DaveGetsFit

It’s been over two years since I first picked up a kettlebell. In my “first post” (under the “Stuff” menu on the right), I detailed how that eventually took me to Mark Sisson’s site, and my adoption of what was to become known as the Primal Blueprint. I lost 30 pounds in about three months by following Mark’s eating recommendations, and working through a kettlebell exercise program. Since then it’s been a lot of yo-yoing with a particularly bad episode this past holiday season. So I’ve decided to go back to the beginning. I’m going to redo the same kettlebell program I was doing when I shed those initial 30 pounds.

The program I am doing is the Art of Strength workbook by Anthony DLuglio that is based on Pavel Tsatsouline’s Enter The Kettlebell. There are two phases: the Program Minimum and the Right of Passage. The first is an initial phase (4 weeks) that prepares you for the more intense work in the second phase (8 weeks). I could probably skip some or most of the first phase, but I decided to just do it as prescribed and build back slowly.

The first phase is consist of alternating exercise days of “manmakers” and “Turkish Get Ups.” The manmakers in this case are sets of kettlebell swings interspersed with “active rest” for a period of 12 minutes. I was supposed to start yesterday but that didn’t happen. So today I did eight rounds of 20 swings with one minute of jogging in place between each round. Tomorrow I will do five minutes worth of TGUs. By the time week 4 rolls around, I’ll be doing sets of 40 swings and 10 minutes of TGUs.

Thirty pounds in three months may be a lot to expect, but I hope to at least get back to where I was before Thanksgiving with a chance to do even more.