Final Thoughts on 10,000 Swings 2018

It's been a bit over a month since we completed the 10, 000 swings challenge.  I was really impressed with how people got on board and the huge numbers of swings that people managed to churn out across the month.  It's so many swings, and it was great to see people increasing the weight of their bells as the month went on, but consistently demonstrating a commitment to doing safe, powerful swings.  The purpose of the following ramblings is to give a quick summary of what I liked, disliked, and where we'll go with the swing challenges in the future.

Positives

-  No one finds 100 swings particularly intimidating anymore, and most people seem inclined to add more swings into their daily life.

-  Most people who participated regularly finished the month with a better swing technique that we'll hopefully be able to leverage for more power in the months to come.

-  Coming together to strive towards a common goal was nice for our community.  It was nice to cheer each other on, as well as to strive for a target.  There was a little bit of friendly competition amongst some of our more competitive clients.

-  My wife is not so secretly beauty and the beast.  Rachel crushed out almost 330 tonne of kettlebell swings across the month with bells ranging from 28kg to 40kg...  The most tonnage of anyone (Obvious proud husband right here...).

- Rachel was joined by Barry, Phil, Nick M, Matt, Nick C, Tim, Amanda, Christina, Fiona and Ingrid in hitting the 10, 000 mark for the month, which was hugely impressive, with our group falling every so slightly short of our 5, 000, 000 kg target (4, 761, 622).

- I'm sure there were other positives but a month out, these were the ones that stood out in my mind.

 

Negatives

-  We had a few clients that didn't really connect with the challenge. I'll probably offer some other, less repetitive work for people next year who don't want to join in.

- Some people probably pushed a little hard at the start and burnt out instead of enjoying the whole month.

- There really didn't seem to be that many negatives as I look back.  The main one for me is to make sure that I don't have many high volume swing or snatch programs through the majority of the year so that this month is something a little bit different to minimise the sense of monotony for people who are attending class and don't find this kind of thing invigorating.

 

Next Year

Next year, we're going to do the same thing again, but I'm hoping to do it for charity.  We'll find a cause that people in our community care about, and we'll try and use our swings as a tool to raise some support, awareness, and cash for it.  I'd love for us to see more people complete the swing event next year, and also for some of the people in our wider community join in.

We experienced a huge benefit and got a lot of pleasure from the event, so hopefully, we can get the Australian kettlebell community at the very least to make 10, 000 swings 2019 an even bigger, better event.