I was talking to a female fitness instructor I know today and she gave me her take on why kettlebells have become so popular among male fitness enthusiasts in recent years. My friend didn’t put what she was saying in the words I’m about to use, but the crux of her argument was that doing the key kettlebell exercise – the swing – was the closest a guy could get to having sex in a gym. The swing is all about hip thrust and thus resembles male movement in penetrative sex! My friend’s take on the kettlebell swing was that it was a good exercise since it raised the heart rate and used many different muscles, but that you could do it just as effectively with a dumbbell.
Moving on, a year or so ago there were dozens of TV and video parodies of people using shake weights – since those exercising with them looked as if they were masturbating. Now I’m wondering why given the similarity between kettlebell swings and humping there aren’t dozens of YouTube piss-takes of this exercise? Perhaps today’s video generation is repressed and just feels more at home with jerking off… Or maybe the fact that the kettlebell swing is an effective exercise, whereas scientific research indicates that the claims made for the shake weight are nonsense, means parodies are less attractive? On the other hand if the world was just waiting for someone to point out in public the similarities between the kettlebell swing and penetrative sex, once this blog is posted perhaps the web will be flooded with videos riffing on this elective affinity to comic effect. It would certainly be interesting to see how macho proponents of kettlebell use – such as Pavel Tsatsouline – responded to parody videos (or whether they just ignored such a phenomena).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!