We’ve all had clients who don’t get the kettlebell swing or deadlift on their first go. Be it their back rounding like a fish hook or knees bending & it becoming a squat. Swings & deadlifts require the body to learn to hinge at the hip rather than the waist or knees.

The benefits are obvious. Less movement through the spine means less chance of injury to the delicate spinal structures such as the intervertebral disks & spinal nerve roots. More hip movement means more glute strength for running, jumping & other power movements.

So, how do we get people to learn to move properly? Cueing.

People learn in one of three main ways. They either respond to visual, auditory or kinaesthetic cues. Meaning that they learn by seeing, hearing or feeling respectively.

For the visual learners you have to demonstrate good technique & highlight the points they should observe. For example, when you demonstrate a correct deadlift bring their attention to your neutral lumbar spine & how your knees aren’t flexing excessively as you descend into the lower position of the deadlift.

With visual learners it’s worth demonstrating bad technique too but make sure you do it with the Sandwich Method, i.e. precede it & follow it up with reps of proper form.

For the auditory learners you can use specific postural cues during their repetitions of swings. Cues such as “hips back” as they get into the eccentric portion of the movement work to make them hinge.  Another great cue which conjures up a mental image is telling the client to close a car door behind them while their hands are holding shopping bags.  If you’ve ever done that in the car park you know you have to stick your hips out while keeping the arms  & chest forward otherwise you’ll topple over backwards. Thank you to a workshop participant earlier this year for that cue.

Cues to keep the spine neutral can be “chest forward”, “shoulders back”, “chin in”, “eyes on the bell”. To engage the glutes more cue them to “snap”, “thrust” or “pop” their hips forward on the concentric portion of the movement.

For the kinaesthetic learners, or those who learn by feel, you can use props or manipulate their position with your hands as they do the movement. For the deadlift you can set them up with their back to a wall, standing about one foot length away. As they descend into the eccentric portion tell them to reach their bum back to the wall & touch it before coming back up. If they just round their back they won’t reach the wall or they will fall backwards into the wall.

Another kinaesthetic cue is holding a dowel rod along their back. Tell them to keep three points of contact with the rod – the back of the head, between the scapulae & the sacrum. That way they are forced to keep the spine neutral on the eccentric.

While those are the main methods of learning, some people just don’t have the strength in their back muscles to be able to keep a neutral spine. Alternatively, some clients don’t have enough strength in their posterior chain to be able to lift weight with a hip hinge. In those cases regressing them to an easier hip hinge to groove the movement pattern is their way to progress. Refer to our article Regressing the Swing (http://www.kettlebellinstitute.com.au/regressing-the-swing/) for more on this path.

As trainers we see this all the time. Probably not as bad as this example but there is a definite tendency towards forward shoulder & head posture in the average person due to the amount of time we spend at computers & in front of TVs.

This forward posture is an imbalance of muscle tightness & length around the scapula & thoracic spine. It’s known as Upper Crossed Syndrome. The general pattern results in tight pecs as well as loose/weak rhomboids & lower traps. This is further exacerbated by the fact that regular gym-goers tend to train the muscles which they can see in the mirror, i.e. the pecs, often neglecting the upper back muscles, i.e. rhomboids & lower traps. Just think about how often you see people doing push-ups, bench presses, flyes, pec deck compared to rows, pulldowns, chin-ups, reverse flyes? The pattern here being that on top of forward posture people generally push more than they pull.

So what?

Ask them how their shoulders or neck are feeling & you’ll probably find that they have niggling pain in the area or at least discomfort when doing certain movements or exercises, such as pressing overhead.

What can you do about it?

Apart from stretching the tight areas you also need to strengthen the loose/weak areas. While kettlebells aren’t ideal for horizontal pushing exercises, there being only two major exercises, the lying chest press & push up on kettlebells, they are a great option for pulling exercises. A great way of rebalancing the muscles around the scapula is to include more pulling than pushing exercises in clients’ programs if they have Upper Crossed Syndrome or especially if shoulder pain on pushing or overhead activities. A ratio of 2:1 or even 3:1 pull to push for a short time in their programs should do.

The Kettlebell Pulls

With all rowing exercises the main cue is to pull the scapula back as the arm moves backwards, not just allowing the shoulder to stay forward as the elbow pokes backwards. Make sure your clients incorporate that in the following kettlebell row options.

