7 Ways to Progress Your Kettlebell Workouts Without Adding More Weight

Is your kettlebell starting to feel a little lighter? If so there are many ways to progress your kettlebell workouts without adding more weight.

Below I have listed 7 ways for you to advance your workouts without the need to buy another kettlebell or risk potential injury.

Before you jump in and start changing up all your workouts just have a think about your goals and how these changes will help you achieve them.

For example, are your goals strength or cardio?

Let’s get started:

1 Reps and Sets

The easiest way to progress your workouts without changing the kettlebell weight is to simply change the amount of repetitions and sets you perform.

The simplest change is to just add more reps to your workout each session, so adding 1 – 2 reps per workout can make a big difference.

An increase in repetitions will change the amount of time your muscles are under tension and ultimately alter how your body responds to the workout.

You can use the following rep ranges as a guide:

1 – 6 reps strength
7 – 12 hypertrophy or muscle building
13 – 20 endurance

These rep ranges are not strict parameters and there will be cross-overs in muscle recruitment and energy systems throughout the entire range.

If you want to manipulate the amount of time you spend in each of the repetition ranges above you can further adjust your sets.

Consider a total of 24 reps, you can adjust your sets like this:

1 x 24 reps – endurance
2 x 12 reps – muscle building
3 x 8 reps – muscle building
4 x 6 reps – strength
10, 8, 6 reps – muscle and strength

You can see from the sets and reps above a few simple adjustments can affect what you achieve from just one kettlebell weight.

How to take action:

Experiment by adjusting your reps and sets. 20 Goblet squats will feel very different from 2 sets of 10 Goblet squats, try it.

2 Base of Support

Have you ever tried running on sand or hopping on one leg?

Changing your base of support will radically alter the difficulty of any exercise.

Here are a few options you can use:

Stand on one leg (eg. overhead press)
Stand on an Airex Balance Pad or Mat (eg. squats)
Exercise on sand (eg. kettlebell walking lunges)
Stand on a BOSU (eg. kettlebell cleans or pistol squats)
Change levels with a step (eg. Bulgarian lunges)

Here’s an image of the Kettlebell Bulgarian Lunge in action:

Changing your base of support demands greater stabilisation and is more neurotically demanding.

You will need more rest days in between workouts because the neurological system takes much longer to recover than the muscular system.

How to take action:

Progress slowly, for example try a few overhead presses standing on one leg and then finish the set on both legs.

Want more? Top 5 single leg kettlebell exercises

3 Tempo and Partials

Another simple way to progress your workouts without changing your kettlebell weight is to adjust the tempo of each exercise.

There are 3 main elements to every movement:

Eccentric – when the muscle lengthens (eg. the down part of the squat)
Concentric – when the muscle shortens (eg. the up part of the squat)
Isometric – both eccentric and concentric (eg. stopping during any part of the squat)

Now you understand the 3 elements of movement you can adjust the tempo of each.

For example, consider the Goblet squat shown below:

3 seconds lower, 1 second pause at the bottom, 1 second up
3 seconds lower, 3 seconds pause at the bottom, 3 seconds up

The slower you perform an exercise the more challenging it will be due to the increased time up tension.

In general, the eccentric part of the movement is the easiest and should be performed slowly.

The concentric part of any movement is the most difficult.

Slow eccentric movements will lead to muscle soreness over the following 72 hours so start steady and build up.

You can also use partial repetitions to further intensify any exercise by not performing the full movement and stopping before the start or end range of the exercise.

Partials can be useful for breaking through sticking points during an exercise and isometrically pausing before and after the most challenging part of an exercise.

How to take action:

Get creative with your tempos. Slow down the eccentric part of an exercise and speed up the concentric phase. Try pausing at the bottom of the squat for 5 seconds or at the top of an overhead press.

4 Movement Pattern Progressions and Complexes

If you understand the concept of movement patterns than you can easily progress exercises when they become less challenging.

Lets look at the Deadlift movement pattern as see how you can progress it:

Kettlebell One Arm Deadlift
Kettlebell Clean
Kettlebell Swing One Hand
Kettlebell Swing Alternating Hands
Kettlebell High Pulls
Kettlebell Snatch

Here’s an image of the kettlebell snatch:

Looking at the above exercises you can see how 10 repetitions of the One Arm Deadlift is going to be a lot easier with a 16kg kettlebell than 10 reps of Snatches.

Other than progressing the movement pattern as above you can also add further complexities to an exercise by combining two exercises.

For example:

Kettlebell Clean and Press
Kettlebell Side Lunge and Clean
Kettlebell Lunge with Rotation

Here’s an image of the kettlebell lunge with rotation:

Adding additional movements to an existing exercise is a great way to further intensify any exercise.

How to take action:

Think about the next logical progression for your particular exercise, can you add an additional movement like a press, or twist to make it even more challenging.

5 Rest Periods

Reducing the amount of rest you take in between your exercise sets is a simple way to make the next set even more challenging.

You have a few ways of addressing rest periods:

Decreasing rests (eg. 30, 25, 20, 15 seconds)
Increasing rests (eg. 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds)
Constant rests (eg. 30 seconds each set)
Breathing rests (eg. 10 deep breaths between sets)

Using increasing rest periods feels the most natural because as you start to fatigue you take longer and longer rest periods.

Breathing rest periods are a great way to actively control your breathing and can also be matched to the amount of repetitions you perform. For example, 10 deep breaths after every 10 reps you perform.

Think about your goals. Shorter rests of 30 – 60 seconds are better for cardio and endurance training whereas 90 seconds and more is better for muscle and strength building.

How to take action:

Start by simply reducing your rest periods in between sets. Next, try increasing rest periods to balance out fatigue caused from each set. Have some fun with breathing sets eg. 10 kettlebell swings followed by 10 deep breaths.

6 Pre-fatigue

Here’s a simple experiment, perform 10 push ups and then 10 overhead kettlebell presses immediately afterwards.

Notice anything different?

What you are experiencing here is pre-fatigue, the push ups made the overhead press more challenging.

You will have probably experienced pre-fatigue without even knowing it based on how your workouts are structured.

Failing grip strength is a common symptom of pre-fatigue.

Pre-fatigue can take the form of both muscular and cardiovascular.

Here are some pre-fatigue examples:

500 Metre Row (muscle / cardio)
100 Metre Sprints (muscle / cardio)
60 Seconds Airdyne (muscle / cardio)
Squats Thrusts or Burpees (muscle / cardio)
Push Ups (muscular)
Pull Ups (muscular)

Here’s an image of the squat thrust:

When designing your workout programs you should take into consideration the exercises and movements involved to see how pre-fatigue will occur.

How to take action:

Take a look at your workout program, think about rearranging exercises to induce pre-fatigue before the easier exercises. For example, if goblet squats are becoming easy try adding 20 squat thrust or burpees before your goblet squats.

7 Exercise Combinations

Changing up your exercise combinations is another way to progress your kettlebell workouts without adding more weight.

Peripheral heart action (PHA) training is a method of combining exercises so that blood is shunted from the lower half of the body to the upper half.

The rapid blood shunting caused by PHA generates additional cardiovascular fatigue.

One of my favourite kettlebell workouts illustrates this form of training: