Cycle 3 Completed and a Fortnight Until Florida

I finished up the 3rd cycle of Wendler 5/3/1 and am currently in de-load week.    I finished my weak-assed bench press doing 185 for 6 on the last set.  Left one in the tank.  For military press, I got 135 for 3, which with a barbell is a personal rep. record.  For the Deadlift, I did 305 for 3, another personal rep. record.  I cranked out 140 pullups last week as well.   For de-load weeks I usually do kettlebells.  The dilemma I was having at the end of the last week was whether or not to blow off de-load and go to cycle 4.  Going down South in a couple of weeks and I was going to try to fit the 4th cycle, 9 workouts into 18 days.  I decided against it.  Why rush the process?  I’ll get done what I need to get done and use the vacation as a rest week.  Usually we go in March, but this year we can’t pull my son out of school, now that he’s in the 7th grade.  Not only will the workload that he’ll miss be too much, but he’s made the high school varsity tennis team!  Huge accomplishment and I’m proud.  We’re going during the April vacation and although I live 6 miles from the start of the Boston Marathon, I’ll miss the start of it for the 45th year in a row.

There was a time when I was a runner and doing 15-20 miles a week that I thought I might run it someday.  That thought passed after doing 13.5 miles one Sunday on 3 cups of coffee and a glass of water.  Not that I couldn’t do it, I know I could if I trained.  But why?  Long distance running makes you fat.  It’s not good on your body or joints.  And let’s face facts, training in the dead of winter sucks donkey balls.  We’ve had a lot of snow this year and the biggest problem is the wind.  It howls as you get closer to the water.  I can’t imagine few things worse  than running into a stiff 20 mph headwind for 26 miles.  One of my mentors at my firm is running for the 40th year in a row.  He’s 73 an swears to me this is the last one.  He’ll bang it out in just over 5 hours.  But he was telling me about the 22 mile run he did this weekend, taking a cab from Wellesley to Hopkinton, his sciatic nerve screaming going through Ashland/Framingham.  Getting to Wellesley having some water and a snack at his car and praying that his back would hold up going through the Newton Highlands.  Not to mention the chafed thighs, irritated nipples, sore feet etc.  Funk that.   We discussed a good formula.  You run 5 ten minute miles and walk 1 fifteen minute mile.  That’s an hour and five minutes.  Do that 4 times and you’re at 4:20 with a little over two miles left.  Bang those out and voila, you’ve finished in 4:40-4:45.  I went running Sunday and did 4.3 miles.  It was 40 degrees with a slight breeze.  My hips were a little tight afterward, but from a conditioning standpoint I was fine.  I plan on doing some running in FL as well as borrowing my friend’s 35 lb. kettlebell that he currently uses as a door stop.

Since Christmas, I’ve been in the low-mid 190′s for weight.  I was fine with it because I put it to good use doing 5/3/1.  But, I knew I needed to address it before going South.  My fighting weight is between 183-185.  Last week wasn’t a good week to start.  My sales year has been off to the best start in 11 years and I’ve had to take clients out.  Thursday I went into town to Abe & Louie’s and had the biggest piece of dead animal flesh on the menu, medium rare, washed it down with multiple Macallan’s and had cheesecake for dessert.   Saturday was veal night out with another client in Worcester (wis’ ter) is the correct pronunciation.  Sunday, with 17 days to go it was time to implement my health kick.  From 10 PM Saturday night, I didn’t eat until 6 PM on Sunday and pounded water.  I also went for a 4.3 run as stated above.  After the run, I did 200 snatches with a 55 lb. kettlebell in sets of 5L,5R rest to the top of each minute.  I later played tennis in the wind and lost 6-4 to my son.   I followed that up yesterday with a great eating day.  A 5 egg omelet, a protein shake and a salad with meat in it.  Got on the scale this morning, 189.8.  Lowest I’ve been this year.  Fasted for 24.5 hours from last night until tonight.  Yesterday and today, I did kettlebell complex workouts using a single or double 45 lb. bells.

