Archive for the ‘kettlebells’ Category

Kettlebells are great for your off-court tennis fitness training. They will improve your explosive strength, balance, stamina and coordination. The basic kettlebell swing improves your endurance and hip strength, and is very easy to learn. In addition, you will burn a lot of calories and get nicely lean.

When you want to focus more on your hamstrings, you can add a stiff-legged deadlift into your training routine. Make sure to

• keep your lower back straight and bend in the hips rather than rounding your back.
• Focus on pushing your heel up to the sky behind you, and that will bring your upper body down, hinging in the hip.
• Keep your standing leg as straight as possible, but don’t lock or overextend your knee.
• Connect with your hamstrings and glutes on your standing leg when performing the movement.

To add variation, you can use one hand only and switch the hands on the top of each movement.

More articles on kettlebells for better tennis fitness

In addition to endurance and strength, good tennis fitness requires a lot of explosive power. You need to have strong legs, hips and core to load, coil and uncoil into the shot. Kettlebells are excellent tool to train your hips, core, legs, shoulder stabilizers and endurance simultaneously. Performing the basic kettlebell swing will get your heart rate high up, almost as high as running 8-minute mile.

Basic Kettlebell Swing for Better Tennis Fitness

Before you start swinging, you need to find a kettlebell that is not too light for you. If it is too light, you may develop bad habits, such as using your arms too much and “muscling” the bell up and down. Yet, you don’t want to have the bell too heavy so you cannot develop a good technique. Women can start with 26 lbs and quickly transition to 35 lbs. Men can start with 35 lbs and transition to 45 lbs, or just do more repetitions. A basic swing with 35 pounder for 35 repetitions gets pretty tiring.

Make sure your chest and chin are always up. Focus your eyes on something far in front of you and don’t lose that thing from your focus during swinging. Keep your lower back neutral or slightly arched. Your stance is wide and the kettlebell hanging between your legs. Bend your knees slightly, push your glutes back and then with a powerful explosive movement of your hips forward (like you want to hit an imaginary wall with your hips), catapult the kettlebell upward. Your arms and hands should remain as relaxed as possible. Hold the bell loosely. Then let the bell descend with a free fall, don’t resist it with your arms. As it is going down, stick your glutes out and immediately explode into another powerful thrust.

Under no circumstances let your chest collapse or bend in your hips. Keep your posture always erect. If you do your hip snap correctly and powerfully, you will feel a little “shake” of everything on the front side of your body. That’s a good thing! Keep swinging until you develop smooth and effortless technique. You will feel how your glutes and hamstrings are working intensely. Your forearms and grip will get stronger as well.

If you handle the basic swing well, you can proceed to a one-handed swing, and you can switch the hands on the top of the movement (the kettlebell’s apex). This will teach you to have your hands relaxed, because if you grab the bell too tight, it is difficult to get the timing of switches right. As you proceed to more advanced stage, you can flip the kettlebell with underspin or overspin at the apex, with both hands or one hand.

In the following video, observe the nice erect posture, relaxed hands, and the power of the hips. A regular kettlebell swinging will improve your tennis fitness dramatically! Watch another video of a more advanced tennis fitness kettlebell swinging.

More articles on kettlebells for better tennis fitness

Kettlebells are great for every athlete, but specially for tennis players. You use the quick power of your hips to catapult the kettlebell up or over the head. You have to engage your core to a maximum, to resist the forces of the kettlebell that is swinging/falling back down. And when you have the kettlebell over your head, because the center of gravity of the ball is behind you, you will engage more shoulder stabilizers. Besides that, it will strengthen your hands and grip, forearms, eye-hand-coordination and flexibility. Last, but not least, it is extremely fun in its challenging way.

Ready to try it?

More kettlebells articles

The legendary tennis coach Oscar Wegner (modern tennis methodology) has interviewed me about my book “Tennis Fitness for the Love of it.” We were chatting about the importance of fitness and stretching for maximum tennis performance and life. Watch, listen and enjoy!

