Kettlebell Information and Techniques

To lose fat and build muscle we need exercises which work the whole body using enough weight to signal to the body that it needs to get stronger and also trains the cardio-vascular systems to get more efficient.

Heavy Squats are well known for being one of the best muscle-builders with a serious a fat-shredding effect. What is even better than the squat is performing a combination movement that has the squat as one of the components. An example is the thruster, either with a barbell, dumbbells or kettlebells. There are many others

The way it works is the more muscles you use in an exercise the more energy is required to do the movement so you burn more fat and get stronger as well.

I will be perfectly honest, these combination exercises suck. They are hard, they may make you feel like you want to puke, and you might, so don’t go crazy. You have to build your work-capacity over time or suffer the consequences!

So here are my favorite exercises for fat loss and lean muscle gain:

Exercise#1- Swing, Flip and Squat or any Squatting Combination Exercise- Squat Thrust/Burpee Variations, Squat to Overhead Press,  squat thrust to snatch etc.

Exercise#2- The Swing- Kettlebells, Med Balls, or Sandbags

Exercise#3- Any Lunge Combination Exercise- Alternating Lunge and clean to Press, Alternating Lunge plus Twist, etc.

Exercise#4- Any Push-Up Combination Exercise- Push-ups plus Knee-Ins, Push-up Rows, Spiderman Push-ups, Burpees, staggered, walking etc.

Exercise#5- The Chop- Med Balls, Bands, or Sandbags

Exercise#6- Olympic Lifting Variations: Kettlebell Cleans, Snatches, High Pulls and Jerks

Exercise#7- Renegade Rows and combination such as a pushup a Renegade row to a double clean

Exercise#8- 1/2 kneeling overhead press or Windmills for core activation

Exercise#9- Turkish Getups for total body control, ab work, leg work, shoulder stabilization and strength

Exercise#10- one leg deadlift with kettlebell or barbell. Try it with the weight on the same side as the working leg (ipsi-lateral) and with the opposite hand (contra-lateral)

Try these out and add at least on of them to your workout and see how much more effective your training becomes.

In the weeks ahead I will be sharing more great exercises like those above and I will be posting videos of them on my site as well as YouTube, so stay tuned.

By: Dave Randolph

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