Monday I had two cases of “kettlebell flu” at my gym in two young, healthy men. Against my better judgement, I allowed two guys to “drop in” to my group classes.
The Kettlebell Flu is what happens when you experience the massive lactic acid dump and cardiovascular demand from a full-body kettlebell/bodyweight workout. Luckily, they both made it to the bathroom before puking.
These cases are exactly the reason I require people to work with me individually before taking part in group training. Kettlebell training is something you need to ease into. I don’t want anyone to throw up, especially on their first visit to my facility.
Less is more when starting with a kettlebell. You are placing a load on your body unlike anything you experience in bodybuilding or other types of “cardio” sessions on a treadmill or other machine.
Hopefully, both of these hard-chargers will be back soon. They will both make lots of progress fast.
This is a revised version of an article I wrote a few years ago (back when I still did CrossFit and wore a Bodybugg). I like to send it out this time of year. Enjoy. – Jim
You can’t out-train the dinner table!
Fitness is at least 80% nutrition.
For most embarking on a fitness mission, the objective is some form of weight/fat loss. Many think an hour on the elliptical or a cycling class is sufficient to burn off the extra calories consumed during an eating binge. Not so.
For the more enlightened, some form of strength training, kettlebell training or maybe CrossFit workouts are prescribed, which will create a greater conditioning effect, and also speed fat loss. Generally, these types of workouts also expend way more calories than just cardiovascular training, or distance running, which burn only slightly more calories than walking.
Here is a concrete illustration of the fact that no matter how hard you train, your nutrition is still the deciding factor in whether you lose or gain weight. By nutrition, I mean the amount of calories you take in relative to the amount you burn throughout the day.
Forget about ratios of protein to carbohydrate and fat, or what types of foods you eat. Yes, they do have an impact on your physiology and the way your body will respond to training. But, let’s not get that complex for now. It is calories in versus calories burned, first and foremost.
Since kettlebell training is not familiar to some, I will use a simple bodyweight workout as an illustration. By simple, I do not mean easy. This is a smoker. Give it a shot sometime.
Set a stopwatch and do the following as fast as possible:
CrossFit’s “Murph”
1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 bodyweight squats
1 mile run
Puke breaks are allowed, but the clock still ticks. Think this is enough to “burn off” poor eating for the day? Think again.
Some time ago, I hit this workout hard. I completed it in roughly 40 minutes, so I was jacked.
That is an awesome workout, probably a little harder than normal for me. And, I dare say, lugging my 230lb frame though 600 bodyweight reps and two, 1-mile runs is significantly more power output than is found in any cycling or aerobics class, or any DVD course found on some infomercial.
I went home and downloaded my Bodybugg. I’d burned 722 calories during the workout. That is a lot for 40 minutes.
The Bodybugg is a device that measures g-force, the amount of heat your body dissipates, the amount of sweat you are producing and the amount of heat your skin produces. All these factors are figured together in order to calculate calorie burn. It is the most accurate device on the market, but still not perfect. There are still other factors that impact this number, and more importantly, how many calories you burn as your body recovers from a workout like this.
Do not believe the electronic calorie burn numbers on machines at the gym or on any heart rate monitor. They are not close to accurate.
A pound of fat equals 3,500 calories of energy.
To lose a pound per week, you have to reduce your caloric intake by 3,500 per week, or 500 calories per day. To lose two pounds, you’d have to reduce your intake (or increase your expenditure) by 1,000 calories.
If you reduce your expenditure (or increase intake) by 500 calories per day – or one 12oz latte – you’ll gain a pound a week.
That same day I did the Murph workout, I ate the following:
– An Apex Fit Drink and a bowl of oatmeal.
– A 12″ turkey and pastrami deli sandwich with a small bag of barbecue
potato chips and a 32oz raspberry iced tea.
– Post workout, I had another Apex FIT Drink mix, with a scoop of glutamine.
– For dinner, I had a heaping plate of pasta with shrimp wrapped in bacon. Oh, and I also had two 12oz pale ales and a glass of red wine.
Yes, this was a “cheat meal/day” and I ate like absolute garbage.
Grand total calories consumed for the day? 4,170
Total calories burned that day: 3,798
.
That equals a calorie surplus of 372 calories.
That being the case, if I were to do the this workout everyday (!), and eat like a pig, I would still gain a pound of fat about every 9 days. If I did that every week for a year, I’d gain 40lbs of fat.
