14 Months of Kettlebells: Did I Keep My Barbell Strength?

By MAJ Carl Amolat, USAR

BLUF: For fourteen months (Mid-September 2023 thru Early November 2024) I trained near exclusively with kettlebells ranging from 16KG to 32KG and a pull-up bar for strength. When I took the Relative Strength Assessment on 10 November 2024 I maintained a ‘Good’ rating for a Mountain Athlete despite some strength losses.

Background: As stated in previous writings I am a middle aged male Army Reserve staff officer who drives a desk and occasionally a Non-Tactical Vehicle (NTV). In my civilian life I study Information Technology at Florida State College of Jacksonville, with a concentration on databases. In my off-duty hours, I enjoy training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai and took up Judo at the age of 40. I’ve been an obligate fitness enthusiast due to military service, mostly using barbell-based strength programs such as MTI’s Big 24 and Wendler 5/3/1.

Logistics Drive Programming: Kettlebells have been part of my strength training arsenal since 2006 when I discovered the Hardstyle Kettlebell training popularized by Pavel Tsatsouline. However, the barbell dominated my programming throughout the 2010s with kettlebells as a secondary option. Prior to Mid-September 2023 I had to rely on mostly kettlebell-based programming three times:

• For brief 2-week stints each month from 2018-2019 at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA as an Observer/Coach Trainer (OC/T). Back then I’d spend 2-3 days in the field with a one-day refit. Using the array of kettlebells (16KG, 24KG, and 32KG) on my back porch versus driving to the gym saved time and energy for me.
• During the 2020 Pandemic. When gyms closed their doors in Hawaii for several months, I was left reliant on the same kettlebells in my apartment, training on my lanai (back patio).
• Summer 2022. From July-mid September 2022 I mostly used kettlebells due to the time to get to the gym being scarce between job hunting and then preparation for my first annual training with the Army Reserve.

Not one of those three periods was longer than three months.

When I returned home from deployment in 2023, I returned to a similar set of circumstances to Summer 2022. Time to train with the barbell was on the scarcer side of the fence. So, for my ‘DD-214 Summer Vacation’ I returned to my ‘old reliables’, an array of kettlebells ranging in size from 16KG to 32KG.

Returning to the AK-47 of Exercise Equipment: An article on the StrongFirst blog, The AK-47 of Exercise Equipment, references the ages old argument of the AK-47 versus the M-16 where barbells are compared to the latter rifle and the kettlebell to the former. One passage from the article states, “While the AK-47 was initially dismissed because it didn’t do some things as well as other weapons, some of its perceived flaws were actually virtues in the right circumstances (Emphasis Mine). Similarly, you can find people bashing the kettlebell for not being a barbell but many of the features that seem like disadvantages to some actually lend themselves to very useful applications that the kettlebell is better suited for.”

For me the ‘right circumstances’ were the logistics after my return home favoring the kettlebell over the barbell. I had the following goals following mobilization:

• Build a good strength and conditioning base for Brazilian Jiujitsu and Muay Thai/Mixed Martial Arts
• Maintain a good base of strength built at Camp Arifjan during my mobilization.
• Build and improve my aerobic base.
• Have time for a life.

Prior knowledge of a good array of kettlebell programs, mostly written by the folks at StrongFirst, guided my hand. Revisiting the previously mentioned article and hearing reports of a ‘What the Hell’ effect when it comes to kettlebells and their benefits, I took a leap of faith.

Subsequently I would spend fourteen months focused on bodyweight and kettlebell training with mostly aerobic roadwork from running with my local run club in Jacksonville Beach.

The kettlebell exercises I used are listed in order of importance:

• Goblet Squat
• Swing
• Getup
• Snatch
• Clean
• Press
• Note: One could easily focus on the first three exercises in the list and attain some great results. The book Kettlebell Simple and Sinister by Pavel Tsatsouline outlines how to do this quite well.

Over the fourteen months between mid-September 2023 and early-November 2024 I used the following programming.

