When you are looking to lose weight however, strength, endurance, balance and flexibility exercises are not necessarily things you are focusing on. You want to burn calories. Kettlebell workouts are great for all of the above!
One of the great things about kettlebell workouts is that it only takes half an hour to exercise your entire body. This improves calorie burning.
Experts have shown that in just 20 minutes you can burn more than 400 calories with a kettlebell workout. This means that you burn more than 20 calories per minute and is equivalent to running 9km in six minutes.
Resistance
Kettlebells, like other weights, add resistance to your workout. This added resistance enables your body to burn more calories.
Different planes of movement
Instead of just moving up and down as you would with traditional weights, kettlebell workouts make you move from side to side, as well as in and out. It’s a lot more functional and realistic.
Because of this, you use more stabilising muscles, which increases the number of calories you burn.
Different weight, different calorie-burning
If you lift a kettlebell like you would traditional weights, you will burn the same calories. However, if you use the kettlebells to exercise into all the different planes of movement, you will burn more calories. This is because you are recruiting a lot more muscles than you would with traditional weight lifting exercises.
Recruits more muscles
Because kettlebell workouts are based around movement patterns rather than focusing on exercising a specific muscle, you use your entire body to perform the workout. When your entire body is engaged, it uses a lot more muscles to complete the movements. This means you use more energy and, in turn, burn more calories.
Improved Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption
Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) is your body’s ability to keep burning calories even after you have stopped exercising.
Kettlebell workouts create a large imbalance in homeostasis throughout your body. After your workout, your body needs to restore this imbalance, which burns more calories.
More weight
When you are starting out it is recommended to use a lighter kettlebell. As you get used to the exercises, you can increase the weight of the kettlebell. As you increase the weight of the kettlebell, you increase the number of calories you are burning.
Fluency
Kettlebell workouts are generally a series of movements if you perform these movements fluently and all at once, you will burn more calories than when you spread them out.
Intensity
The intensity of the kettlebell workout can also have an influence on the number of calories you are burning. The more intense, the more calories you burn.
Because of the explosive, dynamic movements required with kettlebells, your workout is more likely to be intense.
Kettlebell workouts require your entire body to support the change of gravity when you are shifting from one movement to the other. This increased engagement from your body, requires more muscles to work, which burns more calories. The resistance that the weight of the kettlebell provides also acts as a means to burn calories.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
To find out more about exercising with kettlebells, you really need to do our kettlebell course. For more information, please follow this link.