Even after a workout like Murph, a binge at the dinner table will more than out-do any hope of trimming down through exercise alone.
Think about this the next time you try to rationalize poor nutrition by a trip to the gym. It won’t work. It is about consistent hard training, and constant accountability for what you eat and drink. There is no “I eat pretty good.” Unless you strictly monitor your calorie intake -vs- output, you will not reach any weight loss goal.
No matter how hard you train, you can’t out-train the dinner table.
-Jim Beaumont
WALK!
This is a fitness lesson I will never, ever forget.
I used to train a gentleman, Frank, who was 100 years old. This is not an exaggeration. He was born in June of 1909. I began training him in June of 2008, at a commercial gym, shortly after his 99th birthday.
I remember one day waiting for him, one of the few times he was late. He was usually at least 10 minutes early. One of his sons was in town and drove him to the handicapped parking spaces right at the front doors of the gym. There was a blue handicapped parking permit hanging on the rearview mirror. He got out and we began our usual training regimen of dumbell presses, squats to a chair and medicine ball tosses.
Since Frank always parked around the side of the building – as far from the front doors as you could – I asked about the handicapped permit, and who required it.
He told me that he was issued the permit years ago, but refused to park in the handicapped parking spaces, preferring instead, to force himself to walk as much as possible.
He said he had done this his entire life wherever he went.
Sofia McKibben – Strongsport S-20 LongCycle 34 reps in 4 minutes.
To my knowledge, Sofia (Idaho Kettlebells Superwoman) is the first person in the State of Idaho to make rank with the World Kettlebell Club. On November 18th she attained the rank of S-20 in the LongCycle event.
To do this, Sofia had to clean and jerk a 44lb kettlebell 32 times in 4 minutes – 16 reps per hand – without setting the kettlebell down, and only switching hands one time. She threw in an extra rep per hand just in case, to make 34 reps in 4 minutes.
The World Kettlebell Club ranking system is the most stringent in the world, and she worked very hard to get there. As her coach, I am humbled by her perseverance and hard work. She is an inspiration to everyone who steps through the doors of the facility, including her husband Mike, who is making inhuman progress currently (more on that amazing transformation later).
My ranking is pending. I submitted a video shortly after Sofia did, because I have to put my money where my mouth is as her coach! I should know in a few days how my attempt went (fingers crossed).
-Jim www.idahokettlebells.com
Want to burn 20 calories per minute during a kettlebell workout? Really?
Lately, every kettlebell instructor in the land is touting the recent ACE (American Council on Exercise) study that revealed that caloric expenditure during intense kettlebell training is up to 20 calories per minute.
What most of the would-be kettlebell instructors are failing to point out, is that what is being done during the workouts will feel like 20 calories per minute, and you have to be using a significant weight to put that kind of load on your body.
Note: this is not some sissy “kettlebell bootcamp” workout using small women’s kettlebells and doing nothing but stupid things like bicep curls and walking lunges with them.
The test is described as experienced kettlebell lifters more or less continously snatching kettlebells ranging from 26lbs to 44lbs. This is tough.
I can easily get my heartrate to 180bpm+ doing this with a 53lb kettlebell. This is not for everyone, and certainly not for someone new to kettlebell training.
The 10 minute workout described in the ACE article is akin to what the US Secret Service uses to test their special operations team’s fitness level. Trust me those guys are doing a little more than the local Globo-Gym’s “kettle-robics” class with cute, 18lb kettlebells.
The enclosed video is a short example of what this exercise looks like, but is only a few minutes long.
The actual study was done doing precise intervals of rest and work, and this a short continuous set using a 53lb kettlebell, rather than a 44lb.
I was gratified to find that a laboratory study confirmed what I already knew: That intense kettlebell snatch sets will smoke you faster than anything you can do in a gym. I know that when I was wearing a Bodybugg calorie monitoring device, I burned 16 to 18 calories per minute while doing hard “man-maker” workouts consisting of 53lb kettlebell snatch sets followed by ¼ mile runs.
Now, every trainer that has ever touched a kettlebell thinks their training is producing that type of load. It simply does not. And neither does every kettlebell workout I do.
For a kettlebell instructor to advertise that their training burns 20 calories per minute is misguided at best and false advertisement at worst, unless their folks are actually working at that intensity.
The bottom line is this: 20 calories per minute is hard work. Don’t think just because you are using a kettlebell you are automatically burning that much.
It takes discipline and guts to dig that deep. Not everyone has that type of motivation. I’m very happy to say that many of my Idaho Kettlebells Superwomen have it.