Here’s my plan with 14 days left.

Workouts: 6 days a week.  Friday’s are off. due to soccer games Thursday nights.  Tomorrow and and Thursday, kettlebell complexes.  Saturday start the 4th cycle of 5/3/1 and do that every other day.  Other days continue the kettlebell complexes.  Overtraining?  Perhaps, but not for long.

Diet:  1. No alcohol until vacation.  2.  Fast twice a week for 24 hours.  Next fast is Good Friday.  3.  Lower carb intake.  limit starches to under 60g a day (a large baked potato), limit fruit to one a day which will be an apple in my protein shake, substitute baby carrots and other vegetables instead.   For protein, substitute hard boiled eggs for Greek Yogurt (a lot of sugar in yogurt).  Basically I’m going to limit as much sugar as possible.  4.  One cheat day, Easter which will help me keep my sanity.

For me the key is getting momentum and with 3 days down and 14 to go, I’m like butter….on a roll.  You can follow the workouts on Tumblr under Blackstone Valley Kettlebells.  Enjoy!

99 Workouts are Finished, Onto Birth of a Hero

I hope everyone survived Thanksgiving.  I lived it up, and was out late past 1:30 three out of five nights.  Had my 25th high school reunion.  Great time and a lot of laughs.  I missed the first 3 and went to my 20th.  I had a blast at the 20th.  This one was even better.   Basically partied like a rock star, if that is possible growing up in Marlborough.  I also didn’t care what I ate or drank for about 5 days and took two of those days off from working out.  Basketball games got in the way, as I attended five of them between my two sons and coached a practice.   What I realized is that people come and go in your life, some people you miss and know you would pick up right where you left off, some you wouldn’t speak to if you saw them walking down the street.   But no one can keep you grounded as the people you grew up with.  One of my good friends is a guy I’ve known for 37 years and is a couple of years older than me.  His brother was and still is my best friend.   We went to his house on Friday night.  When he found out about this blog, he told me “I was neurotic and narcissistic.  Basically it was fucked up.”  I was laughing hysterically.  He didn’t care if he hurt my feelings, in his mind he was telling it like it was.”  I loved it.   Sooner or later you just have to let shit in the past go.  Why hold onto it for 20 – 25 years?  What’s the point?  My uncle and father are both in a high school athletic hall of fame up here.  My uncle was enshrined in the 1980′s, my father in 2010.  At my father’s induction, there was another guy who got inducted.  He didn’t show up to the ceremony because he was still hacked off about not getting in with my uncle 20 years prior.  Carrying a grudge is wasted energy.

I finally finished the 99 Holiday Workouts book.  I banged out the last of the swing workouts with a 55 and did 508 swings in 30 minutes.   This journey was a lot of fun.  For 16 weeks, I randomly picked programs depending on what body part I wanted to work.  No programs, just grab a bell and go.  I enjoyed doing a lot of singles work as previously I had been focusing on doubles.  Highlights of the book are the Snatch workouts and Snatch combination programs.  Fantastic total body stuff.  A lot of the workouts took a ladders approach.  They can be mentally taxing on rungs 4 and 5.  The reverse get-up workout in basic training was one of the toughest ones I did.  I felt my cleaning technique improved as well.  My only complaint was there were way too many squat workouts vs. presses.  Now let me say this.  I like to squat, always enjoyed it even before kettlebells.  You build a house with a foundation.  But there were too many.  Do you really need to squat then clean vs. clean then squat.  It got redundant.  One of the get-up workouts I didn’t like was the stepped up get up.  I like to set the timer, do 15 minutes of hard get-ups and move on.  Reverse ones are even nastier.   I liked the swing workouts especially when the one-handed ones doubling up the reps.  One issue is my tailbone starts getting sore doing 1 arm swings once I get in the 400-500 range.  All and all I give the workouts an A-.  There wasn’t enough balance between the presses and squats.

