kettlebell workout

How Kettlebell Swings Can Help You Burn Fat and Get in Shape

Motion

Kettlebell swings are a dynamic exercise that’s been proven to be a powerful tool for weight loss, especially when shedding unwanted fat. Kettlebell swings are a highly effective exercise for fat loss due to their high calorie burn, total body workout, cardiovascular benefits, functional movement, and low-impact nature.

This blog post will examine why kettlebell swings are one of the best exercises for fat loss and explore the science behind their effectiveness.

First, let’s define what kettlebell swings are. I won’t assume everyone reading this has been swinging kettlebells for years. Here’s what swings look like. My YouTube and Instagram have tons of clips of me swinging.

Kettlebell swings are a ballistic exercise that involves swinging a weighted ball-shaped object, known as a kettlebell, between your legs and up to shoulder height. This movement engages your glutes, hamstrings, quads, core, and back muscles.

So why are kettlebell swings the best exercise for fat loss?

High Calorie Burn

Kettlebell swings require significant energy output and have been shown to burn a lot of calories quickly. Studies have shown that kettlebell swings can burn up to 20 calories per minute, making them one of the most effective exercises for fat loss.

Total Body Workout

Kettlebell swings exercise an extraordinary number of muscle groups simultaneously, including the legs, glutes, core, and back. This full-body workout is ideal for increasing strength and conditioning and promoting fat loss.

Improved Cardiovascular Health

Kettlebell swings are a high-intensity exercise that gets your heart rate up quickly. This type of cardiovascular training has been shown in studies to improve heart health, boost metabolism, and increase fat burning.

Functional Movement

Kettlebell swings mimic (and enhance) many daily movements, such as lifting and carrying heavy objects. This functional movement pattern helps improve overall fitness and enhances our ability to perform daily activities efficiently. 

Improve Maximal and Explosive Strength

Kettlebell swings are a powerful exercise for building muscle and improving overall fitness. The explosive nature of the movement requires a significant amount of force to be generated by the lower body muscles, making it an effective way to improve strength and power.

The study “Kettlebell swing training improves maximal and explosive strength” was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2014. The study investigated the effects of kettlebell swing training on maximal and explosive strength in the lower body. The participants were 16 recreationally active men and women randomly assigned to either a kettlebell swing training or a control group.

The kettlebell swing group trained with kettlebell swings twice a week for six weeks, while the control group did not perform any resistance training during the study period. The kettlebell swing training program consisted of three sets of 20 kettlebell swings with moderate weight.

After six weeks of training, the kettlebell swing group showed significant improvements in maximal and explosive strength in the lower body compared to the control group. The researchers concluded that kettlebell swing training effectively improves lower body strength and power output.

Low Impact Exercise

Kettlebell swings are a low-impact exercise, which means they put less stress on your joints and muscles compared to high-impact activities like running. This makes swings an excellent option for individuals looking to lose weight but may have joint or mobility issues.

How Many Kettlebell Swings Should I do?

Most people will see fantastic results (after about 4 weeks) from performing 75-150 repetitions of kettlebell swings in a single workout, 2-3 days per week. The sensible approach for beginners is to start with lower repetitions an

Over time, the swing volume can increase by adding repetitions to each work set, or by adding an additional work set.

Are Turkish Get-Ups the Best Kettlebell Exercise?

Motion

Here’s why Turkish Get-Ups are one of the best kettlebell exercises:

  • Build coordination and spatial awareness
  • Train rolling patterns and cross-lateralization
  • Improves other lifts 
  • Enhance shoulder mobility/stability
  • Promote upper and lower body stability
  • Adds lean muscle to the body in a functional way
  • Develop upper, lower, and trunk strength
  • Endless combinations, variations, and workouts
  • It can be used for a cardio training effect

Turkish Get-Ups are one of the best kettlebell exercises a person can learn, train, and progress. Turkish Get-Ups demonstrate integrated total body strength, stability/mobility, and control.  

Kettlebell swings, snatches, and cleans are explosive exercises. These movements are ballistic and demand force production for maximum benefit. Turkish Get-Ups are on the other side of the spectrum. They’re a slow and controlled grind.  

