kettlebells

Kettlebell: Manifestation of Your Warrior Instinct

A kettlebell is a cannonball with a handle. It’s an extreme hand­held gym. Lifting a kettlebell is liberating, and it’s as aggressive as broadsword play. It’s a manifestation of your warrior instinct.

Traditionally, guys name their kettlebells the way warriors used to name their weapons. They paint them with their unit’s coat of arms. They get tattoos of kettlebells. The Russian kettlebell is the Harley-Davidson of weights.

Kettlebell train­ing can deliver ex­treme fitness and all-purpose strength, staying power, flexibility and fat loss without the dishonor of aerobics. All these benefits could be accomplished in no more than one to two hours of weekly train­ing—all done with one compact and virtually indestruc­tible tool that can be used anywhere.

Using the kettlebell you can get outstanding muscle mass gains, provided your train­ing protocol is de­signed accordingly and you throw enough protein and calories down the hatch. As a rule of thumb, to build beef, one should do slow kettlebell exercises (grinds), fives (five reps) or quick lifts of 10s (10 reps). Keep your rest periods minimal either way.

athlete with kettlebells

During the past few years an old-school form of weight training called kettlebell lifting has made a comeback in a big way.Thousands of people have experienced the cardio­vascular and muscular-endurance benefits of ballistic kettlebell exercises, such as the clean and jerk and the snatch. Those are exercises that teach your body to work as one unit; they take muscular-endurance train­ing to the next level. Imagine doing several sprints at full power, and you get an idea of what a high-rep set of kettlebell snatches feels like.

In addition to the cardio benefits, many people have benefited from the tremendous fat-burning effects of hard kettlebell workouts. I’ve had clients lose 30 pounds of fat in two months of hard kettlebell training. While anyone who’s done a high-rep set of snatches can attest to the cardio component of kettlebells, few trainees realize that kettlebell training is an excellent way to increase strength and size.