the past seven days. While it seems like most people are more apt to meditate in the morning, I’m not most people, but I’ve been finding that setting aside 10 minutes after tooth-brushing time at night before bed has been surprisingly easy to do. In the past I’ve been super turned off by the whole idea of meditation, “zen”, that kind of woo-woo sounding stuff in general. Dan Harris somehow manages to have even more disdain towards that flavor than me, which is frankly impressive. So far it’s been an interesting experiment and I’ll catch you up on it soon. Told a friend of mine how I’d been combining the mindful moments with time-consuming otherwise boring skincare treatments and she’s encouraged me to make a video about it – we’ll see if I get the nerve to do that or not.
Get-Up Videos with tips, tricks, observations and more:
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