I followed Aleks Salkin’s 8-week kettlebell and bodyweight minimalist program for 6 weeks before I changed the program. (See my previous Body post for details). I would not call my changes improvements, but they suit me.

My kettlebell and bodyweight minimalist program features the same workout every day of the week:

  • 5 minutes of crawling
  • 10 minutes of get-ups
  • 10 minutes of heavy swings
  • 5 minutes of pull-ups

Crawling is a great way to warm-up. Beginning every session with crawling is time efficient because it involves practicing an important skill and developing strength while warming up. I was very pleased with improvements in my crawling after a few weeks of following the program. I was soon covering as much ground in 5 minutes as I had been covering in 10 minutes.

Pavel’s Simple and Sinister program calls for swings and get-ups every day. Wanting to perform get-ups every day was the biggest reason I changed Aleks’ program. Now instead of doing get-ups 5 times every two weeks, I am doing get-ups 10 times every two weeks. In other words, I am doing 100 get-ups every two weeks instead of 50. I want to achieve the Simple goal of completing 10 get-ups in 10 minutes and 100 swings in 5 minutes with the 32-kg bell by the end of 2016, so staying steady with get-ups is important to me.

I hoped I would feel ready to move up from the 24-kg to the 32-kg bell for one-handed swings, but never felt I was in shape at the end of the week to risk starting the next week with the 32-kg bell. However, I was able to generate more power and snap as I kept working with the 24-kg bell.

I was surprised that I could complete 22 pull-ups in 5 minutes when the best I had completed in 10-minutes was 34. By doing pull-ups every day, I could complete an extra 50 pull-ups every two weeks – 220 instead of 170.

After 3 weeks, I made another change. I began to superset 10 heavy swings with 2 pull-ups until I completed 100 swings and 20 pull-ups. I slowed the pace of my pull-ups. I let myself hang for a moment before pulling up slowly. I pulled up until touching my lower throat to the bar. I descended slowly and let myself hang for another moment before pulling up again. And I came down slowly after the second rep and reached hanging position before releasing the bar. In other words, I focused on each pull-up intensively. My pull-ups are feeling very strong now after a few weeks of this approach.

On April 25th, I began experimenting with adding an additional 10 minutes of work to this routine. I practiced double swings, double front squats, snatches, double cleans, and double military presses in 5-minute segments. So I might do 5 minutes of double swings with a pair of 16 kg bells and then do 5 minutes of snatches with one 16 kg bell to finish. This meant my training shifted from 30 minutes to basically 40 minutes. The added work made completing 5 sessions in 5 days challenging and I often took Friday as a rest day and used Saturday as a make-up day.

After experimenting with different arrangements for three weeks, I started a new program on May 16th. I liked how it went today, but will live with it for a while before reporting on it here.