Waving the Load: The Simplest Programming Tool You're Not Using

In this episode of Kettlebell Corner coach Jeremiah Waylon dives into practical strategies for structuring kettlebell workouts using the wave method to optimize strength, endurance, and recovery. This episode breaks down how to apply deliberate variations in volume and intensity to achieve consistent progress without overcomplicating your training plan.  An ideal approach for beginners and a refreshing change from decision fatigue for adults with full lives and decisions on a regular basis.   Great for experienced kettlebell practitioners to change the pace between specific training programs. 

Key topics

• The principle that the body adapts between sessions, not during them
• Structuring your week: heavy, medium, and light days for balanced training
• How to adjust effort based on how you feel to optimize performance
• Using percentages of max effort to guide training intensity
• Volume and density management in ballistic vs. grind movements
• Specific wave formats: EMOM, ladders, and set schemes
• The importance of consistency and sustainability over complexity
• How to simplify skill mastery with basic movements like swings, snatches, and presses
• The mental and physical benefits of a deliberate, adaptable approach
• Encouragement for beginners and experienced lifters to embrace simplicity for better results

Timestamps

 00:00 - Introduction to waving the load and its benefits 

01:23 - The body's adaptation process and training principles

02:50 - Structuring weekly training: heavy, medium, light days 

03:49 - Adjusting based on how you feel and recovery considerations 

04:47 - Using percentages of max effort for training intensity 

05:44 - Ballistic movements: managing volume, density, and recovery 

06:44 - Practical examples of volume management with EMOMs and bell sizes 

07:38 - Variations for different movement types and training styles 

08:07 - The simplicity and effectiveness of basic skill mastery 

09:05 - The value of focusing on fundamental skills for long-term progress 

10:02 - The importance of sustainability and consistency 

11:28 - Encouragement for patience and deliberate practice 

12:51 - The versatility of kettlebells for full-body development 

13:21 - Simplifying training for busy or decision-heavy lifestyles 

14:51 - Upcoming events and ways to connect for coachingResources & Links

Contact us to participate in the SWING CLINIC on March 28th 1-3p.m. at Ionix in Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) $100 - email theironrevival@gmail.com or DM our Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theironrevival/

Note: For detailed movement examples and deeper training insights, check previous episodes and visit our social channels.

Download the Bells kettlebell training app from the apple app store here:  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bells-by-iron-revival/id1554919084

Get Roger Parks’ book Kettlebell Essentials: Ballistics on kindle or paperback here:

https://a.co/d/3JmimHQ

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Subscribe to our YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ironrevival?si=zhcY_GxBkz0D3GKw