Here is one example:Jenny J. doing 1/4 mile runs, followed by a set of 40 snatches with a 35lb kettlebell, followed by 8 knees-to-elbows (on a 3″ pipe, no less).
She did this for 4 rounds, then threw up. That is what 20 calories per minute looks like.
Why doesn’t my commercial gym just have a whole bunch of kettlebells, barbells, dumbells and pullup bars instead of machines?
This is not a simple question, and therefore will not get a simple answer.
Money for nothing.
Like most everything else, it comes down to money. Corporate gyms don’t make money from people who get results from exercising through effective training methods. They get results from people who sign a membership contract and don’t use the gym.
I trained at a corporate gym for a while, and their own statistic was that 75% of those who sign a membership will not even be using the gym in 90 days. Of course, they’ll still be paying and the gym owners will be making money for nothing for the next two years.
Effective exercise takes time, discipline and lots of hard work and nothing else. Most people won’t pay to work that hard. Machines appear to offer an “easy way out” for lazy, misinformed or desperate people.
Any idiot can step on an exercise machine, slap on an iPod and watch TV, while making some flailing motions on some worthless exercise machine. Ever had to “elliptical” your way quickly from one place to another? I rest my case.
No doubt you will burn slightly more calories than sitting on the couch at home, but you gain little else from it.
As far as strength training with machines goes, forget it. Just forget it. Lifting heavy objects is the only way to teach your body to lift other heavy objects safely. Pushing or pulling a lever on a machine does nothing but teach you how to push and pull levers, no matter how much resistance is offered.
The owners and sleazy salespeople at big corporate gyms make money off people who come to a commercial gym, are in awe of all the fancy machines, and sign a two-year contract with the good intention of using the gym almost everyday.
The inviting atmosphere and vision of getting in shape while watching TV gets you in the door. I’m sure there are pictures of fit people on the walls using those worthless machines, and if you only sign on the dotted line, you’ll get there too. I’m sure they also have a rack full of miracle supplements – that are marked up at least 100% – to help you meet your goals.
Congratulations! You are now paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for a gym membership at a corporate gym.
For the first few weeks, all is well and you may even lose a few pounds as your body adapts to the new routine. But quickly, your body will find ways of decreasing the effort required to pedal that bicycle, or “elliptical” your way to health. The results stop, and you soon find reasons not to go to the gym.
That is how corporate gyms make money. The initial investment of those machines is more than offset by the steady stream of people willing to pay for easy fitness.
The problem is there is no such thing as easy fitness!
Being strong and lean requires work, sweat and sacrifice. Not machines. Muscle soreness, missed social engagements, and denying yourself things like junk food is part of the game. There are no shortcuts. No easy routes.
You will feel pain from working out. Deal with it.
Learn to separate slight soreness from actual injuries. If you haven’t been moving much, your body will hurt at first, but the results will come fast. Just don’t fall into the trap of gauging the productivity of your training strictly by the amount of soreness you experience. More on that later.
You will have to miss out on the after work party, the football game or your favorite TV show. Deal with it.
You will have to plan your meals, because working out hard while eating nothing but processed junk will hurt. All that sugar, salt and fat does not fuel a body well enough to accommodate hard training.
You have to pay attention while you train (not watch TV). If you are not paying attention while lifting a heavy kettlebell, dumbell, barbell or your bodyweight, you will get hurt. Period. And, it will be your own fault.
You will have to cut the bullshit and be accountable. No more crap about how you have a “slow metabolism” or “I eat pretty good.” You don’t.
If you don’t measure out every gram of food, you don’t know what you are eating. You have a “slow metabolism?” That is because fat requires less calories to maintain than muscle. Want to change that? Move more, and gain muscle.
Yes, there are some people who have health issues that impede their progress. Guess what? No one cares. The task is the same. Take responsibility for your health and work hard.
Leave your self-pity at the door. It does not serve a purpose. You must take control. No one else will, or can. Find out from a medical professional if you have some physical reason why weight loss is difficult (for a small percentage this is a real issue).
The bottom line
Your neighborhood corporate gym makes money on the promise of easy fitness. There is no such thing. Machines are the tool they choose to use to separate you from your money.
Serious training is not for the person who is content to disconnect their mind and body with an iPod, a TV and some form of repetitious movement that serves no purpose.
It takes hard, intelligent work to meet a fitness goal. Lifting your bodyweight and other heavy objects is the best means to that end.
