Hot and Hard: Kettlebelles

Feel the Burn
Unlike dumbbell or barbell exercises, kettlebell movements often involve large numbers of repetitions, and are in their nature holistic. They work several muscles simultaneously and continuously for several minutes, or with short breaks. This combination makes the exercise partially aerobic. In one study, kettlebell enthusiasts performing a 20-minute snatch workout were measured to burn, on average, 13.6 calories per minute aerobically and 6.6 calories anaerobically.






ги́ря
Kettlebells are cast-iron weights made up of a ball and a handle. They come from Russia, where they were first developed in the 1700s. In Russian, they are called ги́ря (‘girya’). The first appearance of the word in a Russian dictionary was in 1704. They were originally used as standard counterweights that bore the Imperial Seal to weigh out dry goods on market scales. People started throwing them around for entertainment, and at some stage after that, they began to be put to use for exercise.




Know your poods
Kettlebells are traditionally measured in units called ‘poods’. A pood is roughly equivalent to 16kg (or 35lbs) and in events sanctioned by the International Union of Kettlebell Lifting and the International Girya Sport Federation, this unit is still used in competition. A 1 pood kettlebell is yellow, if it’s green it’s 1.5 poods, and the red ones are 2 poods.




Back in the USSR
After the Russian Revolution, the use of kettlebells for physical training began to flourish inside the USSR, and was commonplace in the military, among Olympic athletes, and rural workers. In 1948, kettlebell lifting was declared the national sport of the Soviet Union. In 1981, a government commission made it compulsory to train with kettlebells in an attempt to increase productivity and reduce healthcare costs. The Russian army to this day tests the strength of its recruits not with push-ups, but with kettlebell snatches.




From Spetnaz with Love
Although kettlebell training had spread across Eastern Europe during the Cold War, they were still virtually unknown in North America in the late twentieth century. But in 1998, Pavel Tsatouline, former Soviet Special Forces (Spetnaz) physical training instructor, introduced them to American strength athletes in a series of publications. The response was such that he was approached by Dragon Door Publications, who offered to manufacture kettlebells in America, if Tsatouline agreed to teach people how to use them.




Dig the New Thing
By 2001, Dragon Door had published The Russian Kettlebell Challenge and manufactured the first US-made kettlebells. Certification for kettlebell trainers was established, and Rolling Stone voted him the ‘Hot Trainer’ of 2001, and in 2002, the same magazine named kettlebells the ‘Hot Weight’. Within a decade, kettlebells were a worldwide phenomenon.





Apologies for the terrible pun in the title. Hope it didn't spoil your enjoyment!

Kettlebell History (from Kettlebell Science), and more history from Kettlebell USA
Wikipedia on Kettlebells and Pavel_Tsatsouline

Hot and Hard: Don't Try This at Home

We really don't want you to end up as a comedy gif on Tumblr, so don't be trying this. Your man-sized ego might be telling you that anything she can do, you can do better, but admit it, you can't. Don't even try to copy any of these moves. Even if you manage it without causing yourself serious bodily injury (and that in itself is extremely unlikely), you'd never be able to pull it off as gracefully as these beautiful, strong, gymnastic fantastic ladies.

LEGS AKIMBO

Swann Cardot is a case in point. On a piece of equipment designed by groin surgeons to increase their workload, she's as serene and graceful as a, well, as a swan.

Things You Wish Your Girlfriend Could Do I & II

Hands on the floor, feet in the air, gloves on the feet?!

My kind of street art

Things You Wish Your Girlfriend Could Do III

UPSIDE DOWN

Power, balance, grace

Sometimes it's just not enough to get to the top of the mountain

Roof gymnastics

ONE-HANDED

OK, the first two are cheating a little by actually using something else for support, but even so, I couldn't manage any of these positions even if there was a team of little people holding my limbs in position. The picture immediately above is particularly breathtaking. And brave.

