Improvised Kettle Bell: An Experiment

Last night, the Marmot and I decided to try something new. We have been considering buying an adjustable-weight kettle bell for home use, but we wanted to try out the exercises before purchasing. The kettle bells at our gym are only available for use during personal trainer sessions, which is pretty messed up, both in not letting everyone have access to equipment AND training folks with equipment they'll only have access to if they keep paying for a personal trainer. I call shenanigans!

It was the Marmot's excellent idea to use what we have at home: a heavy-duty bag (similar to the one above) and our bocce balls. It has everything we need to approximate the training we'd be able to do with a kettle bell, without buying first. We could put in or take out the heavy resin balls to adjust the weight, and the bag is boxy enough and the handles are short enough to not even graze the ground on the lower part of the swing. Brilliant!

We first tried the kettle bell swing:

The Marmot went first, completing 20 swings with all of the bocce balls in the bag. I had less success; I took out some of the bocce balls, which meant the bag was less densely packed and the balls shifted and clanked through the swing. It felt unbalanced, and I had a series of horrible visions where the bag's seams suddenly exploded and the heavy balls manage to destroy our living room window, break my computer monitor and bash our poor sleeping cat. I stopped 7 swings into the routine a nervous wreck. Now that I'm thinking about it I could have stuffed the rest of the empty bag with a towel or shirt, but I was too anxious to think clearly.

Next, the Turkish Get Up:

We have read high praises again and again for the TGU as a great full-body exercise that is additionally useful to highlight any muscle imbalances, so we were eager to give it a try. For a second time, the Marmot had much more success than I did. We each did it once on each side for one set to practice, then a second set for 3 on each side, and a final set 5 of each side. Halfway through my last set, I realized that the part of the movement where your full body weight (+ the weight of the kettle bell) is resting on your heel and hand was exacerbating a minor wrist injury I thought I had fully recovered from. I (perhaps stupidly) finished the set anyway, and for the rest of the night my left wrist was throbbing.

For as frustrating as the experience was for me (exploding hypothetical windows! re-injured joints!), we learned a lot:

1. The weighted swing is awesome. Even only doing one set of 7, my glutes feel unexpectedly worked this morning. Right on!
2. The TGU is on the back burner for now. Even though we both felt Muscle-Man Strong while we were doing the lift, we both concluded that it's not worth continuing in the immediate future. My wrist needs ample time to heal, and this morning the Marmot complained of an asymmetrical lower-back strain. We might have started with too heavy a weight while we were learning the routine. It might be worth starting again later, but much more patiently.
3. Bocce balls should be used for playing bocce; maybe it could function as a really impractical paper weight, but not as a replacement for a kettle bell.