Good Morning IKFF,

I have come to you guys for your expertise and insight. I recently purchased, and have completed all of the workouts on, Steve Cotter's Extreme Kettlebell Workout DVD series. Although it was unbelievably challenging, I also found that it was extremely rewarding and now feel like I have a good idea what weight I need to use to complete each workout.

I am not a trainer and do not pretend to have any reasonable experience to "design a program" or comprehensive schedule for using these workouts. I consider myself to be in good/very good physical condition, athletic, and would be working out to increase my overall physical well-being and strength without any need for weight loss.

Any advice, suggestions, or friendly words of encouragement are greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Jesse

Hi Jess,

Thanks for your comments.

I consider training a process. It is important to assess goals/interests regularly.

For a teacher the goal is to educate, for the student goal ought to be to apply. Any program (DVD or otherwise) is going to offer something but not everything.

You can certainly continue to progress with the same Extreme KB Workout circuits, by using progressively heavier KBs and/or faster pace.

However you may wish to change the approach for a while also.

You can never go wrong with emphasizing a program based on the core lifts, if you like circuits you can train in that fashion, however you can also work in sets with rest periods.

I suggest a program that selects snatch& jerk, or long cycle as a core lift and then rounding out with squats, stretching, and some general conditioning (jogging, pull-ups), some extra abs and grip work is always a good idea.

Depending upon your age and health, 3-5 days per week of this sort of training will keep you in excellent condition.

My suggestion is to use this sort of progression:

1. time
2. rate/speed
3. load

First pick a weight you can go with for a unit of time, say 1 min or more. Stick with that for awhile until you can reach some unit of time goal. Many people look at 5 min each for 1 hand or 10 min for double hand lifts, since that is consistent with Girevory Sport, but it can be shorter or longer units also. Once you reach that time goal (eg 10 min), then work on going faster. Maybe you can go 10 min at 12 rpm, now try to go 8 min at 15 rpm, or 6 min at 22 rpm (these are just example). When you can meet your time goal at a fast pace, you have good control of that load. Now move up to a heavier load as you main training weight, and repeat the process.

This is a very simple and well tested method for continuous, consistent progress. It can work with any lifts, but works best with the ballistics like snatch, clean, jerk of single and double varieties.

Let me know how you progress in your training.

-Steve

Wow! Thank you Steve so much, a reply from you with such great information is invaluable... but as embarrassing as it is to say, when re-reading my post I didn't even ask the question I truly meant to have answered. What I intended to ask is this: now that I am proficient enough to do each workout in the Extreme DVD's, in what order and how often should I do the workouts to maximize their potential but not over-train over a set period of time (week or whatever number of days is most beneficial). So, what I really wanted was a recommendation as to how I should arrange my training using your great product.

Thanks again for your time!
Jesse