Kettlebell Workouts Are Not For Wimps!

It’s a funny thing really. The Internet has managed to get such a bad rep for fitness and weight loss products that kettlebells are often viewed with great scepticism and mistrust. However, the humble kettlebell, which is possibly the simplest of fitness accessories, is a solid performer (pun wholeheartedly intended) when it comes to intensive, cardiovascular and muscle endurance workouts.

Kettlebell Workouts

Few individual items can provide such a complete workout as a kettlebell. You have to pick the right kettlebell for your needs, that is, the right weight, otherwise you either risk too little strength training or an injury.

So, why are kettlebell workouts so good? Well, firstly they provide a full body workout. You are on your feet almost all the time and moving around. This means that they work your legs and core as well as upper body.

The key muscles worked are the glutes, thighs and hip flexors. This makes kettlebell workouts a fantastic choice of exercise for women as well as men. They are arguably the best way for a woman to exercise. They work all the parts the average woman wants to tone and tighten and limit upper body development.

They do provide you with improved grip strength and shoulder strength, but do not cause any bulking of muscles like some traditional weight training exercise risk doing (if you follow a specific bulking regime and diet to match).

What’s more is that a kettlebell workout can provide a very good balance of muscular endurance, strength training and cardio fitness. The basic kettlebell movement, the double-handed swing, is an excellent way to raise heart rate while also working the glutes and thighs.

Other exercises which really lead to the fat burn are walking lunges, single arm swings, wood chop and figure eights. These exercises really work your whole body and you will find, that with the right weight, you are toning your muscles while also strengthening muscles.

As you are performing a lot of reps using a relatively light weight (relative to a weight used by bodybuilders at least) you are not performing just anaerobic exercise. You are more likely to increase your VO2 Max levels with kettlebell training that you are with any form of traditional weight training. Also you work the core in just about all exercises, to it is great if you are looking to tone your stomach and love handles.

The final great advantage of kettlebells is that they are so small. Women generally start out with a 6-8 kg kettlebell, men start out with 12-16 kg kettlebells. These take up a very small space and you can perform an excellent fat burning and muscle strengthening workout in a very small space.

Like with traditional weight training there is so much to learn about kettlebell workouts, but really practice makes perfect. There are some great kettlebell routines for beginners plus some advanced movements. If you do not wish to limit yourself to just kettlebells then follow a Barbell and Kettlebell Workout Plan which combines traditional barbell training with kettlebells movements to provide an even better full body strength training workout to build superior fitness and muscle development.