April 2026 Programming — KB Pentathlon & Hyrox Block

Every month I write my programming on a single side of A4 and stick it on the fridge. April's sheet is a kettlebell-heavy block pointed at two benchmarks, with a deliberate bias toward staying in the game: daily movement, autoregulated intensity, and a rotation that's easy to keep up when life gets busy.

This post is the long-form version of that crib sheet — what I'm doing, why, and how I'll know it's working.

The two benchmarks

Goals are easy to write and hard to measure. I'm only tracking two numbers this month:

• Calories in a 30-minute bike. Simple, repeatable, brutally honest about where my aerobic fitness sits.
• Reps of a double 20 kg clean & press in a single session. The KB pentathlon headline lift — volume here is the shortest path to a better total.

Everything else in the plan exists to move those numbers. If a session doesn't support one of them, it's cool-down or it's cut.

Goals for the block

• Be active every day — even if "active" means ten minutes of mobility.
• Improve my KB pentathlon numbers (long cycle C&P is the priority).
• Reduce my Hyrox time.
• Train consistently and injury-free.
• Use autoregulation to moderate effort. Some days the session on paper isn't the session your body wants.

The autoregulation piece is the one I keep re-learning. The crib sheet doesn't prescribe weights or RPE targets — it prescribes categories of work. On a good day that's a heavy C&P ladder; on a tired day the same slot becomes iron cardio with a lighter bell. Same category, different output.

The rotation

Five kinds of session, cycled based on feel rather than a fixed day-of-week split:

1. Kettlebell strength & conditioning — clean & press ladders, cleans-into-squats (5-4-3-2-1).
2. Kettlebell conditioning — EMOMs and iron cardio at lower intensity.
3. Low-intensity cardio — a long run or bike in zone 2. Rounds out everything else.
4. Gym strength — the stuff kettlebells can't do well: hack squats, lat pulldowns, dips, heavy lunges.
5. Hyrox work capacity — one or two stations at a time, alternating EMOMs or timed repeats.

The split deliberately isn't "push/pull/legs". It's modality — the movement patterns rotate through the week without me having to think about it, and the low-intensity days pick up whatever the high-intensity days left behind.

The session template

Every session, regardless of rotation slot, runs the same five phases. I skip or extend any of them based on how I feel and how much time I have.

1. Mobility — cat-camel, sun salutation A with a low-lunge rotation.
2. Warm up — either a bodyweight circuit (20 reps × 3 of three exercises) or a Hyrox-flavoured cardio warm up (800 m run + 20 squats + 20 lunges + 20 wall balls).
3. Movement prep — heavier-but-submaximal versions of the session's key patterns. Roll-outs, halos, cossack squats, a goblet squat / curl / press / skull-crusher complex.
4. Main session.
5. Cool down — usually a walk or easy cardio.

The warm-up and movement-prep stages are where autoregulation shows up most. If movement prep feels great, I'll push the main session. If it feels rough, I'll swap the category.

The bodyweight warm-up

3 rounds of 20 reps, three exercises picked from:

• Banded pull-aparts, hip thrusts, dead bugs, squats, glute bridges, plank variations
• Press-ups, up-and-overs, lunges, banded bicep curls, banded tricep extensions

The cardio warm-up (Hyrox days)

• 800 m run
• 20 bodyweight squats
• 20 lunges
• 20 wall balls

How I'll track it

Pen and paper. The monthly crib sheet has a printed log grid on the back (one cell per day) and I jot down the rotation slot + the key number. At the end of the month I compare the bike cal PR and the double C&P total against March.

For session design — i.e. the actual content of the main piece — I lean on the workout generator for couplets, triplets and 21-15-9s when I want a surprise, and the Hyrox generator for station-specific work. The EMOM days are usually self-prescribed because they're built around a single KB drill.

One-month check-in

The plan is written. Now the work is showing up. I'll post a follow-up at the end of April comparing what I actually did against what the crib sheet said, including the two benchmark numbers and whatever got in the way.

If the rotation survives contact with real life, it becomes May's template. If it doesn't, May gets rewritten.