Today is day two in a personal 30+ day experiment. I was recently reminded of 30 day experiments by Scott Young‘s prompting.

Basically I have set a short term goal of finite duration with well formed outcomes and well formed process goals. This particular experiment is to (re)develop my exercise routine. I’m dedicating myself to throwing kettlebells every day for 30 days as my momentum goal.

Oh, wait. I don’t think I’ve publicly talked about MnM goal setting (nothing to do with the candy!). Hmmm, I think I’ll save that for a later post. Today is about 30 day experiments.

For this experiment my nada goal is a daily 3 minute warm up, 100 swings in 5 minutes with a 16 kg ‘bell, and 8 brocades as my ”cool down” afterwards. The monster for this experiment is 100 snatches with 24 kg in 15 minutes.

Yesterday I did 100 swings @ 16 kg in about 5 min with a Tabata style cadence: 10 swings in (approximately) the 20 seconds maximally active then 10 seconds rest. Grip it, rip it, and repeat. I did about 3 minutes of stretching/loosening before diving into the swings and just walked it off while catching my breath afterwards.

Today I was still feeling the little aches that tell me my swing form wasn’t ideal so I decided to do cleans instead (to at least distribute the aches across a few new locations!). Similar deal as the swings: 10 cleans as fast as I could (approx 20 seconds), 10 seconds rest, 10 cleans w/other arm, 10 seconds rest. I doubt I’ll be doing that exact sequence again because my hands were getting torn up by the poorly designed handle on the adjustable ‘bell I was using. (I either need to round out the handle or wait for my Kiwi friend to come back to the states so I can test one of my other adjustable kb handles I loaned out.)

What does all this girevik geekery mean for the non-RKCs? It means public accountability. I wouldn’t bother making up this level of detail if I hadn’t done it. It also gives you a chance to see how small the commitment can be (less than 10 minutes a day so far) and still have significance.

Your mission for today is to choose an area of your life where you’re willing to run a 30 day experiment — health, relationships, money, learning, etc and share it in the comments below. Tomorrow we’ll talk about well formed outcomes and process goals so you can run a 30 day experiment through April.