This weekend see’s the Irish National Kettlebell Sports Championships taking place in Meath.
I’ve two from my Kettleheads GS Team taking part. I was meant to be taking part too, but if you read regularly, you’ll be well aware of my recent injury.
But enough about me, lets talk Kettlebells.
There is Hard Style Kettlebell Training.
There is Kettlebell Sport
And there’s everything else.
Look around the internet and you’ll see die hard followers of Hard Style vigorously defending their system as the best thing ever. You’ll find a similar attitude from many in the kettlebell sport world.
And then there’s a smaller number who are a bit more open minded.
But I’ve got to hand it to the Hard Style lads, they are right in their opinion that the Swing is one of the best conditioning exercises one can perform. In fact, if you only ever used a kettlebell for swings and nothing else, you’ll not be doing the tool a disservice.
And at Wg-Fit, we do a LOT of swings.
Few exercises will hit so many common weak areas in a persons armour as the humble swing.
And by that I mean: Stretch loading the hamstrings Grooving a good hip hinge Dynamic core strength, particularly with the one hand swing Scapula control Grip endurance and of course, cardio.
One of the reasons the 1 arm swing is such a top core training drill is that it adds a rotational element to the movement.
As the bell travels down and back through the legs, your upper back will turn to allow the arm to come in towards the midline. If you don’t rotate the bell will either slam into your leg (done that, it aint fun!) or you’ll dramatically shorten your back swing.
As you progress in skill and strength, you’ll gradually be able to turn the upper back more and more, swinging the free arm behind you and really loading up the posterior chain and what is known as the glute to opposite latissimus sling.
This gets even better if you use a staggered stance with your swing.
You get to load up two of the biggest muscles in the body, stretch loading them and then having them both powerfully contract to throw the kettlebell back outwards.
I’ll admit not everyone is ready for this, but then not everyone is ready for one arm swings of any sort. You must go through all the prerequisite stages building strength and skill along the way before jumping into staggered stance, one arm swings with a deep back swing. But once you get there, prepare to see your potential for force production skyrocket.
I’ve put together the Ultimate Guide to the Kettlebell Swing, which is free 26 page PDF download.
Get your copy by clicking on the image below and following the instructions:
Regards
Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com
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