For the next month, I’m going to keep the diet clean.  Had a 24 hour fast yesterday and intend to do this twice a week.  I haven’t checked the scale, but my guess is I creeped into the low 190′s.  Nothing is getting tighter, but being neurotic, a narcissist and fucked up, I can feel it in my stomach.  Back to metabolic conditioning and what better way than Pat Flynn’s Birth of a Hero.  I started it today.  It’s full of a number of nasty complexes, both single and double.  Basically a complex is going from one exercise to another to another without putting the bell down.  Kettlebells are great tools for complexes because they make moving from one exercise to another pretty seamless.   It’s the best way to train with a kettlebell, in my opinion.  It’s quick, but it can be quite painful.   Yesterday as a warmup, I took double 45′s and did 7 rounds of the following complex.  Double swing x 5, Double Snatch x 5, Double Clean and Press x 5, Double Front Squat x 5 and Double Row x 5.  Finished in 19 minutes.

Pat’s book basically has about 50 different complexes.  He recommends mixing them up, doing the toughest ones first and going at it 3 days a week.  So I picked six.  Three doubles complexes, three singles.  Going in I had an idea what weight I was going to use for each one.   I was half wrong.  A lot of these complexes include the double snatch, one of my favorite exercises.  With 45′s, I can do them no problem, the 55′s need some practice.  I can do 1-3 reps and they aren’t pretty.   So the first complex is titled the Great Destroyer.  It’s 6 different exercises, 10 reps each.  Basically it was 2:52 seconds of pain and fatigue.  I finished it, but wasn’t doing it twice.  Tried to pick my lung up off the floor and re-attach it in my chest cavity for 3 minutes and then did a single complex of one arm swings, cleans, high pulls (an exercise I don’t do often), snatches, and clean and jerk. 5 reps each, switch hands.  I opted for the 45.  I really felt it in my grip.  The beauty of the singles complexes are they take longer than doubles because once you’ve beaten up the left side, now it’s time for the right.  Rested up and then did a doubles complex of Double Swings, Double Snatch to Press (another one of my favorite movements, makes the press stricter because you don’t have any momentum), Double Cleans and Double Squats.  Now the fatigue is in the back of my shoulders as well.  I followed that up with a 5 rep single complex of one arm swings, clean and press, snatches, windmill and reverse lunges.  This one I might have been able to use a 55, maybe next time.  Then I did two rounds of a complex that included a swing, a clean, a snatch to press and a reverse get-up.  Go through twice then switch hands.  I definitely could have used a 62 maybe a 70 with this one.  It was like a nice break.  Finally I finished with a complex of 5 Double Swings, 5 Long Cycle Clean and Jerks (these will kick the crap out of you), 5 Double Snatches, 5 Double Windmills (getting the bells in position without putting them down was interesting) and 5 squats.    All of this in 29 minutes and 30 seconds.  I still felt it two hours later.  My heart rate at the end was 184.   This is going to be fun.

8/7/12 Workout The 55 lb. kettlebell is a great fitness weapon

Took yesterday off as part of the 2 on 1 off program.  Instead of working out, I fasted for the day from dinner to dinner.  Monday is always a great day to fast and hit the reset button.  I did a brisket on my charcoal grill yesterday for myself and my sons.  I also made a baked bean side dish that called for lots of brown sugar.   Washed dinner down with a couple of Molson Canadians and I’m sure my insulin was spiking Sunday night.  Can honestly say I’ve never had a bad Molson.  Only two though.  I can’t drink too much beer.  Then it’s time to shift gears to phase II AKA scotch.  But I digress, this is a fitness blog, not what my palate enjoys when I imbibe.  Anyway I was probably holding more salt and water than the Atlantic, so  I didn’t get on the scale and drank a lot of water yesterday.  This morning, scale said 184.8 and I had 8.5 hours of sleep.

