Kettlebells may look like round iron casts with handles, but they do offer significant benefits that other workout equipment can’t. Some of the benefits you can expect include: building significant strength, encouraging better posture, and engaging your core, among others.
With all these benefits, beginners can sometimes find it challenging to include kettlebells into your workouts.
Apart from the four ways below, if you need more information or additional tips on how to use kettlebells, Simple Fitness Hub is a great resource to review.
Table of Contents
Include Them In Your Warm-ups
Yes, you can surprisingly start your workout with kettlebells. However, it’s essential to make sure that the kettlebell warm-ups you do are not intense. It’s the warm-up turns out as difficult as the workout itself, it defeats the purpose. Start with simple exercises and use lighter than your usual kettlebells.
Some of the kettlebell exercises you can include in your warm-ups are:
Shoulder Exercises
Warming up your shoulders with kettlebells can help you reduce the chances of injury and strain. Also, if you have shoulder pain, kettlebell warm-up exercises can help improve your mobility. Some of the shoulder warm-up exercises include shoulder chest hugs, shoulder rotations, and shoulder circles.
Upper-back Exercises
Warming up your upper-back using a kettlebell can help increase your general mobility. It also helps in preventing the overuse of your neck, shoulders, and lower back when working out.
Some of the upper-back warm-up exercises you can do include upper-back rotations or upper-back chest openers.
Other kettlebell warm-up exercises you can perform before your workout are wrist exercises, neck exercises, or knee warm-ups.
Find Simpler Alternatives To Your Current Exercises
Another effective way of incorporating kettlebells into your workouts is by using them during your entire workout. You’ll find that kettlebells are easier to use, easier to move and more versatile than other gym equipment. Some of the kettlebell workouts you can include are:
Kettlebell Swings
The kettlebell swing is a workout that involves the movement of the kettlebell in a swing-like motion. The kettlebell swing works on the glutes, hips, lats, shoulders, hamstrings, grip, and pec muscles. Since the kettlebell swing works on almost your entire body, you can use it to replace and even combine some exercises in one.
Goblet Squats
Squats are a common exercise movement for most fitness lovers. If the squat rack is busy, and you’re in a hurry, grab a kettlebell! With a kettlebell, you can do goblet squats and work on your core, glutes, while you also strengthen your quadriceps.
Use them in Daily Short Circuits
Short circuit exercises are workouts that involve resistance training or strength training workouts using high-intensity aerobics. These workouts target muscular endurance and strength building. One of the major benefits of kettlebells is to help build muscle strength and endurance.
By incorporating kettlebells and making your workouts shorter and more intense, you get to combine the benefits of cardio training with weight training. Making your exercises more cardio-centric with kettlebells lets you keep the best of both worlds. If you’re trying to lose some weight, this combination is crucial to promote weight loss.
Use them for Conditioning
The primary goal of conditioning exercises is to help improve your overall physical fitness and performance. The exercises that fall in this category include strength training exercises, aerobic exercises, and strength training exercises. Kettlebells are an excellent workout tool to use for conditioning exercises.
Kettlebell exercises can help challenge your body just like conditioning exercises. Working with a kettlebell also helps in improving your cardio and burning additional fat as well.
Conclusion
Incorporating kettlebells into your workout is essential. However, make sure that you also consider your fitness goals when choosing how to incorporate the kettlebell. If you are planning to build muscles, you can replace your work out routine with kettlebells.
