What Size Kettlebells for Girls?

You can find a fair amount of advice on kettlebell sizes for adult female lifters. Leading trainer Anthony Diluglio, of the Art of Strength kettlebell studio in Rhode Island, recommends 12 or 16 kilograms for fit women, and 8 kilos for inactive women. Steve Cotter, author of “Kettlebell Training,” agrees on the same weights. But little to no advice exists for girls, with leading resources silent on the subject. So how can a parent or trainer figure out where to start?

  1. Athletic Girls and KBs

    • “Based on the suggestions that swim around the Internet, this topic does seem to have very little guidance with any scientific data,” notes Michael Skogg, co-owner of Skogg Gym in Portland, Oregon, and producer of highly regarded kettlebell training DVDs. So to arrive at a suggestion, he reviewed the background of the girls who over the years have used his training program and his gym. All of the athletes ranged from 8 to 17 years old. “Each and every one of them were very coordinated and participated in some sort of athletic endeavor, including track and field, gymnastics, softball, soccer and volleyball,” he notes.

    Clues to Appropriate Weight

    • All of these young athletes reported an increase in performance. Clues to the best weight to use came from the 8-year-olds -- twins with active parents who had their girls in a sport for every season. “The two of them were workout machines,” Skogg recalls. To his surprise, they most enjoyed grinds -- the slow, challenging exercises such as squats and presses -- more so than ballistic exercises, such as the swing. “Both of them used 4-kilogram bells -- 9 pounds -- which seemed appropriate considering their combined weight couldn't have been over 100 pounds,” he recalls.

    Deriving a Formula for Athletes

    • Thus a 50-pound athletic girl handling a 9-pound bell is lifting roughly 20 percent of her body weight, Skogg points out. “To put that in perspective, I weigh 210. Twenty percent of my body weight would be 42 pounds, making the bell size fall in right around 20 kilograms (44 pounds), which is a challenging weight when performing a conditioning workout. I think this is a great way to establish a baseline for someone who is athletic.”

    How Much for Non-Athletes?

    • For an “everyday Jane who's after a weight-loss goal rather than performance enhancement,” 20 percent of body weight may be too high initially, Skogg notes. An older teen girl who weighs in at 120 pounds might be better off with 15 percent of body weight -- which comes to 8 kilograms (18 pounds) for everyday Jane. And a girl with no athletic ability, a weight-loss goal and no exercise experience should start even lower -- at around 10 percent of her body weight, he recommends.