What Is a Pood: The Ultimate Kettlebell Guide

Working out from home has never been more popular or more important. Kettlebell movements are fantastic. You get total body conditioning, improved core strength, and a cardio workout all the while building muscles. By now it’s clear that kettlebells have become a staple in full-body fitness.

If you are a beginner to kettlebell workouts or CrossFit, you might want to understand some terminologies that confuse you. The term pood is one of these trigger words that you might hear among Crossfit fans. 

In this article, we are going to tell you what is a pood and how it is used. Also, we are going to tell you how to convert poods into pounds or kilograms. Let’s get started.

What Is a Kettlebell Pood?

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A pood is a Russian unit of measurement for kettlebells. Plural: pudy or pudi. To better understand the meaning of the word pood, let’s look at a brief history of this word.

The first mention of the word “pood” was in 12^th-century documents. This Old East Slavic word is much older than funt (a Russian pound), which came from Germany in the 14^th century. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary pood (“pud”) came from the Old English “pund” which came from the Latin language: pondo and means “weight”.

In 1924, the USSR officially abolished the units of weight of the Imperial Russian. However, this weight measurement system and the term “pood” remained in widespread use at least until the 1940s. 

How It Is Used

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Now, the word “pood” is preserved and used in specific cases related to sports weights. For example, you can hear this word when buying traditional kettlebells or performing a dynamic kettlebell workout. Let’s dive into it.

There are specific weights and numbers of reps in CrossFit workouts. It’s called a men’s and women’s RX kettlebell. Traditional kettlebells are cast in poods and used in CrossFit. This obsolete unit of mass is equivalent to 36 pounds. So, there are kettlebells cast in fractions of: 

• 0.5 pood (8 kg or 13 pounds);
• 0.75 pood (12 kg or 26 pounds);
• 1 pood (16 kg or 36 pounds);
• 1.25 pood (20 kg or 44 pounds);
• 1.5 pood (24 kg or 53 pounds);
• 2 pood (32 kg or 70 pounds).

So, these are common kettlebell weights. When CrossFit first started, “2 pood kettlebell” was the RX weight for kettlebell swings.

How to Convert a Pood: Kilogram & Pood Conversions

A pood is equal to about 16.38 kg or 36.11 pounds since 1899. Now, this measurement of weight is rounded off to 16 kg (about 36 pounds). To convert poods to pounds or kilograms, you can use any weight converter on the Internet. 

What Is a Pood: FAQs