How did it get to almost the end of July without me posting more than a couple of posts! Very bad me! This will improve I promise 🙂 This post is a bit of a catch up…

I remember all that time ago in the beginning of the world…no hang on, the beginning of July I asked you to challenge me to some new things…well no-one actually came up with any challenges for me (except Rachel who suggested Tough Mudder…that one was a no!) so I have come up with some myself…

Challenge the first:

10000 kettlebell swings 

in a month…

which is a lot!

The original challenge is here on the TNation website which claims to be hardcore…it probably is I have not been there long enough to properly judge. However if this challenge is anything to go by it might be!

Basically it is a 4 week challenge, where you work out 5 days a week and on every one of those day you do 500 kettlebell swings. You split them into 5 rounds of 4 sets of swings. (10 swings, 15 swings, 25 swings then 50 swings, repeat 5 times).

At first glance, this doesn’t look *that* hard…until you actually try to do 500 kettlebell swings… I had a dry run to see how doable this challenge would be, I did one round of 100 within a different kettlebell workout to see what it was like. It was not an easy thing!!

However, that is the point of a challenge, it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy!

The other thing you do with this is pick one compound movement to do in between kettlebell sets. You get to choose from Squats, Dips, OH presses and chin ups. I may add to these or modify as I can’t actually do a chin up just yet…

I will start this on 1st August…which is this Friday but why not start on  a Friday!! 🙂

Challenge the second

21 Day fix

This is another of the beachbody programs like Insanity and Insanity Max 30, but it comes with little boxes with which to measure your food portions. You get one for each of the different food groups and get different amounts of each box depending on your calorie requirement. It also comes with a DVD exercise program which looks pretty good and consists of mainly half hour workouts.

This is a little gimmicky / short term for the diet I’ll admit, but it is based around healthy clean eating and I am not looking at it as a long term solution, rather a short term visual reminder of what a healthy portion should look like! It is very easy to slip back into bad habits and even clean healthy food with monster portions is going to provide you with too high a calorie intake…

I don’t have  start date for the full program for this yet, I have started using the little boxes already mind you (well about 50% of the time) and it is already serving as a portion control measure!

I will let you know when I start properly!

and lastly…

Battle Ropes!!

This isn’t a challenge as such…more a new toy!!

I have Battle ropes (or rope actually which you loop round a post and use as two)!

It is a 15m long 15kg rope which you use doubled over and basically wave each end up and down or wiggle or whirl around as fast as possible! It is awesome for cardio and upper body conditioning and increased strength and endurance…

These are by no means the only challenges I will set myself, they are just the only ones I have come up with just yet. I am still considering capeoira and adult ballet lessons and I am also looking into strongman (woman) training…but I have nothing certain worked out to do with these yet…

I’ll keep you posted, and if you think of anything, I am still open to challenges from the floor (as it were…)