Thursday, December 4, 2014

Tracy Reifkind's Ten 10 x 10 Challenge

Ah yes....so the story goes.  Last year around this time I created my 10 x 10 workouts designed just to get your hands on the bell, work up a little sweat and get back into feeling your body and out of your head.  Over the last 12 months I've posted well over 100 workouts, close to 200 I'm sure (I stopped counting) so now I have a challenge for you during this busy holiday season to help you maintain your strength, health and fitness and hit the ground swinging strong on the first of the year. In fact it's a great way to get ready for The Swing Quest, which I will lead/host here in the SF Bay Area on January 1st (Thursday morning), and my Winter Tour Classes I'll be leading in St Paul and Milwaukee right afterwards, on January 5th and 8th!

The challenge is this.  Over 1 weekend before Xmas complete ten rounds of 10 x 10's twice.  Once over the course of an entire day (8 hours at least), and once done is consecutive sets.  If you are advanced/intermediate level you should be able to complete the consecutive set challenge within an hour, if you are a beginner do it using "On the Minute" sets of up to 10 reps for 50 minutes, rep count is irrelevant. You can do either way first but do them both one day after the next.....I'll be doing mine this weekend at the Israel SFG, most likely Saturday and Sunday.

You may choose this weekend (like me), or it may be one of the next three, but complete it at least one full week before January 1st.  Here are the ten consecutive sets I did in Sweden on Monday morning but please use any variation of 10 swings, with any variation of bell sizes.  Please share your results here in the comments section!  We all want to know how you did!  Thank you :)






















PS And remember to register for my Winter Tour Classes here on by blog by December 10th to get a special gift form me :)  (links on the left)  and on Face Book you'll find the Milwaukee event here;

https://www.facebook.com/events/386980618133398/


6 comments:

Tracy Reifkind said...

Okay...let me be the first! Today's all day 10 x 10 x 10 was quite possibly the hardest thing I've ever done! Seriously. It may have been slightly affected with the fact that I swung for over 1 1/2 hours (12kg) with some friends here in Tel Aviv first thing this morning so I didn't get to my first set of 10 x 10's until 11:20am.

It was my plan to do a 10 x 10 every 20 minutes but then I decided to not be so stuck to a schedule and draw it out over as long as 5 hours as I could, since that was part of the challenge.

None of the ten rounds was easy and I promise you that I thought about abandoning it many many times...but I didn't. I couldn't! I could not abandon something I promoted or expect anybody else to try or challenge themselves with. More details to come, but basically I used the 24kg for ten rounds of 10 x 10's from 11:20am-4:30pm.

gmkrehbiel said...

I've only done 1000 swings 2 other times so this was a great challenge for me. I did the 10x10x10 you posted videos for on Saturday. I tool me just over an hour with a few breaks to check on kids and get more water and start supper.

On Sunday, I did the same 10x10x10 you posted again. Started at noon and finished at 6PM. That was really hard. I seamed to take much longer that an hour. With all the shoes on and off, sweatshirts on and off, chalk washing ans re-putting on. I'm not in favor of dragging things out like that again.

I'd like to do it again (when I've recovered) but as a 10x20x5. Maybe you could make one for us? ;)
Great challenge. Thanks! ~Gwen

gmkrehbiel said...

I might have listed what I'd like to do next wrong. I am thinking of sets of 20 and doing it 5 times. ~Gwen

Tracy Reifkind said...

Gwen,

Awesome and thank you so much for your feedback, it's really valuable information...that all day long challenge was a chore, wasn't it? Argh! Definitely harder.

Here's the thing about sets of 20... With all of my experience I find sets of 20 to be the easiest, and I don't mean that that's a bad thing.

When training sets of 10, 20, 30, 40 with equal rest intervals I have found that the 20 rep option, a 30 sec/30 sec work to rest ratio is the one most of my students, and myself included, acclimate to easiest. The shorter 15/15 is the most difficult, with 45/45 (30 reps), 1min/1 min next in order.

20/20
30/30
40/40
10/10

would be the progression of easy to hard, in my experience and opinion. I'd rather do the 40/40 next actually.

But no worries....they will all get a chance in some way or another :)

Tracy Reifkind said...

whoops, this might make more sense

30 sec/30 sec
45 sec/45 sec
1 min/1 min
15 sec/15 sec

Those are the work to rest interval times that are hard to harder, to hardest! lol

Anonymous said...

Part one of Challenge- completed! I did the 10X10X10 consecutive swings with the 24kg in 53 minutes. I took some extra rests;) This was harder mentally for me than physically. I've been swinging the 32kg for 15 min 2X a week ( 10x10x3) so this was a BIG change! I am not doing the long dragged out version - mostly because I have no desire to ;) But I loved the version I did. Thanks!!

also, totally unrelated - thanks for the SINISTER workout! I did that workout with MANY variations from July till December.. LOVED IT!!