Fitness is one of the most important factors to living a healthy lifestyle, even twenty minutes a day is enough to get your blood flowing, lungs pumping and keep your body active. If you are looking to step up your fitness goals or expand on the ones you already have, kettlebells are an excellent segue into both. Here are five reasons to start using kettlebells today.
It’s like two workouts in one
Using kettlebells properly will effectively work both your cardio and improve your strength training. Cardiovascular exercise is typically done by those wishing to burn off extra calories or lose weight. When you perform a cardio exercise such as the “Clean” exercise, where the kettlebell comes from the floor to your legs then up near your chin. You effectively and efficiently get both a heart-pumping cardio and strength training exercise at the same time.
Kettlebells can be used virtually anywhere
Often people are looking for an excuse not to go to the gym, well now you can take the gym with you wherever you go. A set of kettlebells can easily be left in your office at work, out in the garage or in the trunk of your car for those weekends away. With the ease of use and simplicity of a kettlebell, they can be as good as a mobile gym.
A fast and easy way to get into shape
If you are putting in the effort to exercise you want to see results, motivation is built on the backbone of results. Kettlebell exercises are a back to basics way to get into shape without over complicating things beyond comprehension. This type of exercise requires very practical whole-body workouts that can quickly tone up your body and shred down inches faster and more efficiently.
The results have been well researched
In-depth exercises using kettlebell were studied by ACE, the American Council on Exercise. It was found that when you swing kettlebells your heart rate rise as much as it would from exercises like jump training. They noted that it wasn’t uncommon to burn as much as twenty calories per minute, the same results you would get in an intense cardio class.
A great way to improve forearm strength and grip
The average day job is spent at a desk, on a phone or often screen related, not labor intensive like it used to be. An area of focus often lost is a need to maintain and use your grip and forearm strength. If this was fifty years ago you might have been throwing more hay bales around and picking up large heavy objects. These days the largest object you need to exert force on a regular basis is probably the phone you are reading this from right now. Even a general workout routine will not implement a grip exercise or rarely a forearm one. The oversized grips and consistent need to grasp them and flex your forearms makes a kettlebell the perfect forearm and grip performance exercise that you don’t even know you are doing.
Kettlebells are the underdog of the gym, often overseen and under-used with people looking for big machines and big results. Pound for pound you will get more from a kettlebell than any piece of major gym equipment available. In the home, office, or in the trunk of your car, a set of kettlebells will go along way to help maintain your health and healthy lifestyle.
