Minimalist training is an approach to working out that emphasizes efficiency. The general idea is to get a very good workout in in a relatively short amount of time. One thing to keep in mind here is that these workouts optimize for efficiency, and they won’t yield optimal hypertrophy, strength, or cardio results.
Principles
- ditch lifts that require long warmups
- ditch lifts that require lots of setup/teardown
- use as many compounds as possible
- low reps-in-reserve (RIR)
- supersets, particularly antagonistic supersets
- dropsets (go close to failure on a set, reduce the weight, then immediately go close to failure with the reduced weight)
KB Workout Design
There are multiple different ways to approach a minimalist workout using kettlebells. My go-to approach lately has been to do large volumes of KB complexes, such as the Armor Building Complex.
Another approach is to do an AMRAP with antagonistic movements, e.g.:
AMRAP 20
- lower body push
- lower body pull
- upper body push
- upper body pull
example
- 10 goblet squat
- 15 kb swings
- 10 kb pushup
- 20 gorilla row
Another variation of a full-body KB workout is a tabata-style with 2 circuits. Each circuit could have 3 exercises, 45s on/15s off, and you do each circuit for 4 rounds. This means you can get through the whole workout in ~25 mins. An example is:
Circuit 1
- KB swing
- Goblet squat
- Gorilla row
Circuit 2
- KB overhead press
- KB RDL
- KB pushup