Kettlebells And The Fat Loss Hierarchy
ByIf you’re looking to drop body fat it’s essential you understand the hierarchy of fat loss before you set sail with your New Year’s fitness programme.
At the top of the fat busting tree is strength training. The common misconception about strength training is that if you’re not leaping about and standing in a pool of sweat by the time your session’s up then it’s somehow inferior to aerobic training. Indeed, an hour’s steady running is likely to accumulate a higher calorific expenditure than an hour of lifting weights. However, unless you’re a professional athlete, the likelihood is that you’ll spend roughly 4 hours week training and the other 164 hours sleeping, working and generally not training. So when it comes to designing fat loss programmes, it’s no good relying on the mechanisms that worked fifty years ago. People were more active then & they walked a lot more. Today’s society requires a programme that enables their metabolism to be elevated for a significant amount of time after they’ve stopped training, and this is exactly what strength training does and steady state cardio does not.
Taking a step down our fat loss tree we find high intensity interval training (HIIT). The first significant study to support the efficiency of this type of training was in Tremblay, Angelo, et al’s 1994 research, which compared the effects of low intensity cardio and HIIT on body fat. The result yielded a 3x greater fat loss for HIIT, and has been supported by countless other studies since.
A branch down again we have high intensity steady state cardio, and finally, the poor relation in metabolic acceleration, low intensity cardio. So where does kettlebell training fit into all of this?
Whilst it would be naive to think that kettlebells can parallel barbells for maximal strength generation, they nevertheless provide today’s hectic gym goer/non-goer, with a huge bang for buck tool that is versatile enough to cover all of the necessary components of our fat loss tree.
The reason why kettlebells are so effective comes down to three main points. Firstly, the way they hang in relation to the body places their centre of mass uniquely below the hand rather than in the centre of it, which consequently initiates a higher stabilisation requirement of the working joints, meaning increased muscular recruitment and higher metabolic output. Secondly, dynamic kettlebell drills are super intense and subsequently super time efficient; making them ideal for our HIIT and well suited to our time starved lifestyles. To understand why they are so effective we need to take a look at the simple physics equation of Force = Mass X Acceleration. Immediately we can see that whilst the bell you are swinging may only be 12kg, the force your body is actually being loaded with is a lot bigger, meaning increased workload in less time and warp speed results. BOOM! The third main benefit to kettlebells for fat loss is that as a result of their efficiency we can afford to reduce the number of reps we perform and thus significantly reduce the impact we place on our joints, particularly through activities such as running where literally thousands of reps of the same motor pattern are being performed.
World renowned speaker Jack Canfield once said, ‘If what you are doing now was enough to get you what you want, you’d already have it.’ So if you’re really determined to drop fat and achieve the body you wish you had, it’s time to start adding kettlebell to your programme!
Charlotte Ord is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach and kettlebell expert. A specialist in fat loss for men and women, she presents her own fitness show on Sky Television and has featured in a number of leading health and fitness publications including Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Triathlete’s World, as well the national press.
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ays Gift: Kettlebell Killer Physique: The Foundations
‘Kettlebell Killer Physique; The Foundations’ is a 10 part video tutorial and fat loss programme designed to give you confidence in the core kettlebell exercises. Delivered by Sky TV fitness presenter & kettlebell expert Charlotte Ord, this easy to follow tutorial and programme is guaranteed to turbo charge your body’s fat burning capacity whilst reducing the amount of time you spend training; get ready to develop a killer physique!
