Are you kidding me?!?!?

Hello and welcome to the Workout of the Week blog!

If you've been following along for the past few months you know Sonya and I are up for about anything. So when our colleague and friend Brooke Bouma invited us to give kettlebells a try, we happily agreed. Brooke has been working out with personal trainer Doug Van Wyk for a long time and says although she's always gotten a good workout, she's never worked as hard as she is during the kettlebell routine. Even with that knowlege, we were not prepared for what we experienced at Fitness World Downtown.

First, Doug had us to kettlebell swings. They're kindof like squats, but with a lot more movement. "So it's really about the hips and thrusting them," Doug explains. After just a few reps we were all sucking wind and Doug made us do several sets of twenty. "Your butt should be burning after ten." Uh ... yeah!

The next exercise involved pushups - which we HATE. Here's the thing ... you do the pushups on top of the kettlebells. And that's not all. You add a row after each pushup! "Your body doesn't want to do it," explains Doug, "but drop that hip more, there hold it, let em burn." By "them" he means our arms, our abs, our butts ... pretty much everything.

By this point in time I was calling Doug foul names, and he hadn't even thrown the most difficult move at us yet!!! It's called the "Russian Twist" and it must've been invented by someone with a really twisted sense of humor. It's very hard to explain (watch the workout video under the As Seen on 13 tab) but you start on the floor on your back, push up onto one hand with the other hand in the air and your opposite leg extended, then sweep that leg behind you into a deep curtsy lunge and finally push up into a standing postion. Reverse all of that until you are back down on the floor on your back. That's one rep. And that's when I said, "I HATE YOU!!!!"

This was brutal. By far the most brutal workout we've done. But you know what? Sonya and I are going to start working out with Doug every Saturday and here's why, "Using kettlebells you can actually incorporate all of the aspects of training into one," he explains, "you get a cardio training while doing resistance training and you work your entire body."

We could feel this through our entire bodies when we were doing it and for days afterward. If you're looking for a new challenge - give kettlebells a try.

Until next week ...
EEK
Erin.Kiernan@whotv.com