This blog will outline some ways to combine running and kettlebell sports. We will look at it from both a running focus and a kettlebell sport focus and create a program that should have synergy or transfer between the two sports. Again, switching focus for both of these sports can be a way to work on weaknesses and help avoid burnout and injuries.
Kettlebell sport can offer runners improved strength and power (and conveniently avoid gyms), while running can offer improved cardiovascular fitness to kettlebell sport athletes. Improving strength has been shown to improve running economy. Additionally, kettlebell sport Involves rapid eccentric muscle actions and posterior chain training, which may help reduce injuries and be particularly useful for trail running or sprinting activities. On the other hand, improving your cardiovascular fitness may help your performance and recovery between sets and sessions. Both running and kettlebell sport have a lot to offer one another. However, both have a lot of overlapping stress, which may be a double-edged sword in some contexts, so careful programming consideration is required.
Considerations
A few key considerations for developing an integrated running and kettlebell sport programming your 1) training experience, 2) goals, 3) specificity of training, 4) training intensity, and 5) training volume. Your training experience in both kettlebell sport and running will determine appropriate workouts. Additionally, your short-term and long-term goals and the training phase should play a big part in forming the training specificity, intensity and volume of each modality. Lastly, it’s important to reiterate that we are all individuals with different strengths and weaknesses (You may wish to perform a needs analysis, which is beyond the scope of this blog). Additionally, we will all respond slightly differently to training, so the program outline below is just a general template.
Training experience
With kettlebell sport and running, we need to be conscious of the training load. So we need to change what we’re doing incrementally, so we don’t want to completely change what we’ve done in the last 8 weeks. For example, I wouldn’t suggest running 10 km daily if you haven’t been running it all. You should slowly and incrementally increase your running distance. Likewise, I wouldn’t suggest grabbing pair of 32 kg kettlebells and performing max reps if you have little kettlebell experience. Maybe start with 12 kg or 16 kg and establish good technique.
Shotgun program for beginners:
If you have no kettlebell experience, start with a small amount of technique work.
In contrast, if you have no running experience, start with an easy walk-run program.
Goals
Below are a few goals that may or may not be appropriate for you. You can start formulating your program when you have your appropriate goals. Below are some example goals:
Do you want to compete in both running events and kettlebell sport?
Do you want to complete a 1/2 marathon and compete in kettlebell sport?
Do you want to use kettlebell sport to help your marathon time?
Do you want to change up your training for your off-season?
Obviously, there are a much greater array of different goals, but we can’t cover them in a blog
Volume
Combining running and kettlebell sport can be a balancing act because both tend towards high-volume training. Also, both have many different events and durations, so the programs outlined below may not be appropriate for all situations. With this in mind, you may need to be very slow and gradual when increasing training volume if you are training both at a similar level. Or you may wish to focus on one while maintaining or reducing training volume in the other.
Specificity
The principle of specificity would suggest that to improve running, you need to run and to improve kettlebell sport you need to do kettlebell sport. So if you want to run sub-4-minute km, you probably need to do some of your running at similar speeds, likewise if you want to snatch a 32 kg bell for 10 minutes, you will need to train with similar loads. However, synergistic adaptations will occur (as mentioned above, increasing strength from kettlebell sport will help with running economy and increasing VO2 max will help with kettlebell performance). Training adaptations are often broken down into peripheral and central components.
Intensity
Intensity is a particularly important variable to get right. If in doubt, typically using a lower intensity to start and building upon that is the way to go. The intensity you allocate to your running and kettlebell sport sessions should be based on your goals, training experience and ability to recover.
Intensity and Training Frequency
Typically, you would train each of these modalities two or three times a week, assuming you are training 6 times a week. A weekly breakdown of session intensity could be: Hard x 2, medium x 2, and easy, x 2. You may wish to combine a hard and easy session to reduce your training frequency. For example, many kettlebell sport training programs for biathlon involves running before snatch. This change is the internal environment making it somewhat similar to the pre-fatigue from a jerk set.