The basic kettlebell row is a great place to start because it’s a pretty stable position which allows the client to focus on one shoulder at a time while the back is supported with the other arm. To further add challenge & benefit to the exercise you can incorporate a thoracic rotation element.

Another option is the two kettlebell row, which is a more balanced exercise as it allows the use of both arms. The challenge in this exercise is a higher demand on lower back control & hamstring flexibility. It can be performed as an alternate repetition exercise, with or without rotation, or as a double kettlebell exercise which requires a lot of lower back strength & stability.

The kettlebell double high pull is a great dynamic rowing exercise which incorporates the whole back side of the body, including the posterior chain.

The renegade row is as much a core exercise as a pulling exercise & therefore a great whole-body integrated exercise which trains the body the way it’s supposed to be used – core stable while the arms or legs are moving.

The short cycle jerk is one of the main exercises we teach in our level 2 kettlebell workshop. While the Get Up is the most complex grind exercise the jerk would have to be the most complex ballistic exercise as it has 5 stages which need to be coordinated & often have the body moving in two different directions at the same time. When first learning the jerk it can be confusing so here we provide reference videos to remind you.

In a past article (Breathing in Kettlebells) we covered the anatomical breathing patterns for the ballistic kettlebell exercises. Below are videos of the stages of the short cycle jerk as a reference & so that you can match up your breathing to it.

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by Boris Bojanovic

Following on from the last article on Lunges, here are the common issues & how to correct them.

Poor hip/knee stability

This is by far the most common issue we see in lunges. Poor strength & control over hip adduction, caused by weak gluteus medius. This can manifest as either the knee of the front leg collapsing inwards & across the mid-line of the body (as viewed from the front), or as the hip of the front leg poking out to the side.

You should first try to correct this by cueing the client to keep their knee in line with the foot if the knee collapses in. If their hip pokes out make them aware of it by blocking it with your hands or a dowel. Facing your client towards a mirror is a good way to make them aware of this.

Squatting too shallow

There are many reasons for clients not wanting to go deep in a lunge. When they first start lunging they might not have the strength to go deep, in this case regressing back to a split squat with the back knee lightly touching the floor at the bottom is a good option to build leg strength.

Another reason is feeling tension or discomfort in the knee of the back leg as they descend. This is often because they are relying on the back leg too much by sitting back into it. The best way to handle this is to point it out to the client & have them reach their knee forward as they come down into the lunge. It doesn’t have to be a huge forward movement, just far enough that the knee reaches an imaginary line drawn vertically up from the big toe as viewed from the side.

Sitting back into the hips

This one is often seen in female clients who have relatively strong (sometimes just tighter) hamstrings compared to their quads. Their hips shoot backwards, often on the way up from the bottom of the lunge, artificially straightening the knee, thus taking the load off the quads & pushing it all onto the hips/hamstrings.

The way to correct this issue is just as the issue above – sitting into the back leg. You can give the client something to aim for with their front knee, e.g. have them stand with the toes touching a wall & aim the front knee to graze the wall. An upright foam roller works well too.

Breaking it down into a mechanical, un-athletic movement

We’ve all seen these & while there is merit in splitting an exercise into component parts & building it up this takes away a huge component of the lunge. That is the dynamic nature of lunging, which literally means “a sudden forward thrust of the body”. This broken down version is what I would call a split squat – the most basic single leg exercise beginner clients can start with.

To fix this encourage the client to go down in one movement & come up in one movement rather than a 4 step process (1. Step, 2. Lower, 3. Lift, 4. Step).

So, we’ve covered the other major

Do you press your kettlebell with your arms or legs?

by Boris Bojanovic

The press is the basic pushing exercise in kettlebell lifting. The kettlebell press can be thought of as the strict bodybuilders press where the kettlebell starts in the rack position & is pushed up to lockout then lowered slowly with the strength of the deltoids & triceps (in the upper half of the lift).You can refer to our article titled “Kettlebell grips – Tricks for making kettlebell lifting easier” for details of the rack & lockout positions.

The kettlebell press is an upper body lift. In fact only the arm works in pressing while the rest of the body tightens up to make a stable base for the arm to work from.

Inevitably, if you see the average client pressing a weight overhead you notice it’s not a strict arm movement. They usually use a bit of a bounce with the legs to help the weight up out of the bottom. This can be seen as cheating, if the goal is to do the exercise as a strict arm-only movement. Or you could call this a Push Press & have a few perfectly valid reasons to use the exercise with your clients.

