What Made me Decide to do this?

For the longest time, my training has revolved around getting stronger. While in recent years I have definitely included a bit more focus on my general physical preparedness (GPP) by programming in more cardiovascular conditioning, plyometrics and explosive training. However, these have always taken  a back seat ro strength performance, which inevitably means towards the end of training cycles it is reduced in order for me to peak for hitting strength goals.

As I am writing this, I am currently 6 months out from getting married. For the longest time I haven’t placed any major emphasis on goals surrounding aesthetics. I’m just not that motivated by it, I’ve never wanted to be a fitness model or compete in bodybuilding shows. However, this is one of the few instances in my life where I would like to be a bit leaner, square out the ol’ jawline and get some pretty-boy photographs on the big day. This has motivated me enough to stick to a slow but steady caloric deficit.

A couple months into this, and the usual thing happened whenever I attempt to lean down… I started to watch my strength numbers drop. Nothing significant, but I knew full well that there wasn’t going to be a PB in sight for a while. This is the point where I usually say “screw it”, add more calories in my diet, and push some heavier weight. But this time I decided to just...let go. I can be weaker for 6 months, who cares.

Now I am a strength programming nerd. I can put together strength and hypertrophy blocks in my sleep. Conditioning...not so much. Left to me I’ll end up working up to something too heavy and eventually butchering the conditioning aspect of it. The idea of doing such a devilishly simple protocol of 10,000 swings in a month is just awesome. For once I can turn off my analytical coach brain. The weight is no longer intimidating. I can just focus on gritting my teeth and getting it done.

Faster and faster.

The 10,000 Kettlebell Swing Program

Many years ago, I read an article in T-Nation from the OG Coach Dan John.  He layed out this insane protocol that involved doing 20 workouts in 4-6 weeks, with each workout containing 500 kettlebell swings broken up with low volume compound movements for each one. The protocol was divided into cluster sets. Each of these cluster sets contain smaller “clusters” of swings with minimal break between each cluster. He laid out the rep scheme for each cluster as being 10, 15, 25, and 50 swings, before taking a breather and repeating it 4 more times. Just to add to the punishment, in between these clusters are low rep compound movements. For these movements I chose to go with the front squat, overhead press, weighted pull up, and dips on gymnastic rings. The rep scheme for these corresponding compound movements is 1,2,3 (for weighted compounds) and 2.3,5 for unweighted compounds (as was the case for my gymnastic ring dips). These are performed between the clusters of kettlebell swings.

While Coach Dan John recommends against altering the program, I did add some additional work before the cluster sets. These were mainly explosive and plyometric movements done at a medium to low intensity so as not to interfere with the swings. All in all, I ended up laying out the program like this.

Which begs the question to be asked…. How did it go?

Week 1

• 0 - 2500 swings

• Fastest Day: 38:02 (Ring Dips)

• Slowest Day: 50:00 (Front Squat day)

• Kettlebell Swing Only: 33:11

• Scale Weight: 87.5kg

I had no idea what to expect starting this challenge. While the vast amount of my resistance training has been in the pursuit of powerlifting (increasing the squat, bench and deadlift), it's fair to say that work capacity and endurance has never been a strong suit for me. On one hand, a 24kg kettlebell feels like a feather when compared to a 260kg deadlift, on the other hand I don't think I've ever done a set of 50 on anything - let alone 500 total reps.

There was only one way to find out… just go for it.

I quickly realised that the 24kg kettlebell I owned, while made of cast iron, was still on the cheaper end of the spectrum. The cheaper the iron, the less dense it is, and weakness is accounted for by thickening it up. You see the same in 32mm cheap barbells. While this had never been a problem with low rep kettlebell work, the thicker handles made their presence known very quickly. I became acutely aware that my grip was going to be my weak point, and this note would carry through for most of the month.

I was unable to do the full set of 50 unbroken, having to give myself 30 seconds to regain my grip before completing the set. By day 2 I had developed a blister on the side of my pinky, quickly coming to realise that chalk actually made the kettlebell HARDER to hold onto. Tape up the fingers and carry on. The compound movements in the cluster sets felt like a welcome break - never before had a beltless front squat seemed like a nice “break”.

After the first day, I had mild hamstring DOMS, but I was sleeping like a baby… an aspect of my life that is usually a challenge for me. Grip isn’t quite recovering from session to session, and while my times are getting better day by day, I see definite improvements in the sessions that proceed a rest day.

Week 2

• 2500 - 5000 swings

• Fastest Day: 27:56 (Ring Dips)

• Slowest Day: 37:31 (Front Squat day)

• Kettlebell Swing Only: 26:32

• Scale Weight: 87.3kg

I’m beginning to understand the effect a single rest day has on my times. While I realise that my front squat day is most likely to continue being my slowest day of the week as it is the most physically demanding, it was still the first day that I managed to do 3 sets of 50 unbroken. The same is not true for the days preceding it. 

The decrease in my times across the board are insane. Given that some of it is being more used to the protocol and how to approach it, a small part has to be attributed to efficiency and a slight bump in adaptation. We shall see if the next weeks bring a similar ability to outperform the previous week, or if this is more of a baseline I will be stuck at. Only time will tell.

