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Kettlebell Cardio Workout!

1. Kettlebell Swings: The swing lift is the base and more commonly known strength endurance lift performed with the kettlebell. This lift is great for helping you to get a tremendous cardio strength training workout. This hard hitting exercise blasts all of the large muscle groups including your hips, glutes, back, shoulders, hamstrings, abs, and of course your heart! The lift is performed by you having to engage your hips and knees in a constant state of flexion and extension in order to create momentum to swing the bell back and forth like a pendulum. After only knocking out 10 to 15 of these in a row with a relatively heavy bell you will understand what I mean when I say CARDIO!

2. Kettlebell Snatches: The kettlebell snatch is a tremendous lift for core strength, leg power, hip strength, and shoulder strength. With all of this it is also a tremendously powerful exercise for helping you to develop the cardiovascular conditioning of a race horse! This dynamic lift is executed by you pulling the bell from between your legs up to a held locked position above your head in one smooth powerful movement. The bell is pulled from between your legs like a single arm swing and elevated to a high pull position with your arm by mimicking the motion of pulling back on a bow. Once the bell is at this high pull position then you can finish the drill off by vertically punching your palm towards the sky to lock it out. This lift is incredible for helping you to develop muscular and cardiovascular endurance while training the muscles of the posterior chain (hips, glutes, back, shoulders, hamstrings). I have always said that if you want to develop a dominant cardio workout, the ability to run somewhere fast, and increase punching power then the kettlebell snatch lift is for you.

3. Kettlebell Jerks: The kettlebell jerk press is a wonderful exercise for helping you to develop shoulder, core, hip, and glute strength. This particular lift can be utilized for an impressive bout of cardiovascular fitness. As a matter of fact, even the best competition kettlebell lifters can go for minutes and minutes on end without ever resting or stopping a series of jerk presses. The lift can be executed a number of different ways, but for the sake of this article I will describe the single arm short cycle press. The short cycle press means that the kettlebell is cleaned and racked once at the chest and then followed by a series of jerks until the desired number or time is met. This is done by utilizing a "knee dip" to roll up onto the balls of your feet while simultaneously starting to vertically press the bell above your head. As the bell is moving vertically you will want to press your heels into the ground in order to push your body away from the rising kettlebell overhead. When you are finished from here simply stand up to finish off the lift.

Use Your Biggest Muscles in Interval Training

The secret to Interval training being so effective is a little process call EPOC(Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption). It's the process of your body replacing intramuscular energy that gets used up during intense exercise. Bigger muscles have bigger stores of energy that need to be replaced. The more energy needed to be replaced, the more fat will be required for energy. Just think about it this way, what would use more energy, intensely exercising your legs or going balls to the wall on your bicep. So weight loss tip one is use bigger muscles for bigger fat loss.

Include a Longer Interval in your Workout

Intense intervals of longer duration (60 seconds) use up a LOT of calories. Intense exercise triggers very efficient fat loss in your body, longer duration intense exercise triggers a whole lot more. Your body needs to work overtime to replace this lost energy. This is a direct form of weight loss. So weight loss tip two is that including one of these longer workouts in your workout will definitely improve your immediate fat loss.

Include a Shorter Interval in your Workout

Intense Intervals of short duration (20 seconds) have body changing affects. And these effects are not only on the waist line. Your body undergoes a metamorphosis and adapts into a long term fat burning machine. Its start channelling energy to your muscles rather than fat stores, it increases its need for energy stores, it becomes super efficient at channelling energy into your muscles at a rate of knots and your muscles becomes very good at using up a lot more energy before failing. This adds up to a flood of energy being naturally diverted from your fat stores and your muscles becoming super efficient at using all this energy. So weight loss tip three is include a shorter interval in your workout.

Eat before you Exercise

For a long time it was believed that doing interval training in a fasted state was the best for losing fat as you delayed the insulin surge that occurs when eating (insulin prevents your body from losing fat). Subsequently it has been found that this is not the case, in fact it's seems to be the opposite. It appears that eating before training gives your body the ability to exercise harder, and as you will see below, the extent and duration of your fat burning is directly related to the intensity of your exercise. It's also been found that any suppressing of fat loss that may occur directly after training is made up for in the entire fat burning process. And lastly but not least, it seems that when you eat before you train you tend to consume less calories during the day. Weight loss tip four is eat an easily digestable, highly nutritious meal about half an hour before you exercise.

