Burn 400 calories with 20 minutes of kettlebells – really?
I often talk about the massive benefits of kettlebell workouts. The biggest one, that seems to be most appealing to the ladies in our exercise sessions are that you can burn up to 400 calories in just 20 minutes.
This is often looked at as make-believe and some sort of marketing ploy, so it was quite nice to come across an independent study done recently that backs this statement up.
This wasn’t a study done by a couple of hardcore exercise nuts. It was actually done by an organisation called the American Council of Exercise (ACE). They don’t get too much bigger!
The study was done on men and women aged between 29 and 46 and was led by 2 research experts at the University of Wisconsin. They typically did kettlebell swings, snatches and quick lifts over the head.
The 20 minute session was made up of short bursts of lifting and swinging followed by short recovery periods and looked a bit like this:
- Snatches for 15 seconds – dominant hand
- Snatches for 15 seconds – other hand
- Do the above set 20 times
Side note: a snatch is an explosive movement when you lift the weight from a squatting position down between your legs up above your head with one hand. The reason is packs such a punch is due to so many muscles being worked at the same time.
The weights of the kettlebells used by the women were between 12kg and 16kg. It doesn’t look like much, especially as you will notice they were resting for half of the workout, but this type of High Intensity Interval Training packs a punch and the average calories burned was 404 calories.
The other thing that isn’t taken into account within the study is the afterburn effect whereby calories continue to be torched for the following 24 hours after the workout!
They concluded that the high calories burnt were due to the fact that the kettlebell snatch and swing are total body movements performed in an interval-training fashion. The optimum heart rate was 86%-99% of maximum and 67%-91% of maximum oxygen uptake. This in itself suggests that it provides a higher intensity workout than standard weightlifting.
They were quoted as saying “overall, kettlebell use can produce remarkable results, which is what virtually all fitness enthusiasts look to get from their workouts. Kettlebells not only offer resistance training benefits, they also will ultimately help people burn calories, lose weight and enhance their functional performance capabilities”
They also added that it resulted in burning a similar amount of calories to running at a 6 minute mile pace. This is really really quick!!
So if you’re interested in stripping fat, adding lean tissue, getting stronger, improving your posture, improving the efficiency that both your lungs and heart work at and doing all of this in about one third of the time of traditional exercise then get yourself a kettlebell and join the party!
Ricky
ps. Bookmark this page and keep an eye out on my new KB4-20 programme which will show you how to start burning at least 400 calories in just 20 minutes.
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