Meet Brutus

First we begin our workout with our usual warmups. We'll cover the topic of pre-workout warmups in greater detail in the future. Then we begin our workout with our favorite complex, the Balding Bear. This complex was created by a fellow comrade with a rather bare scalp, hence the name. Despite it's silly sounding name, this complex is hard, and effective. It will get your heart rate up, it will make you breathe hard, and it will get those muscles moving and ready for the main workout of the day. Note that with a 50lb kettlebell (KB)  for a beginning comrade man, or even an intermediate one, this may be quite a workout in and of itself. Perhaps comrades feeling a bit intimidated by the weight should perform this complex with a 35lb KB to build their strength first. For the lady comradettes, begin with 20lb KB or even lighter depending on your level of conditioning. Always remember to perfect the movements with lighter weight before progressing to heavier ones. Moving up too fast in weight is a recipe for injuries, and we don't want that do we?

Balding Bear

5 Rounds with a 30 second-1 minute rest between rounds.
Beginners and Women (20-35lb KB), Intermediate-Experienced Men (50lb KB), Advanced (70lb KB)

5 2 Hand KB Swings
5 R Hand KB Swings
5 L Hand KB Swings
5 L C&P
5 R C&P
5 R Hand KB Swings
5 L Hand KB Swings
5 2 Hand KB Swings

Some of you may have noticed the similarity of this complex the the Pyramid style exercise structure common in the fitness world. This is intentional. Pyramids are a great way to structure a workout, and they are downright hard when done right. So do your swings hard-style, and don't you dare put that kettlebell down till the complex is over. Trust me, you can do it!

Brutus

5 Rounds for time

10 R KB Snatches (35lb KB)
10 L KB Snatches (35lb KB)
5 Bar Dips
10 Pullups (KPU)
5 KB Clean-Squat-Press (Double 50lb KB)

  This is Brutus. We have contructed this workout as a strength building workout for sure. But one thing it also does is build strength endurance, since there is little to no break between movements. We created a similar workout recently, but we found that that workout wasn't quite challenging enough. So Brutus was born. The initail workout only had 5 kipping pullups (KPU) and regular Clean and Presses (C&P) minus the squat that was added to that movement in Brutus. Also the bar dips were added for a little extra variety of movement.

  Alot of the reasoning behind the addition of the bar dips, and the increase in number of pullups was to assist a Comrade in building his strength directly related to the Muscle-Up (MU). He is very close to achieving his first muscle-up and I thought that adding these movements would be just what he needed to get that first muscle-up. One of the interesting points of the bar dips is that unlike most folks, who do bar dips on parallel bars, we do them on a straight pullup bar. We use a bar that is low enough to the ground that most Comrades can jump up into a muscle-up position and begin their dips. This forces them to go through almost exactly the same movement pattern as a real muscle up, it just allows them to use their legs to generate the upward movement normally derived from the kipping motion. This builds that difficult to work transitional strength between a pullup and a dip that is absolutely pivotal to a muscle-up.