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Kettlebell Form check: KB cleans

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wanderingjames

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Hi, hope everyone is doing well. I'm requesting for some feedback on my form. As always, I appreciate all your input. Thanks!

 
@wanderingjames are you trying to do dead stop cleans, or ballistic cleans? What you're doing is somewhere in between, IMO.

Basically it's fine, but let us know what you're going for and we can probably help you dial it in a little better.

I've got some different clean variations in this video.

And here's a really neat teaching method I saw this week:

 
That's a hang style clean, which is a legitimate style, but unusual with KBs. We usually do swing style cleans, hiking the bell back between the legs between reps. That way, the clean becomes more purely hip driven -- you launch the bell with the drive from the hips and then get your elbow under it to catch it in the rack, without pulling with your arms.

Overall it looks pretty solid -- your hinge position is good.

Three main things I notice:
--Drive the bell up with your hips more than pulling with your arm. Think about keeping your arm locked DOWN to your torso as you extend the hips and only let your arm bend as your hips extend and the bell starts to float up from the hip drive

--On the drop, it looks like you are keeping tension in your arm to resist the fall of the bell and brake its momentum. It can be hard on the elbow when your bent arm is partially tense and then gets pulled straight by the force of the bell. Drop the bell without tension in the elbow and absorb the force of the drop with your hips. Keep your upper arm pinned down to your torso to help transfer the force of the bell to the hips. Especially with heavier bells, it helps to lean back away from the bells as you drop them straight down out of the rack instead of standing vertically and dropping the bells forward.

--When you catch the bells in the rack, it looks like you have a little bell flopping where the bell flies up over the hand and then flops down on the wrist, especially on your left side. You don't want the bells to get above your hand and actually turn over at the top. Keep the bell below the hand on the catch. Your hand goes from on top of the handle to underneath the handle, but the body of the bell stays lower than the hand without turning over. Imagine (or actually do it) lowering the bell slowly from the rack using your other hand to assist. Notice how your are not turning the bell over, but just rotating the bell so your hand goes from under the handle to on top of the handle. Now apply that same motion to your catch.

I have not used the progression that @Anna C posted above. It looks basically okay to me, but I try never have the bell even get to that horizonal orientation where the bottom of the bell is facing forward, so I'm not sure I would deliberately practice this. And I focus on keeping the arm locked down to the torso longer before pulling the elbows back. I'm never really pulling the bell back with my elbows at all (or at least trying not to). I'm driving bells to rack height with my hip drive and then just pulling my elbows back while the bells are floating to get underneath the handles for the catch.
 
@wanderingjames are you trying to do dead stop cleans, or ballistic cleans? What you're doing is somewhere in between, IMO.

Basically it's fine, but let us know what you're going for and we can probably help you dial it in a little better.

I've got some different clean variations in this video.

And here's a really neat teaching method I saw this week:



I also saw this post this week. I concentrated on the "pull the elbow behind the shoulder" tip yesterday and it really improved my form.

I'm currently doing Neupert's Dry Fighting Weight that has a lot of double cleans. I did like 50 of the yesterday...
 
@wanderingjames are you trying to do dead stop cleans, or ballistic cleans? What you're doing is somewhere in between, IMO.

Basically it's fine, but let us know what you're going for and we can probably help you dial it in a little better.

I've got some different clean variations in this video.

And here's a really neat teaching method I saw this week:


Oh I see, I'm doing my cleans as a prerequisite for the overhead press. Thanks for the video on the variations.
 
That's a hang style clean, which is a legitimate style, but unusual with KBs. We usually do swing style cleans, hiking the bell back between the legs between reps. That way, the clean becomes more purely hip driven -- you launch the bell with the drive from the hips and then get your elbow under it to catch it in the rack, without pulling with your arms.

Overall it looks pretty solid -- your hinge position is good.

Three main things I notice:
--Drive the bell up with your hips more than pulling with your arm. Think about keeping your arm locked DOWN to your torso as you extend the hips and only let your arm bend as your hips extend and the bell starts to float up from the hip drive

--On the drop, it looks like you are keeping tension in your arm to resist the fall of the bell and brake its momentum. It can be hard on the elbow when your bent arm is partially tense and then gets pulled straight by the force of the bell. Drop the bell without tension in the elbow and absorb the force of the drop with your hips. Keep your upper arm pinned down to your torso to help transfer the force of the bell to the hips. Especially with heavier bells, it helps to lean back away from the bells as you drop them straight down out of the rack instead of standing vertically and dropping the bells forward.

--When you catch the bells in the rack, it looks like you have a little bell flopping where the bell flies up over the hand and then flops down on the wrist, especially on your left side. You don't want the bells to get above your hand and actually turn over at the top. Keep the bell below the hand on the catch. Your hand goes from on top of the handle to underneath the handle, but the body of the bell stays lower than the hand without turning over. Imagine (or actually do it) lowering the bell slowly from the rack using your other hand to assist. Notice how your are not turning the bell over, but just rotating the bell so your hand goes from under the handle to on top of the handle. Now apply that same motion to your catch.

I have not used the progression that @Anna C posted above. It looks basically okay to me, but I try never have the bell even get to that horizonal orientation where the bottom of the bell is facing forward, so I'm not sure I would deliberately practice this. And I focus on keeping the arm locked down to the torso longer before pulling the elbows back. I'm never really pulling the bell back with my elbows at all (or at least trying not to). I'm driving bells to rack height with my hip drive and then just pulling my elbows back while the bells are floating to get underneath the handles for the catch.
Got it. I was trying to do cleans like a deadlift in mind with a shoulder shrug to rack the bell. On the drop, when you say lean back away, do you mean tilting back one side of the shoulder where the bell is placed or do I slightly hyperextend to disconnect from the bell?
 
On the drop, when you say lean back away, do you mean tilting back one side of the shoulder where the bell is placed or do I slightly hyperextend to disconnect from the bell?
I think of it as pushing myself away from the bells to initiate the drop. I would not recommend twisting to one side (I always do double cleans anyway as a standalone exercise, and single cleans only to get the bell in the rack as part of another single bell drill like a military press or clean and press).

I also would not recommend hyperextending the spine much (and you don't want the spine hyperextended under load as you absorb the force of the drop). It's more a slight bend of the knees that lets your torso lean back away from the bells.
 
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