Kettlebell Pentathlon – first time through!

Today I tried the new Kettlebell Pentathlon from Valery Fedorenko and the WKC.

It’s a simple enough system of exercises done to a specified timing and scored according to your number of reps completed and the weight of kettlebell used.

You can see the video of VF describe the pentathlon here:

The five exercises are performed as follows:

1) 6 minutes of Kettlebell Cleans, to a maximum rep count of 120

5 minutes of rest

2) 6 Minutes of Longcycle Presses, to a maximum  rep count of 60

5 minutes of rest

3) 6 minutes of Kettlebell Jerks, to a maximum rep count of 120

5 minutes of rest

4) 6 minutes of Kettlebell Half-Snatches, to a maximum rep count of 108

5 minutes of rest

5) 6 minutes of Kettlebell Push Presses, to a maximum rep count of 120

You may switch hands as many times as you like and all exercises are carried out with a single kettlebell. You may use different weights of kettlebells for each exercise; each weight of kettlebell has a different “multiplier” for your overall score, so it’s a matter of balancing between using a heavier bell to maximise your score, or maximising your reps with a lighter bell, but with the maximum rep counts in place for each exercise you can only score up to a maximum  level with a particular weight kettlebell. That is, to get really high scores you must use heavier kettlebells as you cannot increase your rep count beyond the limits set by the WKC.

Your total score is given by multiplying your kettlebell weight multiplication factor for the kettlebell used by the number of reps achieved for the exercise and then summing these totals over all five exercises. Multiplication factors are shown below:

12kg=x1.5

16kg=x2.0

20kg=x2.5

24kg=x3.0 etc etc etc for the higher weights.

This means that if you use the 16kg kettlebell for every exercise, as I did,  and max out the reps for every exercise, which I didn’t, your maximum score is 1056. WKC have a general scoring table which is as follows: (also shown here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150286705988123 )

Men’s Standards

• Less < 720 : Low

• 721 – 900 : Average

• 901 – 1080 : Good

• 1081 – 1260 : High

• 1261 – 1440 : Extreme

• More > 1441 : Superhuman

You’ll note that the best you can do with a 16kg is “Good”.

I set my Ultratimer app on my ubiquitous iPhone to handle the 6/5 minute periods and set off with my trusty 16kg kettlebell in hand. I had no problems at all achieving 120 cleans with 20s to spare for the first exercise. Similarly, no issues achieving 60 reps of longcycle press, indeed with 30s to spare. This exercise is performed strict, no bend to the knee when pressing, or rotation to the torso (at least I didn’t!). On the third exercise I maxed out again at 120 reps for the Jerk, but this time with only 3s to spare. The fourth exercise was my least favourite, the half-snatch. It’s not an exercise I ever really do an my muscle memory tried to take over a number of times to convince me to either do a press on the way up (because I had racked on the way down), or a full drop from the locked top position because I had snatched it all the way as normal. It was coming together by the end of the exercise and I notched up 96 reps out of a possible allowed maximum of 108. Finally, the fifth exercise was the Push Press, where the key is that the knees may be bent to start the kettlebell moving into the press, but the heels must stay rooted to the floor. I was heaving a bit by the end of this and recorded 106 reps out of the maximum of 120.

As I said, I used the 16kg kettlebell throughout, giving me a multiplication factor of 2.0x my number of reps (which was 502), giving a score of 1004, firmly in th  “Good” rating above  What I like about this is that I know that IO cannot achieve a “High” rating by simply maxing out my reps, that’ll only get me so far, I HAVE to do at least some of the exercises with a 20kg, or higher, kettlebell to achieve a score high enough. Good incentive to progress, I think! Clearly, with the first two, maybe even three, exercises there’s room for me to up the weight and still max the reps, particularly the cleans, so that, along with trying to max out my reps for the half-snatch and Push Press exercises will be my “way forward”. With the increased multiplication factor of a 20kg kettlebell I need only achieve 96 out of the maximum 120 reps to equal the score of 120 reps with the 16kg. (or 48 reps instead of 60 for the Longcycle press).

Overall I really enjoyed the workout, though I found the 5 minute rests a bit long for the first couple of  exercises, though I was then glad of them for the later ones. Think that just means I need to go heavier.

Finally, I posted my score on Facebook and tagged Valery Fedorenko on the status update. I was pleased to see this soon after, all very encouraging and inspiring  

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Tags: clean, fitness, girevoy, girevoy sport, jerk, kettlebell, lockout, longcycle, press, rack, snatch, strength, swing, training, workout