Technical focus | Getting your swing on!

Getting your swing on!  

Kettlebell swings, the why and the how?

First, a bit of kettlebell history.

Kettlebells are fast becoming a main stream fitness training tool for the everyday man and woman. However, their time on this earth as a tool for building strength and endurance spans back many centuries.

The earliest mention of kettlebells was in a Russian dictionary dating back to 1704! The Russian word for kettlebell is Girya and the men who lifted the Girya were called Gireviks. In recent years, they have become increasingly popular in the USA due to a man named Pavel Tsatsuline. Pavel was a trainer for the Soviet Union Special Forces and is now a well regarded author as well as the Head coach at an organisation known as Dragon door.

In 1985 the first committee for the sport of kettlebell lifting was formed and the first national championship was held in Russia.

Today, kettlebells are finding their way into many gyms and there are a number of training courses now available for Personal Trainers and gym instructors.

I believe that kettlebells are very much here to stay and will be found in an ever increasing amount of gyms. However, I also believe that they should not be used unless you have had some quality tuition on their use. This is because of the dynamic nature of the principle kettlebell movements. This is in complete contrast to the very slow deliberate movements usually incorporated in your regular gym routine.

First things first!

There are a number of fundamental kettlebell movements that need to be learnt before you can call yourself efficient in kettlebell lifting. These are, the swing, the Turkish get up (TGU) the clean, the squat, the press and the snatch.

In this article I am going to focus on the swing. It’s the first exercise you need to learn along with the TGU. You have to master the swing and the TGU before you can snatch or clean the kettlebell. The swing will teach you how to explosively use your hips to create power and the TGU will create flexibility, co-ordination and the stability in your shoulder joint required before you can safely hold a kettlebell over your head. Master the swing and the TGU and you will be well on your way to becoming an efficient kettlebell lifter. These two exercises alone will greatly benefit your conditioning.

 The benefits of the swing.

Kettlebell Swings primarily work your posterior chain. This includes the often neglected muscles of your lower back, your glutes and hamstrings. These posterior chain muscles are key to your posture and joint health and are essential for athletic performance, strength and power. The swing will help increase flexibility in these areas as well as help improve your posture. The cardiovascular benefits of the swing cannot be over exaggerated. Tremendous gains can be had with your cardiovascular system if you employ kettlebell use as a regular part of your training. In a recent study, it was found that kettlebell training when done with high intensity can burn up to 20 calories per minute. That’s an astonishing 400 calories in a 20 minute workout!

A little bit about posture

Picture yourself sat in a chair. Your hip flexors, (Psoas group and rectus femoris, One of four quadriceps muscles) and are in a shortened position. Your shoulders are hunched and moving forward in a protracted position. Consequently your chest muscles are shortened and your upper back muscles will be on stretch. Your head is most likely tilting off its central axis adding to the multitude of problems. Sit like this for long enough and your body will lay down additional material in the form of Collagen to further support this position. Quite simply, we were not designed for sitting around all day!

Adequate flexibility through the hips is essential before you begin. Unless you can get your hips into full extension, you will find it very difficult to adequately ‘pop’ your hips through explosively. Tight hip flexors will result in under activation of your glutes and an anterior tilt of your pelvis. This will create an undesirable lordotic curve in your lower back and a rounded or hunched upper back. Tight hip flexors will also cause the primary hip extensors, the gluteus maximus, to become underactive and render them incapable of their primary role of hip extension. This in return will result in your hamstrings becoming the primary hip extensor, a job they were never designed to do, preferring instead to act as a synergist or ‘support’ muscle to the gluteus maximus. Stretch your hip flexors regularly before and after every swing session. It would also help if you have the ability to touch your toes in a straight legged position.

Whist it is clearly not practical to never sit, you can, at least, address some of these issues through exercise. A lot of what we do in the gym tends to be based on the muscles that we can see or ‘the mirror muscles’. Excessive amounts of work on the quadriceps (front of thigh) chest and the rectus abdominis (six pack muscle) in the form of flexion exercises (crunches and sit ups) simply adds to the problem.  The fact that many people then ‘sit down’ to exercise in various machines compounds the problem even further! Therefore, most people will certainly benefit from some posterior chain exercises such as the swing, clean and snatch.

 Before you begin, Can you squat? Can you deadlift?

The ability to squat to an adequate depth will also help teach you correct body positioning. Practice squatting facing a wall.

Position your feet a couple of inches away and attempt to squat as deep as possible keeping your weight distributed over your heels. As you become more flexible, move your toes nearer to the wall. The goal is to get your toes right up against the wall whilst squatting to at least parallel. Squatting whilst facing a wall like this will force you to adopt the correct positioning. It will also reveal limitations in your squatting ability but these will be overcome with repeated practice providing you supplement this exercise with additional stretches.

I would also advise that you practise deadlifting first. The swing is essentially a deadlift type ‘pulling’ motion performed in a very dynamic fashion.

