There’s an obsession with superlatives in the fitness world right now. People won’t touch a workout unless it’s “optimal”, and promises a ridiculous return on investment, but few protocols actually live up to their exaggerated claims. Whereas this three-move kettlebell workout actually does, and it’s a lot of fun, as I found out recently.
It’s called “the humane burpee”; a blend of kettlebell swings, goblet squats and press-ups cooked up by legendary strength coach Dan John.
“The humane burpee is the best single-kettlebell workout,” he tells me. “Every quality you want to chase is going to be in there somehow. You get sweaty, you get stronger, and you’re going to become a little bit more mobile too.”
With a highlight reel this appealing, and with me being a fitness writer, I had to give it a go. So I lugged a 24kg kettlebell to my local park and got to work.
How to do the best kettlebell workout
Complete 10 rounds of the circuit below (each round, perform one less goblet squat and press-up):
The faster you can complete the workout with good technique, the better. If you’re a beginner, you can start with five goblet squats and five press-ups for a shorter workout. You can also change the weight of the kettlebell to adjust the difficulty of the session, although John says a 20kg or 10kg kettlebell will “adequately challenge” most men and women respectively.
The workout: How I got on
It was a grey day when I came to tackle this workout. A potent cocktail of work and social commitments left no time for a trip to the gym, but I knew I’d feel far better for getting out the house and moving my body, so I resolved to do something during my lunch break.
I wanted a workout that would spike my heart rate and recruit my entire body in lightning-quick time, all with minimal equipment. The humane burpee fit the bill nicely, so I dragged my 24kg ‘bell to a nearby park and got started.
John’s advice was to aim for “quality completion” – cruising through the movements smoothly, and only resting briefly during the transition between the goblet squats and press-ups. To reap the full benefits of the session, it’s important to maintain sound technique while pushing the pace to a point where you’re challenging yourself, he says.
“If it takes you 25 minutes to do it, you’re probably not in very good shape,” says John. “If it takes you a minute, you didn’t do it right and your reps were horrid.”
I aimed for somewhere between the two, and the first round of 15 kettlebell swings, 10 goblet squats and 10 press-ups felt surprisingly smooth. I was able to wrap it up in less than a minute and, given this is the longest round of the workout, a little voice in my head suggested the rest would be easy. But John had warned me not to get carried away.
“Once you get to [the round of] seven, it’s illuminating and people feel like they’ve made bad life choices,” he jokes. “But once you get to six it’s not so bad, and once you get to five it’s just about survival.”
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He was spot on. The reps racked up incredibly quickly as the workout continued, and by the round of seven the muscles in my forearms and back were starting to tire from all the kettlebell swings. The fact I had only completed four of 10 total rounds felt somewhat demoralising as well, but I forced myself to press on without slacking off the pace. Challenge leads to change, after all, particularly in a fitness context.
The next couple of rounds were a slog, but at the five-round mark I experienced a sudden switch in mindset. Thanks to the decreasing rep scheme, I realised this wasn’t the half-way point at all – I was much further along than I thought. With only five or fewer reps of goblet squats and press-ups each round, I persuaded myself to up the ante, and wound up finishing the workout in 9min 17sec.
My verdict: Would I do this workout again?
I thought this workout was brilliant – gamified and effective. It was almost like a classic push-pull-legs workout split, just compressed into less than 10 minutes, working my chest, shoulders, back, legs and core in this time.
“The body is one piece,” John says. For this reason, he believes splitting it up and training different body parts on different days is a sub-par approach for most people, and instead champions movement-based workouts like the humane burpee.
The workout also hit the sweet spot between too challenging and too easy, taking me to an uncomfortable place without being so difficult that I was forced to stop. As a result, mental and physical fortitude were required if I wanted to stick to John’s instructions and keep going without breaks.
The humane burpee acted like an exercise MOT too, highlighting which facets of fitness I need to work on the most. I like lifting weights, so it makes sense that the goblet squats felt great. The press-ups, while a little harder, didn’t present too many problems either. But it was the 150 kettlebell swings that proved to be the kicker.
My grip was fried by the end, as were the muscles across my back, which is a sign that I need to work on strength and muscular endurance in these areas.
But my favourite thing about this workout was its accessibility. If you have one kettlebell and enough room to swing it, you have everything you need to give it a whirl. It democratises top-quality strength and conditioning, and for that reason I’ll be returning to it time and time again. If you have a kettlebell at home, I humbly suggest that you do too.
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