Kettlebell 24kg C+P Form Critique

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

Lay into me please.
This was my last rung on my heavy day 3x(1,2,3,4) 2x(1,2,3). I need to dial this in somehow. I feel like my first rep looks half decent because of the set up but the rest I can clearly see that I’m not hinging very well.
To be honest I just don’t know HOW to get deeper in the hinge... not sure if I should bend my knees more or what? Not sure if there are stretches that will help with my ham string mobility or keeping my upper back less rounded.
Much appreciation and thanks in advance everyone.

 

[Anna C]

Press looks good. Clean, yes hinge could be deeper -- how's your swing hinge? The simplest way to "find" a deeper hinge is practice standing in front of a wall and hinge your hips back until your butt touches the wall. Keep moving your feet out slightly until you can only just barely touch the wall reaching your hips back as far as you can. Then practice going in and out of that hinge. It might be more knee bend than you have, but not necessarily. Feel where the weight is on your feet, too... you want your feet rooted, and weight evenly spread, not on the toes.

I'd say put some focus on squaring up. In any position for the C&P -- set-up, initial hike, during the clean, kettlebell in the rack, initiating the press, during the press, top of the press, and all the way back down -- ideally your working shoulder and non-working shoulder should be squared up. Your working shoulder is significantly forward, in most of those. Same for hips, knees, feet. Try going through these motions with no kettlebell, and feel the difference.

These are technique enhancements, and may feel like corrections (and may need to practice with a lighter bell). What you're doing is still plenty effective, and no harm to it! But I think you'll find greater potential if you recalibrate the movement with these things in mind.

 

[Don Fairbanks]

Cleans look good to me, and I don't think you need to hinge any deeper since it looks like you can easily clean a 24.
On the press you could hold more tension in your non working side ( glutes,gut,grip ) and I would try one strong inhale on the hike and then exhale at the end of the press.

 

[Brett Jones]

You sit into a good hinge position in your setup and then "stand up" to the shallow position during the start of the first clean.
So you can sit into a different hinge position.
Power and Rhythm in the Kettlebell Swing | StrongFirst

There is a bit of casting of the KB from the rack into the next clean—try to have more of a "straight down" drop into the hinge.

RE: the press
Right arm appears to be elevating at the shoulder during the press but it looks like your left arm stays down and connected but it could be camera angle.
I think the right should look more like the left but again...could be camera angle.

 

[Ronzi]

Does your lower back get sore?

I was having the same issue of not knowing how to get a deeper hinge. I realized that my hinge was incomplete because I was stopping it short with my lower back, instead of letting my hamstrings being the "limiting factor", so to speak.

My cleans and snatches felt rushed, much like yours look. Have the patience and courage to let your hamstrings load all the way. A good way to do this is doing KB deadlifts. Really focus on loading your hamstrings on the way down. If you have a second 24 kg KB, try doing dead-stop double swings, too.

I'm a tall guy, and I found that having the patience to get a really good hinge seemed to slow down the clean for me. I didn't feel as rushed to try to hit all of the queue's during the movement. The end result is that I could stay tighter, and my lower back issues were gone.

I have nowhere near the experience as the veteran posters, it looks like we have/had the same issue.

 

[Mark Limbaga]

The clean is more of an upward projection of force..

For the drop, aim to keep the bell/s close to the body as long as possible and then only move the hood when you hand off the bells to your inseam..

This is a clean and push press but as noted by the awesome insights above, the press is not the concern at the moment. Hope this helps

 

[Steve Freides]

@IMayAgainKnowChris, great comments already. I'll be brief about what I see. These are the things that I would, were you my student, ask you to work on.

I try to apply my understanding of the rules for Beast Tamer / Iron Maiden pressing to every press I see. In that regard, you don't pause long enough in the rack position.

