After the trio of Stuart McGill, Dan John, and Ramsey Dewey all recommended kettlebells in quick succession, I made up my mind to finally get some and see what they were all about.
Unfortunately, I finally made up my mind on this after the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Thus, when I went looking for kettlebells, none were to be found. Literally everywhere was sold out due to gym-goers who stocked up when their membership gyms shut down.
Fast forward almost two months of checking websites daily, and waiting patiently for in-stock email notifications to arrive, and both Rogue Fitness and Vulcan Strength got a new shipment in within a few days of each other. Between the two companies, and in spite of absolutely absurd load on their websites once the news of their restock made the rounds, I was able to assemble a set of 4 kettlebells: 12, 16, 20, and 24kg.
They all ended up arriving on the same day, a few days ago—sorry UPS delivery guy!—but it wasn’t until tonight that my lifting schedule gave me a good opportunity to try them out.
I started my first kettlebell workout light, with the 12kg and 16kg bells, and followed the warmup and learning routine in Kettlebell Simple & Sinister. Only ended up doing 5 sets of 10 swings after the warmup and learning drills, but that’s all right. Today is technically a rest day for me, and I’m more than happy to start off light, learn proper form, and minimize the risk of injury.
My verdict so far?
The kettlebell swing is a really curious exercise. There’s less knee movement than on the deadlift, and a correspondingly greater emphasis on the glutes and the core (for maintaining stability). The end result is that the KB swing isn’t nearly as much of a traditional “leg” workout as I was expecting.
Beyond that, the dynamic and repeated nature of the movement presents a different challenge than traditional barbell lifts, where the struggle is to merely keep the bar moving (when it’s natural tendency is to stop). With the KB swing, the bell has a definite tendency to keep moving on its own—inertia! who knew?—and the challenge is to “keep up” with the timing of the swing’s natural frequency. Where you’re trying hard to “keep up” in terms of your breathing, core stamina, and glute activation timing.
Finally, the KB swing presents an additional challenge absent from most barbell exercises: ending the set. With a barbell, ending your set is perhaps the easiest part. You just put the weight down. With the KB swing, though, you and the swinging KB form a resonant system with significant stored energy, and so you have to prepare for and properly time your move to set the KB down in order to both diffuse some of that stored energy, as well as to ensure your own stability during the transition. It’s the first exercise I’ve seen where how you put the weight down at the end of the set is one of the hard parts!