So my kettlebell from
Agatsu Canada arrived on Fri but I didn't get a change to do a real workout until yesterday. I spent $114CAD for a 16kg bell, an instructional DVD and it also came with an e-book that demonstrated a bunch of different excercises. Seemed like a decent deal and that price included courier service. Took 3 days from ordering to door-step (DVD hasn't arrived yet though) .
The kettlebell seems to be made as well as a hunk of iron can be, handle is smooth, and the finish is really nice.
Initial impressions:
1) holy [censored] I'm weak. I thought 32lbs was going to be to light, but I would say that it is actually the perfect wait for me to start out on. Any lighter and I wouldn't really feel like I was working, and with the next size up my form would really suffer.
2) The only time I ever lifted before was in HS gym class and I hated it. After using this kettlebell for one day I know that I will have no problem keeping this up 3-4 times a week.
3) My form probably sucks pretty bad. I watched a couple of videos on proper squat technique and I think I am squatting and swinging okay. I had my gf watch my squats/swings to make sure I was mainting some resemblance to proper form for those.
The things that I feel like I probably could be doing better is the, cleans and presses. The kettlebell is banging pretty hard into my forearm on cleans, I have tried adding a punching motion at the end of the clean to help, but I must be doing something wrong here.
On 1 handed presses, I don't really know what the proper path of motion should be. Like should the weight be starting from the 'clean' position every time, should my arm be rotating at all as I extend it etc etc. Does Enter The Kettlebell cover proper form?
4) not kettlebell related really, but I have no idea about how to best go about achieving my goals of getting stronger. What I did was:
10 two handed swings,
7 one handed presses on each hand (only cleaned the kb on the first one th)
10 goblet squats
30 around the body passes in each direction.
I repeated this 4 times and I don't feel to sore today, my legs definitley feel like they were worked yesterday but other than that not too bad, no lower back pain etc. I just guessed about how many reps to do for each excercise, cuz I really have no idea what I should be doing.
Does this look like an okay program to start out with if I do it every other day, with an hour of cycling on most other days? My goals are just to get stronger, particularly in my core since I sit at a computer all day/night.
5) Just in general, the workout was easy to get into and took a half hour or less. I don't thing I'll have trouble getting motivated to do it (for the first few weeks anyways) and I can tell already it's going to make a big difference (duh).
All in all I'm really happy I decided to try them out and am looking forward to improving my form and technique.