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Kettlebell Corner, where strength meets theory, where we take you on a deeper dive into all things kettlebells. I'm Jeremiah Whalen, and I want to address something today that you might not be doing. Most people think that easy days are wasted days. Well, they're wrong. And this belief is what's stalling your progress and wearing you down. Today I want to talk about waving the load. But first, let's do a little bit of house cleaning. If you're in the LA area, I want to personally invite you out to the swing clinic we got going on March 28th from 1 to 3 p.m. If you're interested in doing this, it's in Woodland Hills, and you can reach out to us at theironrevival at gmail.com or simply on Instagram, send us a DM. We're at the Iron Revival. If you're interested in doing that, come and check it out. It's a hundred bucks. Spots are limited. If you want to go, we'll get you in. And then online coaching is coming soon. We've had a lot of people ask, how can I get feedback from us? Well, we want to let you know that we are setting up a system to where you can submit your videos and we'll be able to give you coaching based on that. So stay tuned for that as well as the update on the Android app coming uh soon for the Bells app. All right. So let's talk about the first principle when it comes to waiving the load. It's very important to remember that the body adapts between sessions, not during them. Training is a stimulus and recovery is the result. So you have a few different things to go off of here. When I approach training sessions, whether it's for myself or it's for my clients, I like to kind of keep things moving in a way that's not complicated. This doesn't have to be a complicated thing. This effort that we're gonna go through in waiving the load isn't something that requires a lot of thinking or a lot of calculations. However, as we've said in the past, the weight matters, the stimulus matters, and the recovery matters even more. So when it comes to the wave, let's start with grinds, which is gonna be your press, your squats, maybe even your getups, but these primarily are gonna be in the press range and the squat range. In this sort of thing, the wave is deliberate. And if you're training, let's say three times a week with your kettlebells, which is adequate enough and will get you results. And if you're new to kettlebell training, that's a great place to start and it's a great way to kind of get this going. And if you've been doing kettlebells for a while and you felt like maybe you are tired of following a strict program or you're just looking to be consistent, this is a great way to do that. So the wave needs to be delivered, and it's a heavy, medium, and light day, sort of spread out across the week, or you can even do it in a ladder style format in a particular session. And the idea behind this is that the muscles and the joints that you're using will get that lighter day so it can fully recover and be able to utilize the heavier days to your advantage and the medium days to your advantage. The light day isn't exactly a rest day, it's a technique under control and a nervous system resetting for the next heavy effort. One thing that that I consider when it comes to training this particular way is, and we've mentioned this before, is asking yourself first or asking your client if you're a coach, asking yourself first, how do you feel? How do I feel today? What is this day going to be? None of this training is needing to be set in stone. So if you say, Oh, I'm doing my heavy day first, which is a somewhat of a good idea, especially if it's early on in the week because you have the most resources available to you typically after a weekend and before like the aspects of the week mount up and get into this. If you're going with your heavy day and you say, I feel great, I feel fantastic, then go ahead and proceed with the plan. But if you're going in and you are feeling a little bit less than, or you know, maybe you had a crappy night's sleep, then you may want to resort back to the medium or the light day. And then you just simply shift them around. If you did your medium day, then the next day could be the heavy day followed by the light day, or vice versa. You just want to kind of make sure you get in those specific efforts. And using the percentages of your max total, whether it's a rep max total or a singular press max total, are gonna be key. I think generally we like sitting around 75% is a good enough stimulus to give you uh a result. And that's gonna maybe be your lighter day. 70, 75% of your max is gonna be your lighter day. Then you got 80% and you got 90%. And of course, what changes with this and how it correlates is if you're going with those lighter reps, maybe you're doing the five sets of five, or maybe you're doing a one to five ladder. And if you're subsequently, as you get in medium, maybe that rep range changes, or when you get into heavy, maybe it's just singles. So these are sort of ways you can work that. But this is an important thing to consider, even if it's deadlifts or squats or or press, whatever it is, whether it's kettlebell, barbell, whatever, this is an effective way to stimulate your training to get the result. And this is particularly for the grind lifts. And when it comes to your ballistics, which is a swing, a snatch, a jerk, a push-press, whatever it is, you're not gonna really adjust the bell size too much intercession. Maybe you're getting that lighter in for the technique, and that's your light day. But the bell size is typically gonna be more fixed. So the wave actually lives a little bit differently. This is gonna live in volume and density and rest. So you can't separate the cardiovascular system from the muscular system in ballistic work. You can't manage one without managing the other. And if you overload them, something is gonna break down. So the wave that you want to include here is the volume or the density. And if we take the swing as the foundation, what we mean by this is if you're doing something like an imam style. So if you're doing an em style of training and your weight is, let's say, for a two-arm swing, you're a beginner, maybe it's a 24 kilo, you're uh a more experienced lifter and your average strength and you're going 10 reps, maybe it's a 32 kilo. You want to make sure that that this emo style is one particular day of the week, okay? And if you're looking at the snatch, for instance, that's gonna change a little bit as well. So maybe your lighter is, let's say, a 20 kilo, and your your test size bell is a 24 kilo. So then your medium day is gonna be the 24, and then your heavier day is gonna be the 28 kilo. And when you're doing this, you're gonna change things a little bit. So on the lighter days, it's maybe it is a 10 plus 10, uh, and then taking a rest of you know 60 to 90 seconds, recovering enough to get into it. And then maybe on your medium day, it's that 24 kilo, and that's your test size bell, and you're hitting a five by five Ema. And then you come to your, then you come to your your heavy day, which is the 28 kilogram bell, then you're going to likely switch that up to maybe a three plus three or even a five plus five, but you're extending that rest duration a little bit longer so you can