Turkish Get-Ups can be used to create a cardio stimulus if performed continuously for a longer duration. Loaded conditioning is fantastic for fat loss and building work capacity.  

The following movements are woven into every repetition of Turkish Get Up:

  • Core rolling patterns 
  • Windmill 
  • Hip lift
  • Lunge 
  • Dynamic shoulder stability (holding the kettlebell anterior, vertical, etc.)

In future posts, I’ll share variations that add other exercises to create a different training effect and challenge. Every segment of the Turkish Get-Ups allows an opportunity to add an exercise or tweak. The options are limitless.  

The unique part of Turkish Get-Ups is the mirror effect of the exercise. The movement actions performed in the first half of the exercise are mirrored and reversed, returning to the floor. Therefore, you’re training the concentric and eccentric phases of each movement.  

Learning, practicing, and building strength and work capacity with Turkish Get-Ups are worth your time. Over time (and with attention to essential factors like diet, hydration, sleep, etc.) Turkish Get-Ups can play a influential role in improving body composition (losing fat and building functional muscle), strength, coordination, and control. 

3 Jump Rope and Kettlebell Workouts To Try

Workouts

Depending on your training level, pairing kettlebell drills like swings and jumping rope can provide an incredible training stimulus.

All three of the workouts below will require a kettlebell and a jump rope.

The effectiveness of the workouts will depend on you, your effort, training familiarity with the exercises, kettlebells and jump rope.  Jumping rope can be a limiting factor for a lot of people, but with practice, you’ll quickly improve.

Step #1: Choose a kettlebell weight that is challenging to swing for 15 repetitions (we’ll be swinging it for 10 repetitions in the workouts).

Step #2: Select a jump rope that turns effortlessly and has a length appropriate to your height.  Generally speaking, when you place one foot on the rope you should be able to pull the handles to your armpit region.

Selecting only two pieces of equipment minimizes decision fatigue.  Less can be more.

Baseline workout:

10 Kettlebell Swings

1 minute Jump Rope

  • 10 continuous rounds without rest between swinging and jumping.
  • Two movements performed savagely well.

 

Intermediate workout:

10 Kettlebell Swings

10 Kettlebell Goblet Squats

1 minute Jump Rope

  • 10 continuous rounds without rest between swinging, squatting and jumping.
  • Addition of the squat pattern element to the baseline workout above.

 

Advanced workout:

10 Kettlebell Swings

10 Kettlebell Goblet Squats

5 Right/Left Arm Kettlebell Overhead Press

1 Minute Jump Rope

  • 10 continuous rounds without rest between swinging, squatting, pressing and jumping.
  • Now it’s a party.  A full-body training session of hip hinging (swings), squatting (goblet squats), vertical pressing (overhead press) with jumping rope serving as the active rest between these loaded movements.

 

One easy way to make any of these workouts more challenging is to complete more rounds in the given timeframe.  

In other words, work faster.  Be mindful of exercise technique of course.

Less is more.  

The impact of a simple workout like this is tremendous, and I often recommend breaking the monotony of traditional cardio training with sessions like this.

Incorporating big bang major movement patterns like kettlebell swings will serve you amazingly well.

Enjoy these workouts and feel free to progress them beyond what I’ve suggested to further challenge/customize to suit your needs.

 

Kyle

 

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Saturday always provides adequate time to explore different combinations of work capacity style circuits.

I like to take the governor off and push myself on Saturday mornings.

This past Saturday didn’t disappoint.

The goal was to accumulate 25-30 minutes of a work:rest style circuit.  I didn’t feel like being monotonous with the exercise selection so included 10 different exercises, stringing them together strategically so that I could give an honest effort to each exercise without sacrificing anything (mostly due to fatigue) to the next exercise in the circuit.

It really worked out well and challenged a number of movement patterns.

