A kettlebell looks like a solid iron bowling ball with a thick handle and it is used to build functional strength and fitness.

They are an style piece of strength and conditioning equipment used predominantly by old time strongmen at the turn of the century and in the last 3 or 4 decades by Russian athletes.

Kettlebells are often referred to as "Russian Kettlebells" as Russian athletes have used them for decades to predominantly build functional sports strength for sports like weightlifting, gymnastics and for fighting sports. Kettlebells are also used to train the Russian special forces and the Russian Army.

Pavel Tsatsouline (a Russian strength coach residing in California) is credited with bringing kettlebells to the West. Pavel joined forces with the Dragondoor.com Martial Arts & Fitness company and together they have had tremendous success in increasing the popularity of this Russian strength & fitness tool.

Kettlebells are incredible versatile and can be used in an infinite number of ways. Kettlebell exercises are generally classified into two groups.

1. Grinds, these are strength based movements done for low reps (usually less than 5 reps) eg, Military press, Turkish get Up.

2. Ballistic exercises, these are exercises done quickly with momentum for either low, but typically high repetitions eg, Swings, Snatches.

A key difference when training with kettlebells is that the focus is often on utilizing the whole body to perform kettlebell movements. Therefore they are very useful to develop functional strength and conditioning which transfers over into most sports and activities. This is in contrast to bodybuilding which has a focus on training individual body parts and not the whole body.

Kettlebells are very effective when combined into circuits with other exercises such as burpees, pressups, star jumps etc.

Kettlebell exercises can be grouped together and performed non-stop for a multi-exercise set commonly referred to as a "complex". Typically complexes are set up with dissimilar exercises after each other so that the individual muscle groups recuperate even though the system is still under load.

Kettlebells first gained popularity in the West with fighters, due to the functional strength benefit of them. For example Steve Cotter was a 2 time US Full Contact Kung Fu champion that came from a fight background but found kettlebells so useful he is now is an established kettlebell expert who travels the world teaching kettlebell.

There are now specialised kettlebell instructors. One if the first kettlebell instructors is Las vegas based Mike Mahler who focusses on developing Agressive Strength and Exposiveness for his clients.

However, soon teams such as the San Francisco 49's, the San Diego Chargers, the Chelsea and Liverpool football clubs, the West Tigers Rugby League Club and the Canterbury Crusaders Rugby Union Team and many more all started incorporating kettlebell training into their strength and conditioning routines after getting great results with this different style of training.

It wasn't long before Hollywood and celebrities found out about kettlebell training and now they are used by Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Bassinger, Slyvester Stallone and many more.

But now normal everyday people are catching on to this style of training because routines can be brief but effective and you can combine fitness and strength workouts together to minimise your training time but maximise your results.