The first being as a way of overloading the pushing movement. You can always push press more than you press because the initial leg drive helps in the hardest part of the lift – the bottom half. This lets the triceps & deltoids handle a heavier weight in the top half of the lift which is great for muscle growth, strength & even power development.

Alternatively, the push press is great for beginner clients who don’t have the strength yet to strictly press a kettlebell overhead. They can use the legs to assist the press while it strengthens the deltoids & triceps until they can handle it with the arms only.

As you can see we have been moving from pressing overhead with arms only to a mix of arms & legs. The next logical step is to press a kettlebell overhead without using your arms to push at all. It is possible. It’s called the Jerk. Our level 2 Kettlebell course covers the 5 phases of the jerk in great detail so we’ll only skim it here.

The jerk starts with a dip of the knees leading to a powerful explosion upwards, lifting the feet off the floor as if jumping. This powerful movement propels the kettlebell upwards high enough so that you can quickly drop down into a squat to catch the kettlebell with your arm straight overhead. That way all the arms do is hold the kettlebell overhead rather than pushing it up.

Apart from being one of the competition events in Girevoy Sport the jerk is an athletic, complex coordinated lift which is fun to perform & will help develop leg power, agility in change of direction & coordination of the whole body. It makes it ideal for your athlete clients & more advanced kettlebell lifters.

Sport is multi-planar & in particular in the transverse plane so why not do your swings in the transverse plane? Sport also mostly happens on one leg rather than firmly grounded on two legs at all times & often requires quick movements of the feet before planting the legs & generating power. Why not do your swings combined with quick foot movement?

Enter the lateral swing. The lateral swing requires you to generate power more sharply, with a rotation of the hips (transverse plane), while shifting weight from leg to leg to propel the kettlebell side to side in the frontal plane. It’s a great way to train aspects of the golf swing – shifting weight, planting on the lead leg & rotating the hips to generate power.

The kettlebell uppercut is a multi-planar (sagittal & transverse) power generation to propel the kettlebell upwards & to the side of the body in a figure of “8″. Again it requires you to shift weight from leg to leg to make way for the kettlebell to come up through the midline before your hands guide it down on the side for another swing. It allows you to practice generating transverse forces as well as resisting excessive transverse & sagittal forces. The uppercut is great for martial arts, tennis & other swinging sports.

The walking swing variations allow you to practice generating force with the legs in a quick movement before shifting foot position before planting again before the kettlebell comes down so that you can stabilise the bell again before propelling it. Walking swings can be done with a forward/backwards movement, as well as side to side & pivoting/rotating. Although the power generation is straight sagittal plane it allows you to practice coordinating power generation & shifting foot position seamlessly. This is great for sports which require cutting & planting, i.e. all of them.

There you have three kettlebell swing variations which take your sporty clients out of the easy sagittal plane & into the transverse plane, where most athletic movements occur. They also allow your clients to train shifting weight & moving the feet which will result in improved agility on the sports field.

Try them out yourself & with your clients & let us know how it goes on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/kettlebellinstitute

Which is easier: swinging one kettlebell with one hand or with two? Two hands, obviously. So, when our client is too fatigued or just plain not strong enough to perform a single arm swing well we regress them to a two hand swing. Easy.

But what happens when our client doesn’t have the strength to press a kettlebell overhead single handed? Or when they don’t have the coordination to grasp a clean or snatch? Without the ability to do these movements with one hand alone makes it easy to throw the rack & overhead positions, along with the vertical power generation for a clean & snatch in the too hard basket, leaving them for “when the client is strong enough”. But you are throwing away too much potential training if you do.

Sure there are valid options such as using powerbags (one bag/two hands) to teach these positions & movements but if you don’t have access to powerbags you have options. Enter the One Kettlebell/Two Hands spectrum: two hand swing, clean, press, squat & snatch.

Two Hand Clean

The two hand clean comes from the two hand swing. The concept is the same: develop momentum with the hips, keep the arms close to the body to direct the bell upwards (not forwards as in the swing). The difference comes when you catch the kettlebell in the rack position. You need to let go of the handle briefly to catch the bell by the bulb, with your palms on the bulb & thumbs/index fingers around the horns.

Two Hand Rack

The two hand rack position still requires you to keep the arms in contact with the chest & therefore have the weight of the bell resting on your body rather than just in the hands.