Today, I chose workout number 100,  Snatch to Press to Squat combination.  But there are only 99 workouts!  Well in reality there are over 150 when you add one hand swings, hand to hand swings, kalos stenos getups, double kettlebell workouts, etc.    I used a 55 lb kettlebell and did 4 sets of  5.  My shoulders were pretty fatigued on each side when I was done.  There is something to be said that one kettlebell exercises are harder than double kettlebell exercises.  Why?  Time under tension.  Yes, you are doubling the weight when you use two, but the set is faster.  You bang out the set of 5, put the bells down rest.  With singles, you’ve warn out one side of your body, and your heart is beating hard.  Now switch to the other side.  The set takes longer.   I picked the right bell.  No way would have I been able to use the 62 in good form.  On paper, this looked like a wham, bam, thank you ma’am.  In reality, simple, but not easy

For the second part of the workout, I did workout 12 which is as many sets of 20 two hand swings as you can in 20 minutes.  I used the 55 again.  To tell you the truth, I wanted to do sets of 20 starting at the top of each minute, but after 8 sets, my grip was starting to go so I rested longer.  The handles on my body solid kettlebells are pretty thick which makes two hand swings challenging.  I ended up doing 16 sets of 20 for a total of 320 swings.  Total body workout.  Hit my shoulders, forearms, abs, cardio, quads and hamstrings.  All in 40 minutes with one piece of equipment.

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The Miracle Mineral

Today healthcare costs are skyrocketing.  Medicare is underfunded, the federal government enacted a law for nationwide coverage (if it’s so great, why aren’t the lawmakers who passed it using it themselves?), high deduction plans galore for company benefits.  My current health benefit has a $3,000 deduction.  Makes you kind of think twice before going to the doctor.  When I speak to my parents, who are healthy, I can’t believe the number of preventive appointments they have.  No wonder Medicare is going broke.  Enough boring healthcare talk.  Not all health problems can be cured, but in my opinion, a lot of them could be alleviated.   Ninety (90) % that’s right NINETY percent of Americans are significantly deficient of this mineral.

What if I told you that there is a mineral that if you spray on your body twice a day that would

1. Curtail inflammation in the body

2. Help you sleep better

3.  Prevent migraines

4. Detoxify chemicals in the body

5. Prevent  kidney stones

6. Alleviate arthritis, muscle soreness, aches and pains

7. Keep obesity genes from expression

8. Iron out wrinkles,  regenerate sun damaged skin, bring natural color back to your hair

9 Enable the body to produce and store energy

10.  Lower high blood pressure

11. Reduce cholesterol levels

12.  Block calcium.  Too much calcium leads to asthma, heart disease, cell death and headaches

13. Lower blood sugar levels in Type II diabetics

14.  Act as a natural calming agent.

15. Help to prevent and treat osteoporosis

16. Optimize hormones

17. Relax muscles.

18.  Cure skin issues including acne and eczema

19. Calm PMS symptoms (I can’t vouch for that!)

20. Promote healthy teeth and gums .

would you use it?   If not, why?

The mineral is magnesium oil.  Basically, it’s a highly saturated solution of magnesium chloride in water along with a trace of other elements.  You absorb it through your skin.  Well why can’t I take it orally in pill form you ask?  Well, magnesium taken orally doesn’t digest well in the stomach.  Also, too much magnesium can cause diarrhea.  Absorption through the skin avoids these issues and is the most efficient way to take it.    There are a couple of ways to use the product.  First, you can spray it on your arms and legs and massage it in, or  you could do a foot soak or a tub soak.  The most economical way is to spray, rub it in, and go.  I like to use it on my arms, legs or lower back, if there is soreness.  Eighteen (18) sprays twice a day, when I first get up and before I go to bed.  You can leave it on indefinitely or wipe it off after 20-30 minutes.  It will leave a dry residue after a few minutes.

