Optimal Life Fitness, for health, fitness and a new lifestyle outdoors.

An increasing numbers women are starting to break out of the stuffy gym studios and hit the great outdoors for their exercise. Great. Being outside not only offers you all the benefits of your gym based workout, it adds the exhilaration and vitality only fresh air and green surroundings can. But once you've jumped off the treadmill where to next? Well, some choose to jump on a bike and some choose to hit the park trails, mp3 player in hand, for a nice relaxing jog. Based on the alternative (of sitting indoors on a recumbent cycle) this sounds great but, in most cases, the women in question are merely repeating the same ineffective training patterns which brought slow results in the gym and made the whole exercise experience monotonous in the first place. What's most evident here is a serious lack of resistance work.
Resistance training offers many benefits, some extremely relevant to the long term health of females in particular. These will be discussed in greater detail below but for now let's just focus on the fact that resistance training can help females to burn more fat, tone up and increase cardio vascular fitness. The benefit of using kettlebells as part of your resistance programme is that they are more efficient at achieving these benefits than any other piece of resistance equipment.
So why do women often raise a skeptical eyebrow when the kettlebells are brought out? Well as a woman myself I have to admit that the first time I encountered a kettlebell I was somewhat daunted - and I'm not a beginner when it becomes to resistance training. They looked totally different to any equipment I had ever encountered before. There's no denying that kettlebells look like a tough piece of training equipment but underneath that rough exterior lays an extremely effective, versatile, challenging and most importantly fun piece of training equipment. Unfortunately our engrained social stereotypes lead us to pigeon hole them as a "male" piece of equipment but this couldn't be further from the truth, they come in a range of weights and sizes that make them easy for anybody to use.
It's not just the steely appearance that traditionally puts women off the idea of using weighted training equipment. The most common concern is that resistance training will lead to muscle gain and a "butch" appearance. Well to a certain degree it is true that resistance training can increase lean muscle mass, however, only to the extent that it can help you look leaner and burn more calories. All good things. And this increased muscle mass generally comes at the expense of fat, recent studies have demonstrated that though they get stronger and achieve a greater leaner mass women who engage in regular resistance training show no muscle enlargement. In reality it's actually incredibly difficult for females to build muscle to the extent that they look 'manly' or 'butch'. If you look at your average male body builder they have an extremely complex regime of tough tough training, strict nutritional programmes involving huge volumes of protein and supplements and extremely disciplined rest/sleep patterns. And that's all before we've added the magic muscle building ingredient of testosterone - studies have shown that on average men produce ten times more testosterone than women - and they still have to work incredibly hard to gain muscle bulk. Quite simply, muscle gain should not be a concern when approaching kettlebell training.
Most women exercise not only for health but also for aesthetic benefits. However, when it comes to losing weight most women do the wrong thing. This is where we come back to hitting the park on that long jog or just sticking to the CV equipment in the gym. It is absolutely true that a good CV workout burns calories and this obviously aids fat loss but there are a number of factors that can prevent or slow the effect of such training if it is not allied with some resistance work. The key phrase is good CV workout. Without a varied and planned progression the results of CV training will be limited, it's simply too easy to sit at a comfortable pace and say "well at least I'm burning calories". Our bodies are lazy, they will adapt to make everything we do as comfortable as possible so if the stimulus isn't varied (by something like a kettlebell training session) the body will learn how to carry out the task efficiently and then stop adapting. So it will work out how to burn as few calories as possible on your long slow jog and then do just that.
Ever heard of the magic "fat burning zone"? The old adage that at 60% of your maximum heart rate (about the speed of a light or comfortable jog) your body burns more fat for energy. Though this is true it is incredibly misleading. As your work rate increases during a workout the proportion of calories taken from carbohydrate increases in relation to the amount taken from fat. So at a light work rate (60% maximum heart rate) a high percentage of the calories burned come from fat and a lower percentage from carbohydrate. If work rate is increased (80% maximum heart rate) the proportions will flip over, however, the increased intensity means that the total amount of fat calories burned is still greater than at the lower intensity. It sounds confusing but consider this. Imagine that fat calories are 1p coins and that carb calories are 2p coins. If I told you that we spent a total of 10 pence and that 60% came from 1p coins then that would equal 6 x 1p coins spent. Now imagine we'd spent £1 of which 40% were 1p coins. As a proportion of money spent 1p coins account for less than when we spent 10p but we've still spent 40 of them instead of a measly 6. Mixing the pace and work rate will burn more calories AND fat everytime, leading to weight loss.
So we've established that kettelbell training will burn more calories than a light jog and burn more fat than the average workout to help you become leaner but there are also added weight loss benefits to the exercise. Pull your attention back to the muscle building issue. Kettlebell training will help females increase their lean muscle mass. This has a huge metabolic effect. Lean muscle mass is more difficult for the body to maintain than adipose (fatty) mass. The more you have the more energy your body will expend at rest to maintain it. Your resting metabolic rate is the daily rate at which your body burns calories before activity, just maintaining itself. An increased lean muscle mass will increase your resting metabolic rate by up to 15% which in turn leads to decreased body fat. In fact for every additional pound of muscle you gain, your body burns around 50 extra calories every day. Not only that but after a higher intensity kettlebell session which combines CV and resistance benefits your body will operate at a higher metabolic rate for up to 48 hours after the session has finished. This is because the adaptations prompted by the exercise require energy to be carried out, this is certainly not a benefit seen by the low intensity "fat burning" jog after which the body will cease burning fat almost immediately.
There's a great deal of information here but if you take just one thing away know this: kettlebell training is a mode of workout that is so effective for females it is actually quite surprising it has not been picked up and pushed into the mainstream before now. It promotes fat loss by:
Increasing lean muscle mass

• Increasing resting metabolic rate
  
• Burning a greater amount of energy
  
• Increasing muscle tone
  
• Combining CV and resistance work to improve overall fitness
  

Quite a formidable resume but it's surprising for many to learn that the list of benefits goes on, both physiological and psychological. Numerous studies have demonstrated that up to 97% of women experience significantly improved self esteem as the result of engaging in resistance training An unfortunate inevitability we all have to look forward to as women is a lighter bone density as we get older. Women are four times more likely than men to suffer from the disease osteoporosis and we are therefore far more likely to need joint replacements and experience serious fractures in old age. Regular resistance training can reduce the chances of osteoporosis in females by increasing bone density. Kettlebell training combines the benefits of increased bone density with complex movements that develop body awareness and motor ability which not only improve posture but help develop the strength and movement patterns that can keep our joints healthy as we get older, reducing our risk of falls and fractures. Include decreased insulin resistance in diabetics, reduced blood pressure, lowered chances of heart disease, greater joint stability, more efficient power generation and reduced injury risk for athletes, lowered risk to a variety of cancers and it's amazing to think that a few moments ago we were even talking about kettlebell training as a male domain.

written by Sarona Taylor
To contact Sarona about personal training or other information you can email her