The new workout from home

Kettlebells

Kettlebells look like an iron ball with a handle.  When I decided that I wanted to do weight workouts from home I looked into my options.  I wanted to be able to do my workouts with a minimum of equipment.  Kettlebells seem to fit the bill.  All of the exercises I have run into so far involve your body and the weight, and that's it.  This definitely seems like something I can get behind - all I have to do it buy the weights.
 I doinked around with the Weider Powerbell, which is a sort of select-a-weight kettlebell that goes from 5 lbs to 20 lbs in 2.5 lb increments.  This sounded like a good idea in my naivete, but in practice the powerbell didn't work at all for me.  The shape is totally wrong for the kettlebell moves.  The tall cylinder tower, missing most of the plates really banged the hell out of my forearms.  I like the exercises, but I could tell that the powerbell was not for me.  So I embarked on my usual obesessive hunt for the perfect set-up that would cost me the least amount of money.  I finally came to the conclusion that buying individual weights as needed will probably be the easiest and least crazy-making way to go. I followed my cautious nature and bought a 10 lb. neoprene covered kettlebell from WalMart.

Over time I have found that I don't like having to plot our my workouts - I want some smart and motivated person to do that for me.  I love a good weight workout, but I no longer love all the research it takes for me to feel confident in my own workout design.  Luckily, there are quite a few kettlebell DVDs on the market at the moment.  I went with Kettlebells the Iron Core Way Vol. 1.  I'll admit to a bit of female chauvinism in my choice, since this series is one of the few that is done by a woman.  As a woman I generally default to female practctioners when possible.  If the best qualified person is male, I'll go with him, but in the absence of that knowledge, I'll pick a female.  Mercifully I wasn't disappointed.  The DVD has a basic introduction to how to handle kettlebells and 6 core moves.  Then there is a workout that has a short warm up, and then a circuit of kettlebell moves that repeats 3 times.  So far with the 10 lb weight I can get through the warm up and 1 circuit, which takes about 25 minutes.  Once I can do all three circuits for a week or two it will be time to buy the second DVD in the series.