Interval Training without Good Nutrition is Nothing
You can do Interval Training till the cows come home, but if your nutrition is not supporting weight loss, you won't get any fat loss. Interval training works in tandem with good nutrition to lose weight. Good nutrition involves a low carbohydrate diet and meals times split into six times a day to increase your metabolism. It also involves providing the minerals, vitamins, energy and liquids required to power your body for maximum performance during your exercise. Nutrition shouldn't be a weight loss tip, it's one of the baseline principles, without it no fat loss happens.

Go As Hard As You Can

The secret to EPOC is intensity, Studies have shown that the more intense the exercise, the longer will be in a fat burning stage. They have also shown that the more intense the exercise, the greater the volume of fat burning will be. The body also adapts under intensity, the harder you can push yourself, the more your body adapts at becoming able to function at higher intensities (the one proviso for this is when you are starting out, ease into interval training, don't go full out from the beginning). Weight loss tip six is give it everything you have got.

Let me explain. Did you know that one out of three women and one out of four men are on a diet at any given time? Two thirds of dieters regain their weight within one year, and virtually all regain it within five years. This is crazy statistic I really want to change. This is the very reason that going on a diet is the worst thing you can do to permanently lose weight. Dieting is short term, usually until you reach your goal weight but most of the time that never happens because diets are unsustainable. They are too difficult to stay on and once you get off the diet you gain all the weight back and many times even more!

Going on a weight loss diet is NOT the solution and learning the truth about nutrition is. Lifestyle eating is tossing out the fad diets and learning how your body uses food. Learning what foods will turn to fat and what foods help you burn fat. Eating a healthy nutrition plan that is flexible and allows you to have some junk food too. Lets be honest here, who do you know that will never eat any junk foods again. This is another reason diets dont work because they lead to binge eating.

Most people and I do mean most people fail when using a diet but it doesn't have to be that way. You can lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever if you just follow a few simple nutrition principles.

The best way to burn fat and keep it off is to eat the right delicious foods in abundance. If you discover how to do this you will never have to go on another diet again. Lets eliminate the d word out of your vocabulary and promise to never go on a diet again. So here are a few key principles to follow so you can lose weight and continue to burn fat without ever having to diet again.

Principle #1: Its absolutely necessary to eat protein, carbohydrates, and fat to lose weight permanently. If you eliminate fat or carbs from your diet your body is missing an entire macronutrient which leads to nutrient deficiencies. The trick is to eat healthy fats that balance hormones and the right carbs that stabilize your blood sugar to keep you in the fat burning zone. Even some saturated fats are good for you and will help you lose weight. Good carbohydrates and healthy fats are not your enemies in fact they are your weight loss allies.

Principle #2: Eat foods that are natural and dont contain artificial sweeteners or are pumped full of hormones. Natural or organic foods are much more nutrient dense and will be efficiently processed by you liver. When you consume foods or drinks that are full of artificial sweeteners your liver gets bogged down in dealing with these toxins, therefore it is not able to efficiently breakdown the other nutrients and fats. This is why your body stores fat when you eat foods containing artificial sweeteners. Your nutrition should be filled with meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, and any other natural or organic foods. I personally love a good juicy steak, some asparagus covered in olive oil, and a delicious sweet potato with some cinnamon on it. Yum! This is a good example of a nutrient dense meal that is packed full of protein, fibre, quality carbs, and healthy fat to keep your body lean and full of energy.

Principle #3: This one may come as a surprise but is often overlooked. It actually has nothing to do with nutrition but everything to do with keeping your body lean and healthy. Did you know that when you lose weight your metabolism slows down? Thats right, the less you weigh the fewer calories you need to maintain your current body weight. The best way to keep your metabolism running hot is by adding some lean muscle to your body. Im not talking about looking like a bodybuilder unless thats what you want.
Im suggesting getting on a resistance training program that will boost your metabolism permanently to keep your fat running scared. There are certain methods and workouts that burn up to 70% more fat but that is a topic for another article. When your body works against resistance it expends calories and burns fat. Your body also adapts by getting stronger and adding lean muscle that permanently boosts your metabolism.
This is how you combat the slowing metabolism from losing weight. Another major benefit of resistance training is the boost in fat burning hormones that trigger your body to melt fat for you. Utilizing fat burning workouts is one of the most powerful ways to skyrocket your energy, ignite your metabolism, and maintain your new lean body.

There you have it 3 of the best tips to kickstart your New Year fitness overhaul.