The ‘Kettlebell’ or ‘Girya’ is a cast iron weight looking somewhat like a cannonball with a handle.
There are two schools of thought regarding the history of the kettlebell.
One is that the military welded handles to cannonballs and started to use them as training tools for its soldiers
The other is that they were originally used as agricultural tools and some bright sparked started to use one to train with, hence the weight categories used in competition: 1 pood(16kg), 2 pood(32kg) which represent the weighting scheme used.
Whichever is correct, use John Fords advice, if you have to choose between the legend and the fact, go with the legend.
The kettlebell has been adopted throughout Russia as an amazing training tool, and even listed in the Russian Soldiers training manual, ‘Soldier be Strong’ as “one of the most effective means of simultaneous strength & stamina development’.’