Kettlebells - Thoughts after using them for six months

I have been using kettlebells for the last six months and thought it might be useful to share my experiences with those interested.

Bit of background to explain what my goals were: I am an active city-bound outdoors enthusiast who uses the gym to keep in shape. I have been doing weights for the last 15 years. In the middle of last year I discovered kettlebells through my contact with Crossfit.

My aim was to find an exercise form that best complimented the full body fitness demands of outdoor sports like climbing, mtb, kayaking etc. I have always found weights too specific; eg I would get fit in the gym but then couldn’t apply my bench press specific strength to rock climbing.

Enter kettlebells. I was immediately attracted to the full body demands of a kettlebell routine. You end up training all the big muscles: legs, trunk, back and get a great cardio workout built in. I hate spending time on cardio machines.

After using them for a bit in Crossfit sessions I took an hour long training session to get the techniques right. From that foundation I used Youtube to learn new exercises. I stopped doing all bar and bumbell-based exercises in June last year. Steve Cotter, M Body Strength and Pavel Tsatsouline were good sources of inspiration.

Here are exercises I used:

• Double/single hand swings
• Single/double kettlebell squats
  
• Renegade rows
• Shoulder press
  
• Clean and press
  
• Cleans
  
• Thrusters
  
• Halos
• Turkish Get Ups
  
• Windmills

I started off with 16kg and have moved up to 24kg bells and now feel the need to move on to heavier ones for some exercises.

I keep my workouts random to make it interesting and learn new exercises as I go along; currently I am working on getting my Turkish Get Ups right. I train 3 days a week in short intense workouts, 45 minutes max including warm up, which would leave me in a weezing sweaty heap. I also found that, unlike weights, I can train on consecutive days without feeling any pain or over straining. I am careful not to over do it and get lots of rest.

Somedays I would work the full body: swings, squats, cleans and on others I would focus on upper shoulder press, cleans, halos, windmills and then the next day lower body squats, swings and lunges

The strength/cardio combo is awesome. I leave the gym dripping. Try using kettlebells with the Tabata Protocol for total destruction

After six months I have found that my overall strength and cardio has improved. My legs, abs and back are very strong and this is where the bulk of my muscle development has happened. I have a six pack and good oblique development without doing any sit ups (but I have done lots of sit ups in the past). I seem to have developed very good practical strength (if that makes sense) and my muscle coordination is great; ie I don’t feel imbalanced from over training any one muscle group.

I will continue to use kettlebells from now on but will include deadlifts and squats into my routines.

I feel that kettlebells are a great sports specific, as opposed to body building, training tool which can be used to build over all muscle coordination and balance, strength and cardio. If this is what you are looking for then give them a shot.