This article featuring the kettlebell recently appeared in Taiwan’s largest magazine. They had contacted us about the article and we did our best to educate them on how to use it. But that didn’t go as we had planned.

Any time you talk to the media, you run into all sorts of preconceived notions they have about fitness: aerobics is great, weight training is dangerous, spot reduction is possible, you can lose weight effortlessly, etc. These are the things their target audience already believes, which is exactly why most people in general are NOT fit. What most people think they know about fitness is wrong, what most reporters think they know about fitness is also wrong, and therefore the articles written about fitness end up keeping everyone who reads them misinformed. It’s a vicious cycle.

The problem with the kettlebell as a product is that you have to know how to use it — the magic is in the method. But you have to learn and practice the method to get the results. That makes it different from most fitness products like steppers, which the kettlebell is compared to in the article. The stepper is a cheap toy bought by people who are not serious about their fitness, that’s why they want something cheap in the first place. They weren’t serious about any of the other fitness toys they have in the closet and they know in the back of their minds they won’t use this new toy for very long, either. So they use the cheap toy for a few days, get no results from it, put it in the closet and look for the next cheap toy that promises to get them fit easily and without making any effort.

On a side note, this is how the local fitness community wanted me to promote the kettlebell — as the latest “light weight” fad that you could dance around with and get great results from. When I refused to play that game, they moved on to people that told them what they wanted to hear.

Our kettlebell was not featured in the article because they aren’t cheap toys — they are serious, high quality fitness tools that actually get you fit when used as we teach people to use them. The problem is that the fitness claims made for the cheap, plastic toy kettlebell are based on what you would get from using a real kettlebell. But when people use the toys and get toy-like results, they’ll blame the kettlebell and think it doesn’t work. The idea that they bought a toy instead of the real thing will never enter their minds and they’ll continue to wonder why they can’t get fit. The sad part is they could have spent just a little more money and gotten the real thing.

So I apologize to you that we couldn’t get real, useful fitness information out to the folks that really need it in this case. We tried but the problems present in trying to present good information to the public sometimes prevent that.

I bumped into a former student a while back whom I know is deeply involved in Chinese martial arts and I was glad to see him. He seemed like someone that got it and I thought it would be good to catch up with him. So I asked him how his work with the 24kg kettlebell he bought from us is going. He replied that he wasn’t using it much, especially for snatches. I was surprised and asked why: he told me he didn’t want to get big.

Sigh.

Listen, it’s HARD to get big. So many people seem to think that you snap your fingers and muscles just get huge overnight. Believe me, there are thousands of skinny guys that wish that were the case. It just doesn’t happen.
Why is it next to impossible to get big while snatching the 24kg?

First, 24kg just isn’t a lot of weight. For weak people, it might seem heavy, especially if you’re used to moving nothing but air. But it isn’t enough weight to make you look like the Hulk. Most people really just don’t know how much weight it takes to look huge. 24kg (around 50lbs.) just ain’t gonna do it.

Second, kettlebell snatches and similar exercises have very little time under tension. Time under tension is how long the muscle exerts force to lift the weight. Bodybuilders who want to build bigger muscles use slow tempos, especially when lowering the weight, to keep the muscles under tension longer, forcing them to adapt by growing big. This is what that looks like:

Now let’s look at a kettlebell snatch using the 24kg:
Notice that the time under tension for the shoulder is only at the very top and it’s extremely short — much too short to make the muscles huge. Does she look huge? She does more snatches with the 24kg than most anyone who will ever read this post. If she isn’t huge, then what are your chances of getting huge? None.

Kettlebells are ideal strength and conditioning training for martial arts but you have to have an open mind to their potential to realize that.

Most fitness equipment is designed, produced, and sold by people that don’t even workout, let alone use their own equipment. So these people often produce bad equipment because they don’t know how to use it. They add things like grips to kettlebells because they don’t understand the kettlebell handle has to rotate in your hand when you swing it. Or they produce cheap versions that ruin your fitness experience, like plastic kettlebells. At Kettlebell Taiwan, our kettlebells cost a little more because we know how to use them and what makes a good kettlebell. We aren’t interested in selling you a cheap piece of junk that will hurt your hand or break or give you a bad workout. The Taiwan fitness market is already filled with cheap junk. People who believe they can tie two water bottles together and try to use them as a kettlebell don’t understand quality and we aren’t trying to sell to them.

We believe that you deserve to have the best and that’s what we sell!

They’re back!

We now carry a full range of competition kettlebells from 8 to 32kg. 36kg currently sold out!

8kg NT1500  12kg NT2500  16kg NT3000  20kg  NT3500

24kg NT4000  28kg  NT4500  32kg  NT5000 

This is how one of our local competitors thinks a kettlebell should be used:

 What our competitors and the rest of the Taiwan sporting goods industry obviously doesn’t understand is that the kettlebell is a skilled piece of equipment — meaning you have to have skill in order to get value out of it. It isn’t the object itself — assuming it’s correctly manufactured without a grip on the handle, etc. — but in how you use it that makes the kettlebell special. Local sporting goods merchants don’t know what to do with this because they’re used to selling skill-less objects to the public. My main concern is that folks will buy a crap plastic kettlebell from these people above and think this is the way to use it. Very sad. I hope no one gets hurt.

Buy this thing above and waste your money. Buy a REAL kettlebell from us and learn how to use it and you have a lifetime investment in serious fitness.