Most kettlebellers will happily talk all day long about the strength, mobility and fitness benefits of swinging a kettlebell but it’s the cerebral element that I find so attractive.
Classes aren’t too bad because there is always a social element and the best instructors I’ve worked with can take your mind off what you are doing by having you laugh as you sweat. But treadmills, elliptical machines, cross trainers and exercise bikes are just mind numbingly boring, I used to dread my gym program, counting the minutes to the end.
However when I kettlebell I have to think, what is my form like, can I do more, swing heavier, use a different set of muscles…? Very often I don’t train, I practise.
This evening all I did was stretch out my lats and snatch or swing trying to make sure that my core and lats were working. The only reason I noticed a raised heart rate was that Chuzzy has asked me to wear a HR monitor and it was beeping away. Time flew and I had to make myself stop because I kept wanting to do another set, just one more to get it right.
With other trainers I simply followed their routine, now I’m writing my own routines and learning about different approaches to excercise and strength training and it’s liberating. It’s a great distraction from my all consuming job. I look forward to my workouts now because I become so absorbed in what I’m doing that I forget everything for a while. My blood pressure (Which used to be a problem) is now 100/60.
Don’t take my word for it, whenever I’ve commented on this on other forums I get a string of replies saying the same thing. How can swinging a lump of metal be so cerebral?!
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