What are the benefits of kettlebells? You may have seen these strange looking weights sitting around your gym and been intimidated by the shredded demi gods swinging them around in odd ways. You may have thought to yourself ‘gee, I sure would like to look like those guys, but I don’t know anything about these mythical kettlebells’ Well wonder no more, here we at UKSF will go over everything you need to know about kettlebells and why you should start using them last week!
Training with Kettlebells
The first thing to keep in mind when training with kettlebells is that they are used for practically every part of the body. This versatility immediately sets them apart from other kinds of equipment as due to this you can use one simple appropriate weight kettlebell and with the right exercises get a huge amount out of it.
They cover core strength, endurance, power, balance, flexibility and almost everything you can think of when it comes to employing every part of your body in a dynamic way. Kettlebells when used correctly are one of the most useful single tools you can use in the gym. They are also ideal for a home workout due to their small size and ease to handle compared to a normal dumbbell.
Key benefits of Kettlebells
Burns Calories
One of the clearest benefits of kettlebells is their ability to burn calories like a demonically possessed instrument from hell. High impact exercises like a kettlebell clean and jerk can massively boost your calorie-burning and are easy to do and only need one kettlebell.
Due to the multiple body parts impacted by a kettlebell exercise, it naturally burns more calories, even when you rest your body will be burning calories as it recovers from the workout. It should be remembered that muscle burns fat, and kettlebells use high impact (HIIT) exercises which are excellent at building lean muscle mass which in turn will help burn more calories.
Ideally, you will want to maximise your afterburn which is also known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), the effects of which are that you will continue to burn calories and fat after you have done all of your workouts. If you are unsure what exercises to do that will burn the calories quick check out our handy guide here.
Functional strength improvements
In terms of your cardiovascular fitness and overall power endurance, kettlebells can be one of the most valuable tools you will use in the gym. A classic clean and jerk or snatch can hugely improve your power due to the impact motion of the exercise and the fact that you have to perform them quickly.
These elements combine to mean that these classic kettlebell workouts are perfect for increasing your power endurance rather than strength endurance. Ultimately it helps in producing fast-twitch muscle power that will allow you to perform explosive movements more easily, as opposed to strength-building exercises that will allow you to lift a larger amount of a longer period of time.
Kettlebells Improve Balance and Posture
Balance is essential to any kind of sports performance and in your daily life. Kettlebells are perfect for practising your core balance and classic kettlebell exercises are some of the best activities to improve your balance and core strength.
The very nature of kettlebells gives them an advantage over machine weights or complex workout tools. They require a significant amount of user input to balance them during and exercise due to their centre of gravity being usually 6 inches away from the handle grip. In order to do a kettlebell exercise proficiently, you need to be constantly struggling with the weight to keep it in balance. This means that you are constantly practising your balance while using a kettlebell.
Builds muscle
Naturally working out with weight will build muscle eventually, but kettlebells are superb implements to use when gaining strength as well as building up your lean muscle mass. Kettlebell exercises are ideal for body sculpting and creating that leaner physique that seems to be so popular these days.
The variety of exercises that you can do with a kettlebell means that it is much easier to concentrate your workout on what your specific goals are. Do you want to build more muscle? Then you can get a heavier kettlebell and start adding more strength-based exercises to your workouts. Do you want to build more lean and toned muscles with explosive power? Then there are a huge variety of exercises for you to choose from.
Joint Health and Flexibility
As you get older your joints naturally start to deteriorate, and certain exercises create a lot of impact on your body and seriously speed up the rate at which your joints become broken down. Increasing the strength in these joints is a great way to stave of this decline and increase your functional strength.
Increasing your flexibility is also a great way to strengthen up your joints, as well as keep your body limber and more able to do other strengthening activities. There is such a thing as kettlebell Yoga, the name of which kind of speaks for itself. Effectively what you are doing is integrating kettlebell exercises into your yoga routine, improving your strength and flexibility at the same time.
Cost-Efficient and Highly Effective
One of the most important aspects of kettlebells is that with all of the reasons listed above they are also a very cheap and convenient way to workout.
A single kettlebell can take you a long way and due to how they are designed they are not intrusive and are easily carriable. They also, as mentioned before, are brilliant at working out your whole body or concentrating on specific parts, so they fulfil virtually every aspect of your workout routine.
Ultimately the question you should be asking yourself is not should I get a kettlebell, it’s why haven’t I gotten one already?
We at UKSF provide a variety of kettlebells with different weights and colours, if you would like to join the scores of people all around the world who are having their life changed by this simple weight, then contact us now!