When you first start using magnesium, it has a tendency to sting or itch and can be a tad uncomfortable.  This only happens the first 3 or 4 times you use it and then it stops.  If the sting is too much, dilute the solution with 50% water.  It’s only 20 minutes and after that you can wipe it off.  Don’t put it on any sensitive areas or cuts.  It’s like a salt in the wound.   It can be an acquired taste, like black coffee, scotch, or a new Britney Spears single.  But after a few times, you begin to appreciate it.

The stuff really works, specifically as a pain reliever.  Currently I’m doing a Turkish Get up challenge for the month, and after a Thursday night of playing soccer on artificial turf and a Friday of double squats and lunging up in the getup, my the top of my right knee was ornery and barking.  I think I have a little arthritis from banging into a concrete beam running several years ago.  I sprayed my knee five times with the magnesium and massaged it in.  Pain was gone in 15 minutes!   My parents, who have arthritis now swear by the stuff and have also passed it on to their neighbors!  My father said, that he was so used to aches and pains  he didn’t even know he had, until he started using it and the pain went away.

Where can you get it?  I used to buy the DermaMag brand through Vitamin World,  It was about $25 for an 8 oz. bottle and lasted about 5 weeks for me, using 36 sprays a day.  Each spray has 12.5 mg of magnesium.  You only need 1/2 the amount vs. if you took it orally, so for an active male, like yours truly if I took it orally about 900 mg, using the spray, 450mg or (36 x 12.5).  Unfortunately, Vitamin World stopped carrying it.  You can get it online through Amazon, with prices ranging from $10-25 for different brands.  I bought the Ancient Minerals at Amazon for $15.50 plus shipping recently but haven’t tried it yet.  It has gotten good reviews so we’ll see.

What you’ll notice right away is you will sleep much better.  Your dreams may be a lot more vivid, and a little weird as well.  You’ll also notice you won’t have as many aches and pains, and you may have more energy.

I’m not one of those holistic people by any stretch of the imagination.  I don’t even take a multi-vitamin.  But I read about the benefits of it on another website, did my research and decided to try it.  I’m glad I did and hope that you will reap the benefits as well.

8 Days Until The Beginning of Fat Season

The average American gains somewhere  between 5-7 lbs. between Thanksgiving and New Years.  There are feasts, family gatherings, Christmas parties, cookies, and free flowing alcohol all around.  It’s a great time of year to celebrate and get together with relatives, friends and people you don’t see as often as you wish.   Every year there are newspaper articles, TV reports about Thanksgiving.  “Eat in moderation, practice portion control, don’t use gravy, load up on vegetables.”  Saying the same thing over and over.  Here’s my advice.  EAT WHATEVER AND AS MUCH AS YOU WANT!  No one has ever gained 5-10 lbs from one big day of eating.  Yes the scale might say different, but it’s mostly water and will come off in a day or two.  A lot of dieticians recommend cheat days.  Have Thanksgiving be your cheat day and enjoy being a glutton.  Eat, Drink and Be Merry!

Now that being said, there should be a price to pay.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Plus/Minus, Yin/Yang, etc.  There are 8 full days until Thanksgiving.  If one can maintain their weight through New Years’, mission accomplished.  Here’s my advice.  For the next 8 full days, keep your diet clean.  You’ll come into Thanksgiving thinner and believe it or not, with a smaller stomach, you probably won’t have to eat as much to get full.  Now what do I mean by a clean diet?  Simple.  Fast two times for 24 hours.  That means skip four meals.  I’m going to skip Saturday, and next Tuesday.   Is it hard?  It’s not easy, but it’s a state of mind.   Stay as busy as possible to keep your mind off food.  Your stomach will feel empty, but you will have a lot more energy.  Drink a lot of water that day.  At least 100 oz.   It will get  your liver to fire up your metabolism, wash the toxins out, increase your growth hormone and increase your insulin sensitivity which will help you from gaining fat.  Second, avoid bread, pasta, cereal, bagels, chips, sugar  anything white and carbohydrate related.  Keep your intake of carbohydrates between 100-120 g a day.  Eat sweet potato, brown rice, a small white potato, fruit.  If it’s wheat or enriched white flour, avoid it.  If you insist on drinking, stay away from beer for 8 days or until Wednesday night, which when I was younger, was one of the great nights of the year to go out.   When you have carbs, limit them after 3 PM.

