Elise calls this one Kettlebell Cardio, which is a pretty fitting name.  It looks like this:  10 2 Hand Swings, 10 Single Hand Swings (5R, 5L) 10 2 Hand Swings,  10 Swing/Cleans (5R, 5L).  Rest and Repeat.

Last time I did this one I did 6 rounds.  Tuesday I did 9 rounds.  I did alter the plan slightly on the last 3 rounds because my grip was deteriorating.  Instead of doing 10 Swing/Cleans,  I did 10 Single Hand Swings (5R, 5L) followed by 10 Cleans (5R, 5L).  I think the tradeoff was worth it since I got so many more total rounds in the workout.

No fun add ons.  After the 9th round of Kettlebell Cardio, I was cooked.   Oh yeah, and the hands.  Blisters + kettlebell snatches = not a good combination.

Wednesday my kettlebell practice was Turkish Get Ups (1-3 each side) and Swings (25 2 Hand).  I like this one a lot because it is so simple.  Today I used a 10kg kettlebell for the TGUs and 16kg for the swings.  This was the first time trying a TGU with a bell heavier than 8kg.  I wasn’t sure I could even do one, but things went pretty well.  I can tell I’m getting stronger and better at the whole TGU thing.  However, they did look sloppy several times today as I had to work harder with the heavier bell.  It will be a while before I go up in weight again.

I had to scale back on the reps of the TGUs but I still managed to do 5 rounds.  I wanted more swing time after that so I did another 100 swings for fun, in this format:  25 swings/:30 rest.  No snatches today either.  : (

I’m still planning on doing some HIIT this week.  While Fred’s suggestions are quite intriguing, I have my heart set on running stairs somewhere.  I just have to figure out where I can do that.  Maybe that will be a Saturday thing.

To start off, I did Elise’s cardio workout.  It’s the one that is mostly swings, with a few cleans thrown in at the end of each round.  Since I got my heart rate monitor, I’ve been keeping track of which of these workouts burns the most calories.  The lower body work out wins, but I believe this one comes in second.  It’s just a piece of information, though.

Last time I did six rounds of this workout. Today I finished 7 rounds without any difficulty.  My grip was wearing out by the end of the cleans, but otherwise I still felt good.

Despite the tired hands, I picked up the 8kg bell and decided to really work at this kettlebell snatch situation.  (Mind you, I learned this move 2 days ago.  8kg is a lot today.)  I also chose to wear my wristbands just because I knew that if I didn’t, this wouldn’t last long.

It was ugly, and then – it got OK.  One time I tried snapping my hips crazy hard and success!  Soft landing with the bell.  Ah hah!  I had another breakthrough when I tried snatching continuously, rather than doing a swing-snatch-swing-snatch thing.  (Don’t know why I was doing that anyway.)  Wow!  So I kept going.  I did a bunch of them.  Over and over.  I lost count.  I rested a little here and there, and I think I finally stopped about 15 minutes later.  Probably not too wise to do that many.  My elbows are feeling strange at this point.  Not injured, but confused.  Hopefully tomorrow I won’t be crying.  And hopefully I’ll remember how to find the groove I somehow managed to stumble into today.