How to Guarantee Intensity & Burn 26 calories a minute with Kettlebells!

Using a Stopwatch:
Intensity = Meet or Beat Your Previous Time

In an effort to keep my workouts productive and intense I've been using a stopwatch to time each ladder I perform of Clean and Presses. On Mondays during my first ladder I will try to meet or beat my time from the previous week, Wednesdays I compare to the previous Wednesday and so on. During the second ladder I try to meet or beat the times from the first ladder, you get the idea. Not only do I time each ladder but I am also recording the times it take me to complete X ladders and then meet or beat it next week. This guarantees that I am continually compressing both my work and rest periods as much as possible. As I've been recording my workouts I've noticed that my first ladder is usually the slowest and my last ladder is consistently the fastest.


Using a Heart Rate Monitor:
Calories burned per minute as a measure of Intensity

With the help of my heart rate monitor I've started tracking calories burned during each portion of my workouts as well never letting my heart rate drop below 130bpm during rest periods. This has turned out to be yet another fun and challenging way to ensure that I keep my Kettlebell workouts intense and on track. My Nike Heart Rate Monitor takes my age, gender, weight and heart rate to calculate a running total of calories burned during my workout. With each Ladder of Clean and Presses I record the time it takes me to complete the ladder as well as my heart rate at the end of the ladder. My rest period between ladders is equal to the time it takes for my heart rate to drop no lower than 130bpm and start my next ladder, at times this can translate to little or no rest between the 1st,2nd and 3rd ladders.

In addition to limiting my rest periods my Heart Rate Monitor allows me to track the calories I am burning per minute during each workout. Using my Heart Rate Monitor I record the number of calories burned each workout and calculate the number of calories burned per minute each workout. Each week I will try to improve upon one or both number each workout.

Here are my results from today's workout.

Calories Burned per pound of body weight per minuteKettlebell Clean and Presses: = 0.074
Kettlebell Swings and snatches = 0.159*

*Note: 0.159 x 164lbs (my body weight) = 26.076 calories/minute!

I was curious how this compared to other exercises and found a "Calorie Burn Chart" at whatscookingamerica.net.

This chart lists the calories burned per pound of body weight per minute for 37 exercises. I dumped all the data into an excel spreadsheet, added my Kettlebell Grinds and Kettlebell Ballistics data to this list and found the following:

My method of performing Kettlebell Ballistics (Swings and Snatches) are superior calorie burners compared to all other 37 exercises listed and superior to my method of Kettlebell Grinds (Clean & Presses).

My method of Clean & Presses came in 4th out of 39 and outperformed Weight Training/Free weights which ranked 27th.

Here is the full data:
Keep in mind that heavier person will burn more calories per minute than a lighter person.

Rank	Activity	Calories burned per pound per minute
25	Badminton	0.044
17	Basketball	0.063
33	Bicycling (5.5 mph)	0.029
24	Bicycling (9.5 mph)	0.045
21	Climbing	0.055
16	Climbing hills (with 22 lb. load)	0.064
20	Climbing hills (with 9 lb. load)	0.058
38	Cooking	0.022
18	Dance, Aerobic, intense	0.061
23	Dance, Aerobic, medium	0.046
37	Dancing, ballroom	0.023
28	Golf	0.038
34	Grocery shopping	0.028
10	Jumping Rope (125 jumps per minute)	0.08
7	Jumping Rope (145 jumps per minute)	0.089
13	Jumping Rope (70 jumps per minute)	0.074
1	Kettlebell Ballistics (Swings/Snatches)	0.159
4	Kettlebell Grinds (Clean & Press)	0.097
22	Mowing the lawn	0.051
9	Racquetball	0.081
35	Raking leaves	0.025
3	Running (6-minute mile)	0.115
6	Running (8-minute mile)	0.095
8	Running (9-minute mile)	0.087
39	Sitting Still	0.009
15	Skiing , cross-country, walking	0.065
2	Skiing, cross-country, uphill	0.125
11	Snowshoeing, soft snow	0.075
5	Squats	0.096
12	Swimming, breast stroke, fast	0.074
14	Swimming, crawl, fast	0.071
19	Swimming, crawl, slow	0.058
32	Table tennis	0.031
36	Volleyball	0.023
30	Walking, normal pace, asphalt road	0.036
29	Walking, normal pace, fields & hills	0.037
31	Weeding	0.033
26	Weight training, circuit training	0.042
27	Weight training, free weights	0.039

How Calories Could You Burn performing Kettlebell Swings?

Kettlebell Swing Calculator
Your bodyweight	lbs.
Minutes Kettlebell Swings (35lb KB @ 45 sw/minute)	minutes
Calories Burned