I’ve had a regular kettlebell practice for many years, but since the completion of my first February Simple & Sinister challenge a while back, swings and get-ups have grown into the spine of my training. Then, last fall, life got spicier: my son deployed to the Middle East, my daughter got engaged, and my elderly parents “crashed” a bit and needed more of me and my time. I needed to train simply. Simple, AXE, and Q&D provided the perfect platforms from which any and all other “work” grew naturally.

Enter Sisyphus.

The basic Sisyphus myth tells the story of the clever (if somewhat nasty) King of Corinth, who angers the Olympian gods. Zeus condemns Sisyphus to the inherently meaningless task of rolling a large boulder, daily, up a hill—only the boulder inevitably rolls downhill again before Sisyphus summits and completes his punishment.

Repeat for eternity.

Most people associate Sisyphus with futility. But French philosopher Albert Camus claimed that Sisyphus, if able to embrace and accept his fate, probably found meaning in his predicament. I like to think that perhaps Sisyphus became a student of his task, and in his meticulous attention to a redundant and mundane labor, he understood each climb to be a “first”. Unique. (Okay, maybe not every climb.)

So, I asked myself, “What if Sisyphus swung a kettlebell?”