Russian Kettlebells for Fat Loss and Fitness

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By kettlebellnathan


My Russian Kettlebells

My two best friends
My two best friends

Burn off stuborn body fat with Russian Kettlebells

Everybody wants to lose some fat and tone their muscles up, but not everyone knows how and almost no one knows how to do it efficiently. Hard, quick workouts with Russian Kettlebells will make your body shed fat amazingly fast. I know this because I was fat.

I hated, and still do, cardio. I would diet but then gain the weight back on. I would lift weights all the time but that just made me big, strong, and fat! It was crazy! One day I saw an add for Russian Kettlebells and I decided to give them a try. After the first workout I was hooked. I was sweating, my heart rate was elevated long after the workout, I was hungry and hot. My body temperature was staying up for hours after a training session. I trained with my kettlebell for two weeks straight and lost about 15 lbs of fat! I could not believe it and neither could my family.

It was so simple, I would do the exercises perscribed in the book I purchased, The Russian Kettlebell Challenge, by Pavel Tsatsouline, for about 45 minutes a day in my basement. And afterwards I would lie on the ground panting and sweating and just loving it. I lost the fat around my stomach so fast that my skin was loose for a few weeks!

The training sessions were fun because my joints were not pounding due to jogging on the streets, I wasn't on some stupid machine for an hour at the gym watching TV with no volume, no, I was training in the privacy of my own home with the music blasting throwing around a giant metal ball. I loved it and I still do!

These days my workouts are even shorter at 30 minutes but are much more intense. I train hard and short every day because it keeps me feeling fresh and it keeps the metabolism elevated. I am always hungry because my body is always recovering from some insane workout.

Is training with a kettlebell hard? Yes, but it is fun. You don't work with your kettlebell, you play with your kettlebell. Try all kinds of crazy exercises and routines and you will have no idea just how hard you were working until you put it down and you can't catch your breath.

I compare kettlebell training to lifting weights while sprinting. You are doing resistance training for an extended period of time and purposely forcing yourself in oxygen debt. This type of hard, exhausting training is great because it is time efficient, and will elevate your metabolism for an extended period of time.

Take a look at some of the videos I have posted on this site to get a better idea on how to train with Russian Kettlebells and feel free to post a comment if you have any questions.


Russian Kettlebell Circuit for fat loss

My Russian Kettlebell and Fitness Blog

  • Kettlebell Workout of the Day

    This workout is a mix of kettlebell and body weight drills to keep your body guessing and burn some fat. Do one set of each drill listed for as many reps as you can perform in good form. Basically, move to the next drill when you start gassing out. mobility work, 5 minsdynamic warm-upreverse lunge with twistside lungeinch wormRussian twistt-push-upkettlebell and body weight circuit (try not to rest at all between sets, if you finish all the drills in less than 20 mins just start from the top)glute bridgeswinging plankbird dogswinging planksingle leg glute bridgesprining tripodclam shellTexas push-upkettlebell swingsplank with leg kicks (kick across your body so you are forced to twist in and under your other leg)kettlebell hot potatokettlebell lunge with under leg passtactical pop-upkettlebell windmill, each sidesingle leg squat, each side1 kettlebell clean and press, each sideSpiderman lungefigure 8 to hold, each sidemountain climbersplate curls, just curl whatever you have handy and be sure to check out your guns in the mirror while you do itkettlebell haloLike I wrote above, treat this workout like a circuit, just do one set and move to the next. Do as many reps as you can and when your form breaks down move to the next. You can rest a bit between drills but try not to. If you blow through it quickly and want more, just start from the top again!

  • Push your way to lean and powerful physique

    As a lifter I have always believed that squatting and deadlifting is the best method to develop your legs and hips for sports or just being hayooge. Being the kind of guy that devours everything about training I can find, I have noticed that a lot of elite athletes prefer to push trucks or sleds, or just run hill sprints instead. Why is that? Well, for a lot of elite athletes, they are almost always beat up and sore to being with. Think about football linemen or mma fighters for example. Do you want your 300 lbs line man doing heavy squats two days before the super bowl? Hell no! What if he hurts his back? I still think squats and deads have an important place in training to be a powerful dude (and no, pistol squats won't make you really strong), but pushing an object is a lot less stressfull and puts much less load on the spine. So for people with back issues, those looking to mix things up, or someone who needs extra leg work, pushing or pulling something heavy can be a great tool to add to your arsenal. And don't forget, pushing will improve your cardio faster than almost anything. The simplest option is pushing your vehicle. That way you don't have to buy anything, except a vehicle if you don't have one I guess, and you can start right away. Other options are a sled to drag or the prowler. Any of these options will allow you to train your legs really hard, and get an awesome cardio workout at the same time. For those that have never done a pushing or pulling workout, you won't believe how quick your heart rate shoots up when chugging your legs sending the power through locked out arms like in a truck push. As I mentioned at the top, hill sprints are great for the legs too, but I don't think they will put as much size on you. They will help lean you out and improve explosiveness, which is important too! I really can't imagine being fat if you ran hill sprints or did a pushing workout twice a week.   Truck pushing is great, but you don't have to make a bunch of silly noises!

