Why Your Home Gym Needs Adjustable Kettlebells
If you’re short on space or can’t afford an entire kettlebell collection, a good quality adjustable kettlebell is one of the best investments you can make for strength training at home.
I have two adjustable competition bells from Titan that can weigh anywhere from 12kg (26lbs) to 32kg (70lbs). Lest I start sounding like an advertisement, Kettlebell Kings does exactly the same as Bells of Steel . The sticker is priced around $300 for Kettlebell Kings and $250 for others, though they do go on sale occasionally. I bought mine for about $200.
“Competitive” style means that the bells are the same size and shape as those used in kettlebell lifting competitions. I mention this because there are several oddly shaped adjustable weights, and most of them don’t look like they would be comfortable to clean, push, tear, or do anything other than swing. The plates of the adjustable competition bells are encased in a smooth, round shell and feel exactly like a normal competition bell.
I get questions all the time about how much I like my adjustable bells, so I’ll do a full review here. Do they like me? Yes. Do they loosen or rattle during workouts? Usually no, no. Are they hard to adjust? Just like.
What can you do with adjustable weights
Short answer: anything you can do with kettlebells . The biggest drawback is that they cannot become lighter than 12 kg. Many beginners will need a lighter bell to begin with, especially children and petite women. If you’re planning on doing a strict overhead kettlebell press, or doing long sets of snatches or clean and jerks, you’ll probably want to start at 8 or maybe even something lighter.
If you just want to swing the kettlebell, especially if you like swinging with both hands on the same kettlebell, you may end up finding that 32kg isn’t heavy enough. In this case, the T-handle will allow you to rock even harder. Here is a pen you can buy for $45 ; Here are instructions on how to make your own from $11 plumbing parts . None of the prices include plates.
If you have an adjustable one or a couple of them, you can do cleans, presses, snatches, snatches, swings, front squats, goblet squats , Turkish raises ( if needed ), or complexes that combine a bunch of these things together. .
Why I Love My Adjustable Kettlebells So Much
Kettlebells come in standard sizes, with 4 or 8 kg (9 or 18 lb) jumps from one kettlebell to the next. At first I thought the point of the adjustable weight was to be able to create a standard size kettlebell that you don’t have – if I had 16 and 24 but not 20, I could load my adjustable weight 20. Or if I wanted to do an exercise that required a pair of 24kg dumbbells, I could use my single 24kg one and load an adjustable one as its helper.
That’s all true, and that’s why if I only had room for a few wind chimes, I’d make sure at least one of them was adjustable.
But there’s another reason I fell in love with adjustable bells: you can get everything in between. Let’s say you can strictly squeeze 16 reps, but you failed to squeeze 20. The technique should be.) Well, you can work your way up by loading a regulated weight up to 18kg and working with it for a while before trying 20 again. Or, since they load in just one kilo increments, you can even go from 16 to 17 and then 18, 19 and then 20.
Do you need extra workload for effective learning? Probably no. You can train enough from 16 to get to the point where 20 is easy. But the ability to gradually load gives you more options for training. And you don’t have to look for a specialized gym with 18 kettlebells; You can make the bell you want with the ingredients you have at home.
Disadvantages of adjustable weights
Aside from a fairly tight range of weights (you can’t make it under 12 and there’s no easy way to make it over 32), adjustable bells have one major inconvenience: they have to be adjusted.
Adjusting my kettlebell requires me to:
- Flip it on its side
- Use a hex wrench to remove the bolt at the bottom
- Carefully remove the bottom of the shell (the equator of the bell has a seam where the two halves come together).
- Remove the nut from the large threaded bolt that runs vertically down the middle of the flare.
- Remove the small weight plates inside
- Adjust the nut that is above the weight plates.
- Put back the right plates, remembering which one goes where (they are different sizes)
- Bring back the big nut
- Reinstall the bottom case
- Tighten the bolt with a hex wrench
If I’m only changing the weight by a kilo or two, I can skip steps 5 and 6. The nuts at the top and bottom of the stack of plates are used to balance the weights in the bell; if you’re just swapping out a two-kilogram plate for a three-kilogram one, you can get by without having to readjust the entire stack.
In general, I would say that this is about a 5-minute process. If I’m in a hurry, I can do it in 2 minutes. If I have extra time, I call my six year old daughter and let her do it. (She loves to play the role of my kettlebell mechanic.)
In short, adjusting kettlebells before starting your day’s workout isn’t that hard, but you don’t want to change weights from set to set once you start.
How to make life easier with an adjustable kettlebell
There are a few annoyances in life with an adjustable kettlebell, but most of them will be taken care of by a marker and drawing pen.
But before we get to the markers, sometimes the plates will wobble or rattle during use. In my experience, they are good for short sets of exercise, but can sometimes get noisy towards the end of a long workout. To avoid this, be sure to tighten the nuts above and below the plates, and make sure the bolt at the bottom is secure and tight.
Next, a little safety tip: when it’s fully loaded, be careful how you tilt the bell to the side. Once I broke my nail. I’m fine, but now I’m more careful.
Finally, the most important tip: label everything with .
When you first unpack your adjustable weight, take photos (or videos) showing how it all works. It’ll look easy, and then the next day you’ll be like, “Wait, that 2kg plate looks different from that 2kg plate. Which one goes up and which one goes down?
Then, and this step is crucial, use markers to write down how much each plate weighs. Each of my adjustable cymbals has a 6kg cymbal, a 4kg cymbal, two 3kg cymbals, and two 2kg cymbals. (This allows you to mix and match all increments except 13 and 31.) You can see the difference visually, but I promise you that if you don’t mark them, someday you’ll mix up 2 and 3, or 3 and 4.
Since I have two adjustable bells, I used a pink marker for one of them and a white marker for the rest. You’ll also want to set aside a spot in your home gym where the plates will sit when they’re not in the bell, so keep that in mind when you’re deciding how to place your workout equipment in that corner of your apartment. .
And to make your life easier, keep a marker next to you where you charge your bells. Mine are red so I use a black marker. If your bells are black, you may need a chalk marker. (This exercise is best left to the reader.) This step is especially important when you’re working with these extra sizes—I once picked up a bell that I thought was loaded to 18 and did half of my workout thinking, “Wow, I’m the last time got a lot stronger”, only to realize that he was actually loaded up to 14 . I now have a strict policy of always writing the total weight on the outside of the bell. Learn from my mistakes.