• Mid-September 2023 thru End of 2023: For the rest of 2023 I used a kettlebell snatch interval program outlined in Pavel Tsatsouline’s The Quick and the Dead as well as one of the variations on a kettlebell clean, military press, and single kettlebell front squat program detailed in Brett Jones’ Iron Cardio. Both slow lifts (press and front squat) and quick lifts (kettlebell clean and snatch) covered a broad spectrum movements in four exercises.
  • Within 24 hours of landing back home in Jacksonville I performed a kettlebell snatch test as outlined in The Quick and the Dead and proceeded from there.
  • As far as the cleans, presses and front squats from Iron Cardio went I took a freer style of loading by a roll of two dice. The first die would be how much time would be spent lifting kettlebells (at the time 10-20 minutes) and the second die would determine loadings from a 16KG, 20KG, 24KG, 28KG and 32KG. A simple AMRAP is how that time interval was programmed.
    • A typical day would look like this:
      • Kettlebell Snatches (between 40-100)
      • 10-20 minutes of kettlebell clean/press/squat and pullups
    • A typical week featured 2-3 such strength sessions as above and 2-3x runs with my local running club. This was layered atop 3-4 sessions of MMA, Judo/Jiujitsu, or Muay Thai a week.
  • Note: Knowing the next summer would lead to working in a more austere environment I also practiced advanced calisthenics to add more tools to the toolbox. I would achieve my first one arm pushup in early November 2023.
• 01 January 2024 thru 01 June 2024: In late 2023 I bought another of Pavel Tsatsouline’s latest books, Kettlebell AXE, a work capacity focused program built around kettlebell swing intervals. I put it into practice on the first day of 2024.
  • I replaced the kettlebell snatch intervals with hand-to-hand kettlebell swing intervals as outlined in the book, with the same frequency as previously stated. I didn’t change my other lifts.
    • A typical day looked like this:
      • 10-20(+) minutes of Every Minute on the Minute hand-to-hand swings (between 2-6 per interval as outlined in Kettlebell AXE).
      • 10-20 minutes of kettlebell clean/press/squat and pullups – maintained from previous era.
  • A highlight of this era was swinging a 24KG kettlebell for 240 to standard reps in sets of six over forty minutes. I advanced to a 28KG kettlebell for loading by the end of this timeframe.
  • My martial arts and endurance training remained more or less the same frequency. As Annual Training was coming up, however, I put more emphasis on the perishable skillsets in martial arts throughout the month of May.
• 01 June 2024 thru 15 June 2024: During Annual Training at Fort Hunter-Liggett, CA I couldn’t spare a lot of time towards fitness. Why? Busy 12-hour shifts in the command post in a field environment occupied a lot of my time. Keeping both sleep hygiene and physical fitness in mind, I knew very abbreviated workouts were the order of the day.
  • After duty shifts I used short burpee workouts, one arm pushups, and kickstand squats to maintain some semblance of physical fitness.
    • Training was structured in a simple A/B split. And a typical structure was Session A one day, Session B the next, rest on the third day. Rinse and repeat.
      • Session A was 10-20 minutes (or in a pinch 10x perfect singles) of practicing one arm pushups and kickstand squats.
      • Session B was 10-20 minutes of burpee intervals, modeled after another article I found on StrongFirst.com (How to Train Against a Virus).
  • During some downtime, I re-read Kettlebell AXE and Quick and the Dead on Kindle and highlighted a passage about alternating the two programs for 6-12 weeks. On the flight across the country back to Florida I brainstormed how I’d put it all in practice.
    • I elected to use the pushups and swings based program from The Quick and the Dead for this.
    • Initial brainstorming involved retaining Iron Cardio for the slow lifts.
    • Retaining my three run club meetups a week was a running (pun intended) thread for programming.
• 16 June 2024 thru 10 November 2024: After I returned from Fort Hunter-Liggett I put it all into practice. I started with an assessment day for both kettlebell swings and pushups and went from there.
  • The first cycle began with my trusty 24KG kettlebell for The Quick and the Dead. This entailed between 40-100 pushups and swings/session.
  • After the first six-week cycle, I went into another cycle of Kettlebell AXE, mixing both 24KG and 28KG swings into the mix.
  • I advanced into using a 28KG kettlebell for the swings on my second six-week cycle of Quick and the Dead.
  • I started to find that Iron Cardio post the other two programs proved to grind me down a bit for recovery, so I would sometimes substitute a short kettlebell military press session in lieu of it some days.
    • A ‘short session’ looked something like this:
      • Kettlebell military presses
        • 1x 3-5/arm at 24KG or 28KG
      • 3×1/arm at 32 KG.
    • Short sessions proved decent intensity but not a lot of volume, helping me to recover better.
  • Alternating six-week cycles of Kettlebell AXE and Quick and the Dead proved to be versatile in addressing work capacity needs. I found I recovered quicker between sparring rounds on the mats during that period.

