How Kettlebells Give You MORE Than This $4,000 Piece Of Equipment

This might sound like one of the most unusual titles we’ve ever written, but it’s purposeful. Recently, I came across a piece of equipment getting a lot of attention online, backed by celebrity endorsements and even featured on a hugely popular podcast. It’s touted for building rotational strength, especially in pushing and pulling movements.

Now, I have nothing against this equipment—it seems effective at what it promises to do. However, it comes with a hefty price tag of over $4,000! While some may find the cost justifiable, it got me thinking about something I feel very strongly about: Return on Investment (ROI).

Back when I ran my personal training studio, I made the rookie mistake of buying cool-looking equipment whenever I had a few extra dollars. Before long, my gym was packed with random pieces of gear. It looked impressive but lacked purpose. Then, one day, I had a realization: the most valuable asset in my gym wasn’t a piece of equipment—it was space.

I even had HAIR back then!!

This epiphany changed how I viewed equipment. Instead of focusing on aesthetics, I began prioritizing tools that delivered the best ROI. I started asking myself these key questions:

-Did the equipment do anything unique that couldn’t be accomplished by something else less expensive and offer a benefit that would justify it’s cost?

-How versatile was the equipment? When I started to look at equipment like Ultimate Sandbags, kettlebells, superbands, medicine balls, and the like, these became vital pieces because of how much versatility they offered. Not just how many different unique things I could do with them, but how many different types of people could benefit from them in their own ways. 

 

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 Gyms like Fitness Lying Down I think REALLY get it!

-How much space did the equipment take up? I’ve already said that space is your most valuable asset, so when you are going to take from it, how much can you save? If the equipment takes up A LOT of space it better start to offer so much more in the areas of giving a unique benefit, versatility, and how many different people can benefit from its use. 

I wanted to give you such an example using this quite expensive and to be honest, large piece of equipment that is $4,000. Let’s just keep it to the idea of this rotational power that it is being marketed at delivering. 

If we just compare it to the world of kettlebells, I think kettlebells easily beat the need for this piece of equipment. One of its BIG promoted features is that you can do a push pull motion with it, how do you do that with a kettlebell? You can do so in a variety of ways, one of my favorite is the Renegade Row or push-up row…

Yes, this exercise is about RESISTING rotation (which the other equipment hypes up), but what about creating rotation? Kettlebells I think EASILY win this as not only are there more progressions and ways to create serious rotational power that carries over to punching throwing, and a host of other activities as well as just building A LOT of total body strength, but you aren’t confined by the movement of a machine. 

Using tools like kettlebells allows us to build within one’s own movement capabilities, but a rotational overhead press as physical therapist, Jessica Bento and I break down becomes a BETTER way of doing a rotational push-pull action. 

You can see by the progressions that Jessica shows there is SO MUCH more that kettlebells can offer for the same goal as this $4,000 piece of equipment and that is counting all the OTHER things kettlebells allow us to accomplish. 

Whether you have a facility or train at home, if you want to find out how kettlebells offer such a bigger and better world of training and gives you MORE for your return on investment, we hope you will join our 6-week online Progressive Kettlebell Movement Masterclass. You get great CEUs, our PKM online swing course for FREE all for our early bird price of about $16 a week. Talk about a great ROI! Don’t miss it HERE!!!

 

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