NEITHER RAIN NOR TRAFFIC NOR BITES OF MOSQUITOES...

...Stays these crazy kettlebellers from getting it on in public.

I've just arrived home after our first Kettlebells In The Park workout, held in TTDI park. The KDT bunch was joined by Jonathan Wong and friends from the Pushmore gym, which was really cool.

We got off to a late start, because it was raining a bit and there was also a pretty big event being held in the park, so there was quite a lot of traffic in and around the area. Fortunately I was one of the few who got there on time and managed to score myself a parking spot. The area where we got to work out was actually quite far in, so just getting there, while hanging on to a kettlebell, was a good warmup in itself.

I had made the decision to switch down in weight for today's session, passing my current 20kg kettlebell over in favour of a 16kg (fortunately they were both Pro Series kettlebells, so nobody could tell I was cheating). It turned out to be a pretty smart decision.

The KDT group was the first to arrive so we were already doing snatches, swings and squats. When the Pushmore gang joined and everything got under way, though, it turned out to be a really good workout! We did another several hundred swings, snatches, presses, jerks, squats and slingshots.

For me, the killer was when we did our sets of swings. First Cliff, then Thong and finally myself, each counted out 50 swings (25 each hand) and everyone followed along. In between each set, nobody could put the kettlebells down, and we were made to do slingshots as an active recovery exercise. By the time I was done we had gone through about 150 swings - which was really challenging for me, first thing in the morning - and we weren't even halfway finished!

I did manage to find one thing out for myself though. Placing my kettlebell on the floor with the handle perpendicular to me, and my hands on either side with my fingers pointing towards the ground, pushups are a great way to stretch out my wrists. Being that the swings only tired out my forearms, wrists and fingers - my triceps and pecs were still right fresh.

Lots of fun was had by all, and I'm seriously looking forward to the next time we get to drag ourselves out of our warm beds at 8 in the morning on a rainy Sunday to go hurl my kettlebell in a park with all the joggers and mosquitoes!

I'll be looking to put up pics of the workout, though since I didn't bring a camera, I'm rather at the mercy of those who did.