If you want to do a cardio workout at home and don’t have the space or the spare cash to invest in a treadmill or elliptical trainer don’t worry! You can still get all the benefits (and more) from a traditional cardio workout by doing a home workout with a kettlebell.
If you still haven’t got your own kettlebell yet, head over to our guide to the best kettlebells now.
Why are Kettlebells Good for Home Cardio Workouts?
One of the great things about kettlebell training is that the exercises you perform with them are all very dynamic and require good levels of fitness and conditioning to be able to do them correctly and with correct form. A typical kettlebell exercise like the kettlebell swing or the Turkish get up, call into play lots of different muscle groups and require a good level of core strength. If you compare this to traditional weight lifting exercises like the bench press or the barbell row and you can see that kettlebell exercises generally require more parts of your body to get involved in the movement.
This means that kettlebell training not only leads to improved strength, greater muscle tone and development, but also has the potential to raise your level of conditioning and fitness. Why spend ages pounding the pavement when kettlebell training delivers so much?
Home Cardio Workout with Kettlebells
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Q5ByaCbpo
The best way to perform a cardio workout with kettlebells is to undertake a circuit training style routine. By keeping the rests in between each exercise short and moving from one exercise to another quickly, you will soon be out of breath with your heart racing, and getting all the benefits of a regular cardio workout but with the added benefit of improving your strength and muscle tone. This type of training is so much better than slogging away on a cardio machine for hours.
By doing weight training at high intensity, you are doing so much more to help your body get into the kind of shape you want than by doing any kind of cardio training. Circuit training style exercises like Crossfit and other high intensity weight training circuits can help you in the following ways:
- Burns more calories, even after you’ve finished, than treadmill cardio
- Improves muscle tone, which speeds up your body’s metabolism, burning more calories thorough the day
- Prevents you from falling into the skinny fat trap
- Improves muscle tone and development for that athletic toned look
- Gives you great levels of conditioning
Combine Body Weight Exercises with Kettlebell Training
If your fitness or strength levels aren’t up to a full on 30 minute kettlebell circuit workout, you can still do cardio with kettlebells. To do this, simply alternate between a kettlebell exercise and a body weight exercise. This reduces the level of difficulty a bit, allowing you to go on for longer. This is common in Crossfit routines and is a great way to diversify your workout to stop it becoming boring or your body getting too used to it that it no longer benefits. An example workout for how to do cardio with kettlebells would be:
- Kettlebell Snatch: 3 sets of 8 reps
- Push up: 3 sets of 12 reps (see this article on increasing the intensity of push ups)
- Turkish Get Ups: 3 sets of 8 reps
- Burpees: 3 sets of 10 reps
- Kettlebell Swings: 3 sets of 12 reps
- Crunches: 3 sets of 15 reps
If there is any gas left in the tank after that, get your trusty skipping rope out and start skipping to failure! The above is just an example of how you can combine body weight exercises like the push up and crunches with typical kettlebell exercises. Of course you can do things like rope pulls or pull ups but when it comes to training at home, the less equipment required the better.
Hopefully now you know how to do cardio with a kettlebell and can forget about saving up for a $1,000+ cardio machine!
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