Kettlebells are a fantastic tool for building strength endurance and shooting your conditioning level through the roof. But for balanced development, you do need to include other types of training in your overall programming scheme. Using your own body weight as a workout tool is a great solution. Here are three advanced body weight exercise methods that should make a great compliment to your existing kettlebell training program:
1. Static holds
Here’s a somewhat unorthodox technique for building strength your own body weight. A static hold is, at it’s most basic level, where you simply hold an exercise at a particular point in its range of motion. It’s a great way to make exercises that are easy when you reach a certain fitness level – like Push Ups – more difficult.
As an example, to use this technique with a Push Up, you could do three static holds of 30 seconds each at the bottom, middle, and top of the range of motion of the exercise.
2. Tabata Intervals
The ‘Tabata’ method, just for a quick review, is a simple interval protocol. It involves twenty seconds of all-out work, ten seconds of rest, and is repeated eight times. Then puke, fall down, pass out, etc. 🙂 I wrote more about the Tabata method in this post:
It works great with a variety of bodyweight exericses, like Squats, Push Ups, and Sit Ups.
3. Using Body Weight Exercises For Cardio
In the same vein as Tabata intervals – if you hate doing traditional cardio (like I do), you can do a body weight circuit instead. You simply need to string together a series of body weight exercises and make sure that they:
- Keep you moving non-stop for a period of time
- Keep you heart rate up
- Aren’t overly intense – you should be able to maintain the flow for at least 15-20 minutes
Here’s a cool video to give you an example:
So there are three advanced body weight exercise training methods to compliment your current kettlebell training program. Build them into your workouts today!
If you’re looking for even more advanced body weight training methods, check out my book and DVD all about how to get an awesome workout anywhere in 30 minutes or less, No Gym? No Excuse! And if you’re interested in a top-secret package deal on all of my products, check out the checkout page of that very same website:
Kettlebell work and bodyweight training are really a match made in heaven. It’s the best way (in my opinion) to get full-body strength and conditioning, along with functional flexibility and range of motion work. Thanks for the great resource.
Absolutely – thanks for the feedback and thanks for stopping by!