100 Kettlebell Swings A Day Challenge

Nowadays, there are so many workout and diet challenges. Every other day you see people on social media challenging each other to push-ups, handstands, cleanses, and dumping ice on their heads.

Most of the fitness-based challenges are clickbait. I’m not ashamed to say that I am among the guilty parties. Putting the word challenge in the title encourages you to read on to see if you are capable of succeeding where others have failed. In all likelihood, you won’t participate in the challenge and will read this article to determine if it is even worth considering trying.

For me, training is about the results. Therefore, for any challenge, I want to know two things:

#1 Was it worth it?

Dump Water on your head for ALS, sure.

Do 20 push-ups a day for the troops; why not?

Do 100 Kettlebell swings a day for 30 days; hmmm.

#2 What quantitative results did you see?

Did you raise money for charity?

Did you lose weight?

Did you get stronger?

What strategy did you use to get these done?

Unfortunately, this kettlebell swing challenge isn’t for charity. It is just a fun challenge for the sake of a fun challenge. For the rest of our challenge criteria, I will do my best to answer each question in full:

100 Kettlebell swings a day for 30 days, was it worth it?

I’ll be honest, doing 100 Kettlebell swings a day is tedious. It is pretty much the same thing day in and day out. I would vary the weights, the rest intervals, the number of hands I used, but at the end of the day, no matter what, I had done 100 Kettlebell swings.

OK, almost every day. On day 12 of the challenge, I was swamped and forgot about the challenge. It happens. So this 30-day challenge took me 31 days, but I got it done nonetheless. Sometimes shit happens.

In addition, training for power with a kettlebell swing every single day is tiring. You get sore, and you can’t safely swing heavy kettlebells every single day. So on some days when I was feeling exceptionally rundown, I would do swings with a much lighter bell. I started the challenge with a 20 kg Kettlebell but ended up doing most of the swings with the 24 kg kettlebell.

On day 23, I was pretty sore. I had been pushing to do some of the 100 swings with the 28 kg bell the day before, and all those swings caught up with me. So for day 23, I did 100 single-arm swings with an 8 kg bell. It only took about 3 minutes, but I did my 100 swings. Still counts.

This challenge was tough, and by the end, I was glad it was over but based on the results, I’ll let you decide if you think it was worth it.

Did you lose weight doing 100 Kettlebell swings a day for 30 days?

I started on May 1st at 164.6. I ended the challenge at 162.8 - throughout the challenge, I did not track or change my food intake. However, my girlfriend was cooking a lot of vegetables towards the end of the month, which could have contributed to the weight loss.

If your goal is weight loss, this challenge is probably not the best one for you. I only lost a little under 2 lbs. However, changing your habits to healthy eating generally causes about a pound a week of weight loss.

I would have lost a lot more if I wasn’t attempting to create the perfect high-altitude German Pancake. I’m on version 6.0, and I think I’m pretty close.

In addition, kettlebell swings don't incentivize weight loss even though they burn lots of calories! Exercises like pull-ups and push-ups get easier as you lose weight, while kettlebell swings get harder.

A short physics tangent - Remember, kettlebell swings are a power movement.

Power = Work/Time

Work = Force*Displacement

Force = MASS*Acceleration

In other words, the heavier you are, the more power you can generate, assuming you can move at the same speed.

If your goal is weight loss, a better challenge would be to eat 50% vegetables.

Did 100 Kettlebell swings a day for 30 days make you stronger?

Undoubtedly, I started the challenge swinging the 20 kg kettlebell, and now I can easily do the same pace with 28 kg. I don’t own a kettlebell heavier than 28 kg, so I may have artificially capped my gains but not by much as I was always challenging myself. In addition to getting stronger, my Kettlebell swings also got more efficient.

As the month progressed, every swing got easier. My form was improving, and so was my timing. Once you’ve learned the proper form for a kettlebell swing, timing is everything. Good timing on a kettlebell swing is the difference between one hundred swings feeling easy and a hundred swings feeling difficult.

Also, the power from my lower body greatly improved. This challenge would be great for someone looking to improve their vertical or long jump. Someone who wants to increase their drive in golf, and an excellent supplement for someone looking to increase their run speed.

While I did gain strength over this month, I wouldn’t say this challenge would be the most efficient challenge for strength gains. While my glutes, abs, and hamstrings got stronger, the challenge wasn’t very challenging for the rest of my body.

If your goal is to gain strength, a better challenge would be to pick four exercises to lift heavy with:

A pushing exercise for your lower body (ex. Squat, lunge)

A pushing exercise for your upper (Bench press, shoulder press)

A pulling exercise for your upper body (Row, pull-up)

A pulling exercise for your lower body (Deadlift, single leg RDL)

Perform one exercise a day and do five sets of ten. Then, each week, try to increase the weight on at least the last two sets. For Deadlifts, a lower rep count would likely be better (5x5, for example).

What strategy did you use to complete 100 kettlebell swings a day?

Most days, I would do ten kettlebell swings EMOM (Every minute on the minute).

For 10 minutes, most of the time, I’d finish at around 9:20. A relatively short workout in the world of strength training. And with a 5-10 minute warm-up consisting of banded squats, banded shuffles, and side lunges.

100 Kettlebell swings are something anybody can fit into their busy schedule. However, it is not an exercise that your average person can perform perfectly. If you’ve never done a kettlebell swing before, I’d strongly recommend seeking a professional to help you with the form before attempting this challenge (I’d be happy to help).

Some days I favored one arm swings and would use a lower weight, but most days, it was that same EMOM swing workout. I would often add 50 push-ups or 30 pull-ups to the end of the workout to not neglect the top half of my body, but I just swung the bell a lot of days.

Summary:

I know I said earlier I’d let you draw your own conclusion as to whether or not this challenge was worth it, but I lied. It was definitely worth it (otherwise, I just wasted a month).

All in all, I lost two pounds, started easily swinging 20 lbs more than before, and have become more powerful than you can ever imagine(Count Dooku voice).

If you give this challenge a try, let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear about your experience.