One Kettlebell, Two Burpees: This CrossFit Hero WOD Is One of the Most Efficient Workouts You Can Do

The first time I saw 'Joseph Grzelak' – one of the CrossFit Hero WODs honouring men and women who have given their lives in the line of duty – I thought it was going to be simple. Easy, even.

In fact, in my hubris, I programmed this one into a longer session, thinking it would take no time at all and leave me feeling fresh enough to get on with a few other bits.

Boy, was I wrong.

The workout is disarmingly simple on paper:

• 100 kettlebell swings at 32kg
• At the top of every minute, perform 2 burpees

Before you begin your swings, start a running clock. Perform 2 burpees immediately, then start working through your kettlebell swings.

At the top of every subsequent minute, stop wherever you are and perform another 2 burpees. Continue until you've completed all 100 swings.

'Only 2 burpees?' I thought. I was convinced it had to be a mistake the first time I saw it. 'This is going to be easy.'

Within a couple of rounds, you find out just how wrong you are.

This workout leaves you with two options.

You can try to blast through as many swings as possible in the early rounds, hoping to finish in a fast and respectable time before the burpees begin taking their toll.

Or you can pick a conservative number of swings to aim for each minute, swallow your burpees and get through your target as quickly as possible to earn yourself a few seconds of rest.

To be honest, neither strategy is particularly easy.

Go out too aggressively and your grip, lungs and posterior chain can fall apart before you reach the finish line. Move too conservatively and you risk spending longer in the workout, accumulating more rounds of burpees as the clock continues to run.

There's no 'good' option.

Although deceptively simple, this workout is a fantastic way to pack a huge amount of more-or-less full-body conditioning into less than 10 minutes (with any luck).

The slightly heavier-than-usual kettlebell swings hammer your grip, hamstrings, glutes and entire posterior chain, while forcing you to repeatedly produce explosive power under fatigue.

The burpees keep your heart rate high, interrupt your rhythm and make it increasingly difficult to settle into the swings. Even though you're only performing two at a time, those reps quickly begin to feel disproportionately expensive, eating into your swing time and forcing you to expend more energy picking the bell up and putting it back down.

Together, the movements create a functional halfway house between explosive strength and threshold endurance – the ability to produce powerful reps, recover quickly and continue grinding long after your body has begun begging you to stop.

The prescribed weight is 32kg for men. If you don't think you could comfortably perform around 20 clean swings with the prescribed load, scale down to 24kg, 20kg or another weight that allows you to maintain good form.

But I do think going relatively heavy here is the right choice – heavier than you'd usually use in a workout. It turns the session into a genuine strength challenge, rather than just another high-rep conditioning finisher.

The weight should demand attention. The burpees should steadily erode your enthusiasm. And that supposedly 'easy' 100-rep target should feel considerably further away than it did when you started the clock.

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Andrew Tracey

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.