I can’t stand wasting time, especially when working out. That’s why I prefer kettlebell exercises. It always bothers me to see the typical person concerned with fat loss, idling their life away on a cardio machine for 45 minutes to an hour, especially when it doesn’t do much!

Another version is the male who is obsessed with muscle, reads all the muscle magazines, and spends 45-90 minutes lifting weights 4X per week, another hour or more per week on “cardio” and $500 a month on supplements, all for mediocre gains.
3I have never really focused on looks, just performance so my conditioning wouldn’t be a liability for me in combat. Along the way, I discovered not only some very efficient ways to build strength, endurance, and cardio (anaerobic and aerobic fitness), I found out how to do it all at once! I also learned ways of burning up to 6 times the fat of traditional cardio methods also in less time.

This is accomplished through high intensity interval training or circuit training. Dr. Tabata conducted a landmark study in 1996 where he had subjects do 8 sets of sprints on an exercise bike. The sprint intervals were 20 seconds long at max effort, followed by just 10 seconds of rest. The entire workout portion was only 4 minutes long, but in his research he found that compared to the control group riding at a steady pace for an hour, those using his protocol increased their VO2 max by more than the control group and their an-aerobic capacity was much improved. (The control group didn’t improve an-aerobically at all, never tapping into this system). Perhaps most surprising is that the sprint group showed a greater percentage increase in aerobic (traditional cardio) capacity as well!

A researcher by the name of Tremblay conducted a study of high intensity interval training similar to Tabata, but he measured fat burning. He found the interval group burned fewer calories than the traditional cardio group during the workout…but due to having an elevated metabolism for 4-6 hours later because of the high intensity, the end result is they burned up to 6 times the fat as the long, slow, distance cardio group.

We can take these concepts (intervals with high intensity and short rest periods) and combine them with weights. Now we have a way of increasing strength, strength-endurance, cardio and anaerobic capacity, along with superior fat burning, all in one 15-45 minute (max) workout!

While you can do this with anything (or nothing, just bodyweight), kettlebells and kettlebell exercises lend themselves to this style of training perfectly. Kettlebells are very compact and the handle lends itself to high rep, full body exercises, that would be hard to do with dumbbells of a similar weight (without taking out your knees). The kettlebells build incredible grip strength in addition to developing killer cardio, raw strength and burning the fat.

Bottom line: buy kettlebells, try out some interval training, and reap the rewards of greater results in less time!