Definitive Kettlebell Guide:
For The Versatility One
Richard Robertson
Copyright 2020
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Introduction
Kettlebells are still relatively new to the fitness industry. Along with the barbell and dumbbell, they are amongst many machines designed to do one or two exercises. However, the kettlebell has been around for centuries with hidden benefits we have been tapping into for the past two decades. This guide is designed to give you all the information needed to understand its origins, versatility of use, and how to implement it for all goals desired. You will come to find that for being one simple object, there is a lot you can do with it.
Understanding the kettlebell is important. It is easy to use for someone just starting their fitness journey, yet is also quite useful for athletes and advanced lifters. Everyone would like to be healthy and fit, but it can be intimidating to have to commit to a gym and figure out how to use all of the different equipment. It is confusing and daunting to enter a gym and perform unfamiliar movements in front of strangers. Kettlebells help you understand your body and can easily be used anywhere with little space. Do you want to get stronger and lose fat? Improve your overall quality of life with minimal investment? Then this simple object was meant for your hands to grip and move.
Table of Contents
The History of the Kettlebell
Never contest for space with a kettlebell. - Pavel Tsatsouline
G reek Halteres, Russian Girya, and now the kettlebell. All terms for a simple piece of equipment used to create strength champions from ancient Olympics to modern-day athletes. Credit goes mainly to Russia for the use of kettlebells as a body strengthening tool that led to competitive use as well. The culmination of centuries of existence led to its full-blown use for physical training in the early 21 st century in the United States. Let us take a deeper look into the unique history of the kettlebell, and why it has become an established new type of equipment for the American population to use for strength and full-body training.
Although Russia holds the credit, the use of equipment similar to the kettlebell dates back to ancient Greek history, one of the first civilizations to incorporate resistance training for physical development and sport training. The well-known concept of progressive overload dates back to ancient Greece, which gives you an understanding of how useful this equipment has been to make it through to our modern-day society. The Scotland Highland Games have weighted objects with a handle that can be swung, which demonstrates the use of a kettlebell-like object that has changed overtime. Just like a car, equipment for lifting updates over time to be more efficient and effective.
Germany should also be given credit for the use of kettlebells as part of a strength training program. Many diaries, journals, and other historical documents discuss the use of kettlebells for strength performance. Strongman competitions were quite popular and date back to the 18 th and 19 th centuries, before the use of the kettlebell as an accepted exercise in Russia. Instead, the earliest documents in Russian history discussing the kettlebell only indicate its use by farmers as a counterweight for grains. Eventually, farmers began to use it to pass time and demonstrate strength. As international travel became popular, the well-known doctor Vladislav Krayevsky attended a German strongman competition that used this object for sporting events and training.
Two years later he wrote about how the kettlebell is important for sports medicine and informed the Russian Czar of his findings. Later this would be a required training protocol for the Russian army, recommended for citizens to use to reduce health costs, and eventually turned into a popular sport. This is one reason Russian weightlifters dominated their sport since they had already popularized kettlebell use prior to, which encouraged the use of full-body resistance training to encourage both strength and power.
Pavel Tsatsouline, Soviet Union special forces instructor, later migrated to the United States in the '90s. He is accredited with the introduction of the kettlebell for physical conditioning in America. He later developed a kettlebell workout program to help Americans understand how to use the equipment and put together a training program. However, even though Pavel gets the credit, the use of the kettlebell for athletic conditioning was actually seen in America during the early 1900s.
Kettlebell and strongman athletes that migrated from Russia and Germany brought their knowledge with them and started showing men in the gym what they had learned. Many coaches and gym owners were immigrants from these areas known to use the kettlebell. Somewhere in the mid-1900s, use of the kettlebell declined, most likely due to World War Two taking place and the focus on physical fitness taking a backseat to other concerns.
Modern-day society now fully embraces that kettlebells have a lot to offer in terms of conditioning, versatility, and overall health benefits. However, too many fear it as an advanced piece of equipment that is difficult to use, or they simply have trained for so long without it they do not really know what exactly to do with this odd-shaped object. The main reason people do not allow something new into their lives is because it is unfamiliar and they fear looking awkward and not knowing how to use it correctly. The purpose of this guide is to first educate you on the use of the kettlebell, as knowledge is power, and then teach you how to apply the use of this equipment effectively to any workout program to achieve any goal.
Benefits of Kettlebell Training
What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. - Socrates
T here are many benefits to be derived from using the kettlebell as a training tool. Athletes from ancient to modern day would not be where they were without this type of equipment being incorporated into their training programs. The key points that differentiate kettlebell training from dumbbell and barbell training are:
Full Body Conditioning Tool
Enhances Body Awareness and Coordination
Mixture of Strength, Power, and Cardio
Improves Posture, Imbalances, and Muscle Weaknesses
Easy to Train Anywhere and Ease of Storage
The dumbbell is the only free-weight piece of equipment that resembles the kettlebell, but the design differences are what separate them from each other. The dumbbell is very one-sided in terms of design: a simple straight line with equal weight at the ends. Basically, the dumbbell has already balanced the resistance out for you to easily operate. Physical conditioning was not meant to be easy, and the difficulty of movement is what uses more muscle groups and strength to overcome the imbalance the kettlebell provides.