In the spring of 2024, I received orders to mobilize again for another trip to ‘The Sandbox’. Knowing I’d have easier access to barbells and available kettlebells being a big unknown I planned out a barbell-based cycle built around the Efficient Strength Program. To target work capacity, I retained the six-week cycles of the Quick and the Dead and Kettlebell AXE from June-November 2024.

To establish a baseline, I administered a Relative Strength Assessment on 10 November 2024.

A Tale of Two Relative Strength Assessments (20 July 2023 and 10 November 2024):

Assessment Results
Front Squat	235 lbs	235 lbs	0 lbs	0% Change
Pullups	8	9	+1	11.1% Gain
Bench Press	235 lbs	225 lbs	-10 lbs	-4.26% Loss
Deadlift	385 lbs	315 lbs	-70 lbs	-18.2% Loss
Bodyweight:	185 lbs	188 lbs	+3 lbs	1.6% Gain
Score:	5.42	5.0	-0.42	-7.75% Loss
Date:	20 July 2023	10 November 2024	16 Months

Conclusions and Way Ahead:

• The delta between my two scores still put me in a ‘Good’ rating for a Mountain Athlete. As a middle-aged desk jockey, that’s my absolute minimum standard.
• The biggest surprise was no change at all on the front squat. I had anticipated at least a ten-pound loss. I attribute the high volume of squats from Iron Cardio as a factor here.
• I was a little disappointed on my results for pullups, it was still an improvement over the previous year, but the added bodyweight is a likely limiting factor for performance.
• Bench press losses were under half of what I expected. The kettlebell military presses and one arm pushups were quite helpful in preserving performance.
• My deadlift loss was about what I expected (a 15%-20% loss). However, I note that kettlebell swings of a decent volume (100 or so per session) – especially when exceeding 24KG loads – preserve about 80% of deadlift performance. This is comparable to previous data from February thru April 2023. This is useful for the Army Combat Fitness Test, where a 3RM deadlift is the first event.
• Relative Strength Assessments conducted on a regular basis (perhaps semi-annually or quarterly) provide a good azimuth check for the strength side of programming.
• Future titrations on kettlebell programming likely will include routinely swinging kettlebells exceeding 32KG at least some of the time and increasing my pressing volume.
• A Good-to-Excellent on the Mountain Professional scale is an even better standard to strive for and maintain.

Referring to the AK-47 of Exercise Equipment article the kettlebell does an excellent job as a strength training tool. It may not enable me to bench 500 pounds, but it certainly works well enough as seen by the ‘Good’ rating on the Relative Strength Assessment. The added durability for both rucking and combatives, various conditioning improvements, and quicker recovery after long duration rucking efforts (7-12 miles) are also nothing to sneeze at.

Recommended Reading:

• Kettlebell Simple and Sinister by Pavel Tsatsouline
• The Quick and the Dead by Pavel Tsatsouline
• Kettlebell AXE by Pavel Tsatsouline
• Iron Cardio by Brett Jones

The views represented in this article are the author’s alone and do not represent the US Army Reserve, US Army or Department of Defense