Kettlebell Exercises - a Beginners Guide
Kettlebell exercises have the potential to turn your training routine on its head. Fat loss, muscle building and conditioning can all happen simultaneously with balance and stretching ability being improved too -- If you don't have kettlebell exercises in your regime, you're missing out.
Now, before getting on to the bread and butter of the article - the exercises themselves - I feel it's important to explain what a kettlebell is.
The training tool of choice for the Russian elite forces, kettlebells have been in prevalent in Russian society for a very long time. Shaped like a cannonball with a handle on the top, kettlebells allow for compound movements that work the body as a whole with a large amount of muscles and muscle groups being worked in each workout.
When buying a kettlebell, it is important to make sure that you start off with the correct weight. Too heavy and you could risk injuring yourself; too light and your training will suffer. Men who are new to the world of fitness training should start with a 16kg with more experienced athletes opting instead for a 20kg or even a 24kg kettlebell. Female trainers should start with an 8kg weight with more experienced athletes picking up a 12kg or 16kg instead.
Unlike dumbells, kettlebells do not increase incrementally in small jumps. This is compensated by variation in the exercises performed. As strength and conditioning is increased, more difficult kettlebell exercises are deployed that push the body harder and further.
The first exercise any aspiring kettlebell athlete (or girevek, as they're known in Russia) should learn is the two handed swing. Despite it's relative simplicity, the swing is an amazing exercise as it targets the back, the legs the abs all the while increasing flexibility in the hips and increasing cardio vascular endurance. The swing epitomises all that is brilliant about kettlebell exercises.
To perform the two handed kettlebell swing, you should start by placing your feet shoulder distance apart with your toes pointly slightly outwards. The next step is to squat down and pick up the kettlebell gripping the handle with both hands while sticking your bottom out in the air. Next, stand up and swing the kettlebell in front of you, pushing your hips forwards at the top of the swing. Finally, let the kettlebell fall down between your knees while you squat down. Rinse and repeat.
It is important to manage your breathing while carrying out the swing. While the kettlebell is rising, the girevek should be exhaling gradually with a sharp exhale at the top of the swing. The girevek should then inhale as the kettlebell falls and swings down between their legs.
A simple workout that can be carried out with the two handed swing is as follows:
- Warmup for ten minutes, doing a variety of bodyweight exercises. I recommend jogging for thirty seconds, then doing thirty seconds of pushups, thirty seconds of squats and then thirty seconds of ab crunches. Repeated five times at a moderate pace, the body should be warmed up and ready for action.
- Alternate between one minute intervals of swings and active rest for twelve minutes, i.e. one minute of swings followed by one minutes of jogging followed by another minute of swings followed by one minute of pushups, and so on and so forth. Active recovery is not supposed to tax the body greatly and should thus be carried out at a moderate to low pace to keep the body active.
The next morning after completing the workout, you'll definately feel it!
Once you've masted the two handed swing, you can move on to other variations of the swing such as the one handed swing and the DARC swing where the kettlebell is released by one hand in the air and caught by other.
Beyond the swing, there are hundreds of kettlebell exercises to experiment with. To get the most out of your training, I recommend picking up the book Enter the Kettlebell! by Pavel Tsatsouline.
Good luck in your training!
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