Kettlebell Crazy: Kettlebells on “The Biggest Loser?”

2/19/09 Posted in Kettlebell Crazy  |  1 Comment

It’s a rare sighting:  but amid all the exercise machinery on NBC”s “Biggest Loser” there may be seen a kettlebell making a cameo appearance, if only for a second or two.  It’s hard to tell how much usage the KB actually gets in the course of a day’s workout, that may never make the final cut.  But there have been spin-offs of this top-rated series, on both the international scene, and on local TV stations in the U.S. where kettlebells play the starring role.

In the UK, blacksmith Stan Pike dubbed the kettlebell the most sophisticated body-conditioning tool around.  He began turning out his own line of bells–even formed his own certification program, to train instructors.  And his first student was a young woman named Angie Dowds.

Angie’s curiosity had been piqued by an article she read on kettlebells, written by Pavel Tsatsouline.  She knew instinctively that this was something she wanted to get in on.  She searched relentlessly until finally, she met up with Stan.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.  Despite her years of experience as a personal trainer, she had never sen it done like this before, as she watched this big burly bear of a man, swinging, pulling, pressing, and juggling a 55-pound bell.  Once she got her hands on a bell of her own, still warm from the forge, no doubt, you couldn’t get it away from her.  She became super fit and strong with the kettlebell, in a way that none of her bodybuilding, boxing, or martial art training had done for her.  This total body training, she discovered, even firmed up her mid-section without any direct abdominal work. 

With her UK certification in hand, and soon thereafter, an RKC cert from none other than Pavel himself, Angie resolved to bring kettlebells to the forefront of fitness training in Great Britain.  And she was uniquely qualified to do just that.

Think Gillian Michaels, shorter, blonder,  and with a British accent, and you get “The Biggest Loser UK”, on which Angie is the red team leader.  Another difference:  the kettlebell.  Angie went up against the producers of the show on that one:  It was inappropriate for their deconditioned contestants, they argued; and most likely dangerous.  But Angie got her way (“I always do,” she grinned.).  On a steady diet of kettlebell swings and sessions on the rowing machine, the red team outstripped their opponents on the weekly weigh-ins, and ultimately produced the first female to win the grand prize money on the season finale.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, Sarah Lurie, nationally known as the face that launched the GoFit kettlebell line, was just opening her new gym, Iron Core, in nearby La Jolla.  The local TV station in San Diego chose Iron Core to train sixe obese people exclusively with kettlebells to see how much weight they could lose in just six weeks.

To maximize results, the trainers at iron Core put their subjects through a strength-cardio, circuit training regimen that was calculated to burn fat very quickly–up to 20 calories a minute.  Typically, they warmed up with joint mobility drills, followed by combos like the bear crawl-double-clean-and-press, the burpee-clean-swing-and-snatch, front-squat-and-duck-walk, and walking-lunge-one-legged-deadlift. 

At the end of the six week period, the contestants lost a combined total of 150 pounds of fat and over 45 inches.  The total time spent in the gym amounted to 24 hours.  Altogether, they had lost the equivalent of an entire person in the course of just one day’s time.

Compare that to the poor souls on the NBC’s “Biggest Loser”, who can expect to sweat it out on treadmills, elliptical machines, and body-building type workouts for six hours a day.  Then ask yourself what your time is worth.