Kettlebells are a well-established piece of fitness equipment these days. Kettlebell workouts can form a part of anything from a Crossfit session, to a group fitness class, to a strength and conditioning programme. You won’t have to look far to see people performing kettlebell swings, snatches, carries, and cleans in your local gym. However, the rapid acceptance of kettlebell training doesn’t guarantee that they’re being used optimally.
When I meet a new personal training client, these are the common responses I hear in relation to to kettlebell training:
- “I’ve heard they’re great, but I don’t want to use them wrongly.”
- “I used them once, but I don’t think I did it right.”
- “Kettlebell workouts look fun but I’m scared of hurting my back.”
If this sounds like you, don’t be put off. Kettlebells are very different to other conventional free weights, and this means you generally can’t just jump into a kettlebell workout without learning what makes this training equipment unique. Here are 3 tips to help you get on board with kettlebell workouts so you can do things like this:
1. Master Your Hip Hinge
Most kettlebell exercises originate with a hip-hinge movement to load the hamstrings. I’ll discuss more about why we do this in point 2, but for now it suffices to say that you need to master your hip-hinge skill to have good kettlebell workouts.
A hip-hinge is a movement pattern that describes any time we move by folding primarily at the hips. One of the clearest examples of this is the Romanian deadlift, however there are plenty of other exercises that fit into this category such as good mornings, conventional deadlifts, bridges, and – of course – kettlebell-specific exercises such as swings, snatches, and cleans.
Most kettlebell exercises have an element of speed and momentum to them. This generally means that you’ll be hinging very quickly, so kettlebell workouts may not an ideal place to start if you’re not familiar with hinging already.
Get comfortable at performing some of the other exercises on this list first to build the foundation of your kettlebell movements.
2. Kettlebells Move Very Differently To Other Weights
Whether you’ve lifted weights before or not, most people’s instinct when given a weight is to lift it slowly and carefully. This makes a lot of sense for maintaining control and increasing the time a muscle spends working. However, for kettlebell training this is far from ideal. To perform specific kettlebell exercises, we harness momentum generated by the weight. The kettlebell sits outside of your hand, allowing you to swing it like a pendulum. This shape makes it very hard to lift even a light kettlebell without this momentum.
The way to generate this pendulum-like momentum is to power the movement from the legs and hips, rather than the upper body. A kettlebell swing, for example, should not make the arms feel tired (see the video above). For most kettlebell exercises, the purpose of the arms is to guide the kettlebell into position after you have powerfully thrust the weight up by standing as quickly as possible. This is why having a good hip hinge is so important.
Of course, this means each repetition in a kettlebell workout has to be performed with explosive intent to get the weight moving. If you try to slow down any part of the movement, you will lose some of the momentum you have built up, and it becomes harder to use the power from your hips.
When learning kettlebell exercises, it’s important to alter your regular lifting habits in order to lift more effectively.
3. Build Up Your Kettlebell Workouts Gradually
In case it’s not already clear, kettlebell exercises are complex. Kettlebell training is a form of sporting competition in it’s own right, and it can take a long time to master the full range of kettlebell-specific exercises. For these reasons it’s generally a good idea to build your abilities patiently before leaping into kettlebell workouts consisting of hundreds of reps of kettlebell snatches, followed by kettlebell swings, followed by cleans, followed by burpees, and so on.
While I have enjoyed a few of these workouts in the past, I think I can say (without blowing my own trumpet) that they’re pretty advanced. Even when I do this type of kettlebell workout, I normally mix more complex exercises like swings in with simpler moves like squats, shoulder presses, and core work. That’s because as fatigue builds up, technique normally deteriorates. Once this happens, it’s probably not a great time to being doing high-speed, high-force complex movements.
As always, I want to point out that human beings are incredibly robust. Your body can adapt to all kinds of stresses and I believe most people will be amazed by how much they are capable of. That being said, this robustness and capability does take time to build up, and you can’t rush that process by adding a tonne of fatigue.
Summary
Learning to add kettlebells to your workouts should follow a very clear process:
- Nail your hip hinge movement – get strong and familiar in that position.
- Learn how to use the momentum of kettlebell exercises for best technique.
- Build your kettlebell exercise repertoire up gradually before going for hardcore kettlebell workouts.
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