Week 3

• 5000 - 7500 swings

• Fastest Day: 25:52 (Ring Dips)

• Slowest Day: 32:53 (Front Squat day)

• Kettlebell Swing Only: 21:22

• Scale Weight: 86.9kg

Well I am definitely beginning to feel signs of overuse in my left hand. A weird tightness through my palm that makes it rather uncomfortable for my first cluster set. While nothing to worry about, I imagine if you were to follow this protocol for more than the 30 days it would cause a pretty significant imbalance in your extenders.

In saying that BOOM, another week of crushing the previous week's times. I also finally managed to get all 5 sets of 50 unbroken on my dips day - so while my hands are feeling a little tender they’re still keeping up (barely) with my constant demand to get the work done faster.

Week 4

• 7500-1000 swings

• Fastest Day: 22:59 (Ring Dips)

• Slowest Day: 29:26 (Front Squat day)

• Kettlebell Swing Only: 19:33

• Scale Weight: 84.6kg

Final week, it was time to go for broke. My left hand was giving me a tonne of issues (I would later find out I have a Dupuytren Contracture - the hardening of the tendon in my hand, a genetic trait and not from this challenge), but I pushed through the strain and kept going. At this point, the difficulty is all cardiovascular and maximising my mental ability to deal with discomfort. I had a few goals in mind to end strong. First, to come in under half an hour on the squat day. The second and final challenge was to achieve a sub 20min time, a feat that required 100 kettlebell swings every four minutes. To get both of these ticked off, I really had to push, ignoring my burning lung’s cries for recovery and start every new cluster set well before I felt ready. My engine had definitely grown over the last 4 weeks, and I surprised myself with my ability to recover even during sets. The sets of 50 became easier, but by no means did they become any less daunting.

After my 10,000th swing, I picked myself up off the floor, filled my lungs with the oxygen they had been begging for before breathing a sigh of relief. Sweaty, tired, but unbroken. I had done it, and outperformed every metric I had set along the way.

The Results of Performing 10,000 Kettlebell Swings in a Month.

Performance

I covered earlier that my experience with adhering to conditioning blocks of training has always been a challenge for me. Because of this, I was hyper responsive to the training as my baseline was likely low compared to other people that may have a greater emphasis for cardio in their training. In saying this, the days that involved front squats as the additional compound movements were consistently the slowest out of all the days every week, but I still saw an initial time from 50 minutes drop to under 30 minutes over the challenge. The kettlebell only day (no compound movement in between) also had a reduction of almost 15 minutes when comparing the first session to the last.

While it is a little out of the scope of this protocol, I also increased the weight of the compound movement every session (old habits die hard) and still managed to beat the previous week's time every single session.

Body Composition

While I never set out to do this challenge to lose weight, I had been in a caloric deficit prior to this. Throughout the challenge I maintained the same calories, but still managed to strip a significant amount of weight off my frame. In 30 days, I dropped 2.9kg. This is quite significant (and probably too much weight in my opinion) and I did rebound back up about a kilogram a week after finishing. Still, it was nice to lose weight without purely relying on further caloric restriction. 

More importantly, I retested my beltless deadlift and front squat after the challenge was complete and actually set 2 beltless personal bests. So at the very least, my strength was somewhat maintained by the huge amount of volume, a feat that is usually hard to achieve when losing so much weight in such a short amount of time. I have also noticed incredible mobility through my hips and lower back region.

Final Thoughts

It took me 30 days, 20 workouts, and a total of 10 hours and 43 minutes to perform 10,000 kettlebell swings. It goes without saying that I have become insanely intimate with the kettlebell swing pattern.

But would I recommend this challenge to anyone else? I am in two minds about this. My gut reaction is a resounding YES. From reinforcing better quality of movement to the increase in overall work capacity (and therefore benefitting future ambitions of strength and mass), the 10,000 swings challenge is a fantastic short term challenge. For me personally, I gained a lot of novelty from the simplicity of the programming, removing the nuance that comes along with training for optimal strength. It was a huge departure from my regular training with just enough challenge to keep me interested for the entire month without overstaying its welcome.

My caveat to this would be for people that have a younger training age. It’s difficult for me to figure out the impacts it would have on a newer lifter. The kettlebell I used is less than 10% of my max deadlift, so the weight itself was never any real issue for me. While you could adjust the bell weight according to experience, the nature of such high rep work would make it difficult to actually figure out an optimal weight for you. A range of 0-24kg is not much to work with. Being under-experienced for a protocol like this would definitely have you knocking at overuse-syndrome’s door. Not having a well developed hip hinge pattern coupled with bad kettlebell form has some major implications for lower back and adductor strain. While I never faced any of these, as a coach, these are all factors I would have in mind before prescribing this protocol to anyone.

In conclusion, I highly recommend breaking out of your comfort zone and exploring novel training parameters. While the 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge may or may not be for you, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am sure I will repeat it with some alterations in the future… I’m already wondering if it is possible with a 40kg kettlebell.

Guess I’m just a sucker for punishment.