What kind of exercise routine should I be on if I want to lose weight?  What kind of foods will help me get rid of the fat around my belly?  Is there a kettlebell exercise that will help tone my butt and my stomach? 

Those are the kinds of questions I routinely get asked or see asked of other fitness experts.  I will tell you up front that I am in no way an expert in nutrition.  It’s the one area of my fitness life that I will admit is less then perfect.  With that said, I am confident that I eat much better then the average person. 

I think deep down inside, most people have a good idea of what they should and shouldn’t eat anyway, they just don’t put into practice what they know, even if that knowledge is limited.  So keeping that in mind, I won’t even make an attempt to deceive you by telling you what your diet should look like.  There are other places you can go to educate yourself about diet.  Our purpose here is to discuss the working out part of your weight loss efforts.

The kettlebell is a handy tool that you can use to burn calories while gaining muscle and building strength.  You can employ this tool to achieve your weight loss goals without the dishonor of dieting or aerobics. (I stole that line from Pavel but I don’t think he will mind).

One of the absolute best ways to burn fat, increase conditioning and increase your strength is by employing short bursts of high intensity work sandwiched between short periods of active rest. 

Before I go on any further, an explanation of active rest is necessary.  Remember back in gym class when you teacher told you after you were done running that you needed to walk around to cool off.  You see elite athletes doing it all the time.  This goes against what your body wants to do after a strenuous workout.  Your body’s natural inclination is to sit or lie down and rest.  Now in most cases, your body will tell you what it wants and it is almost always right.  Not this time.

When you lie down after any strenuous activity, your heart must work overtime to keep the blood pumping so that it can deliver oxygen throughout your body.  The muscles in your legs help this process along.  When the muscles in your legs contract, blood is pumped out of them and to other areas of the body.  Your heart, also a muscle does the same but the muscle that is your heart is obviously much smaller and can’t pump the volume of blood that the much larger more powerful muscles of you legs can.  When you prematurely begin resting, you don’t get the added benefit of recovery that your legs deliver.

So, during our workouts, especially one involving short, high intensity lifts, it is critical that you continue to move around, run in place, stretch, or whatever you like, just as long as you don’t sit down and rest.  You will find that you will actually recover faster by moving around.  Thus, we will be “actively recovering”. 

Ok, with that in mind, let’s take about the workout.  I’m not going to go into the ins and outs about why this is an effective way to loose weight and improve conditioning, you can research that on your own.  Hell, you might not even care so long as it works. 

You can pick any dynamic kettlebell lift you want.  My suggestion is to employ the kettlebell snatch.  Again, there are reasons why this lift is superior to some of the others, reasons I won’t get into in this article.  Suffice to say, the energy used to perform the snatch is far greater then a lift like the swing.  This is one of the main reasons you should consider using it.

Use a kettlebell lighter then you would normally use when you perform your snatches.  I routinely perform kettlebell snatches with a 24kg bell or heavier but when I perform my snatches using the protocol that I am about to describe, I use a 16kg bell.  The ladies should use a 8 or 12kg bell.  Very strong men can use a 20kg.  Our goal is to burn fat and improve our conditioning, not to see how much weight we can lift.  Trust me when I tell you that a 16kg kettlebell is more then enough weight. 

To keep this simple, we are going to use the 30 / 30 protocol.  It is not the optimal time but again, we need to keep it simple until you get the hang of it. 

What 30 / 30 refers to is 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off.  Perform as many kettlebell snatches as you can in 30 seconds and then actively recover for 30 seconds.  Each time you do this, you have completed one cycle.  Don’t kill yourself trying to perform 20 or 25 snatches in 30 seconds.  15 or 16 would be a pretty good pace to strive for.

Your goal should be to perform in the neighborhood of 20 cycles for your given rep range.  When you get to 20 cycles, add a rep or two per 30 seconds and work your way back up to 20 cycles. 

Perform this protocol twice weekly and don’t worry if you can only perform 4 or 5 cycles, we all gotta start someplace.  Add 1 or 2 cycles a week and enjoy.

Yours in Health,

Dennis

This post is meant to give you some ideas and get you pointed in the right direction as it relates to using a kettlebell.  You will obviously not master the kettlebell just by reading this post.  I would strongly suggest you seek out quality instruction either with a certified trainer or through the use of books and videos.  The best in the business is Pavel Tsatsouline.  I would suggest to you “Enter the Kettlebell“  by Pavel.  As with any fitness routine, check with your doctor first. 

Tweet This Post