Kettlebell Full Body in Durata: when the app climbs faster than your rack
This is the most portable program in the catalogue. One full-body session, run three times a week, built out of swings, goblet squats, cleans, presses, rows, high pulls, get-ups and carries. One bell will do it. Two is better. Nothing else is required.
That simplicity creates one problem worth understanding before you start, and this drive walked straight into it. The progression rule adds 2.5 kg at a time. Kettlebells do not come in 2.5 kg steps. Nine sessions in, the app was asking for weights that no ordinary rack contains, which turns out to say something useful about how to run the program.
Finding the program
A fresh install opens on the first-run funnel: import an old log, build a profile, find a program, connect Health, or skip straight to logging. This run takes the program route.
Goal, experience and days a week produce a shortlist, and Kettlebell Full Body comes back at the top for a beginner training three days a week. It is one of the few programs in the catalogue that asks nothing about what equipment you have, because the answer is already in the name.
The program page shows the shape before you commit: three identical full-body days, eight movements, and a progression that works by adding reps before it adds weight.
Nine numbers and no maxes
The setup sheet is the shortest in the catalogue: a working weight per movement, starting at 12.5 kg on most of them and 10 kg on the press. No training maxes, no percentages, no test session.
Start lighter than you think. On a program where every session is the same session, the cost of opening too heavy is that you meet the ceiling in week two instead of week six, and the cost of opening too light is a fortnight of easy sessions that the rule will climb out of quickly anyway.
A start date lays the three-a-week rhythm out. Everything after this is decided by what you log.
The same session, three times a week
The clean opens at 12.5 kg for three sets in a five to eight rep range, with the rule chip sitting under it: complete the sets and the app adds 2.5 kg next time.
Doing the same session repeatedly is unusual in a modern program and it is the right call for a beginner. Eight movements is already a lot of technique to acquire, and the fastest way to acquire it is to meet the same eight movements every time rather than nine different ones spread across a split.
The session tallies at 2360 kg across 18 sets and 193 reps. The rep count is the striking number. Kettlebell work is high-rep by nature, and a session that would be forty reps with a barbell runs to nearly two hundred here.
Three sessions, three jumps
The clean went 12.5, 15, 17.5 across its first three appearances without hesitating, and every other movement did something similar. This is what a beginner program looks like when the opening weights are honest: nothing is close to a limit yet, so every session clears its target and every target moves.
It is worth saying plainly that this rate is temporary. A weight that climbs 2.5 kg three times a week is climbing 7.5 kg a week, and nothing sustains that for long. The first stall is not the program breaking, it is the program arriving at the part where it does its actual work.
By session three the app already has the next weight on screen when you open it.
20 kg, and the first honest session
20 kg is where the run stopped. The clean produced 4 reps against a target of five, which is a miss, and the weight was held rather than advanced.
The rule chip is a button, and this is the moment to use it. It showed the evidence out of this movement's own history: 17.5 kg cleared, 20 kg attempted and missed, 22.5 kg waiting behind it, the session standing at miss zero of two, and a 10% cut if a second miss lands at the same weight.
The second miss did not land. The next session cleared 20 kg and the climb resumed. One miss buys a repeat rather than a cut, which for a beginner is exactly the right amount of patience: enough to absorb a bad day, not so much that a genuine ceiling goes unnoticed.
The strip below is the clean across all nine sessions.
Kettlebell Clean across nine sessions
- 12.5S1 Session 1 — start
- 15S2 Session 2
- 17.5S3 Session 3
- 20S4 Session 4 — 4 reps of 5
- 20S5 Session 5 — held, then cleared
- 22.5S6 Session 6
- 25S7 Session 7
- 27.5S8 Session 8
- 30S9 Session 9
The rule wants 22.5 kg and you own a 24
Here is the thing to know before you start. Every rule in this program steps by 2.5 kg, and kettlebells step by four. Across nine sessions the clean was prescribed 12.5, 15, 17.5, 20, 22.5, 25, 27.5 and 30 kg, which is eight distinct loads that almost no home rack contains.
That is not a fault in the arithmetic, it is what happens when a rule written for plates meets equipment sold in fixed sizes. What it means in practice is that the rep range is the real progression here and the weight column is the bookkeeping. The chip on the accessories says it directly: climb from 8 reps to 12 on every set, and only then does the weight move.
