Kettlebells

I'm thinking about buying a set of these and becoming part of the /homegym/ masterrace. Has anybody had much experience with these? Can good gains be made from them?
Thanks in advance.

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they're good but i dont really ever use mine because i like other lifts more.
yes you can make gains

they make adjustable ones. i have the adjustable 150lb DBs from ironmaster and they're rock solid. they also make adjustable kettlebells so id recommend those but dont actually own them

Kettlebell progressions are all about adding reps so you won't make as many muscle and strength gains as you would with traditional strength training but it's better than nothing. Doing a mix of kettlebell and calisthenics is probably the best you can do with the least amount of equipment.

I use it for various homemade exercises. Don't really like the traditional ones you supposed to do.
It was a great complement to my dumbells in order to do some quick stuff to keep in shape, but for the moment I go to the gym instead.

Interesting. Would you know if two adjustable bells are cheaper than a set of, for example, 16kg-48kg?

this
I'd reccomend doing at least six months of heavy-ass barbell muscle building before jumping the crossfit train

I am part of the /homegym/ master race. I have kettlebells but it is limited because for some exercises the weight won't be right and to have an adequate range of weights to suit a progressive workout plan you will have to buy a shittonne of them. The best thing for a workout gym is if you get a bench, a power rack, an olympic bar, a good range of weights for the bar and a big adjustable pair of dumbells. With that you can do the main lifts and progress gaining strength. Kettlebell workouts are decent but you do require a range and if you are a male the larger kettlebells get very expensive. If you are a woman though you might have better use of them.

I see, but wouldn't it be more about time under tension than rep count? So the muscle/strength gains would be quite similar to conventional training?
And yeah, I do calisthenic stuff already, so that's alright.

I see, I think Hulse uses them the same way.

I worked from home a lot when my kids were first born, and so I ended up working out from home a lot. I didn't make gains with kettlebells, but I had a good routine that at least kept me from losing much. It was a pretty quick road back to top shape once the kids were in school.

Also ftr homegymming is fucking awesome. You can do it naked, have food right after, have whatever music you want out loud and most importantly do whatever you want when you want. It is HIGHLY worth the investment in kitting out a room properly

I'm not interesting in Crossfit, just KB exercising due to potential efficiency. And yeah, I've consistently done BB strength training since May.

I understand that heavy KBs are quite expensive, but I factored in costs and it would end up cheaper than a year at my current gym, so price won't really be an issue.

How did you train with KBs?

Sounds great, but sorry, what's ftr?

*For the record

I was comparing pricewise to what you'd spend on a powerrack, bench and barbell set. The disadvantage is space though since you'll have to dedicate a room for it

I see, thanks, lol

Oh, okay, that makes sense. FWIW If anything, I'd only be getting a bar + weights, no rack. I can clean to front squats and OHP.

>I'd only be getting a bar + weights, no rack. I can clean to front squats and OHP.

You're going to stall hard if that's the case. Get a rack and in addition to the pins helping with a variety of lifts, you have other options like pullups, band work, etc.

Oh, okay, I'll look into a rack then.

The reason I suggest rack is mainly the pullup bar and safety, I am always terrified of trying to much weight and killing myself, but you can set it up to catch you if you fail. Also my floors won't be able to take a plummeting 100kg+ barbell unscathed even with mats down.

Yeah, that's a good point to consider, safety is paramount. In saying that, I don't typically push myself to extremes anyway. If I know I can't do a rep, I don't attempt it.
You raise agood point about the floors. My landlord wouldn't be too happy. I'll need a rack.

I basically tried to mimic traditional barbell and dumbell lifts as best I could, and tried to gradually increase difficulty over time. My two main variables were reps and explosiveness, which I would cycle through every few months. So I'd spend a few months trying to do more and more reps, then de-load and focus on trying to do less but do it explosively. Nothing too complicated. Specific exercises, off the top of my head:

Kettlebell swings to roughly mimic squatting
Farmers carries
Overhead farmers carries
Curl to press
Turkish getups
Skull crushers
Weighted twists

Etc. I also used my kids as bodyweights. So I would let them sit on my back while I did pushups, and I drilled some metal anchors into an especially thick tree branch in our back yard and hung two ropes with rings, and had one of my kids hang onto my legs while I did pullup variations (which was always a treat for them). It was also good, I think, for them to see daddy working hard to stay strong.

It's intruiging that you didn't increase the weight lifted. Surely your body would have increased in "functional" strength, right? That routine looks terrific for training the core.

Oh yeah definitely if you are renting haha, you can get some cheap mats on amazon that will stop the rack and weights making marks too plus prevents slip etc

Terrific, thanks a bunch for your input, user.

I train at home, and have a handful of kettlebells. In combination with my power rack and a couple of barbells and some plates and a set of gymnastics rings, there's pretty much nothing I can't do.

I use them mostly for KB armbars, Turkish get-ups (these are fucking amazing for shoulder health), as well as KB swings and KB snatches.

>Kettlebell swings to roughly mimic squatting
user, you're either doing squats or swings very wrong...

Of strength, muscular endurance, and power, I knew that strength would be the component I could mimic the least well with kettlebells compared to barbells and dumbbells, so I didn't bother. You need heavy weight to increase strength, and I didn't have heavy weight. Both endurance and explosiveness can be achieved with pretty light weights, so I focused on what I could work on the best given the equipment at hand.

>Turkish get-ups
I absolutely love doing these, one of my favourite exercises

Well, as I said, roughly. They're far from analogous. Also, this:

journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2012/12000/Mechanical_Demands_of_Kettlebell_Swing_Exercise.5.aspx

Understood, that's a very pragmatic way to go about it. It's good to hear that your absolute strength didn't drop much despite not really training for it.

No worries hope it goes well and you may be blessed with many gains!

Kettlebell is still this mystified Soviet tool that is supposed to make you into a real man. Well, it doesn't. No matter how many cool and tough Soviet war stories Pavel tells, it doesn't.

Soviet soldiers were weak and dumb and got beaten by much smaller army of Finns in Winter War, even though Soviets had a hundredfold of tanks and 30 times the airplanes. What Finnish men did that time was lumber jacking and skiing.

Lifting and running is the way to go for real men. Kettlebells are great for home moms.

Well you're making the same mistake as Pavel in that you're taking a bit of an extreme viewpoint.
It's just a tool, man. It's not the be all end all, and it's not worthless either.

Their displaced center of mass makes them good for exercises where you actually want a bit of instability such as armbars, and it makes them great for ballistic exercises such as swings, cleans, snatches.
For presses I much prefer DBs.

I don't think it's fair to talk so negatively of kettlebells - they have a purpose and a use. I agree with you on your point about Pavel, he is a charlatan and hack IMO. As for saying that kettlebells are for 'home moms', I wholeheartedly disagree. Kettlebells range from 4kg to over 60kg, doing something like a Turkish Get-up or Bent Press with a 60kg bell is well beyond the capability of a 'home mom', along with my consistent gymgoers.
Kettlebell training is by no means conventional, but I don't think it's fair to talk of it as you do.

many* not my