Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Kettlebells for effective calorie burn workouts

Recently The American Council on Exercise (ACE) studied the calorie burn of kettlebell training. The article regarding the results is HERE.

ACE is one of the oldest fitness research and certifying bodies in the USA. Their study on the calorie burn of kettlebell training yielded some interesting results. In the article they also describe the interval training protocol used for the study.

Dr. John Porcari, who led the study, said “.. they were burning at least 20.2 calories per minute, which is off the charts. That’s equivalent to running a 6-minute mile pace. The only other thing I could find that burns that many calories is cross country skiing up hill at a fast pace.”

20.2 Calories per minute.
600 calories in a half an hour.

And that doesn’t even include the post exercises effect of the EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) effect that we know as the “afterburn”.

The article goes on to say: Researchers credit the brisk calorie burning to the fact that the kettlebell snatch workout is a total-body movement that is also done very quickly due to the interval-training format. “We knew it would be extremely intense,” says Schnettler. “It’s a quick workout, and you do get a big bang for your buck in a very short amount of time.

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