Mixing It Up

I got an email earlier this week from a triathlete who was interested in how I would mix up my bike racing training with my functional strength training.. My response was that it would basically be a mix of cycling, kettlebell work and bodyweight work focused on muscular endurance. Most of my kettlebell work will consist of swings, snatches, long cycle, Turkish Getups, Windmills, Overhead Squats. I put in a killer bodyweight workout on Tuesday (see last blog about murdering stress :).. 

Yesterday I got out for 51 miles and I followed that up with another 29 miles this morning. Then I got a break for a couple hours this afternoon and put myself through an excellent kettlebell workout that consisted of snatches, heavy swings, and heavy TGUs.. Typically, for muscular endurance I would go with lighter weights and longer sets, but my goal is to work up to longer sets with heavier weights. So today was a bit of a compromise.. I started out with 20 rounds of 15:15 of 1 arm snatch with a 24kg kettlebell.. After my long layoff from kb snatches I'm finally back to where I can start pushing the weights up :) Today's snatch workout felt better than it has in almost a year with the 24kg. I was very psyched. I was getting 6 or 7 per round and finished the 10 minute set with 63 snatches on each side. Then I did a 12 x 30:30 round of kettlebell swings with 32kg.. This was pretty tough. It wasn't a maximum effort, but it was definitely a tough effort. I finished up with what was supposed to be a 10 minute set of TGU with a 32kg but I ended up going 11:05 because at the end of 10 minutes I only had 9 on each side and I couldn't very well stop at 9 on each side, could I?

Totals for the day:

29 miles on the bike, about 200 W avg pace with 300-400W efforts on hills, 1082 calories burned

10 minutes of 1 arm snatch with 24kg, 126 total snatches

12 minutes of 32kg swing, ~170 swings total

11:05 minutes of Turkish Getup with 32kg.. 10 on each side for 20 total..

Best,

kevin