Putting my Christmas present to good use in my kinda-home-fitness-room

So far, I've used the kettlebell I got for Christmas exactly once in a workout. As a matter of fact, my dad has hauled around more than I have. He brought it back from Michigan in the trunk of his car, which means he loaded it into the car, unloaded it from the car, and carried it up the stairs into my house. And he's 75 years old. I should be ashamed of myself.

I was racking my brains today trying to come up with a heavy metcon that I could do at the house because, quite frankly, doing a WOD in the rain at the squishy soccer field in High Point didn't appeal to me. Inspiration didn't strike until I tripped over the damn kettlebell in my living room.

But what to do with the KB? Swings are an obvious choice. Cleans, snatches and high pulls are out of the question right now because of my elbow. Hubby put the kebosh on any release moves in the living room. I tried Turkish Get Ups, but 25# is still a bit heavy for those. Creativity (at least in exercise) does not appear to be one of my strong suits. But I finally came up with the following WOD, which I was going to call Kettlebell Fran, but I like Kettlebell Jenn better. :p

Buy-in: Arms swings, hip and knee rotations, 100 rope skips
3 rounds:
10 OHS w/broomstick
10 GH situps (used swiss ball with feet hooked under the couch)
10 pushups
10 supermans

WOD: AMRAP in 10:00 (used 25# KB)
21 KB swings
15 KB thrusters
9 bench dips

Total: 3 rounds + 21 swings + 15 thrusters + 5 dips

Thoughts: As with most metcons, this sounded easier than it was. I made it through the first round doing all the exercises unbroken. Second round, I had to catch my breath halfway through the thrusters. Third round, only the dips were unbroken. Thrusters were broken up not only because I had to catch my breath, but I had a dire fear I was going to drop the KB and break my foot, or worse, put a dent in my living room floor.

Cash out: 3 x hollow holds (:45/:30/:30)
Inhale a bowl of leftover beef stew before taking Number One Son to High Point

On a somewhat related note, my living room is slowly turning into my workout room. I started doing BW metcons in there because it's fairly open and has a decent-sized rug over the hardwood floor. Now, in addition to my nice furniture, it has a couple of swiss balls, a jump rope, a broomstick, a foam roller and a kettlebell. In the near future, I can picture a couple more kettlebells, and perhaps a pullup bar across one of the doorways.

This drives my mother bonkers. It's a formal living room (as opposed to a den or family room). In her mind, that means it's there for show, not for actual use. The best furniture and art are in there. It should be as dust-free as an Intel clean room. One is not to sit on the sofa as much as perch on its edge, and then only on special occasions. The kids and the cat should never be in there unsupervised. You can only imagine how she reacted when she came in and found me merrily swinging a kettlebell in the midst of the finery. Well, I wasn't merrily swinging it, but you get the idea.

But we have this funny way of actually living in our house. IMO, it's really too big for just the four of us, and we have this thing about using stuff we buy. So the formal dining room has fine china and a nice big table where we stack mail, catalogs and all the work Hubby brings home from his office. The formal living room has become an informal fitness room, as well as a repository for KAD's guitar and music books along with a collection of Christmas tins and baskets while I decide what to do with them.

Heck, if the room was big enough, I'd abandon all pretense and install a lifting platform and squat rack. If only....