So run it in reps. When the app asks for a weight you do not own, log the bell you actually picked up and keep climbing the range on it. The next real bell is a whole size away, and the reps are how you earn it. If you have two bells rather than one, the gap between them is your whole progression ladder, which is why two bells is worth more than a better program.
The double bells change this too. A clean and press with a bell in each hand is not a one-bell lift, and logging it as one will make your volume look wrong. Enter what you moved.
Past the weight that stopped it
By session seven the clean was at 25 kg, comfortably past the 20 kg that had stalled it a fortnight earlier. That is the ordinary shape of a beginner block and it is worth seeing once, because it is the evidence for trusting the rule the next time it holds you.
The block finished with the clean at 30 kg on screen and the ledger carrying it forward to 32.5 kg. The swing, the goblet squat and the high pull all went from 12.5 kg to 20 kg, the press from 10 kg to 17.5 kg, and the gorilla row from 12.5 kg to 15 kg. Six movements, six separate arguments, all of them settled from logged reps.
The two movements the app leaves alone
Six of the eight movements carry a progression rule. The Turkish get-up and the farmer's walk do not, and they never appear in the progression ledger at all.
That is deliberate. A get-up is a skill before it is a lift, and the useful progression on it is doing it better rather than doing it heavier. A loaded carry progresses in distance and time as readily as in load. Putting a rep-target rule over either one would produce a number that means very little and would push you toward failure on a movement where failure means dropping something over your face.
So they sit in the session, they get logged, they count toward volume, and nothing tells you to add weight to them. Add weight when they feel easy. That judgement is yours and it is the right place for it.
Nine sessions over three weeks fills the calendar at a rate anyone can keep up with, which is most of the argument for a three-day full-body program in the first place.
What three weeks of kettlebell work adds up to
The block moved 28193 kg across 162 sets and 1761 reps. The rep count is the number that separates this from a barbell block: nearly eighteen hundred reps in nine sessions, most of them ballistic.
The strength view spreads the movements from 38 kg at the top down through 30.7 kg, 26.7 kg and 21.6 kg, with 48 kg of combined estimate. Those are small numbers next to a barbell program and they are not comparable ones. A kettlebell clean is a different task from a barbell clean, and the useful comparison is this block against your own next block.
The estimate chart shows the shape properly: a steep climb, the flat spot where 20 kg was held, and then a resumption that ends well above where the stall happened.
The payoff: session one against session nine
The same movement, the same three working sets, three weeks apart. One held session in the middle, and nothing else decided by hand.
Beginner rate, and it does not last. The first genuine stall is where the program starts doing its real work.
Common questions
What is Kettlebell Full Body?
A beginner three-day program built entirely from kettlebell work: swings and high pulls for the posterior chain and conditioning, goblet squats and clean and press for legs and shoulders, gorilla rows for the back, and Turkish get-ups and farmer's walks for control and grip. The same session three times a week, with progression by adding reps across a range before adding weight.
How many kettlebells do I need?
One will run the program. Two is meaningfully better, because the gap between your two bells becomes your progression ladder: you climb the rep range on the lighter one until the heavier one is earned. A third bell in between is worth more than any change to the program.
The app is asking for 22.5 kg and my bells go 20 then 24. What do I do?
Log the bell you actually used and keep climbing the rep range on it. The rule steps in 2.5 kg because that is what plate-loaded equipment does; kettlebells step in fours. On this program the rep range is the real progression and the weight column is the record of it, so a movement that sits at the same bell for a fortnight while the reps climb is progressing exactly as intended.
Why do the get-up and the farmer's walk have no progression rule?
Because neither one progresses usefully by adding weight on a schedule. A get-up improves by being done better, and a carry progresses in distance and time as readily as in load. They are logged and they count toward your volume, but nothing tells you to add weight. That call stays with you, which is the right place for it on a movement where failure means dropping a bell over your face.
Is this enough to build muscle?
For a beginner, yes, for a while. Three full-body sessions a week with a load that climbs every session is a real training stimulus, and this run moved 28193 kg in three weeks. As you advance you will want heavier bells or a barbell, because kettlebell loading eventually runs out of room in a way a plate-loaded bar does not.
Is Durata free?
Yes. Durata is free to use, with the full program catalogue, rest timers, rule chips and PR tracking. Everything in this walkthrough is in the app.
Put it into practice
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