kettlebell hype

March 31, 2005 3:48 AM

With girya or kettlebell training you can hack the fat off without the dishonor of diet and aerobics.
posted by the cuban (19 comments total)

I'm there.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 4:17 AM on March 31, 2005

Thanks for the link! Adios, dumbbells.
posted by yoga at 4:47 AM on March 31, 2005

Are they really superior to ordinary hand weights?</possibly naive question
posted by orange swan at 5:20 AM on March 31, 2005

Some folk don't think so...
posted by the cuban at 5:21 AM on March 31, 2005

won't help me much unless they work as a firefox plugin.
posted by th3ph17 at 5:48 AM on March 31, 2005

Cool - kinda reminds me of shisuo, the Chinese equivalent, which was modeled after a traditional padlock.
posted by sudasana at 6:20 AM on March 31, 2005

That before & after pic in the 4th link is downright disturbing. Okay he got all muscular but what happened to his chest hair?!?
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:37 AM on March 31, 2005

A weight is a weight is mass. If you move the weight you're expending exercise and shredding your muscle. Do this enough and you'll lose weight and build muscle mass. There are some differences between doing weights with a machine v.s. free weights (with free weights there's balancing involved, even for things like curls, you have to maintain overall balance and you have to balance whatever part is extended so free weights will involve more muscles than any machine I've tried).

If your form is constant there shouldn't be a difference between kettle weights and barbells. For instance if you do squats with kettle weights or barbells the effect on your legs will be identical if you use identical weight, sets and reps. If with the barbell you rest it on your shoulders while with the kettle bells you hang them at your sides there would be some difference to your arms.

I happened to run into kettle bells while looking up something last week and I think I understand why this would seem to be a more efficient manner of exercising if fat loss is your goal: high repetitions. Your body can generally expend more energy doing high repetitions of lower weights than it can expend doing low repetitions of high weight. With heavy weights once your main muscles are depleted you're done unless you ramp down the weight which most people don't do. You can't safely do more repetitions with the same weight.
posted by substrate at 6:38 AM on March 31, 2005

In Soviet Russia, weight lifts you! (/me dons asbestos suit)
posted by leapfrog at 6:48 AM on March 31, 2005

expending exercise should be expending energy
posted by substrate at 7:26 AM on March 31, 2005

I've been doing these for two months now. These are by far the best work out tools I have ever used, and one of the simplest. Doing these exercises two to three times a week, and not much else, in the last two months has dropped my run time in the mile-and-a-half by over a minute. A workout with kettlebells is a full body work out; you are not isolating any particular group you are including many major muscle groups into one exercise. The KB is very versatile, and there many different exercises you can do with it. I challenge anyone who looks at these and scoffs at them to find someone with a set and try to stick it out for a one-hour workout. It looks simple, but by the end of the workout you will see how amazing these things are. One of my friends was poking a little bit of fun at me for doing these workouts so I had him come out and do one. He barely made it to the end using a 12Kg KB.
posted by x_3mta3 at 9:12 AM on March 31, 2005

Marketing technique:
1. purchase 2 or 3 MF accounts
2. Create slightly wacky product page
3. Use one account to post a "hey, look at this wackiness" link
4. Use other accounts to post "no, seriously, I've used this and it worked" responses

I'm not sayin' this is what's going on... I'm just sayin' is all.
posted by Capn at 9:46 AM on March 31, 2005

that really, really wasn't worth it, leapfrog.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:26 AM on March 31, 2005

Capn, though I have no way to prove it, I can assure you I have no idea who The Cuban is. If I was trying to market them I probably would have told you to jump right out and buy one, preferably from a site where I would make the money off of it, but I didn't. I seriously have been doing these for a while now, and they really are great. That's all I'm going to say.
posted by x_3mta3 at 10:51 AM on March 31, 2005

These seem awfully expensive compared to dumbbells. At $90 for a 26-pounder, they'd have to be about five times more effective than a pair of 20 pound dumbbells to make up for their cost. They're pretty cool-looking, though, and the workout looks fun. Call me when Big 5 has them in stock for $30.
posted by vorfeed at 1:15 PM on March 31, 2005

$90 for 26 pounds of low-grade cast iron?

I was sceptical before, now I'm sure: This is bollocks.

High-quality barbell plates sell at $1/lb, scrap iron is even cheaper.
posted by spazzm at 3:11 PM on March 31, 2005

Scrap iron/steel costs about 8 cents/lb.

Go to your local welder/mechanic/junkyard and tell them what you want. Show them a drawing. Explain to them that this is alledgedly what the Spetznas (sp?) used to get fit.

Maybe they'll knock you out one for free, just because you're funny. Maybe you can pay them with a bottle of Vodka.
That would be the real russian way.
posted by spazzm at 3:18 PM on March 31, 2005

I've been a member here since 2001, dont know x_3mta and have no financial interest in Kettlebells.


I'm The Cuban and endorse this message
posted by the cuban at 11:32 PM on March 31, 2005

You end up looking like a lobsteranyway. Is this attractive to people?
posted by asok at 2:48 AM on April 1, 2005