Categories

Life Lift

About the Author

Anthony
Anthony Roberts holds a BA in both English and Philosophy, is the author of Anabolic Steroids: Ultimate Research Guide and Beyond Steroids, and is a staff writer for Muscle Evolution and a contributor to Muscle Insider. He’s a certified trainer and coach as well as having worked as a formulator in the nutritional industry. He is a member in good standing of the Society for Professional Journalists.
... show more ...

Other Articles by Anthony

Archive

Recently Added

Kettlebells versus Olympic Lifting: A study debunked

by: Anthony Roberts

A recently published study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research has compared Kettlebells to traditional Olympic Lifting  to see which one was superior for improving certain strength parameters, namely the back squat, vertical jump, and powerclean. Sounds good, right? Kettlebells have never been more popular, yet to date there had only been a single study performed on their efficacy (*although it only examined their calorie burning ability versus another form of aerobic exercise).

The study in question was performed using 30 men with an average age of 22; 13 trained two times per week for six weeks doing the high pull, the power clean and the back squat at 80% of their 1RM (the Olympic Lifting group), while the other 17 trained exclusively with kettlebells, doing swings, accelerated swings and goblet squats (the kettlebell group). I'd like to point out that there are two lifts contested in the Olympic Games, namely the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk, and the "Olympic Lifting group" performed neither of these two lifts.

However (and this is the part of the study that makes me want to slam the researchers in the face with a flaming bag of possum crap), the kettlebell group was only permitted to train with a one-pood kettlebell. How heavy is a pood, you ask? It's 32 lbs. A "pood" is an archaic form of unit measurement formerly used in Russia, and currently used by kettlebell trainees to a.) sound esoteric and b.) make them feel special. So while the Olympic Lifting group trained with weights at 80% of their 1RM (fairly heavy), the kettlebell group trained with no more than 32 lbs. Intuitively, we know that the group training with the heavier weights is going to make greater strength gains, don't we?

And that's exactly what happened.

The weightlifting group's squat rose by 18.07kgs (!) while the kettlebell group only managed a 5.58kg gain. And while the kettlebell group added a respectable 3.35kgs to their powerclean, the O-lift group added 7.69kgs. Neither group really moved their vertical jump much.

But this isn't how people actually train. Kettlebells aren't a religion and athletes aren't married to them. Generally if you use kettlebells in your training (and I do, as do most people I know), you use them in addition to barbells and dumbbells. I can't name anyone who exclusively trains with them or who owns a single 32lb kettlebell and uses it as their sole training implement. This study is kind of like examining people who do exclusively cable crossovers versus people who exclusively bench press, then seeing who can bench more.  Nobody trains like this. In fact, most people who use kettlebells aren't using them to develop power, per se, but rather for metabolic conditioning.

Another confounding variable is that these men were only semi-experienced lifters  - and if we look at the back squat, a movement that the O-lift group did, we can see that their biggest gains were in this exercise. Could that have been a result of improved neuromuscular efficiency (after six weeks of practice)? Of course. If you do a movement for six weeks, you're going to get better at it, in terms of technique - so even if you make no true strength gains, you're still going to become more efficient at the movement and be able to use a heavier load.

So the researchers concluded:
  • " ...Olympic weightlifting exercises are more effective for strength development..."

This is absurd on its face. Kettlebells are weights made of a specific shape. Barbells are weights made of another (different but regular) shape. To make the claim that weights of one shape can make you stronger than weights of another shape is decidedly odd. The fact that the testing protocol more closely resembled the training done by the O-lift group gives them a clear advantage - it's called S.A.I.D. (specific adaptation to imposed demands). And although I'm repeating myself here, it's clear that the kettlebell group trained with weights much lighter than the other group. Think about it - in the goblet squat, they guys using the 'bells were using 32lbs, while the other group was squatting with an average of 234 lbs (700% more weight).

The take-home lesson? If you're training for strength and you're never using more than a 32 lb kettlebell, you're probably not going to develop as much leg strength as you would by squatting with a nice heavy barbell.



References
J Strength Cond Res. 2012 May;26(5):1199-202.

CATEGORY: Training