Pros and cons of kettlebell workouts for strength and fitness:
It goes without saying that kettlebells have become a main training tool for the whole fitness industry. Still, there are some people who are doubtful about whether they should include kettlebells in their training program. Knowing the pros and cons of kettlebell workouts help you make a better decision.
What are the pros and cons of kettlebell workouts?
Advantages of kettlebell workouts
1. This tool is versatile
Kettlebells can serve many purposes such as strength, endurance, flexibility and balance which are the main components of physical fitness. This is certainly one of the most important advantages of kettlebells. They are multifunctional and they make things simpler. In a complicated world that develops quickly, the ability to conduct total body conditioning with just one tool is a great achievement.
2. Enhance strength and stability
kettlebells are great for enhancing core strength and stability. Most kettlebell workouts are a kind of ballistic training. Ballistic training influences explosive power by increasing acceleration and decreasing deceleration. These explosive exercises arouse the abdominal muscles completely well. They need core contraction and coordinated breathing since the movements are severe. This results in an important improvement in core strength, even when not inevitably choosing your core.
3. Improve body awareness and coordination
Kettlebell workouts are highly vigorous. You will be turning them around – in many different directions including above you, your side, between your legs, and side to side – and for doing this you are required to be totally aware of your body. This will develop the mind-muscle connection which causes you to enhance proprioception which refers to awareness of the position and movements of the body.
4. Enhance balance and stabilizer muscles
When exercising with machines, you are creating force and moving in a prearranged direction. On the contrary, when working with kettlebells, you must be in charge of movement direction. You must continue improving the stabilizer muscles for each specific movement. Strengthening of stabilizer muscles in all aspects of movement, along with enhanced core power as one of the advantages of kettlebells, can make your balance extraordinary.
5. A wonderful alternative for cardio
Keep in mind that a kettlebell is multifunctional conditioning too and that includes cardio training too. Due to the adaptability of kettlebells, you can perform an effective cardio session with one kettlebell. If you want to burn calories in a short time, a lightweight kettlebell HIIT or metabolic exercise will carry out this in a great way. Indeed, many believe that it is more efficient than unvarying cardio for burning fat, reinforcing metabolism, muscular strength, and enhancing cardiovascular health. It is important to keep a high heart rate for the whole exercise.
6. Build lean muscles
Kettlebell workouts are different from heavy barbell exercises since they cannot build enormous muscle mass. Rather, it raises the quantity of lean muscle tissue. You’ll see that individuals who follow kettlebell training seriously, can achieve better results and have strong muscles. They benefit from lean muscle mass.
7. Build a stronger posterior chain and enhances posture
Kettlebells can strengthen the posterior chain. Workouts such as the Kettlebell Swings are ballistic exercises conducted from a hinge position, which can make stronger the glutes, hamstrings, lower back, middle back, and traps considerably. This will result in leaping higher, running faster, and kicking harder and possibly most significantly, it will result in better posture.
8. Enhance joint health
Kettlebell exercises will enhance or preserve joint health. Kettlebell workouts are energetic so they need intentional control. This will form joint strength and stability by making stronger the muscles that endure your joints. In addition, energetic kettlebell workouts will enhance joint pliability and mobility. You can easily accomplish this with light to medium-weight kettlebells.
The disadvantages of Kettlebell training
Kettlebell training has many amazing advantages that can improve your cardiovascular fitness, help you reduce weight, make stronger your muscles and some others. Still, in spite of its many advantages, kettlebell training has its own specific disadvantages. Here we deal with four of the major drawbacks of kettlebell training.
1.It is expensive
If you have a limited amount of money, kettlebells may not be a suitable fitness tool for you. While barbells and dumbbells can be easily changed, kettlebells are unchangeable and fixed. In other words, if you’re doing exercise at home, you’ll have to buy a new kettlebell every time your strength enhances. This can be a very expensive and costly experience. Even if you are training in a gym with its own specific kettlebells, it will be also expensive for you. Kettlebells are fitness tools that need specific knowledge, so working some sessions with a professional kettlebell trainer is obligatory. Because kettlebell trainers have very special skills and knowledge, they ask for a higher price per hour in comparison with ordinary personal instructors.
2. It has a high injury risk
Doing kettlebell workouts wrongly is more perilous than lifting barbells or dumbbells wrongly. The kettlebell is continuously moving around your body and exercising with poor form imposes a huge amount of pressure on your back and your joints and probably causes severe injuries. While training with the correct form does relieve a lot of the danger connected with kettlebells, the fairly high injury risk is still a drawback in comparison with other forms of exercise.
3. It is not good for beginners
kettlebells are fitness tools that need professional knowledge and because of this, they’re not good options for beginners. So if you’re going to embark on your fitness journey and thinking about the potential exercise choices that are accessible to you, kettlebell exercises are not a suitable choice for you.
read more:(Is isometric training good for building muscle)
4. It is difficult to learn
One of the disadvantages of kettlebell training in comparison with other fitness choices is the difficulty to learn. Learning the correct form with kettlebells is time-taking and if the learning process is not interesting for you, kettlebells may be something that you do not want to approach to it.
In general, you must be aware of the pros and cons of kettlebell workouts before deciding to use them.
