The BeWOW Breakdown: “This Workout Was Deceiving”
Rebecca tackling some physioball crunches during this week’s workout.
This Week’s Workout: Crush Calories With a Kettlebell and Physioball
The Breakdown:
Total time commitment: 35 to 40 minutes
Difficulty (out of 5): 3
Soreness factor: We didn’t think we’d be sore. Then we definitely were the next day — hammies, quads, and abs, oh my!
Overall grade (out of 5): 3.5. This workout seemed not too bad when we did it, but we were surprised at the soreness we felt the next day. You do need equipment (ideally two different kettlebells and a physioball), but it was still great.
First impression:
When we saw the workout, we loved seeing the kettlebells and ball incorporated. We also liked that the pyramid started high, then the reps got lower as the workout progressed. Win-win!
How we felt afterward:
This workout was deceiving. It didn’t seem all that bad when we were actually doing it — except for the curtsy squat with the ball. We spent more time trying to figure out the balance of that than actually doing it. Some gym buddies joined us and one gave up on the ball and did the curtsy squat on the ground instead. You need serious balance and coordination to do them right (neither of which Rebecca has).
It also would have been nice to have different kettlebell weights available because the weight you do a squat with is usually heavier than one you will do a row with. Our gym had 20 pounds as the lightest kettlebell, so we swapped for lighter dumbbells instead. By the end, we weren’t sweating because the workout didn’t require much cardio, but the soreness the next day showed how good of a workout it was! Definitely a great workout to do if you have the equipment and want to work a lot of muscles.
About our testers:
Rebecca Barber is the founder of the Rocky 50K Fat Ass Run, a just-for-fun 50K run that follows Rocky Balboa’s footsteps in Rocky II. She’s a 16x marathoner and 14x ultra marathoner, having started running when she was a kid. She’s an active volunteer with Back on My Feet Philadelphia, where she works to help the homeless community use running as a means to better their lives and find stable employment and housing. When not running all the miles, she is the social media coordinator for The Wharton School.
Alon Abramson is the founder of the West Philly Runners, the creator of RunPhil.ly – a web resource for running in Philadelphia – and the organizer of a number of running events in Philly, including the annual 26×1 Mile Team Marathon Relay, Beat the Bus, and Beat the Commute. Running since high school, Alon is an on-again, off-again runner with ebbs and flows to his mileage and commitment. More recently however, he’s taken a new approach to training, emphasizing cross-training and speed work as much as building up mileage and this has dramatically improved his running performance. When he’s not organizing and running, Alon works as a research project manager at Penn’s Institute for Urban Research, studying energy efficiency best practices. He’s on a number of non-profit boards and works on his whole-home retrofit project whenever there’s free time.
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