How to Prepare for a Workout? Prep Work
A good session has a warm-up, prep work, workout, and a cooldown. Most of our online kettlebell workout sessions have a follow-along prep work video. For the people that do not follow our workouts, here is an explanation of what prep work is and how to design your own prep work for a kettlebell workout.
Prep is short for preparation, preparing for the work (workout) to come. Prepping is part of the warm-up to the workout. A warm-up is usually performed without weights and raises the heart rate and temperature. Prep work involves warming up with weight and is usually performed going from lighter to heavier weight using the same exercises that are in the workout.
If a workout had kettlebell swings in it, one would grab a light kettlebell and perform low reps of the swing. Then increase the weight, and finally, use the weight that was planned to be used in the workout. This is a great way to gradually prepare the body for the more intense work but it’s also a great time to iron out any issues and deciding whether the planned weight is still appropriate.
More Complex Combos or Flows
If a workout had a more complex task, like a combo or a flow, then the prep work would break that task down into pieces and build it up. For example, a flow would be broken down as: perform the first exercise in the flow several times, then add the second one, repeat several times, and then keep adding on until the full flow is performed flawlessly. This is prepping for the workout and making sure the flow will be performed without issues.
Build it up and Focus on Technique
Prep work is all about building up and focusing on technique, and so should the workout, but in a workout, one can move fast for AMRAPs, FOR TIME, or interval tasks. In the prep work, the idea is to break it all down and focus on form step by step. For example, clean and press. One would clean the weight, and pause in racking to make sure that the racking position is perfect. One would press and pause while holding the weight overhead to make sure the overhead lockout is perfect. And last but not least, one would work on the return to dead, drop from overhead into racking, pause, drop from racking into the backswing, and back to dead.
Design Your Own
To design your own prep work, you need to know what you’re about to do in your workout. Take those exercises and break them down, build them up, low reps, no rushing, full focus, and start light working up to the weight you intend on using.
Most of our kettlebell classes have follow-along prep work included.