AND FOR HER NEXT TRICK

Would you be ready to stand there with the apple on your head for the kind of girl who can fire an arrow with her feet while supporting herself with her arms? Are you wondering what else she can do? Me, too.

Enjoy! More heat and hardness tomorrow.

Hot and Hard

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but here in the UK it is beginning to seem like this winter will never end. Snow and freezing temperatures have given way to rain that comes at you horizontally in howling winds and temperatures that are, well, just a little above zero. And now the snow's back again.

It’s all rather depressing.

Meanwhile, as always, FMS has been collecting images from around the internet for the occasional Hot and Hard series of posts, gorgeous women, leaner than full-on bodybuilders, who have nevertheless got more than enough muscle to satisfy.

So, we’re freezing cold, we need cheering up, and we have a folder overflowing with images of hot and hard women. Can you tell where this is leading?




Welcome to Hot and Hard Week!




What makes this XXL winter XXL annoying for me is that as spring approaches I always wonder whether this will be the breakthrough year, the year when British womanhood shed the winter layers of jackets and jumpers to reveal they have spent the entire winter pumping iron and eating right. The year when a toned female arm on the streets of the UK will become an everyday sight, rather than a rarity.

Every year I’m equally optimistic, despite all past experience telling me it’ll never happen. Imagine a man who’s never won a penny on the lottery, but keeps buying his ticket. It’s not because he’s convinced he’ll win, but until he’s found out the dream hasn’t come true, he enjoys the possibility that it might.

But our man would soon lose interest if the lottery draw never happened, and that’s how I’m starting to feel about the spring layer-shedding. You can’t enjoy the anticipation forever. And this winter seems to have gone on forever.




What came first – the hot women or the hot climate? Are hot women drawn to places with hot climates, or are hot climates the result of concentrations of hot women? There certainly seem to be more of them in places like California and Florida, not to mention Brazil, but if I take that logic to its conclusion, the hottest women in the world would be in Saudi Arabia or thereabouts, and we’re never going to find out if that’s true, are we?

Nevertheless, could a critical mass of these Hot and Hard women serve to change the weather? Perhaps if all of the women we’re posting today stood in the middle of Britain (which is around a village in Lancashire called Dunsop Bridge, by the way) the temperature might rise. Call me mad if you like, but the temperature of the men of Dunsop Bridge would certainly rise. It might be worth a try.




Of course it’s climate change that’s responsible for the colder winters the UK is experiencing, and more generally it’s responsible for more extreme weather across he globe. Unless you’re a Chinese industrialist, you probably try to do your bit to make sure your carbon footprint isn’t doing more damage than necessary.

Hot and hard women are no exception. A number of bigger and more environmentally-conscious gyms are already harnessing the incredible energy these women have, recycling it through the exercise equipment they use back into the gym’s power supply.

It’s very simple really, explains John Smith of The Big Green Gym in Brighton. Every rep on a cable machine, for example, produces a small amount of power through the friction created when the weights rise and fall. Enough people doing enough reps on enough machines and you can basically save enough power to light the gym, so you’re not taking any electricity from the grid.





So, the members get a workout, the gym saves on energy bills, and less power is consumed and wasted. Everybody wins. And according to Smith, it’s the higher-rep workouts that do the most good. The big boys tend to lift big, heavy free weights, and we haven’t worked out how to harness that energy yet. The women tend to use the machines more, and while they may lift less weight, they do so for a greater number of reps, he says. So they’re the ones doing the most good for the environment.

Perhaps, then, hot and hard women really can help us to control the weather, if only by doing their bit to ensure we don’t do more damage to the environment than we already have. They might not be able to improve the weather, but they are assisting in the fight against it getting even more extreme than it is already.




And anyway, no matter where you are and no matter what the weather is like there, haven’t these images of gorgeous muscular women raised your temperature? Isn’t it a little bit higher than when you were at the top of the page?

The temperature will continue to rise tomorrow. Get your Hawaiian shirts ready.