The equipment that I used:  24kg kettlebells x2, jump rope, Jungle Gym Suspension Trainer

Here is how the workout was structured…

—> 20 seconds of work: 20 seconds of rest of the following:

24kg kettlebell snatch right hand

rest

24kg kettlebell snatch left hand

rest

Bodyweight Chin Up

rest

Double 24kg kettlebell squat-to-press (aka: Thrusters)

rest

Mountain Climbers

rest

Kettlebell Figure-8 (advanced and technical, but great drill)

rest

Bodyweight Push Ups

rest

Double 24kg Lunge (alternating sides)

rest

Hand-to-Hand 24kg Swings (alternating every rep)

rest

Burpees (jump and push up)

rest

Jump Rope (combination of two foot bounce and running)

—-> Repeat 4 complete cycles of the above…

The best part about this workout is that you don’t have to worry about keeping track of reps.  When I am doing work capacity style training, counting reps can be a major pain.  It’s really the last thing I want to be doing while I am huffing and puffing.  Instead, the work starts on the buzzer and ends on the buzzer.  It’s really convenient.

Know thyself… If you’re a beginner, this workout might not be scaled to suit you.  If you’ve been working out for a while, this might work great for you.  If you’re a tough guy or gal, bump up the weight for kettlebell exercises, add a weight vest to chin ups and push ups, use a weighted jump rope, etc.  I can provide exercise progressions to bury anyone if that is what you are seeking, hopefully that isn’t the case though.  Smart training reigns supreme.

You might see a lot of volume in a workout like this, and you’re absolutely right, so nice observation.  However, I preach workouts that can be managed.  I managed this one nicely.  Notice how explosive work is ordered first in the workout.  That is on purpose.  People tend to get hurt when they attempt to move weight quickly under fatigue and will poor form.  I am not foolish enough to place a highly technical lift at a place in the workout when I am most fatigued.

Also notice that all of the exercises are non-competing, and ordered in such a way to respect that.  In fact, look at the kettlebell figure-8 + bodyweight push ups + double 24kg lunge… sequence.  Very different muscles are being taxed there.  Figure-8’s are combination of squats with rotational power where the kettlebell moves from a high front to low back to side and finally diagonally across body to high position (hybrid movement).  Push ups are an upper body push dominant exercise, and lunges are mainly a lower body hip dominant exercise.  This allows for an increase in heart rate and work, without gassing out the body for the next exercise.  You tax one movement pattern, than move on to the next.

Different movement patterns, different muscles, quality technique, short rest, big training effect.

Now I don’t own a calorimeter or a metabolic analyzer, but I would guess that the calorie burn from a workout like this was quite high.  Maybe 650-800kcals total, and that doesn’t include the residual calories that are burned post-workout.  Shortened rest periods combined with resistance based lifts that leverage a sub-maximal muscle contraction are notorious for creating an after-burn effect, it’s been studied quite extensively in the last few years as the concept of fat loss slowly gains momentum versus weight loss.

Metabolism can stay elevated for several days leveraging workouts like this.

If you leverage some quality eating habits during that period of elevated metabolism, you’ll burn some fat no doubt.  Rinse and repeat the process and you’re going to end up burning a bunch of fat.

I should also note that I designed this workout knowing that the coming days were going to be either complete rest (no workouts) or at the very most, a short yoga/static stretch session.  It’s important to rest, recover and let your body heal in between workouts.  Your body can only handle so much stress before adverse events begin to occur.  You really don’t want to play chicken with overtraining or chronic fatigue in general.  The point of recovering in between workouts is to give your body the best possible chance to leverage the work done in the previous workout, while allowing enough time to enter the next training session and make gains.

I think that a lot of people could lose greater amounts of body-fat (faster) while boosting performance if they decreased the amount of cumulative stress from workouts.  You want your body to recover in full.  Always entering a workout in a state of recovery is bad for business.  If you haven’t acquired a full taste for physical activity, this is good news for you, as each dedicated workout can be used to accelerate

Instead, choose fewer weekly workouts that create a larger (but quality) training effect.  Make them count.

Focus on accelerating other areas of life while you recover in between sessions.  Focus on establishing quality eating habits.  Re-think your water intake.  Read more books on success and self-growth.  Calm the mind with yoga, foam rolling and a long static stretch session.  Get more sleep.

Learning how to workout is great, and building fitness is empowering.  But keep your training efforts sustainable.  Win the war, not just the battle.

Give this workout (or a variation of it) a go.

Cheers to kettlebell and bodyweight workouts!

KG

30 Minute Workouts, Bodyweight Workouts, Kettlebell Training, Quick Tips