Month: January 2011

Supercharge fitness and melt fat with the mighty kettlebell

Published by

It looks remarkably like a cannonball with a handle and dates back to 18th century Russia. Meet the kettlebell. Used consistently over centuries by the Russian military, it’s now shrugged off its iron (literally) curtain image and has reinvented itself as the trendiest new fitness tool going. Kettlebells chime well with the austere boot camp ethic that has sweated its way through the workout world. Tough, uncompromising and offering apparently miraculous results, it’s no wonder they are flying (well, being lugged off) the shelves. Celebrities love them and it’s not just macho types like Sylvester Stallone and Matthew McConaughey but the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Aniston and Geri Halliwell. Top football clubs Chelsea and Liverpool factor them into their training and physiotherapists use them regularly in rehabilitation. On the face of it, the kettlebell isn’t terribly impressive. So it’s a bit of cast iron. So what? What’s the difference between swinging a kettlebell around and hefting barbells or free weights? ‘Unlike a dumbbell or barbell, the kettlebell’s centre of mass is offset …

Zumba – fitness dance craze taking over the world

Published by

The music is thumping, an infectious Latin American beat. The sweat is pouring as the crowd, moving as one, shimmies and shakes, weaves and waves. It could be Havana but, in fact, it’s the Isle of Wight. This is Zumba®, the fitness dance craze that has taken the US by storm and is now poised to break over the UK in an unstoppable rip-tide of wild abandoned enthusiasm. It all started simply enough in Colombia in the mid 90s when aerobics teacher Beto Perez forgot his usual music and had to improvise a routine around the music he had in his car – traditional Latin salsa and merengue. The class was a huge success and Perez realised he was onto something, merging aerobics with dance to a lilting Latin beat. He moved to the US and the Zumba bid for world domination began. There are over 20,000 instructors teaching Zumba in thirty-five countries. 400 of them are in the UK and that number is set to explode. The principle behind Zumba is incredibly simple: get …