If that training frequency and intensity seem crazy, remove 2-4 sessions and create a combination that lets you train both modalities at least twice a week. Typically the less you train, the higher the intensity of sessions. An example of three weekly sessions could be Monday hard run, Wednesday easy combined session and Friday hard kettlebell session.
Quantifying Training Intensity
We can quantify internal and external training load. Internal training load quantifies things from within the body, like rating of perceived exertion (RPE), or your heart rate (HR). In contrast, the external load can be quantified through things outside the body, like training volume or tonnage, distance, and running speeds.
Given that external and internal training load measures are not completely interchangeable, an internal load such as a session RPE will likely be the best way to quantify training load. Session RPE can easily be quantified by the duration in minutes of the session times a 0-10 RPE score. This way, you’ll be able to compare the two modalities easily. Another option is to quantify the HR from each session. This may be particularly useful if you’re trying to spend time in different physiological zones or using a method such as polarised training (I will cover this in part 2).
Programming order
You can alter your exercise selection order to emphasise different aspects of you’re training. If you wanted to do running speed or kettlebell power training work you would probably do that first. Alternatively, if you wanted to emphasise endurance, you could do that last.
You can take advantage of cardiac drift to increase the demands on the heart, so if you were to run for half an hour and then do 6 minutes of the snatch, your snatch set would be performed at a higher heart rate.
If you wanted to emphasise running in a fatigued state, you could run after a kettlebell session. The eccentric muscle damage caused by the training will reduce your running economy and make the session harder. This is somewhat similar to ultra runners doing two long runs back to back.
Program
Below are a couple of different program suggestions. Please select the most appropriate for your phase of training, experience and overall goal. This will give you some ideas about how to do that and find the appropriate combination for yourself.
Example Session Template
Short/Hard kettlebell sessions: intervals kettlebell 60s on, 60s off x 10
Short/Hard session running: 4-minute efforts or 1km runs, walking in between x 3-5 rounds
Medium kettlebell session: 3-6 minute sets x 2-3
Medium running session: 20-40 minute run
Long/easy kettlebell session: a single 8-12 minute set
Long/easy run: run for 30+ minutes easy pace
Kettebell Sport Focused Session Breakdown
| Focus | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| KB sportX 6 | KB(hard) | Run (easy) | KB (medium) | Run(easy) | KB(easy) | Run(medium) | Off |
| KB sportX 5 | KB(hard) | Run+ KB (easy) | Off | KB(hard) | Run+ KB (easy) | Run(medium) | Off |
| KB sportX 4 | KB(hard) | Off | KB+Run(medium) | Off | KB (easy) | Run(easy) | Off |
Running Focused Session Breakdown
| Focus | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| RunX 6 | Run(hard) | KB (easy) | Run (medium) | KB(easy) | Run(easy) | Run(medium) | Off |
| RunX 5 | Run (hard) | Run+KB (easy) | Off | Run(hard) | Run (easy) | Run+KB(medium) | Off |
| RunX 4 | KB+Run(medium) | Off | Run(hard) | Off | KB (easy) | Run(easy) | Off |
Combined Session Breakdown
| Focus | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| X 6 | KB(hard) | Run (easy) | KB (medium) | Run(medium) | KB(easy) | Run(Hard) | Off |
| X 5 | KB(hard) | Run+ KB (easy) | KB(easy) | Off | Run+ KB (medium) | Run(Hard) | Off |
| X 4 | Run(hard) | Run+KB (easy) | Off | KB+Run(medium) | Off | KB(Hard) | Off |
| X 3 | Run(hard) | Off | KB+Run(medium) | Off | KB(hard) | Off | Off |
| X 2 | KB+Run (Hard) | Off | Off | KB+Run(medium) | Off | Off | Off |
In part two, we will look slightly deeper into some of the physiology.
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