put in maximum effort with the right amount of recovery and intensity so that you're allowing yourself to fully achieve the training effect that you're going for. These are just a few ways to break that down. But what we're getting at is understanding that the heavy, the medium, and the light days, whether you're varying the weight if you're in a grind situation or a ladder sort of rep scheme or a straight set sort of rep scheme, or you're varying the volume with the ballistic style along with the rest, which kind of helps manage your effort and fatigue throughout that whole training session. These are ways to maximize and get the results you want in a simple manner, okay? Especially if you're beginning. If you're beginning to do this kettlebell training, obviously we mentioned the one, five, one. And this is sort of a broader overview of waiving the load. Again, this programming style is it's like sort of like the anti-program. It's very simplistic, but it does get results. The one is a single when you're learning a single rep sort of status. The five is where you begin to add ladders into the mix, or your sets become longer sets, depending upon what it is you're doing, whether it's a grind or a ballistic. And then then the final one is when you're doing an imam or a timed sort of set scenario. So that's just another little way to work that waving of the load in. You have this opportunity with kettlebells, which is very unique to train on a on a regular basis. Once you get past the initial learning curve and get into your real long game sort of outlook on your kettlebell training, you can really just take essentially seven skills and make them your primary foundation for your training. And we're talking about a swing, a snatch, a clean, a press, a squat, a getup. And then whether it's the push press, if you're newer, or the jerk is another option if you're a little bit more experienced. This is all about simplicity because the reality is complexity then takes away from the amount of intensity that you can do. We've talked about this in several episodes, and you can go back, these are some deeper dives that we've gone into. This treat this as like an entryway. So if you're here and you're new to the new to Kettlebell Corner and Iron Revival, we have gone deeper into all these things. So I just want to let you know that if you start checking out the previous episodes, you're going to find some of the rabbit holes that we go down. Um the idea that mastery of a few things executed consistently over time outperforms scattered effects across many different varieties. Now, we do talk about complexes and things like that, which you can use and you can wave the load on that as well. You can waive the training programming on that as well. It's a it's a it's a unique way to do things. When you start to take these basic skills, master them, or at least get efficient at them, then you don't have to think as much. You can show up, you can handle the work that you need to do, you can take the rest that you need to take, and you can allow your body to recover that it needs to recover in a very easy, hard, medium, and light effort sort of day. Now, this is a very broad overview of how to set up a structure like that. Um, the reality is whatever you decide to do, whether it's a waiving the load or it's a specific program or it's the 151 method when it comes to your training, the best one that's going to work for you is the one that you can sustain, the one that you're able to show up consistently for, the one that you're able to put in the time week over week to get the results, allowing patience and time to be the real factor that uh that gets you to the to the results that you seek. When I start out with clients for the first time, and if they've never used kettlebells before, and even if they have, to be honest, or if they're experiencing weightlifting or training or whatever it is, I'd like to set this expectation that if you allow yourself the patience and the consistency and the process to unfold over the course of however long it takes, it could be a year, it could be two years, it could be three months, it could be six months, that just depends on the individual. But if I if you allow yourself this time to sink in, let these things work for you, develop the skills. This is this is like a unique thing where you can have this sort of hobby that allows you to become stronger, fitter, and really just I think personally better overall. If you allow this to happen, you're gonna see results way beyond just what your body composition looks like and what your mental state is. You're going to have this perfect storm of improvement, self-improvement. And this is where kettlebells lend themselves best. We mentioned this in other episodes as well. Are they the best tool for building the most muscle, building the most strength, building the most endurance? Likely not. But are they the most versatile, well-rounded for getting you proficient levels of each and real-world strength in odd positions? Yes, they are definitely there for that. So whatever it is you choose, remember this is one option that if you aren't using, could take you to the next level. And if you are using it, I'd love to hear what it is that's working for you, as well as what it is you might need some help with, especially coming from this sort of programming angle. Again, this is a basic way to get started. And if you've been in a rut, this is a nice way to get jump started back into your training or to simplify things. Especially, you know, as we're we're adults here, we're we're adults in our mid-40s, mid-30s, 50s, even 60s, you know. Our lives have a lot of decisions that come into play. I, for one, know I'm a father, I'm a homeschool teacher, I'm a business owner, I'm a husband, and all these things add up. And when push comes to shove, I need to get my exercise in on a near-daily basis. And this is one way when I have too much decisions in these other realms of my life that I can take and lean on to allow myself the chance to continue to improve and stay in good physical fitness. So if that's something you're looking for, then this is another option for you as well. All right, that being said, be sure to download the Bells app on Apple App Store coming soon to your Android store. And check us out, the Swing Clinics, and this is a timely one. So if you're listening to this past March 28th, 2026, you missed it. And it's okay, we'll do it again. But we're local here in LA. So if you want to come and get some coaching from us directly, the Swing Clinic is on March 28th. It's in Woodland Hills. All the information will be in the description to sign up. So if you want to get in on that action, you can reach out to us directly. Send us a message. And if you have questions on your training, be sure to post those. We want to answer those. We keep our question and answer episodes around three or four. And if you provide them, we will answer them, I assure you. Then if it requires more in depth breakdowns, then we'll go ahead and provide a deeper episode on that as well. So put your questions in the comments. Send us a text message directly. And again, if you think this is valuable, please share the show with somebody else that trains. And uh until next time, stay strong, y'all.