Two Hand Squat

The two hand squat, or bulb squat, is a regression to the rack squat because it changes the load back to a symmetrical one yet still teaches the client to stay upright. It does have the added bonus of giving the client a depth cue: if their elbows reach the knees they have gone deep enough (providing they got there with a neutral spine). By keeping both elbows down in the one kettlebell/two hand position it also gives clients an idea if their knees have collapsed in at the bottom of the squat – they need to shove their knees outside of the elbows.

Two Hand Press/Overhead Lockout

The regression potential of the two hand press is obvious – it halves the weight each arm has to handle. The other big advantage is that it’s grooving proper kettlebell pressing mechanics, i.e. pressing through the midline. By having both hands under the same kettlebell which is travelling through the middle of the body it is easier to keep the elbows in front of the body & underneath the kettlebell. This avoids the “bodybuilder”/shoulder impingement style of pressing overhead.

Two Hand Snatch

The two hand snatch is a great way to prevent clients from doing a straight arm swing overhead rather than a snatch – a common mistake which results in sore forearms. This regression prevents the door-knocking aspect by requiring you to catch the bell with the thumbs in the same orientation that it came up in. It also prevents overgripping – another common problem in the snatch which results in sore forearms.

There you have it, regression options for all the major kettlebell exercises for when you come across a client who is just not strong enough for one kettlebell/one hand yet. But feel free to use them when a client has trouble with an aspect of any of those lifts as they are good teaching tools for the skills of the clean, squat, press & snatch.

Try them out yourself & with your clients & let us know how it goes on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/kettlebellinstitute

by AIK Presenter Boris Bojanovic

Kettlebell Squat Variations: Which one to use, when & why?

by Boris Bojanovic

The squat has long been called the king of exercises – with good reason. There’s nothing more functional than loading the legs to get them stronger. This makes the squat the most versatile exercise because it helps the full spectrum of your clients.

Your little old nanna client has trouble getting up off her seat without rocking back & forth to build up momentum or helping herself up with her arms. Solution: train the squat.

An 18 year old guy wants to put on weight but all he does is curls. What’s going to weigh more: his two biceps or the muscles loaded by the squat – the arms, shoulders, core, hips & legs? Solution: train the squat.

Your female client is looking to tone her backside & thighs. Training squats is a no-brainer.

Your athlete is looking to build power in their sprints, jumps, throws. hits & swings. Given that all athletic power comes from the legs & is transferred into the arms the solution is to train the squat.

Bodyweight

The bodyweight squat is the base upon which the kettlebell, depending on where it’s placed, modifies the difficulty by introducing a new element. The basics of the bodyweight squat are as follows.

Movements: hip, knee, ankle & back extension (not hyperextension)

Primary muscles used: quadriceps & glutes

Accessory muscles: hamstrings, back extensors, calves, core

Set-up: Feet at shoulder width, toes pointed slightly out

Movement: Begin by pushing the hips back & pushing the knees out to the sides to get down to full depth then keep the torso upright as you stand up fully with knees & hips straight

Points to remember:

• Keep your feet flat on the floor
• As you go down further, & especially as you start to move up, the knees want to collapse in so make sure to push the knees out so that the thighs track with the feet (i.e. pointing in the same direction)
• Keep the spine neutral, i.e. abdominals lightly braced, chest forward, head back, chin in

Troubleshooting:

Go as low as you can before leg strength gives out or the lower back starts to round. With the right hip mobility training most people should be able to reach the depth where the thigh is parallel to the floor.

Ankle dorsiflexion limitations such as tight calves or Achilles tendon can cause the feet to point out more, the arches to collapse in or your clients to lose balance before reaching depth. You can bypass this by putting small plates under their heels when squatting as a band-aid while you work to improve their ankle mobility.

With all that in mind let’s move on to the kettlebell variations.

Bulb Squat

The bulb squat is the most basic way to load the squat with a kettlebell because it’s one kettlebell in two hands, held in the centre of the body. The palms support the bulb with thumbs around the horns. The bulb squat adds further load to the muscles used in the bodyweight squat in addition to loading the shoulders & arms. The bulb squat is great for older clients & a good place to start with the rest of your clients before they move on to a rack squat.

Rack Squat

The rack squat builds on the bulb squat by asymmetrically loading the body. This means the will be more of a challenge to balance & core will have to work harder to resist rotation.