Settings, Goals, Assessing Fitness, and Training Safely

Training Safely

Best practices for kettlebell training — quality over quantity, monitoring exertion, warm-up and cool-down, taking your time, and staying injury free for the long haul.

Train Smart, Train For Life

SMART goals get you pointed at the right destination. How you train decides whether you actually arrive — or get sidelined by injury along the way.

These best practices are the standards to keep in mind throughout your kettlebell journey to better fitness.

The Four Best Practices

Quality Over Quantity

Every rep gets your full attention. Form first, numbers second.

Monitor Your Exertion

Use RPE to gauge intensity, recovery, and when to back off.

Warm Up & Cool Down

5-10 minutes before, 5-10 minutes after. Non-negotiable.

Take Your Time

Progress conservatively. Skill takes time — there's no hurry.

Quality Over Quantity

Each movement has to have your full attention. A program may ask for a certain number of reps; however, the quality of the reps is more important than the quantity.

If the set calls for 10 reps and your form starts to fall apart on rep 6, stop, take a short break, and finish the last 4 reps with precise form.

The way you practice is the way you will perform. Demand excellence of yourself and you will become excellent!

You will have good days and not-so-good days. Sometimes you will feel energetic and other times you will feel tired. The same exact workout, performed on different days, may feel very different and produce a different training effect in your body. There are a lot of factors that influence your workout and how you feel.

Remember the RPE (rating of perceived exertion) discussed in chapter 3? RPE is a subjective way to gauge your intensity. You want to be able to recover between sets, and RPE is a convenient and effective way to monitor your workout intensity and recovery periods and to focus on quality repetitions.

Listen To Your Body

Pay Attention

Listen to the signs and internal dialogue your body has with you. Do not ignore yourself.

Challenge, Don't Overdo

Push yourself, but not too hard, too soon. Use RPE to stay honest.

Rest When Needed

Don't be afraid to take an occasional day off if your body is asking for it.

Sleep Well

Get plenty of sleep between workouts so you can fully recover before the next session.

Don't Skip The Warm-Up And Cool-Down

Warm-Up — 5 to 10 min

Take the time to prepare with a thorough warm-up before vigorous exercise.

Cool-Down — 5 to 10 min

Stretch out, decompress, and reduce the excitation of your nervous system after training.

The cool-down is every bit as important to your long-term progress as the workout itself. The warm-up and cool-down will be explained thoroughly in the next chapter.

Take Your Time

When working out with kettlebells, progress conservatively and do not rush. Refrain from moving too fast and doing too much volume or progressing too quickly in load.

Developing skill and fitness with kettlebells takes time and practice. But there is no hurry — it is worth doing well and staying injury free. You can always do more next time, but if you do too much, too soon, you will most likely pay a big price and may not bounce back so quickly.

If you're unsure, be conservative.

The main causes of injury are selecting a kettlebell that is too heavy, or doing too much volume of training with poor form (emphasizing quantity over quality).

Injury Prevention

There is a saying associated with sport, weightlifting, and gyms that connotes a macho, win-at-all-costs mentality: "No pain, no gain." Many young athletes have grown up hearing this from coaches, friends, and teammates.

But is it really good advice? Is it necessary to achieve pain in order to see benefits or feel accomplished?

"No pain, no gain" is bad advice. Heeding it is a sure recipe for injury, burnout, and poor results in training.

Pushing yourself in training is important to go beyond your current level of strength and fitness — but you have to be smart about how hard and how often to push.

Warning Signs To Heed

Burning

Weakness

Extreme Fatigue (RPE > 8)

If you feel any of these warning signs, the smart thing is to stop, rest, and maybe call it a day. "Live to fight another day" is a better mantra to follow when it comes to long-term success in your kettlebell program.

Don't Strain — Build Patiently

Be careful not to strain. As you become more experienced, you will be able to push your body further in your training, but you have to be patient.

Stop short of straining

Go a bit further each time, but it is not worth it to push too soon.

Leave a little in the tank

Don't empty yourself out every session. Reserve capacity is what lets you come back tomorrow.

Think long term

Your progress should continue over time. Don't try to accomplish all your fitness goals in a day, a week, or a month.

Stay consistent

Rome was not built in a day. Invest in your long-term progress with gradual improvements from week to week and month to month.

Before you know it, you will look back and see all your progress.

Putting It All Together

After assessing your current level of readiness and ensuring that you have a safe training environment to work in, you can develop SMART goals.These goals will have you focused and ready to achieve increased strength and fitness through a well-planned kettlebell training program.

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Assessing Fitness

Four simple self-tests — deadlift, squat, one-arm press, and plank — to gauge whether you have the core stability, shoulder mobility, and base strength to begin kettlebell training safely.

Warming Up and Cooling Down

Why a complete kettlebell training session has three phases — warm-up, main workout, and cool-down — and how each one protects your body and improves performance.