Tag Archive for: Kettlebell Training For Weight Loss

Top Kettlebell Movements For Complete Home Workouts

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The kettlebell is often heralded as a fantastic training tool thanks to its ability to train the body in a less conventional manner that involves more of our supporting muscle groups and challenges balance and focus at the same time.

This is only one advantage of the kettlebell though. What’s just as impressive is just how versatile the tool is – allowing you to train every muscle group in a vast variety of different ways. In fact, a kettlebell is versatile enough to provide an entire body workout and can be a ‘home gym’ all on its own!

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Here are some kettlebell movements that demonstrate this nicely:

Kettlebell Curl

The kettlebell curl is a movement that works similarly to a regular curl and targets the biceps. The difference is that the center of gravity is lower down, thereby altering the angle and changing the direction of the force.

Goblet Squat

Something that is very hard to do when training from a home gym is work the legs using squatting motions. Squats are widely regarded as some of the most functional movements and are particularly popular thanks to their ability to engage lots of large muscles in the posterior chain. The problem is that they require a large, heavy and unwieldy squat rack and bar! Or do they?

Using a kettlebell, you can hold the weight against your chest and then squat from there. This moves the weight forward slightly but is otherwise effectively the same movement as any other squat!

Straight Legged Deadlift

The deadlift is another movement lacking from most home workouts and once again, the kettlebell comes to the rescue. A deadlift can be performed as normal, simply by squatting and grabbing the handle with both hands.

Likewise though, you can also train similarly while keeping both legs straight and bending only at the back to hit the erector spinae. This works better considering the slightly lighter and taller nature of a kettlebell.

Turkish Get Up

Now for something entirely unique. The Turkish get-up is a movement that requires you to lie on the floor next to your kettlebell and then simply stand up with it. This is much harder than it sounds and involves a complex sequence of movements that train the muscles in unison.

Kettlebell Swing

This is perhaps the king of kettlebell movements and involves performing a squat like motion while swinging the kettlebell behind yourself between your legs and then up in front of yourself. The key is to use a continuous motion and to use your hips to thrust the weight forward rather than engaging your legs or back too much.

Kettlebell Clean and Press

This movement is good in all kinds of ways and involves squatting down to grab a kettlebell in on hand, then throwing it up to lean against the shoulder, standing up and pressing it over head. This trains a huge range of different movements but what’s perhaps most effective of all about it is that you are training on just one side of the body – meaning you need to work very hard to maintain balance and to stabilize yourself.

How to Train Like an Old-Time Strongman

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When setting out to get into a shape, a good starting point is to find role models. Who are your fitness heroes? Whose physique would you like to emulate? Whose training philosophy most closely resembles your own?

Get this right and you can find yourself with a blueprint to follow and ample amounts of inspiration and motivation. Get it wrong and you’re asking for disappointment and frustration.

fitness

An example of a ‘wrong’ fitness role model might often be found on YouTube. While there are some great personalities on YouTube in the fitness community, there are also some destructive forces that you must contend with. In particular are those who spout unhelpful training advice and use steroid-driven physiques in order to sell us on its merits.

They tell us we can look like them by training like them. What they leave out is the chemical assistance that helped them get there, or the crippling back pain that is the cost of developing all those ‘mirror muscles’ and approximately zero ‘functional strength’.

Why Old-Time Strongmen Are Great Fitness Heroes

So who might we choose to look up to instead? A good alternative might be one of the legendary ‘old time strongmen’. These are individuals who trained long before we had protein shakes – let alone steroids and yet they achieved physiques that are well beyond many of our modern YouTube stars!

What’s more, they could actually use that strength and would be able to do incredible things like bending iron bars and lifting huge amounts of weight. These strongmen trained using completely different tools and methods and the results more than speak for themselves.

So if you want muscle that’s not just for show and that has an amazing historical heritage, that is a much better way to train.

How to Train Like an Old Time Strongman

So with all that said, how do you go about training in such a manner? What tools and techniques did they use that you could replicate?

The first trick is to use functional tools that train your body from multiple angles and that require you to use supportive muscles and balance in conjunction with brute strength. These force us to use our bodies as intended: as a single unit, working in unison. This is how we are able to generate the most strength and actually use it in ways that are useful.

Some tools that you can use to train this way include kettlebells, Indian clubs, ropes and barbells with especially thick bars. Training with one handed movements is also a particularly useful exercise, as well using more unconventional lifts, like the Turkish get-up and ‘anyhow lift’.

Another tip is to make sure that you are training your grip. This is the secret weapon of any old-time strongman and anyone interested in building truly functional strength needs to give it serious consideration in order to ensure no energy is wasted and that all of it is directed at moving the wei
ghts.

Finally, combine this with a protein rich diet and if you want to go truly old-time: lots of raw eggs!

(Although maybe a little cooking to avoid a biotin deficiency… not everything was better back in the day!)

Building an Unconventional ‘Functional’ Home Gym

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In the last few years, the face of fitness has changed a great deal. We’ve seen a move away from very static, single-joint movements like the bicep curl and a move towards more adventurous and engaging forms of training. These include things like kettlebell training, TRX (suspension training), Indian club training, weighted stretching, squatting, deadlifting and more.

These types of exercises effectively allow us to use our body in the way it was intended: by using all of our muscles together rather than in an isolated fashion. The result is that we produce more growth hormone and testosterone (triggering greater muscle growth) and that we build a more stable and functional body.

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The problem is that this type of training often doesn’t extend to the home gym. It’s not easy to fit a squat rack in your front room… so what can you do?

Here are some items that will allow you to build an awesome, functional and unique home gym that might be a little different from the other gym bros…

Kettlebell

The first thing you need to make your home workouts more functional is a kettlebell. This will immediately challenge you more by providing a more dynamic workout and by moving the center of gravity in unpredictable ways.

What’s more, is that kettlebell training allows you to perform movements like squats, deadlifts and more that you couldn’t train on your own otherwise.

Parallel Bars

Here is a simple tool that everyone can use in order to train and that not enough people have in their home. Parallel bars usually cost about $40 and allow you to perform dips, hand stands, planche, inverted push ups, neutral grip pull ups and much more.
They’re fun, easy to store and build incredibly dynamic strength.

Gymnastic Rings

Gymnastic rings can be used for many of the same exercises as parallel bars. The big difference is that you have to balance them and hold them steady while you train. They cost a lot less than TRX and have the added bonus of letting you perform dips too, so they are far superior in that sense.

Indian Club

Indian Clubs are the lesser-known little brothers of kettlebells. These let you train with similarly unconventional shapes and another uneven center of gravity, this time using a tool that looks a fair bit like a bowling pin! Grab onto the end and swing, push, lunge and generally sword fight an invisible opponent. That’s a fun way to build strength!

Balance Board

If you want to make any movement more challenging, more functional and more interesting then simply perform it while standing on a balance board. This will force you to balance while also moving the weight, which is much more challenging for your entire body.

Rope

A rope can be used for all manner of exercises. One of the simplest ways to train with it is to hang it over a pull up bar and then perform neutral grip pull ups with it. This will build grip strength as well as allowing you to train your biceps and lats. Otherwise, you can perform rows or even wrap it around your weights and pick them up that way!