The kettlebell or girya (Russian: гиря) is a traditional Russian cast iron weight that looks like a cannonball with a handle. The best kettlebells are hollow but cast the same size so that different weights have the same footprint. The kettlebell has become a popular exercise tool due largely to the efforts of strength and flexibility coach Pavel Tsatsouline.
Kettlebells are now manufactured in many sizes, 4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32 and 40Kg. Traditionally they were made in just 3 weights 16kg (1 Pood) 24kg (1.5 Pood) 32kg (2 Pood).
The best starting size for for someone regardless of how fit you or if you have lifted before, who hasn’t exercised with a kettle bell is 8kg for a woman and 16kg for a man.
Kettlebell workouts are intended to increase strength, endurance, agility and balance, challenging both the muscular and cardiovascular system with dynamic, total-body movements.
The shape and design of the kettlebell make transitioning from one movement to another easy. Ideally the kettlebell is a near perfect sphere with a small flat bottom and an handle slightly wider than one hand width. As a result combination lifts can be performed smoothly and as such they are paricularly suited to movements such as “jerks”, “cleans”, “clean and jerks”, “snatches” and “swings”.
With the growing popularity of kettlebells, maufacturers are now producing kettlebells in a multitude of colours and designs, many come with rubberised bottoms or are vinyl dipped. Competition kettlebells vary slightly from the standard kettlebells in that they retain the same spherical dimensions regardless of the weight and they are also usually more expensive but, a 12kg kettlebell has the same dimensions as a 16kg kettlebell. This allows for consistency without compromising technique when lifting competitively or training for long durations.
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kettlebell,
kettlebells
Weston A. Price was a prominent dentist known primarily for his theories on the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and physical health. He founded the Research Institute of the National Dental Association, which later became the Research Section of the American Dental Association, and served as its chair from 1914-1928.
In the early 1930s Price travelled more than 100,000 miles to study the diets and health of isolated primitive peoples all over the world, at a time when such communities still existed — people “who were living in accordance with the tradition of their race and as little affected as might be possible by the influence of the white man”. What he found makes fascinating reading, turning many of our modern ideas on their heads — far from living lives that were “nasty, brutish and short”, these people were healthy, vigorous and happy, with few or none of the modern diseases of degeneration. Then Price compared these communities to other, less isolated groups of the same peoples, exposed to the “trade foods” produced by industrial society (processed foods grown by synthetic farming methods), in the shape of the “white man’s store”. He found it takes only one generation of eating industrialized food to destroy health and immunity.
Want to understand why hundreds of thousands of people in the “developed world” die each year from cancer and heart disease? Dr. Price’s book spells it out, Nutrition -> causes -> physical degeneration. With the coming of the modern man with his foods of commerce, comes disease and even death. The book was written in the 1930′s therefore has some odd ways of viewing society, but the technical and social information is extensive. The photographs in the book are priceless. Hundreds of faces tell the story better than words ever could. As the text is now available online complete with pictures, there is no reason not to avail yourself of this groundbreaking resource. It will revolutionize the way you think about food. This is the book that showed me why I needed to change my dietry habits. If you never read another book in your life, you owe it to yourself, your children and your grand children to read this book. I highly recommend it. The book is available to read online here.
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Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
With the growing popularity of kettlebells, maufacturers are now producing kettlebells in a multitude of colours and designs, many come with rubberised bottoms or are vinyl dipped. Competition kettlebells vary slightly from the standard kettlebells in that they retain the same spherical dimensions regardless of the weight and they are also usually more expensive but, a 12kg kettlebell has the same dimensions as a 16kg kettlebell. This allows for consistency without compromising technique when lifting competitively or training for long durations.