You clean with a twist. Try to move your elbow back and then bring it forward as you catch the bell, but (@Anna C mentions this, just in different words) don't do it with your entire body. When I was first learning the clean, the way I fixed this for myself was to practice double bell cleans, then single bell cleans, and trying to make the single bell clean look like the double version. You can make a drill out of this - two bells in front of you, do a few double cleans, then clean only one of them, then double cleans, then clean only the other one. If bell size is an issue, just set up a single bell and your double bells near each other and scoot to the other position to practice the singles.

-S-

 

[Anna C]

This thread is sort of like S&S -- all the points are excellent! But only some will resonate, at first. Different ones may resonate later.

So, focus on one or two that make sense and are actionable for you... Practice for a while... Then come back and re-visit the words again... re-read, pick some new points to practice. Different ones may make more sense and resonate at a different stage, and will further improve your practice.

Anyway, great work! Keep it up and let us know how it goes!

 

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

@IMayAgainKnowChris, great comments already. I'll be brief about what I see. These are the things that I would, were you my student, ask you to work on.

I try to apply my understanding of the rules for Beast Tamer / Iron Maiden pressing to every press I see. In that regard, you don't pause long enough in the rack position.

You clean with a twist. Try to move your elbow back and then bring it forward as you catch the bell, but (@Anna C mentions this, just in different words) don't do it with your entire body. When I was first learning the clean, the way I fixed this for myself was to practice double bell cleans, then single bell cleans, and trying to make the single bell clean look like the double version. You can make a drill out of this - two bells in front of you, do a few double cleans, then clean only one of them, then double cleans, then clean only the other one. If bell size is an issue, just set up a single bell and your double bells near each other and scoot to the other position to practice the singles.

-S-

I have doubles of the 24 and also 16’s. I definitely see how the double clean could help with squaring the shoulders up.

 

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Have some good ideas to work with.

 

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

Does your lower back get sore?

I was having the same issue of not knowing how to get a deeper hinge. I realized that my hinge was incomplete because I was stopping it short with my lower back, instead of letting my hamstrings being the "limiting factor", so to speak.

My cleans and snatches felt rushed, much like yours look. Have the patience and courage to let your hamstrings load all the way. A good way to do this is doing KB deadlifts. Really focus on loading your hamstrings on the way down. If you have a second 24 kg KB, try doing dead-stop double swings, too.

I'm a tall guy, and I found that having the patience to get a really good hinge seemed to slow down the clean for me. I didn't feel as rushed to try to hit all of the queue's during the movement. The end result is that I could stay tighter, and my lower back issues were gone.

I have nowhere near the experience as the veteran posters, it looks like we have/had the same issue.

My lower back does feel it for sure!

 

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

The clean is more of an upward projection of force..

For the drop, aim to keep the bell/s close to the body as long as possible and then only move the hood when you hand off the bells to your inseam..

This is a clean and push press but as noted by the awesome insights above, the press is not the concern at the moment. Hope this helps

Mark thanks so much. Very good view of the “drop” of the bell. Mine has way more of an arc to it. Thanks!

 

[barrak]

Mark thanks so much. Very good view of the “drop” of the bell. Mine has way more of an arc to it. Thanks!

You're getting some seriously pro tips, my friend. I'm piggybacking here and re-learning.

Sometimes we lose track of some of the important basics and it helps to brush up on them every now and then. I suggest you watch again Pavel's Enter the Kettlebell video with its many tips. I particularly benefited from his door frame drill to emphasize pushing yourself away from the overhead bell (instead of pushing up the bell) by using your entire body without any momentum... teaches full body bracing, toe to bell alignment, breathing behind the shield, packing the shoulder, seriously engaging the lats, and so on.

I also appreciated how he emphasizes learning the drop from the clean before learning the clean! The video is full of gems like that.

 

[IMayAgainKnowChris]

Assuming I can get my shoulders squared is this a sufficient angle for the hip hinge? I feel like I see people who SO much more of a bend forward and not any more of a knee bend than this.

 

[Don Fairbanks]

Assuming I can get my shoulders squared is this a sufficient angle for the hip hinge? I feel like I see people who SO much more of a bend forward and not any more of a knee bend than this.

