Last week my Sister (gym buddy) and I went to our first Kettlebell class... Oh my lord we did not know what we'd signed ourselves up for!
Kettlebells have a bit of a murky history, it seems that people don't really know where they originate from -perhaps a Scottish curling stone, or a Russian military cannonball (the handle making it easier to load). The most likely explanation is that they originate from Russian farmers who used the weights as a counterbalance.
With movements such as the swing, snatch, clean and jerk, which are supposed to mimic farm labour, it all sounded a little like hard work! I like my gym classes to come with plenty of smiles and a few fits of laughter!
There was no laughter in this class - There were smiles but they were most definitely of the grimace variety.
The class started ok with a basic warm up to the latest dance tune - a little like the start of a Zumba class but without the booty shaking. Whilst we did the warm up the kettle bell assigned to me lay on the floor in front, looking innocent and not evil in the slightest... The instructor guiding us through the steps, smiled encouragingly and flicked her golden pony tail as she clapped her hands, looking innocent and not evil in the slightest... oh how naive I was...
What followed was a series of movements that pushed me to the limit - I swung, snatched, cleaned and jerked like my life depended on it!
The Angel that stepped from side to side with us at the beginning of the class had now swapped bodies and had become some kind of twisted army sergeant!
She barked orders at us over and over again:
'Get lower girls, lower!'
'Squat! I said squat! You won't get anywhere standing there looking pretty!'
'Don't stop!'
'If you don't like it you know where the door is!'
'It's meant to hurt!'
'Don't make me come over there!'
... You get the picture...
I have never been more terrified, I couldn't help thinking - am I totally crazy to be paying for this?
I'll tell you something though her technique albeit scary definitely works, I didn't stop once in the class and I tried my hardest to make sure she had no reason to come over and shout at me!
It was a tough class and I sweated like nobody's business, they're definitely not lying when they say you can burn up to 1,500 calories.
When the class finished and most of the participants looked like they were about to die, the instructor warned us that next week would be harder and if we couldn't handle it then we were not to bother coming back!
Well...
We're going to find out just how much harder it gets because we're booked on to the class this Thursday!!!
It's hard but it's certainly one of the best workouts I've done in a while. This post doesn't seem like I'd recommend it, but I would I definitely definitely would!!!!
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| Evil, evil, evil!! But good evil :) |
With thanks to
www.powercore-fitness.com without your section on kettlebell history I would have been in the dark writing the history-esque section of this post.
