How to Start training with kettlebells: everything you need to know and five exercises for beginners

Strength training encompasses many methodologies and tools that we can use to carry it out. For a person who is just starting out, it is ideal that they first learn to master their body weight and then begin to master external objects such as free weights. Kettle bells or Russian weights (girl, in Russian) would be one of those external objects that we can use to train. Where are kettle bells born? Kettle bells or Russian weights were originally used as a counterweight to measure food rations, although in a short time experts began to emerge in the use of these objects who performed displays of strength, control, and skill for entertainment. In Russian, it is what is known as grievous, Pavel Tsatsouline, a renowned physical trainer, is one of them. How can we work with kettle bells? Kettle bells offer a wide range of opportunities to work in different ways and through various exercises. But essentially they present three characteristics: They produce ballistic movements in which a pendulum trajectory is created due to the mass distribution of the kettle bell itself. This benefits us when it comes to giving strength and speed to the exercises and being able to perform them for a long, since we can use the inertia that is generated. Depending on the design of the training and the selection of exercises, we can train through the different energy pathways, making more or less notable use of the different energy substrates: phosphates, glycogen, and lipids. Kettle bells, then, allow us to guide training towards maximum and short efforts or towards lasting efforts. Great proprioceptive and central stabilization work. Because most of the kettle bell's mass is concentrated in, this creates difficulties to stabilize it in any of the movement planes in which we work. In summary, it requires good dynamic stability, an aspect that we have already highlighted on previous occasions when working on our core. What physical advantages does the kettle bell provide compared to other tools? Some of the benefits we have already mentioned, but they are not the only ones, given the versatile nature of this implement: Great transfer to specific sports gestures can be created in the same force vector. Most exercises involve the whole body and several simultaneous muscle chains. Great job stabilizing the shoulder girdle, something that is not abundant today. Dynamic stability work is one of the basics of a strong core. An exercise for each muscle group A good way to design the routine is to try to cover all the basic movement patterns, in such a way that we train the main muscle groups and chains. Knee dominants like the goblet squat are one of the basic exercises that anyone should master before considering putting a bar on their back. Dealing with the kettle bell in this exercise can be a great way to work your lower body through knee dominants like the quadriceps. If the goblet squat becomes easy, you can progress to more complex movements such as the single-arm kettle bell thruster, which will also allow us to work on the vertical thrust pattern as well. Hip dominants like the kettle bell swing, This is probably one of the most famous basic exercises that can be performed with kettle bells. It is about making a pendulum movement with the kettle bell through a hip extension. When the kettle bell comes back after sending it up with our hip extension, it puts a big eccentric load on our hamstrings. Horizontal pushes like the floor press Although this exercise can be done on a bench and even unilaterally, the floor press is a great way to start mastering the kettle bell during a horizontal push. Horizontal pulls like the kettle bell row This exercise can be done with both arms simultaneously, which would be known as bent-over kettle bell rows, leaning on a bench or doing it as in the video. There is a multitude of exercises that can be performed with kettle bells, some much more advanced, but it is important to learn to master these first in order to take the next steps.