  • Superhuman Strongman

    Hey guys, I found this cool documentary on the amazing limits of the human body. Check it out!

Big Time Weight Loss Blog

  • In India, have skipping rope

    I am in Bangalore, India on a work assignment. It is an amazing place I tell you, friend me, Nathan Donahue, on Facebook or flickr to see the pics. Be sure to mention the blog or I will think you are a creep and not friend you! Anyways, it is an amazing place but not the easiest city to find a proper gym. Especially one with barbells and dumbbells instead of just cardio machines and some mulit-gyms. Needless to say I let this challenge get in my way and failed to train my first few days here. In other words, I bitched out. Luckily I have friends with strong posterior chains who are always looking to motivate me! This video was sent to me by Paul Vaillancourt, professional strongman and owner of Ultimate Fitness. He is doing the massive trap bar deadlift at 20 seconds in. After watching this video I realized I was being a soft little girly man and letting this obstacle prevent me from reaching my goals. As the saying goes, "the weak see obstacles as an inconvenience, warriors see them as challenges!". So, since checking myself I have been hitting the "gym" in the hotel hard. My first workout was pretty simple and not overly challenging as the heat kicked my ass pretty quick. Here it is: mobility work, 30 mins in my hotel room10 pound dumbbell circuit in the "gym", these are the heaviest dumbbells there!Series of high pulls, clean and presses, presses, rows, lunges, squat thrusters, one leg deadlifts, jumping jacks, push-ups, and overhead twits to failure, 30 minutesJump rope to failurePretty basic and honestly not very well thought out. Oh well, the important thing here is I broke the cycle of missing workouts due to a lack of kettlebells or barbells and got back in the game. Tomorrow is another day and a chance for a better training session.India is famous for yoga, which doesn't really interest me, but it also has these traditional wrestling schools called Akara's where locals lift stones and wrestle in the sand. If I can find one of those places it would be awesome!

  • Big Time Weight Loss Moving

    For all new posts please go to the new Big Time Weight Loss Blog.

  • Is The Biggest Loser Weight Loss Reality Show for Real?

    by: Jayson Hunter Registered Dietitian, CSCSWe are going to be talking a little bit about the confusion there was on the show The Biggest Loser, a lot of people watch that show. In the first week all these people, extremely heavy people lost a ton of weight and then the second week really nobody lost any weight. In fact, to my knowledge, one person gained one pound. So, I want to explain what the confusion is and what exactly happens when you have that rapid weight loss. So, why did people see such amazing results the first week and see none the second week?If we just use this show as an example. They saw so much weight loss in the first week because they obviously tell you that they are on a special type of diet, they don’t really go into the details of what it is, but I can assume that it’s a higher protein, low carb diet. These people are obviously 300/400 lbs because they were eating too much, they were over eating, ingesting thousands and thousands of calories. So, when they got to The Biggest Loser, of course they restricted those calories and put them on a special type of diet. Glycogen is created from the carbohydrates and starches that you eat. So, for every gram that you store in your body, you also store 3-4 grams of water. If you look at it from the stand point of maybe someone was eating 500 – 700 grams of carbs and they were storing all this glycogen and they cut it to 200 grams of carbs, well you can also cut out about 3-4 grams of water for every one of those carbs you just cut out. And obviously that’s weight on the scale. The metabolism kind of goes into shock when this happens so you lose all that glycogen and the extra grams of water which is weight in the end, and then not to mention they were exercising like crazy which none of them had really done before, so they’re going to lose water weight anyway from the amount of perspiration and body changes that are taking place and all the stuff that your body has to do to adapt to that exercise now. Your body generally fluctuates about 3-4% on a daily basis anyway. If you look at it from the stand point of some of those men are 300-400 pounds, a 3 %- 4 % change could be, 12 pounds in either direction. And obviously women that are 200 lbs or 250 lbs, you’re looking at maybe 10 lbs in either direction, 8 lbs in either direction, somewhere in there. Women tend to fluctuate even more then men in regards to water weight on a daily basis just because of the hormone levels. When you saw the weight loss they were getting, such as 15 lbs, 18lbs, I think someone lost 29lbs. Most of that is the initial shift because of eating less carbs, eating less calories as well as just general water weight loss because of the increased activity that they were now doing. It’s very important for people to understand that when you start, you can see these dramatic results but it’s permanent lifestyle changes that allow you to have fast, safe permanent weight loss but its permanent in the sense that you can start by taking off 15 – up to 15lbs in 30 days, but things are going to level off, and you have to make behavioral changes, you have to change your life. There are no quick fixes for anything.If you go to the extreme and say, and again we don’t know exactly what diet The Biggest Loser people are on, but a lot of people go on what they call, a true low carb diet, and a true low carb diet is, maybe 30 grams of carbs for the entire day. It’s low. It’s essentially nothing. When you go on that type of diet it really wreaks havoc on your metabolism, Your goal is to be cycling your carb intake which is going to get you that fast weight loss, but not sacrifice your metabolism because you want that metabolism to be fast all the time. That’s the number one goal.Your body works a certain way and that’s true for all of us, so you need to know the science behind it and while you can lose weight fast, safely and keep that metabolism up, you’re going to need to make those permanent lifestyle changes to keep it off. Don’t get caught up in these changes, these extreme changes of “Man how did they lose 30lbs and I can’t lose a pound.” You got to compare apples to apples here and see what positions their in and see what you’ve been in because as you noticed as you watched the second week of the biggest loser, those guys lost 2lbs, 3lbs, someone gained a pound and that’s their body going through that transition and almost going into a survival mode. I think you’ll find that as you keep watching the show; their weight will start to be more consistent where they’ll consistently lose 2lbs of fat a week or 3lbs of fat a week. You won’t see this wild swing of losing 30 lbs then losing 0 lbs even though they worked just as hard and ate just the same, because your body’s going to adjust, and your body – your metabolism will slowly speed back up and the goal is to try not to get that metabolism to slow down to begin with, try to keep it up at an elevated rate so that it is a consistent, permanent weight loss.Jayson Hunter RD, CSCS is the author of the Carb Rotation Diet. To discover the 5 absolute truths Every Serial Dieter Who Seeks Rapid-Weight loss MUST come to grips with visit The Carb Rotation Diet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjuNmNu4RQg

