A (Kettlebell) Swing Every Hour

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I’m a big fan of a guy called Beau Miles on YouTube. He’s just a pure character and one of his favourite things to do is to push himself to do more in every day. Basically, an every day adventurer. One of his most popular videos is a 17 minute visual feast where every hour he runs a mile around his block, 24 miles in total, essentially a marathon.

It’s a great video and it got me thinking about doing something similar. I’ve also recently read Arnold Bennett’s short work “How to Live on 24 Hours a Day” which is a great read for getting you thinking about things.

So I did 60 kettlebell swings every hour for 14 hours straight, starting at 8am and finishing at 9pm for a total of 840 swings with a 24kg kettlebell. I performed it in 3 sets of 20 using an EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) format for a total of 42 minutes of kettlebell swings across the day.

Why? Why not.

Key learnings:

  1. You’re going to get sweaty, it’s just enough work to get some heat going in the body
  2. I started to look forward to it in the middle sessions
  3. It was a nice break from office work for the day (I was working from home due to COVID)
  4. It really challenges your assumptions about what you can do in an hour, because you’re definitely going to be having a break it creates a natural “rhythm” to the day. I found the rhythm quite enjoyable and I kind of think as a consequence I was able to do more.
  5. I definitely felt more focused throughout the day and had more mental clarity, I did fatigue at the end of the data
  6. The worst 3 minute sessions was immediately after food, I could either have eaten more frequent smaller meals or taken a longer break here
  7. My traps are a bit sore now
  8. Plan out the space between the hours, use the deadline as an opportunity for trying to finish something within the allocated one hour
  9. The phone is a killer, there were a couple hours that went by where I literally spent them kind of mindlessly scrolling.

Overall, a fun experience, not something that I would want to do every day but something that’s fun as a bit of a “palate” cleanser. I would be interested in doing more challenge style of activity to assess what my body is capable of. I’ve been heavily focused on short duration “power” and strength activities versus endurance activities for a long time. Might be worthwhile to swing the pendulum the other way for a bit.