Albany gym offers the first all-women's competitive kettlebell team

Driving west on Highway 80, passing through Albany, your attention might drift to the two apartment towers on your left, to the specter of San Francisco looming in the distance, but almost certainly let pass the nondescript blue building on the right.

And even if directions sat in your lap as you ambled down Cleveland Ave., specifically in search of this blue building that you didn’t even know was blue at all, you’d have to pull over and ask for directions. Only then, when a description had been provided, would you realize you’d actually stopped in front of your destination.

The unassuming location is fitting for the sport practiced within these walls, which would confuse your average athletically inclined layman. Situated next to the City of Albany Maintenance Center on a road that runs parallel to the highway is Ice Chamber, a gym that teaches kettlebell and houses the country’s first ever all-women’s team.

“It feels awesome on many different levels—as an athlete and as a woman,” said team-member Jessica Dibiase. “I feel really proud we’re pioneers for this sport at this gym in Albany.”

The national sport of Russia, a kettlebell is a caste iron weight, like a cannonball with a handle, that’s used as an exercise tool. In competition, the Jerk and the Snatch are performed for 10 minutes. The competitor with the highest number of reps wins. Similar to a middle distance race, individuals push themselves to go all out for those few minutes.

If the sport conjures images of burly weight lifters grunting through a series of vein-popping sets, you’ll find none of that at Ice Chamber. The usual stereotypes fail to apply here. And if you hang around long enough, contrary themes about fitness, lifting weights, the sport of kettlebell and how all of this applies to women emerge.

The women on the five-member team have visions beyond just competing and doing well, but desire to make inroads into the traditionally male-dominated sport and to usher kettlebell out of obscurity and into the limelight. And in the process they hope to reverse the myths some women still believe about lifting weights.

Take one glance at these women—Heidy Casonala, Dibiase, Maya Garcia, Sara Nelson and Surya Voiner-Fowler—who are all lean, strong and athletic and the notion that weight work makes women bulky becomes a fallacy.

“It’s a lean sport,” said Steve Khuong, the team’s head coach. “You’ve got the high aerobic aspect that keeps everybody trim. If you look at the girls, they don’t look buffed out.”

Garcia and Khuong, who are married, founded Ice Chamber, which specializes in synergistic, total-body movements. They introduced kettlebell, a sport they learned from Russian World Champion Valery Fedorenko, to the gym about a year ago as a way for members to take their fitness level to another level.

The formation of the all-women’s team, which is sponsored by women’s active apparel company Athleta, occurred by chance—a byproduct of teaching a new sport to a group of women with competitive, athletic backgrounds.

“We kind of banded together,” said Dibiase. “I was the last member of the team. They did their first meet and I came on board a month later. We just started competing and it just excited me to be a competitive athlete again at an elite level.”

On March 6, the team participated in the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, the largest sport and fitness exposition in the country. For the first time, the festival included kettlebell, making it the biggest competition in the U.S. to date. The ICKB Girls brought home four national championship titles—two gold and a single silver and bronze.

The World Championships in Chicago in August are up next.

“August will be a big proving ground,” said Khuong. “I really think all the women on this team have the potential to be champions in all the respective categories and classes.”

Besides carving out a place for women in the competitive arena, team members want to promote and grow the sport through Ice Chamber, which draws a devoted following of kettlebell participants. The attraction stems from how simple, yet effective swinging a kettlebell can be.

“It’s quite possibly the best 10-minute workout because it really does combine everything,” said Dibiase. “You have strength training, core work and leg and arm work. Women are looking for the workout where they can have their cake and eat it too. With this, they really can.”

Classes contain all types—men, women, fathers and mothers and all sorts of body types and fitness levels.

“It’s half men and half women,” said Garcia. “We have a 62 year-old woman who has never felt stronger.”

And this will be their legacy, Ice Chamber and the women’s team, not the medals won or respect gained, but the reshaped bodies, improved health and lifestyles—basically, the lives touched.

In doing so, they’ll reach their ultimate goal.

“I want to continue to move the sport forward, as much as we can,” said Dibiase. “I don’t know where we’re going to go, but I definitely don’t want to stop. I have no intention, it’s in my blood.”