After being a group of five last week, this week’s workout saw only Peter and me coming – all the others had plenty of reasons to excuse themselves.

This workout came about without real planning, so we were going to work on the basics instead of handling fancy exercises. Peter has finally gotten his own 24 kg Kettlebell, so we based our workout mainly about this tool which still is a tremendous challenge for both of us.

After toying around a while with the Kettlebells (double Kettlebell work is tremendously challenging – I thought it to be easier, going even as far as thinking about doing metabolic conditioning work with it), we decided on a workout. The final result was:

Metabolic Conditioning

3 rounds of

24 kg Kettlebell Complex

• Push press
• One-armed swing
• One-armed high-pull
• Clean
• Squat

5 repetitions each, left + right

Each round was complemented with a approx. 200-meter-run.

This workout turned out to be a lot harder than I initially thought and I turned out to do a downwards ladder of 5-4-3 repetitions for the respective rounds, which was challenge enough. Peter was braver than me and completed the full five repetitions for each round. What proved hard to accomplish for me was maintaining the grip. I have to admit that my second and third round were shadowed with an extremely high frequency of resting the Kettlebell on the round – which defies the purpose of training with complexes, which is maintaining the grip throughout exercise execution.

Post-Fatigue

Peter came up with the idea of the ‘Man-Maker’. This is a complex consisting of:

• Push-up on the Kettlebells
• Renegade row on both sides
• Double clean
• Squat

Three rounds of five repetitions each were planned. I again reduced the number of repetitions due to pain and fatigue, Peter did the whole amount. This exercise is especially challenging for the abdominal section of the body. Doing the renegade rows, it’s the wrong question to ask which muscles of the body currently are working – the right question would be: Which ones of them aren’t working? This exercise feels just like the whole body being under tension. In this respect, I’d like to compare renegade rows with turkish get-ups.

The workout was completed with a few sets of push-ups plus renegade rows as finisher, before we packed our things and started the way home.

Lessons I learned from the workout today are the following

• A towel is an elementary piece of equipment – you can never know how much you will sweat
• A second pack of clothes also is a good idea if you have a long way home – especially for the upper body, which is usually soaked in sweat and cold
• Take something to eat with you for post-workout nutrition. I favor bananas for the job – as for protein, this is a good field of usage for protein powders – as they are easily transportable in a shaker. Add water and drink it.
• It is essential to train your grip strength. The grip is the first thing that lets loose and limits your abilities.

So far, so good. On to the next workout

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

The question, which exercise is the best, oftenly arouses. There are proponents of many exercises but generally the choice can be narrowed down to a few basic compound exercises: The clean, the snatch, the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, either dip or bench press.

But nothing beats the power of a complex. A complex is a continuous compound consisting of a number of exercises that are done consecutively. By doing this, you can combine the advantages of a squat with the benefits of the overhead press by incorporating them both in the exercise complex. I was inspired to do this by my comrade Dominik, who has done a great blog post on his work with complexes. Once again, his source of inspiration is the legend Dan John.

The CrossFit crew also works with complexes and has created a workout of the day (WoD) for this purpose: The Bear.

But there are countless other options how to design a complex. For instance, I tried out a downward ladder complex (starting from 4 repetitions) of clean, push press and front squat with two 16 kg kettlebells

Compare my efforts to Dominik’s training partner Willi. He is doing this exercise with the barbell and from 5 repetitions down (beast ).

I can tell you that this workout brings you to your limits in an extremely short span of time. It is not only the exercise itself that is so exhausting, the grip challenge is even more of a battle. Especially with kettlebells, it’s hard to maintain a firm grip over an extended period of time. Keep in mind that your grip is pre-fatigued with every step down the ladder. I had to fight hard with the grip already at the 3 repetition ladder. Hard to imagine how the 5 repetition downward ladder must feel like – I look forward to trying it!

From what I have experienced, I can wholeheartedly recommend complexes for training. They train the body as one unit and every musle of the body has its share in successfully surviving the workout.

Train on and stay strong,
Simon