A graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher met under an Oxford Street overhang in Saturday’s near-freezing rain to heave cannonball-like weights over their heads as many times as they could manage.

Angelo A. Mondragon, who works in a chemical laboratory at MIT faced off against Jason T. Clower, a graduate student in the Committee on the Study of Religion, in an event billed as New England’s first kettlebell-lifting competition.

Kettlebell lifting is a grueling workout imported from the Soviet military and rapidly gaining popularity within the American fitness world.

The two-stage match first required the competitors to “snatch” a kettlebell—a large iron ball with a handle—over their heads with one hand, and then to “jerk” two kettlebells upward from their chests simultaneously.

The referee stood nearby in a leather jacket and counted the repetitions in a robotic monotone.

Each kettlebell weighed 24 to 32 kilograms. Lifting a kettlebell requires a special technique that, according to Clower, is far more metabolically strenuous than ordinary strength training because it incorporates the entire body rather than arms alone.

“It really hammers at your lungs,” said Sean Gomez, a dancer and a software-engineering graduate student at Brandeis University who refereed the match. He started training with kettlebells two months ago to maintain his fitness between dance rehearsals. “It’s a ballistic movement,” he explained.

The match could not become an official kettlebell-lifting competition because Clower and Mondragon were not in the same weight class. No winner was declared.

In a kettlebell-lifting competition, heavier lifters are handicapped by lifting heavier kettlebells.

Clower spent the half-hour before the match chewing Trident gum and spitting into the bushes in an attempt to lose six pounds of water weight and move down a weight class. He failed, and so had to lift a 32-kilogram (about 70 pounds) kettlebells while Mondragon competed with a kettlebell 8 kilograms (about 17 pounds) lighter.

The different weight distinctions, Mondragon said, meant different lifting techniques. During the first “snatch,” he swung the kettlebell above his head in a forward arc, while Clower hopped slightly to pull the heavier kettlebell straight up.

“Sometimes more reps with the lighter weights are more punishing,” Clower said. He snatched the kettlebell 20 times with each arm while Mondragon performed the movement 30 times on each side.

Lifters must be certain not to tire themselves in snatching with one arm, because their performance with the weaker arm determines their score, according to the official kettlebell rules.

Russian immigrant Pavel Tsatsouline introduced these regulations, as well as the kettlebell regimen itself, to the United States in the early 1990s.

Tsatsouline was formerly a physical training instructor for the Soviet Special Forces. The U.S. kettlebelling community still refers to itself as The Party.