This will vary from person to person and the weight used. I will bend a bit more jumping on a 30" box as apposed to an 18". For me, I like the jumping cue for the clean and other hinge movements.

 

[Anna C]

Assuming I can get my shoulders squared is this a sufficient angle for the hip hinge? I feel like I see people who SO much more of a bend forward and not any more of a knee bend than this.

I think it's probably about right, but I do think @Ronzi was onto something about being patient and really loading the hip hinge, feeling it in the hamstrings. Sometimes it's not about specific angles but more about tension and loading, finding that elastic tension... "coiling the spring" as @Al Ciampa says. When you use it well, the bell flies up to the rack -- your arms only have to guide it in for a smooth landing!

 

[barrak]

Assuming I can get my shoulders squared is this a sufficient angle for the hip hinge? I feel like I see people who SO much more of a bend forward and not any more of a knee bend than this.

Excellent collective point by @Ronzi , @Don Fairbanks and @Anna C regarding hinging and loading the hamstrings enough to avoid pulling with the shoulder during the clean. I can attest to its useful carryover to other hip-hinge movements.

Mastering this "coiling the spring" bit and driving my feet through the ground as I snap my hips allowed me to quickly progress in my sandbag clean-to-shoulder drill... I'm already past ballistically cleaning 65% of my bodyweight for reps. Should give me a good starting point to venture into the likes of Sinister and double kettlebell/barbell snatches... once the darned t-spine mobility is dialed in.

 

[LarryB]

Mastering this "coiling the spring" bit and driving my feet through the ground as I snap my hips allowed me to quickly progress in my sandbag clean-to-shoulder drill... I'm already past ballistically cleaning 65% of my bodyweight for reps. Should give me a good starting point to venture into the likes of Sinister and double kettlebell/barbell snatches... once the darned t-spine mobility is dialed in.

Awesome thread @IMayAgainKnowChris ! I’m still working on dialing in my clean form after developing golfers elbow (mostly from poor pull-up technique though). A few things that really helped me out are:
1. Re-reading s&s and etk (reading rotk first time too)
2. Drilling all of pavel’s entry level stuff; deadlift, deadstop, hike pass etc.
3. 2h swing (which i hadn’t done in a while) this is where i really found my “new” deep hinge. Drill the 2 hand swing more imo, underrated by people (myself included).
4) the cue to “clean with your hips” (chris and mike from kettlebell works and the breakthrough podcast). Thinking about your hips driving all of your swings, cleans and snatches has been making a difference for me as well.

I think doubles are a good idea too, it is where my training is headed as well. Just finished [reading] rotk and am very inspired to run it after 3 months of q&d.

 

[barrak]

Awesome thread! I’m still working on dialing in my clean form after developing golfers elbow (mostly from poor pull-up technique though). A few things that really helped me out are:
1. Re-reading s&s and etk (reading rotk first time too)
2. Drilling all of pavel’s entry level stuff; deadlift, deadstop, hike pass etc.
3. 2h swing (which i hadn’t done in a while) this is where i really found my “new” deep hinge. Drill the 2 hand swing more imo, underrated by people (myself included).
4) the cue to “clean with your hips” (chris and mike from kettlebell works and the breakthrough podcast). Thinking about your hips driving all of your swings, cleans and snatches has been making a difference for me as well.

I think doubles are a good idea too, it is where my training is headed as well. Just finished rotk and am very inspired to run it after 3 months of q&d.

Since you've been through ROTK already, have a look at ETK Plus... alternating days of ballistics and grinds with plenty of variability, though at the cost of simplicity.

 

[LarryB]

Since you've been through ROTK already, have a look at ETK Plus... alternating days of ballistics and grinds with plenty of variability, though at the cost of simplicity.

I’ve only ever done s&s, etk and now I’m in the midst of q&d. Never properly trained doubles so I’m drilling the moves on off days. Also working with offset bells but it’s not bad. Rotk is the natural next step probably. Just tried the long cycle for a bit today, it was fun. There will likely be form check posts coming in the following weeks.