Kettlebells for Stamina and Heart Conditioning
Sometimes, it just isn’t enough for your heart health to merely concentrate on your anaerobic Kettlebell strength. We also need to push up our heart rate into the aerobic range — but not the Acrobatic range! — in order to get the fullest sense of a properly conditioned heart.
In order for us to raise the tempo of our heart beat, we need to concentrate on cardiovascular elasticity instead of creating firmer shoulders and chests, and we do that by challenging our stamina with the bells. Yes, two bells are better than one when you want to challenge your whole body.
It’s also important to accept that, in order to build aerobic fluidity over time, you will need to drop down the weight of your bells so you can Swing, Press, and Snatch, for longer periods of time. Too often we get caught up in lifting the heaviest bells, and in beating the next higher pood, when we should really be concentrating on the evaluation of our ongoing ability to not stop what we’re doing — keeping that bell in the air!
If you’re used to working out with 24kg bells, and Pressing them three-five times, and then stopping to rest, you are not building aerobic strength, you are creating sprint strength, anaerobic strength. You are getting stronger, but without agility. Try dropping down to a 16kg bell, or two, and see how many more Swings you can do over a longer amount of time.
At the start, you may not be able to Swing a couple of 16kg bells for very long, but over time, you will be able to double, and then triple, your ability to “keep going” at a safe Swing rate.
Your entire body is being challenged, and your heart is adapting to the new load, and if you use a heart rate monitor, you’re going to see great advantages in persistence to pushing your body to Swing and Press for longer periods of time. You can even aerobically Snatch if you lower your bell weight, and then triple the amount of time you used to be able to perform.
The idea here is perpetual movement. Continuous sinew stretching. Start the pendulum and then keep moving until you begin to tire. Don’t overload your ability; don’t overestimate your capacity. Don’t show off. Don’t worry about doing a certain number of reps in a limited amount of time; don’t sweat trying to hurry to beat some sort of wild EMOM goal. Just keep moving, even if your pace slows a little.
A bit of movement is better than no movement at all.
The idea here is to challenge your cardiovascular system to sustain a good, and safe, aerobic per-minute heart rate that will build the right sort of heart strength we all need to live a stronger life!
Feel the pulse of Kettlebell Art.