Kettlebells on Amazon

5 lb. Kettlebell 5 lb. Kettlebell
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The Russian Kettlebell Challenge The Russian Kettlebell Challenge
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Powerbody: Advanced Russian Kettlebell Workout with Phil Ross (kettle bell) Powerbody: Advanced Russian Kettlebell Workout with Phil Ross (kettle bell)
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35 lb Russian Premier Kettlebell 35 lb Russian Premier Kettlebell
Price: $65.00
List Price: $110.00

My Favourite Kettlebell Exercise

My favourite kettlebell exercise tends vary with my mood, but lately I have this one drill that I really love. It is a kettlebell clean combined with a inchworm. A kettlebell clean is a simple movement where you swing the hips and pull the elbow high to pull the kettlebell up to about chest level. Then you drop the elbow and catch the kettlebell against your chest. The inchworm is a very simple movement where you bend over and touch your toes, then walk out into a plank position. Hold it for a few seconds, then walk back with your hands to your toes. The drill is as follows, left hand kettlebell clean, put bell down, walk out into full plank, walk back up to toe touching position, drop your but down and look up, right hand kettlebell clean, put bell down, repeat the series again! Fun stuff and works the entire body! All your pushing and pulling muscles, your legs and your abs will get worked hard. Oh, and don't forget all the fat burning effects!

Comments

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San Diego Personal Trainers  says:
2 years ago

This is some serious workout mate! The videos were very helpful!

kettlebellnathan profile image

kettlebellnathan  says:
2 years ago

Thanks man. I tend to train harder when the camera is on.

New Day profile image

New Day  says:
2 years ago

These look great! I have not heard of them before. I may have to get myself a pair. Would love to look like that model up above - LOL!

kettlebellnathan profile image

kettlebellnathan  says:
2 years ago

Thanks for the comment. Kettlebells are a great tool but quite demanding. I don't sell them but check out my blog for more kettlebell info, kettlebellplanet.blogspot.com

kbelluser profile image

kbelluser  says:
18 months ago

Some great info.

What are the size of the kettlebells pictured and what brand are they?

cheers

sayantanghosal profile image

sayantanghosal  says:
13 months ago

great information,thanks...

i've written an article on static contraction training...

visit:http://hubpages.com/hub/Bodybuilding-The-Magic-of-

orionsky60403  says:
12 months ago

That girl is hot. Does she come with the kettlebells?

vertical jump training  says:
9 months ago

Hi.. I was still wondering at your info's ideas..Really a very good points you have carried on.. I have not heard of them before. Thanks for your comment..Great Hub!

FitnessGoddess  says:
9 months ago

Hello Everyone!I would like to introduce myself I am a fitness lifestyle and nutrition expert. I'm here to help women who are having weight problems. you can check my blog http://www.erinhuggins.com/blog/ for more tips about losing weight and also i have a delicious recipe called Low Fat, Low Dairy Chocolate ice cream. its very mouth watering and super delecious you can check my youtube for that recipe just type in Low Fat, Low Dairy Chocolate Ice Cream you can also check my workout routine there and some pilates.http://www.youtube.com/erinhugginsThank You Erin

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