Introducing The Kettlebell

This cannonball-shaped cast iron weight works your core like crazy – sculpting, strengthening and trimming in ways no other tool can match.

- Jenessa Connor

To look at it, you wouldn’t guess that the simple kettlebell is such a fitness hero—both a superior calorie burner and an ab flattener in one. Thanks to its unique physics, it can elicit more burn and firm than other forms of resistance.

KETTLEBELL CARDIO

Typical kettlebell moves are calorie guzzlers. Take the snatch – a one-arm lift in which, from a quarter-squat position, you fluidly move the kettlebell from the floor to directly overhead as you stand, bell flipping up and over to rest atop your forearm. It burns some 20 calories per minute when performed at an as-many-reps-as possible (AMRAP) pace, according to a recent American Council on Exercise study at the University of Wisconsin– La Crosse.

Exercisers in the study did a 20-minute workout of 15-second AMRAP intervals of kettlebell snatches followed by 15 seconds of rest. “It’s a total-body exercise,” says lead author John Porcari.

By engaging the entire posterior chain (back, butt, hamstrings, and calves) plus the chest, shoulders, and arms, the kettlebell snatch and its variations work more muscle groups than other forms of HIIT, such as biking or running, which use primarily the legs and glutes.