You don’t have to do double day training to notice the cross-over effect between ballistic kettlebell training and your sprint sessions, but yesterday I went ahead and documented just how kettlebell swing sessions and sprint sessions compare to each other.
The results? Quite interesting.
What you are looking at are photos from my sprint session and strength training kettlebell swing session. The Sprint session is listed above the strength session. You will see the documented spikes and drops show full exertion on exercise followed by a rest period. Though the heart rates are slightly different in terms of the rate with how quickly my heart rate dropped during sprints, the overall pattern proves to be the similar throughout both the routines. Interesting. Very much so. I should also note that my heart rate came down much fasted after sprinting due to work a lot of deep diaphragmatic breathing between sets (and I have my suspicions as to why that occurred. KEEP READING)
The Return of VO2 Max Training
The Vo2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen you can use. It is the threshold for when exercise intensity increases but oxygen consumption does not. It may be the single most important factor in determining where an athletes athletic performance plateaus when the intensity of an exercises increases significantly (God! I sound so scientific today).
The take-away points here are that we want to be able to consume as much oxygen as we can handle to keep up with the depends of intense exercise. If we are not breathing correctly our oxygen levels will not satisfy the demands of our training. In the kettlebell world, we practice a technique called “power breathing” to enhance and increase the amount of oxygen we get when performing our lifts. If you’re doing high volume kettlebell swings, you are going to want to own this technique so you don’t fatigue too quickly. Oxygen is our friend, and without it well. .. we wont’ be swinging or living now will we 😉
Here’s the power breathing technique from on of my previous videos.
Endurance Training- How to increase your VO2 Max with kettlebells
Circuit training is normally my go to these days with all the more endurance like things I am getting involved in. You can train a base level of endurance week by week in as little as 10 minutes a day, and I’m going to show you just how to do that here below.
In order to increase your overall work capacity and increase how well you breathe under the pressure of higher volume of swings, you’re going to tweak your circuits week by week. I’m going to show you two separate training regimes for two handed swings and one arm swing.
Two Handed Swing Circuit Progressions
Week 1: 30/30 for 10 minute
Week 2: 35/25 for 10 minutes
Week 3: 35/25 for 10 minutes
Week 4: 40/20 for ten minutes
One Arm Swing Circuit Progressions
Week 1: 30/30 for 10 minutes
Week 2: 15/15 for 10 minutes
Week 3: 15/15 for 10 minutes
Week 4: 20/10 for ten minutes
Instructor Note: the split refers to the amount of time you are doing work and the amount of time you take rest. So, if you are swinging a kettlebell consecutively for 30 seconds at a time, you would take 30 seconds of rest during week one and so on.
Please keep in mind, breathing with the power breath help teach your lungs to take in A LOT of oxygen during lifting. Your breathing pattern during sprints and runs should still remain diaphragmatic, but it is generally more in tune with the pace of your run. You won’t be exhaling as forcefully like you are on swings while running, but the swings themselves WILL make it a lot easier for you to breathe since you’re training to take in more oxygen in general. WIN WIN!
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Keep on swinging folks! Life is worth living!
Let nothing stand in your way!
Press on!
