One of the great delights of working out with kettlebells is the flexibility they allow.

There’s often been a tendency on the part of those coaching or writing about strength, fitness and bodybuilding etc to insist on highly structured, prescriptive workout plans, often featuring large numbers of different exercises, and consequently of interminable length, as being the only way to achieve optimum results.

Click Here to see the exact steps that “ordinary guy” Alex Miller used to lose 36 pounds of body fat and FINALLY get six-pack abs.
Check out Alex’s inspirational pictures and also the Q&A we put together on how he achieved these results (very informative and inspirational!)

But when using kettlebells this kind of training is not only unnecessary but actively discouraged.   Not that you should have no plan at all, but you should be prepared to use the power of the kettlebell to train in short bursts of highly enjoyable exercise, making full use of the many different, and somewhat unconventional movements allowed by the kettlebell.

What You’ll Get From The Best Kettlebell Workout

With a little ingenuity it’s possible to construct numerous kettlebell workouts which will pack strength, flexibility and endurance training into the shortest possible training period.  For example, there’s no need to divide the workout into separate “strength”. “cardio”, “abs”, and “stretching” sessions; in fact you’ll get far better and quicker results once you realise that basic kettlebell moves such as the swing are simultaneously developing your body’s capabilities in all these areas.

But the key to success in any physical training programme, whether you’re using kettlebells or not, is to maintain the highest possible level of intensity, so to get the very best kettlebell workout you need also to thoroughly embed this principle in its structure.  There are several ways in which you can plan your workouts to ensure this.

Firstly: “supersets”.

Now, there’s nothing new or complicated about these; in fact they’ve been used by conventional barbell and dumbbell trainers with great success for many years.  But the versatility of the kettlebell makes it particularly suitable for supersetting.  In essence all you have to do is to pair two different exercises, using different muscle groups, into a superset by performing sets of each exercise without any rest or pause between them.  There’s almost no limit to the variations you can introduce, but for example 5 reps of squats immediately followed by 5 presses would constitute an excellent superset.

You can then do as many supersets as you like, keeping the rest between them as brief as possible to maximise the intensity and get your heart and lungs working flat out.  You can then repeat for as many different exercises as you like, depending on the time you have available.  But be aware that this is a very intense type of training and it’s absolutely not necessary to put in long workouts.

Secondly: “circuits”.

Again, probably very familiar to most of us (and dreaded) from school days or sports team training, but an extremely effective training system.

The basic idea of circuits is to select a number of different exercises and to perform one set of each before starting the sequence again.  If this conjures up a mental image of jogging round the gym from exercise station to exercise station that’s because this is exactly how circuits are very often taught in school or exercise classes.

But you can perform your sequence of exercises just as well without doing this provided you have the right weights to hand.

The real value of circuits is that the muscles worked in one exercise are resting while the others are worked so as to increase the total amount of work they’re able to do during the workout, with consequent increase in the overall intensity of your session.

So a typical kettlebell circuit might be:-

• 10 swings, rest 30 seconds

• “Turkish Get Up”, 1 left, 1 right, rest 30 seconds

• 10 front squats, rest 30 seconds• 10 clean and press, rest 30 seconds

• 10 one hand snatch, rest 30 seconds.

You can repeat the circuit as many times as you can in the time you have available, or until exhaustion, but even 20 minutes of this kind of training will give you a really superb strength and conditioning workout.   And of course, to maintain interest and motivation, you can try almost any number of variations of the exercises included and the order in which they are performed.

Third: “compound sequences”

This is perhaps the most intense of all these training systems, and simply involves the performance of a number of compound exercises (compound simply meaning ones which involve more than one joint – eg the clean or the snatch) one after the other without rest or putting down the kettlebell.  The trainer moves smoothly through a sequence of different movements, perhaps 5 reps of each to constitute a set, and only then rests.

A typical compound sequence might include the swing, the clean, the press and the snatch but again there are almost innumerable variations to try.

You can perform as many sets as you like (or can) but of course the lack of rest between movements will mean using lighter weights than if a more conventional structure were followed.  Overall, however, the intensity is maintained at a very high level for a fantastic conditioning workout.

If you want to get a lean, toned and shapely stomach in the shortest time then click here for access to these great free downloads
Mike Geary’s – Insider Secrets For A Lean Body (e-book)
Tom Venuto’s – Six Pack Abs Revealed (e-book)
David Grisaffi’s – Posture & Core Conditioning (e-book)
Mike Geary and Jeff “Muscle Nerd” Anderson (90 minute MP3 audio)

Steve Smith

© Effective Ab Workouts 2011