About a year ago, YHC successfully evaded a request from Tesh to Q at the Hive, citing lack of experience at a kettlebell AO – and a lack of a kettlebell – as sufficient reason to decline. He never asked again. Band Camp comes along and won’t take “no” for an answer, providing sufficient responses to all my excuses. So, here we are. Jedi’s first post at a kettlebell AO ever, and he’s given Q responsibilities. This’ll be interesting…

0514:45 rolls around and just as I’m about to give the disclaimer, 38 Special rolls in without any sign of urgency, so we patiently waited for him to gracefully park the car and meander to the group. A disclaimer was given with a half-hearted apology that I truly have no idea what I’m doing, and off we went on a mosey around the parking lot. Threw in some knees-to-chest, heels-to-butt, and toy soldiers to get some mobility in before circling back up where we started.

COP

• 10 Windmills IC
• 20 Moroccan Night Clubs IC
• 12 Hillbilly Squat Walkers IC
• 10 Merkins IC
• Downward Dog with cross-body reach, through to honeymooner, then recover

Slowly walk a few feet over with the bells to line up with the cones that I had (apparently mysteriously) laid out across the parking lot. Basically, every row of parking spots had a cone, making for 6 cones (no cones were placed in the lines where we parked, since I didn’t know where people park at the Hive). Anyway, lunge walk with bell held inverted goblet style, twisting and lowering the bell to both sides before standing up and taking the next step. This was to be our mode of transportation forward. When we got to a cone, lose the bell, run back to the curb at the edge of the parking lot by the school, then back to the cone where we would all do the exercise together-ish. Then lunge walk to the next cone (as before), run to the curb and back (as before), exercise, etc.

Exercises on cones:

• 20 Renegade Rows per arm (somehow this was a new exercise to the PAX; maybe they know it by a different name?)
• 50 Toe touches (on your back, legs straight up, hold bell “bottoms up” style and touch toes)
• 20 Bottoms Up Arnold Presses per arm (hold handle with the bell sticking up rather than resting on forearm, hand facing in at shoulder level then forward at the top of the press)
• 20 Single Leg Deadlifts per leg (holding bell in same side arm as leg that goes up behind)
• 50 Overhead V-Ups (um…hold the bell overhead and do a V-up)
• 30 Crush Chest Presses (kneeling, squeeze bell between open hands rather than holding it with the handle or even using your fingers, then press straight out in front and bring back to chest)

That was fun. We still had maybe 6-7 minutes left, so we did a little AMRAP Gorilla Complex until time was up.

One arm at a time, do:

• 8 bicep curls
• 8 upright rows
• 8 strict presses (preferably bottoms up)
• 8 triceps extensions
• Lose the bell and do 8 normal merkins
• Switch arms and do it again

That brought us to 0559, so we grabbed the bells and returned to COT to wrap up at 0600.

Fair amount of mumblechatter, lots of quiet. Slow and steady, but we still pulled in a mile of running. For those wondering, holding the bell “bottoms up” style engages more stabilizer muscles through your forearm and makes you focus on good form. Most of us realized a significant difference between our two arms when holding the bell differently, as our non-dominant arm usually lacks the stability of the dominant one.

So, that happened. I can now say I’ve done a kettlebell workout. See you again in two years.

Jedi.