So what can you eat?  Red meat, chicken, hamburger, fish (not me, allergic since 1992), eggs, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese and all the vegetables you want.   Stick to 2-3 meals with a snack on your eating days.  For a snack or for portion control, eat almonds or walnuts.  A handful of almonds or walnuts before dinner, will definitely cure your hunger.  Slow down when you eat.  It takes 20 minutes for your brain to receive the signal that it’s full.  Put the fork down between bites, don’t shovel.    Plan your fast, get psyched up for it.  Google intermittent fasting and read about the good you are doing for your body by resetting it.  You will not lose muscle.  It takes 72 straight hours of fasting before this occurs.  Dieting is like doing sales calls.  It’s easier to continue than to stop and start-up again, meaning day 3 and 4 are easier than continuously being on day 1.  Another tip, write down everything you eat and review.  Writing it down holds you accountable.  Write down how you want to look.  What weight you want to be, whatever your fitness goals are.  Then when you review your food journal, did what you ingest coincide with your goals?   You’re more likely to think practically than emotionally.   By the way, if you’re not keeping a workout journal, you’re making a huge error.  You can do it on-line or in a steno notebook.  If you run a business you keep a record of how you’re doing.  Same with your workouts.  I’m doing Escalated Density Training now and have been not only able to figure out how many reps I need to do each session, I can look back 8 months ago and see the improvement.

After Thanksgiving, enjoy yourself, but for the majority of the time practice the good habits.  Fast at least 1 day a week.  Monday is usually a great day after a long weekend.  If you want to do it two days, then pick Thursday as well so you go into the weekend feeling well.  Again, just keep the carbohydrates lower most of the time.  I’m not saying completely cut it out, ala Atkins, I’m saying be cognizant of trying to lower your carbohydrate intake.

Finally, workout 3-5 days a week.  And I don’t mean jogging, or doing the elliptical.  I mean fat burning sweat workouts.  Using weights, kettlebells, jumping rope or even playing ball.  Currently I’m doing kettlebells 3 days a week and playing indoor soccer once a week.  The three days I workout, I’m hitting it hard.  You have to earn your days off.    Do total body workouts.  Monday will not be National Bench Press/Big Back Day, Tuesday won’t be Guns Day and Wednesday won’t be Legs/Cows day.  etc.

If you have kettlebells here are some ideas of things you can do.

CIRCUIT TRAINING:  The beauty of the kettlebell is you can transition easily from one exercise to another.  You can go from swings to squats to clean and press to rows as efficiently as possible without putting the bell down.   You can set a timer for 20 -30 minutes and do as many rounds as you can or set the number of rounds at the beginning.

For example: Do as a circuit  10  2 hand swings, 5 Goblet Squats, 5 Clean and Press Left, Right, 5 Rows Left and Right or:

5 Burpees, 5 Snatches Left, Right, 15 Mountain Climbers, 20 2 hand swings, rest until the top of the 3rd minute repeat for 20 minutes.

300 WORKOUT:  I haven’t done this one in a while but I used to use a 35 and it was hard.  On YouTube, there’s a guy using a 24kg bell and completing it in under 12 minutes.  Here’s what you do as fast as you can with GOOD form.  25 V-Ups/Jacknives, 25 Snatches Left, 25 Right, 25 Pushups, 50 swings, 50 burpees, 25 Clean and Press Left, 25 Clean and Press Right, 50 Mountain climbers.  The total reps add up to 300.  The burpees are awful.  Do them in sets of 10 with as little rest as possible.

