Planning Your Kettlebell Workouts – The Basics

Locating a good KB workout online.  Fighting kettlebell routine boredom.  Not knowing what exercises to do on what days/how to put everything together/etc. …

These are all common issues/problems/frustrations folks have in their kettlebell training efforts.  So in today’s post, I’m going to address these issues and lay out a complete foundation for planning your kettlebell workouts!

Planning Your Kettlebell Workouts – The Basics

First and foremost, you do need to change your kettlebell workouts frequently. This is necessary to, among other things, 1) prevent boredom and 2) keep from adapting/plateauing/etc.

HOWEVER – if you change your workouts TOO much – then you never give yourself a chance to improve. You can’t see if you’re getting better at specific exercises (because you’re doing different ones all the time) and you can’t see if your weights/reps are going up (again, because your exercise choice is so varied, you’ll never really know how you’re improving day-to-day or week-to-week).

And this is a big problem – because we’ve ALL been guilty of switching things up just for variety’s sake just a little too often …

So – here’s the three step KB workout planning approach that’s worked for me and now thousands of my personal training clients:

1) Define exactly what your goals are.

Muscle gain? Fat Loss? Improved performance? Before you pick a program to follow, you have to know exactly where you’re going and your ultimate kettlebell training goal(s).

2) Find a program to follow.

There are lots of decent free kettlebell programs around – a great starting point is here, right on this blog. Search the archives, or just take a look at this page to get started:   Free Kettlebell Routines on KettlebellBasics.net

**You could also go the paid route and invest in a resource like I have listed on this page:  Forest’s kettlebell programs and products.  Main difference being that my paid programs are much more complete than the free ones … explanation/video of individual exercises, theory behind how the workouts are designed, how everything fits together, etc.  

The choice of which solution fits best for your specific situation/available research time/etc. is yours … main point being to pick a solid program and STICK WITH IT!!**

3) Follow the program ’till it stops working – THEN switch it up.

Follow the routine you’ve picked for your specific goals ’till it stops working and you hit a plateau.  For most folks, this ends up being about four to six weeks – a reasonable time frame to improve at specific exercises, bump up your weights and reps, etc.

Then you re-asses, set some new goals, rinse and repeat! 🙂

In conclusion, planning your kettlebell workouts is something a lot of folks have a tough time with.  Not knowing exactly how to put things together, getting bored with the same exercises, and a host of other issues make planning your kettlebell workouts tough.  So, when it comes time to plan your next kettlebell workout routine, just follow the three step process outlined in this post, and you’ll be well on your way to reaching your ultimate kettlebell fitness goals!

That’s it for today –

Forest Vance, RKC II

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