Review: Dan John's 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge
This is the first of (hopefully) many strength/fitness program reviews that I intend to post. As a self-taught hobbyist lifter, reading program reviews from others has been enormously helpful to me. For those of us without coaches, social networks or gym cultures to learn from, reviews offer an important middle ground between n=1 self-experimentation and overly general scientific studies. With these posts, I hope to pay forward the enormously beneficial knowledge I’ve derived from others’ reviews.
The Program
The 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge is the brainchild of Dan John, avuncular kettlebell guru, high-level Olympic weightlifter and highland games competitor.
The exact nature of the challenge is mercurial. In the original article, John lays out a very specific program with fixed set-and-rep schemes, clearly defined secondary exercises, and instructions to use a 53 lb. bell for men and a 35 lb. bell for women.
In a follow-up post, however, he provides several more options for set/rep schemes, bell sizes, and secondary exercise choices. On his YouTube channel, he can be seen doing a version with only swings and no additional exercises. Based on this, the “10,000 Swing Challenge” pretty much boils down to: “Do 10,000 kettlebell swings broken into twenty 500-swing workouts that you try to complete as fast as possible, adding other exercises as desired.”
My Background Going into It
When I attempted this challenge in January-February 2022, I was 26 years old and had been training seriously with weights for about three years and going to the gym for almost eight. My e1rms at the time were roughly 450 lb. deadlift, 350 lb. squat, and 245 lb. bench press. I weighed 206 pounds and had been maintaining that weight after a cut from around 220 lbs. I was and am male.
I had tried and failed to complete the 10k swing challenge with a 53 lb. bell about a year and a half before starting this attempt. After about three workouts, I started experiencing knee pain that was exacerbated by doing swings. I continued swinging kettlebells (in much smaller volumes) and around six months later started a grease-the-groove routine where I was doing roughly 100 swings with an 88-lb. bell per day in 15-20 rep increments between online classes. At this point, I was consistently comfortable with swinging a heavy bell and the knee issues were giving no indications of returning.
As the campus gyms reopened, I took a break from kettlebells to run some more conventional barbell routines. However, as Omicron variant spiked during winter 2021-2022, I took another break from gym-going. That winter, I was in the midst of a stressful school year and not in a great place mentally, so I wanted a routine that was simple and not in need a lot of book-keeping but that would also work to pour excess nervous energy into.
Running the Program
As mentioned above, the program is very loosely defined. I boiled it down into the following routine and ruleset:
Routine: 3-4 days per week, cycling through the following exercise pairs:
Swings and pushups (sets of 10-15)
Swings and 88 lb. goblet squats (sets of 5-8)
Swings and single-arm overhead press or single arm jerks (sets of 2-3)
Swings and some kind of row with two 70 lb. Kettlebells (sets of 5-8)
Rules:
Complete 500 swings each workout. Sets can have any number of reps, but the number of sets needed to complete 500 swings cannot increase.
Start with the 88lb. kettlebell for swings and switch to a 70 lb. bell when my grip starts to fail. The number of total reps done with the 88lb. bell must stay the same or increase.
Try to complete workouts as quickly as possible.
As mentioned above, I ran this the Omicron variant was spiking so I did all my workouts in an unheated garage in Michigan in February. Accordingly, I wore gloves to make holding the freezing cold kettlebells tolerable. This had the side-effect of making them much harder to grip, which could be seen as a positive or negative.
Results
I took five weeks to complete all 10,000 swings. For my first workout, I took an hour and five minutes to complete 255 reps with the 88 lb. bell and 245 reps with the 70 lb. bell. On my last workout, I completed all 500 reps with the 88 lb. bell (but forgot to track the time). In general, most of my sets were in the 20-30 rep range, though at the end I did a set of 52 with the 88lb. bell just to see if I could.
Probably the biggest improvement was grip strength, always a weak area for me. I saw a definite improvement in the length of time I could grip the 88 lb. bell and have noticed improved ability to grip deadlifts ever since.
I got slightly better at pushups, but didn’t notice much improvement for the other exercises. I don’t think I lost any strength in those areas, though. My weight remained constant at around 206 lbs. during the program and I think I was a bit leaner, but not in a hugely noticeable way. I think I gained a little bit of muscle in my shoulders from the high-volume pushups. Lastly, I did feel a subjective increase in conditioning and stamina, though I did not measure resting heart rate or any other objective metric.
Concluding Thoughts
The good parts:
The 10k swing challenge is great for improving conditioning without access to space to run or typical cardio equipment. Depending on weight selection and pacing it could be nudged to resemble HIIT or LISS. If I attempt it again, this would be my primary motivation.
It does make whatever you do after seem less grueling by comparison. I’m not big on the macho, “you have to train mental-toughness along with your muscles” aspect of training but if that’s something you feel like you need, consider this challenge. A year later I’m not convinced my tolerance for pain and exertion is really any higher, but at the time I think grinding out 500 swings at a time was grounding and did help me through a period of anxiety and seasonal depression.
In terms of space and equipment requirements, it is extremely minimal. If I were to take up #vanlife or live under house arrest, I would regularly do variations of this challenge. Going back to point #1, conditioning in confined spaces is a bit tougher than strength and hypertrophy training, so having a structured way to do something cardio-esque indoors is fantastic.
KB swings are a great movement. (I’d say they’re underrated by most and way overrated by a few, but on balance they’re great). Being able to train the posterior chain without a barbell is great, and compared to deadlifts they are less technical and scary for a beginner. I have yet to regret getting good at KB swings.
The program is quite flexible (depending on which iteration you follow). It could be easily integrated into pretty much any other type of training with any equipment (as long as you have a kettlebell).
And the bad parts:
It’s just not a fun routine. Grinding through the first thousand swings was a novel challenge and felt pretty rewarding, but by the time I had around 4,000 swings behind me it became a grueling slog. The act of counting to thirty alone became a chore.
While I’m dubious about the idea of “junk volume”, I think the number of sets I was doing on this program went way past the point of diminishing returns (both for the swings and the other exercises). I had had some hopes that doing 200 pushups in one workout would turn me into a pushup god but I didn’t experience any lasting gains there.
It did not deliver on the lofty promises regarding waist circumference made in the original post. I didn’t expect it to, seeing as it was a T-Nation article, but it’s worth noting. None of my “PRs fell like dominos” when I went back to barbell training, nor did my glutes “discover” how to work again.
Right now, I don’t plan on running it again, but if you are considering it, here are my suggestions:
Use a lighter bell. At the time of running this, I had bought into the idea of heavy swings as a way to develop posterior chain strength and hypertrophy. In retrospect, using the 88lb. bell slowed down my workouts and reduced the height and explosiveness of my swings. I think 500 fast, explosive swings might have had an equal or better conditioning benefit while allowing for faster workouts. I still think heavy swings have some benefit to deadlift strength, but I don’t think this challenge is the right format for developing it.
Vary the secondary exercises more. Cycling between two or three similar exercises would keep the workouts more interesting, mitigate the diminishing returns issue, and limit the risk of overuse injuries.