METABOLIC CONDITIONING:  This occurs when you engage your muscular and cardiovascular systems simultaneously.  This is done by performing complexes which is basically a string of exercises performed back to back with little or no rest.  Brutal for sure, totally.  Here’s one I got from Geoff Neupert a while back.

Perform 7 sets, 1 arm at a time,

5 one arm swings, 5 snatches, 5 clean and press, hold bell in rack, 5 reverse lunges, 5 one arm rows.  Switch arms.  Rest 3-4 minutes and repeat.  I did this one about a month ago with a 55lb. kettlebell.  It takes about 35 minutes and it really taxes your conditioning as well as your grip.  Pat Flynn of Chronicles of Strength has an e-book of a bunch of different complexes.  It’s free if not, pretty cheap.  I used a 35 single and double 35′s and have done all the workouts.  He names them after AC/DC songs and underneath one says “I’ll put it gently as possible.  This complex really sucks.”  After finishing it, I whole heartedly concurred.

STACKING: Dave Whitley has an e-book on his Irontamer.com website which is 101 Kettlebell Workouts.  There are circuits, EDT, GVT, 30 workouts under 30, Tabata Protocol workouts.  I think the jewel of it is the stacking.  If using a heavier kettlebell do it for reps, light bell do it for time.  You stack exercises so there are 5 rounds in each.  For example it would go like this:

Swing :30, Rest :30

Swing :30, Goblet Squat :30 Rest :30

Swing :30 Goblet Squat :30  Slingshot (Passing bell around your waist):30 Rest :30

Swing :30 Goblet Squat :30  Slingshot (Passing bell around your waist):30 Clean and Press L:30 Clean and Press R :30 Rest :30

Swing :30 Goblet Squat :30  Slingshot (Passing bell around your waist):30 Clean and Press L:30 Clean and Press R :30 Row L :30 Row R :30

Rest :90 Repeat 3-5 times.   This is tough.  He has 10 different versions.  I’ll use a heavier bell and do it for reps instead.

TABATA PROTOCOL: Pick an exercise and do it for 20 seconds as hard as you can, rest :10 seconds repeat for at least 8 rounds.  You can do this with pushups, burpees (good luck), body squats, goblet squats, swings, snatches, jump rope.  This is a great finisher at the end of a weight lifting workout.  It will really help boost your growth hormone.

Another great finisher is 5 rounds of  heavy one arm swings for sets of 15-20 L, R rest :30

A simple quick 10-12 minute workout would be

10 sets of 10 swings alternating with laddered burpees up to 10 burpees  which would look like this 10 swings, 1 burpee, 10 swings, 2 burpees, etc. up to 10

If you have 20 minutes and want to work on your snatching, do sets of 5 left and right, rest until the top of each minute.  Work up to 20 minutes.

Jump rope for 20 minutes.  Rest as necessary, pick up where you left off.

There was a workout on the kettlebellconnecton website last December where you aimed for 7000 swings in a month as well as each day you did TGU’s based on the day on the calendar.  You got 4 amnesty days.  It came out to about 260 swings each on the day you worked out.  If it was December 5th, you did 5 Turkish Getups on each side.  Sounded easy until you got to 31.  Didn’t try it myself.  I like a little more variety in my workouts.

Here would be a way to implement

Monday:  Stacking

Tuesday: 300 workout and Tabata workout

Wednesday: MetCon Workout

Thursday: Off

Friday: Circuit Training

Saturday: Jump Rope/Swings Burpees ladder

Sunday: Off

All these workouts can be done in under 45 minutes and a majority are under 1/2 hour.  You can even combine them on the same day.  All will make you incinerate fat.  Implement and execute between now and New Years and you’ll be one of the proud minority.