Kettlebell Swings 101

Swing

The swing is an excellent worker of the posterior chain, in addition to the muscles of your forearm and grip, and the tendons from everything in your biceps to your knees. Because the movement is based on dynamic hip extension done explosively, it has application to all sorts of other movements, from helping your ability to bridge off the ground to increasing your squat, power clean, or even your deadlift!

Starting the Swing

As I stated before, the swing is hip centric–your hips POWER the movements. Your arms and shoulders are NOT pulling the weight up: it is the explosion of your hips.

Starting position

Stand with feet at shoulder width or a bit wider. The wider your legs go, the more of the work your legs do and the less work your hips do. The problem with this is that your legs move through knee extension, which is mainly up and down. Your hips allow forward explosion, which is exactly what you want. Your toes should be pointed out slightly; 30 degrees is great, 45 is probably the max you’d want to go (because of how your femurs pivot in your pelvis, the wider your feet go, the more external rotation they want to perform). The kettlebell should be sitting between your feet. Your arms are loose and by your sides.

Sit Down

Now, to initiate the movement, push your hips BACK. You are not squatting down, you are squatting back. The angle of your knees will decrease somewhat, but it will mostly be your hip angle that decreases. Think of sitting back in a chair–pretend a rope is tied around your hips and pulling you back. That’s the starting movement: you will end in a half-squat position.

Reach down to your kettlebell with both hands and grip the top of the handle. Keeping a TIGHT lower back and abs, you are going to swing the kettlebell back between your legs. This initial movement requires you to use some muscle of your lats and arms to bring it back between your legs, but your arms remain LOOSE and STRAIGHT. They should be loose this whole time, like spaghetti al dente.

Explode

In the middle of this slow motion explanation, the kettlebell is now off the ground, back between your legs; you are in a half squat position, your hips BACK; your arms are loose and your back and abs are TIGHT. Good. Even though I explain things in slow motion, the next bit must be done explosively. You are going to extend your hips FULLY–so that your body is now STRAIGHT up. However, the explosion from your hips is going to send your limp arms (which are gripping the kettlebell TIGHTLY) forward, and the kettlebell to eye-level. It may take a swing or two to get it to eye level when you get it started, but you’ll get there. Focus on punching your hips up and out.

Lowering the bell must be a CONTROLLED movement. You are not tightening everything on the way down–you do not want to slow the movement down–but your hips are going to go back in the same motion (sitting down in a chair BEHIND you), your knees will bend to aid in smoothing the movement, and your abs and butt will be tight to brace and protect. Your arms are STILL loose, and you allow the bell to swing back between your legs, and then you repeat the movement–exploding up with the hips.

Safety Points

Some things you should know:

• Do not twist your neck. Keep it in a neutral spine alignment. You do not need to stay looking forward, as some people exaggerate this and aggravate their neck/cervical vertebrae. Your spine has a natural curve to it–a neutral head position means that when you bend down, you look down as is natural. You are not looking down at your toes, but do not be afraid of looking toward the floor as the swing goes backward.
• Your knees need to track your toes. What this means is that with your feet angled out 30 degrees, your knees should not point forward when bent–they need to point in the same direction as your toes. Some lack strong hip development for this, but a good primer is to practice the squatting motion while thinking “KNEES OUT”. Feel like your feet are trying to screw your body into the ground, prying your hips open. Spread those legs.
• You should not be muscling this up with your shoulders. Regarding of how you feel about front shoulder raises, you are messing with the point of the swing if you are muscling it with your shoulders. It is a SWING. When you played on a swingset as a kid, how did you swing? If you answered “with my delts”, please hand in your brain and report to processing. You did it with momentum, and that’s what you use here: momentum GENERATED by your hips

And that sir, is the basics of how to do a kettlebell swing.