Friday saw me take on a challenge of 1 hour of kettlebell swinging with the 24kg.

I've been training for around a month now on lunch times at work, hitting swings and snatches.

I set off with sets of around 100 reps on the swing and 50 in the snatch (with the 24kg), doing a couple of sets of each and have built up to a 1000 swing set and 220 on snatch (all without setting the kettlebell down), for the swing this has been a challenge for my hips and lower back, the snatch has been more of a challenge for my mind and grip!

After my sledgehammer challenge (in which I totally fatigued my lower back and hips), I suffered from plenty of lower back ache, just after the event and also when training in the following weeks felt that it was not a possibilty to do much kettlebell training (especially repetetive snatching or swinging), so laid off for quite some time.

However, life took over and training was not an option anyway and since Christmas came and went and I found space to start training again.

I also found a way to defeat the hip and lower back demons in the form of proprioceptive stretching before every kettlebell session, the results have been awesome.

I've been doing hip flexor stretching in a PNF style which has released my lower back from it's prison sentence. (PNF - in short you stretch the muscle you want to release by doing a standard stetch for 10-20 secs and then tense isometrically the opposite muscle for 10 seconds - in my case my butt muscles vs my hip flexors to utilse the Golgi Tendon Organ) the result of this is a much freer muscle and a less fatigued lower back, in other words I'm directing the stress thorugh the right channels and not directly onto my lower back.

Anyways, after finding a new wind In recent weeks I felt it was time to try a 1 hour kettlebell swing challenge.

Last friday I was aiming for just completing 1 hour of swinging and roughly 2000 reps was the goal.

I knocked off 2302 swings in 1 hour and 2500 in 1 hr and 5 mins with the 24kg kettlebell and enjoyed every 'pain(ish) free minute of it'

1000 more reps may have been a goer if I had the time (maybe next time), but felt I'd tested my self sufficently for the time being!

Just for proof (and future reference), I videoed the full session!



2500 reps with no rest!

Next time 3000"

BTW I don't think I would have attempted this without inspiration from Bud Jeffries and his inspirational fat loss and 'Mental' KB swing workouts.

Thanks to Bud for leading the way!!



Apologies for the crap quality, I compressed the video from 5gb to 190 mb

Before May 2012 I plan to Seek and Destroy the 1000 reps barrier with the 25kg Sledgehammer Challenge

Time Your Personal Bests with a Gymboss