You can find more of Oscar’s teachings at www.tennisteacher.com

Workout trends come and go, and the 2010 has been the trend of kettlebells, a centuries old piece of cast iron ball with a handle. Kettlebell training is intense, fun and fat burning. Increasing popularity of kettlebell training across the country and world motivated the American Council on Exercise (ACE) to look into the science behind this workout trend. They analyzed the energy cost and exercise intensity by studying 10  male and female volunteers at ages 29 to 46 years. They wanted to look and see how much of an aerobic workout you do get and how many calories you really burn. The entire study is below:

http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/kettlebells012010.pdf

The Results of the study:

During the 20-minute workout, the average calorie burn was 272 calories, not counting additional calorie burn due to the substantial anaerobic effort. The researches estimated oxygen consumption and how many calories the trainees were burning aerobically, and it was 13.6 calories per minute. They also measured the blood lactate, and the trainees were burning another 6.6 calories per minute anaerobically. Which means that they were burning at least 20.2 calories per minute, which was off the charts — an equivalent to running a 6-minute mile pace or crosscountry skiing up hill at a fast pace!

The average heart rate was between 86 percent and 99 percent of the kettlebell maximum heart rate, which means that the kettlebell workout is extremely vigorous and much higher intensity than regular weightlifting workout. In addition, it will improve your aerobic capacity as well, which is great for people and athletes who don’t have much extra time.

Keep swinging and get fit fast. Kettlebells are great for tennis as well: improving your explosive power of the hips, strength of your core and legs and shoulder stabilizing muscles. See more articles on kettlebells here:

1. Kettlebell training for tennis players
2. Kettlebell training for beginners
3. Advanced kettlebell training
4. Extreme kettlebell

A lot of tennis players play tennis to be fit. However, if you play tennis on a higher level, you have to become fit first to play great tennis. You will need to improve your strength, power and endurance, in addition to flexibility, agility, quickness, coordination and balance. Kettlebells are an effective tool to improve all the elements above. You will notice the benefits almost instantly.

A kettlebell looks like an iron cast cannon ball with a handle. They are an ancient tool originating in Russia, where it was a popular training tool among military and strength athletes. In competitive kettlebell lifting, the athletes perform Olympic moves such as snatches and clean-and-jerks, but they do maximum repetition and with one arm only.

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The kettlebell is an old Russian exercise tool that resembles an iron cannon ball with a handle. Compared to a dumbbell, the kettlebell’s center of mass is beyond the hand, and allows for swinging movements that are not possible with a dumbbell. Kettlebell training is effective for improving strength, endurance, flexibility and coordination simultaneously. After mastering the basic swings, a variety of advanced moves combined into series of exercises characterize extreme kettlebell training.

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(Suzanna@Livestrong.com)

The kettlebell, an iron cast ball with a handle, is an ancient exercise tool used by elite Russian athletes, old-style strong men and the military. Kettlebell training trains your entire body and effectively increases your strength and endurance in addition to power, speed, coordination and flexibility. Swings, the basic movements, are easy to learn, and you will quickly increase your athleticism and proceed to advanced movements, such as cleans, jerks, snatches, overhead squats, windmills and Turkish get-ups.

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(Suzanna@Livestrong.com)

Training your strength and endurance at the same time, kettlebells are an effective tool to increase your overall fitness. You will notice the benefits of kettlebell training almost immediately. In addition to increased strength, power and stamina, you will notice improved flexibility, coordination, speed and agility. Your body composition will change rapidly as well–you will become leaner while maintaining or increasing your muscles mass.

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(Suzanna@Livestrong.com)

The kettlebell is an ancient exercise tool that originated in Russia. It is a big cast-iron ball with a thick handle. The original Russian kettlebell weighed 35 lbs. Today, sizes range from 5 lbs. to 175 lbs. The special Russian kettlebell exercises will strengthen your back, hips and all your body’s muscles from every possible angle.

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