Friday was an intense session, I believe setting the tone for the warm months. First I set up the kettlebells in pairs from heaviest down to the lightest. I had the students line up behind the ‘bells they wanted to do about 100 foot farmer walks with.
Off they went, with the options of switching to a heavier or lighter line, and taking a short or long rest in between walks. The heaviest combo was a 70 and a 62 lb ‘bell, 132 pounds total. The lightest was two 18 pounders, 36 pounds total. We did the farmer’s for about 20 minutes.
At the end we discussed the effects of the farmer’s walk, and I asked if anyone felt that their lower back felt brutalized at all by the practice. Two people out of the 14 students present answered in the affirmative, so I sent them with my assistant Leland to do spinal decompression on the nearby monkey bars. The remaining students did waiter walks for 10 minutes in the same interval as the farmer’s.
Next we set up a two station circuit. At station one we did 10 swings, kettlebell choice between 18 and 70 pounds. Then walk or run 50 feet to station two and do ten push-press, ‘bells ranged from 8 to 53 pounds.
This gives considerable freedom of choice to the student. Those who are training pure power can do the fast lifts with the heaviest kettlebells and walk slowly between stations. Those who have a fat burning goal use lighter ‘bells and run between stations. This kind of circuit is a lot of fun and you can get a lot of work done in a short time. However we did not do the circuit for a short time, we did it for a solid 32 minutes. People werre starting to slow down but there was no pain, no fear, and no sloppy lifting. Last we did about 10 minutes of restorative movement, well deserved.