So far we've said that in order to get rid of cellulite you need to do some form of weight training and to increase the heaviness of the weight. The second thing I touched on was that the shape of the kettlebell forces you to use muscles that you normally wouldn't use with machine weights or dumbbells and barbells. The third thing you need to do to get rid of cellulite you need to do some form of cardio training. This will be the focus of this article.
So far we have established that we need to build muscle in order to burn fat and reduce that unwanted cellulite. We have also established that the shape of the kettlebell forces our bodies to use more muscles - literally meaning that we are getting stronger faster and burning more calories and body fat quicker. So is there a need to do cardio? Can we just do strength training exercises in order to get rid of cellulite?
Well the answer is yes and no. The great thing about cardio is that it burns a lot of calories during the workout. Simply doing strength training alone will not burn the same amount of calories as cardio during the session. Yet when the cardio workout is finished you literally stop burning any extra calories. So in order to continue, you need to do more cardio! If I had all the time in the world to walk and run and do other forms of cardio then this wouldn't be a problem! Although the question is, can cardio alone get rid of cellulite? In my own personal experience, there was a time of approximately 1-2 years where I completely stopped doing any weight training. I really thought weight training made me 'bulky' and if I wanted to lose weight I should just focus on cardio. So I switched my training sessions to walking, bike riding and the occasional running. During this time I actually gained weight and I noticed a considerable increase in my cellulite. What was going wrong? This was just prior to discovering kettlebells. I must also admit here that my diet was not the best at the time. So a poor diet combined with some cardio exercises caused me to gain weight and see an increase in my cellulite. When I started my training regime with kettlebells, I decided that it was time to clean up my diet as well. For maximum fat loss a healthy diet is also a must! OK, so with my kettlebells I was now doing weights and cardio combined - killing two birds with one stone so I no longer needed to spend 45 minutes on cardio and 45 minutes on weights, what I used to do at the gym. I was now exercising approximately 45 minutes 3x a week and I lost weight and saw definition that I never had before. The results were amazing. The great part was that I wasn't bulky I was starting to look lean and trim. The best part was that I could fit into clothes I never could before.
"But Fab you said 20mins 3x a week is all you need, you were training a lot more!" I hear you say. Since we are discussing the need for cardio in this article, I will briefly touch on this here, but to give it the justice that it deserves I will be writing another article to explain more thoroughly. So stay tuned for that. Call me crazy but I didn't believe that less is more. In fact I still believed that the more I exercise the stronger and fitter I'd become. So I even wanted to exercise 4-5 times a week with my kettlebell! I guess I could, if I really wanted to but I didn't need to. I found myself strapped for time further on in my training and reduced my exercise to 20 minutes 3x a week. This was just prior to my pregnancy and this time I got stronger and fitter and I was doing less. My body looked the best it ever had. That's all I'll say here and will go into detail on this later on.
So why is cardio alone not enough? The ideal solution here is to find a form of training that will increase your basal metabolic rate, the rate at which you burn calories when doing nothing at all. Doing hours of cardio alone is great at the time. As you can burn more calories during the session than just weight training alone yet when you leave the gym or the running track, the extra calorie burn usually stops there. Yet when you do weight training it can last from 24-48 hours after you've completed your exercise regime. Weight training continues to burn extra calories after the workout because the body needs to repair itself from that workout. This means that you can continue burning added calories without doing anything at all for the next 24-48 hours! Also the heavier you lift, the more calories you burn! So combining the two - cardio and weight training using the kettlebell as your tool is a form of metabolic training - literally increasing your metabolic rate at rest. This means that when you are doing nothing you are burning calories - major calories. To put it another way if you could run with a weight in your hand - you will significantly burn more calories than just plain running alone! And you will burn calories long after the run because of the added weight.
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