To deadlift, push your hips back and bend at the knees whist hinging at the hips. Back should be flat; head should be in a neutral position, eyes up… Grab the kettlebell and grip the handle hard. Stand up purposefully and tighten your glutes at the top position. Be sure that your back side doesn’t lead the way in the ascent. Keep it under the torso. Maintain an even tension at all times.

A note on footwear

Use minimalistic footwear or solid soled shoes. There are a whole bunch of proprioceptive receptors in your feet so it’s important with kettlebell training that you have a good connection between your feet and the ground. Please do not wear running shoes for your kettlebell training! Other than that, just wear comfortable loose fitting clothing. Kettlebell training can be done barefoot, though the wearing of shoes is often preferable in a gym environment.

Breathing for the swing

Paradoxical:  Inhale on the downswing, exhale on the upswing. This method can be used both for beginners and for experienced lifters when utilising heavy weights. Taking a deep breath when on the downswing will help create intra abdominal pressure and therefore help brace your back.

Anatomical: Exhale on the down swing, Inhale on the upswing. Once you are reasonably experienced, you should employ this method of breathing for light to moderate weights. It is generally easier to take a full breath as you rise up out of the swing and open up your chest.

Choosing your weight

I don’t want to over complicate things here, but if you are a guy with some weight training experience and you have the ability to squat, you may be best served with a 16kg kettlebell. Otherwise go with a 12kg. For ladies, a 12kg kettlebell for an experienced gym user or an 8kg kettlebell otherwise.  Don’t make the mistake of comparing your free weight abilities to kettlebell training. It doesn’t matter if you can bench press 32kg dumbbells! A kettlebell, when swung, cleaned or snatched will be greatly heavier when in the downswing simply because of the effects of gravity working on it. These guidelines generally refer to the swing. If you are lifting a kettlebell above your head in a press movement or the snatch, then you will need to make sure that your stabilising muscles in your shoulders are strong enough to support the weight whilst in this position. In other words, your stabilisers need to be an even match for your prime movers.  You should be able to comfortably hold the weight above your head for at least 30 seconds. Please don’t assume that strong deltoid muscles equal strong stabilisers if you are only used to pressing a weight in a fixed path with a resistance machine.

 Two handed swing

How to do it

1. Place a kettlebell slightly ahead of your feet.
2. Your stance should be wide enough for the kettlebell to fit easily between your legs but not too wide. It should feel very athletic.
3. Then think about pushing your hips back as if sitting back on to a bench making sure that you hinge at your hips whilst maintaining a straight back position although not upright. Think about trying to touch a wall two foot behind you with your back side. Your shoulders should be back and down. You will then be in the correct starting position. If you’ve got it right then you should be feeling a stretch in your hamstrings. I like to compare the position to a wicket keeper as he is readying himself for a bowler.
4. Look straight ahead and swing the kettlebell back between your legs as if you are passing a football to someone behind you. Get a good connection with your forearms against your inner thighs and quickly reverse the direction and drive though with your hips explosively taking the kettlebell straight out to a chest high position. Concentrate on projecting the kettlebell forwards as opposed to upwards. Tighten your glutes hard as you stand upright. Really concentrate on ‘snapping’ your hips through.
5. Let the kettlebell swing back between your legs under its own momentum and repeat, but make sure you really load up your hamstrings by picking up the momentum at the bottom of the swing and driving the kettlebell back between your legs, get this right and you will stand up with greater speed and power.
6. Remember you are not using the deltoids to lift the kettlebell. This is primarily a hamstrings, glutes and lower back exercise. If you experience any shoulder fatigue, your technique is wrong.

You need to have economy of movement here as is the case with a lot of kettlebell movements. Make sure that the kettlebell doesn’t swing too far out. This is generally referred to as ‘taming the arc’. Don’t lean back excessively but do make sure you keep your shoulder blades pulled back to minimise the outward projector of the kettlebell.

Progressing the swing

Once learnt, you can incorporate the swing in many ways. It can be as part of a sequence of other exercises such as burpees, squats and lunges or you could have a standalone interval session. Of course, once you have learnt a multitude of other kettlebell exercises, you can then incorporate it as a part of a kettlebell complex sequence. The nature of kettlebells enables you to seamlessly transition from one exercise to another without placing the kettlebell down.

Once you have your technique sorted out and you are reasonably confident with your two handed swing, you can look to progress to other variations such as the one arm swing.  Here you have forces acting unilaterally on your body so from a technical point of view it’s a little trickier. In reality though, once you have reasonable form on the two handed swing, making this transition shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

From here you can go for the Alternating hand swing. Here you will change hand on every repetition, making sure that you have a firm hold with the other hand before releasing the bell.

Finally, you have the alternating swing toss whereby you physically release the bell in between each hand change. Following these progressions will enable you to gradually increase your skill level and help save you money since you won’t be progressing to the next size kettlebell until you can confidently perform the various progressions.