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Kettlebell Swing technique critique (knee movement and other stuff)

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Bauer

Bauer

Level 8 Valued Member
Hi there!

I am new to S&S and have some issues with my swing technique. I've read a lot of stuff (mainly from Pavel and this forum) and watched a couple of videos (like Delaine Ross' tutorials) and I try to incorporate all of the helpful cues. My technique has already gotten a lot better. Yet a couple of issues remain.

Here is a video of a mediocre set with a 16 kg KB:
https://goo.gl/photos/tDgS2eVcuwTnDnUC7

And some stills from the same set
KB-Swing-16kg-170403.JPG
Stills 1-3: My downswing phase seems ok to me (plank and hike). Maybe hinge a little later?
Still 4: This is my main issue: My knees move forward for a millisecond when I initiate the upswing with my hips.
Still 5: On some reps I seem to lean back from the hips, arching my back.

I have tried a couple of different clues but I just can't stop the knee movement in the upswing.

What are your observations? Do you have any suggestions for me?

Thank you :)
 
Bauer said:
Hi there!

I am new to S&S and have some issues with my swing technique. I've read a lot of stuff (mainly from Pavel and this forum) and watched a couple of videos (like Delaine Ross' tutorials) and I try to incorporate all of the helpful cues. My technique has already gotten a lot better. Yet a couple of issues remain.

Here is a video of a mediocre set with a 16 kg KB:
https://goo.gl/photos/tDgS2eVcuwTnDnUC7

And some stills from the same set
View attachment 2651
Stills 1-3: My downswing phase seems ok to me (plank and hike). Maybe hinge a little later?
Still 4: This is my main issue: My knees move forward for a millisecond when I initiate the upswing with my hips.
Still 5: On some reps I seem to lean back from the hips, arching my back.

I have tried a couple of different clues but I just can't stop the knee movement in the upswing.

What are your observations? Do you have any suggestions for me?

Thank you :)
Click to expand...

Just a beginner here myself, but I see the following points because I was doing them myself:
  • Go deeper into the hinge and stay there longer. You are coming out too early from the hinge. Noticeable by the bell swinging/flapping when you change direction.
  • Stay longer in the top plank. Initiate the hip hinge when your arms reconnect with your torso.
And welcome to the forum, @Bauer !
 
what @ Tobias Wissmueller said

Go deeper in the hinge, and steal a look at the shins every couple swings to make sure they stay up and down. Your knees are popping forward on the upswing which is another no-no but also likely aggravated by the shallow hinge.

As you go try to remind yourself to push the tuckus back. As long as the KB is still moving the backside should be moving as well.

Overall better than many you will see at the gym!
 
Hello,

@Bauer
Welcome to StrongFirst !

You can try to go deeper on the hip hinge and then throw it forward by exhaling. Even if I perfectly admit this is not necessarily easy, try no to lean backback too much.

Here is the swing standard if it can help you:


Keep swinging !

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
Bauer,
check this article:
The Perfect Kettlebell Swing: Is There Such a Thing?

You can bend your knees into a deeper hinge - shoulder above hip - hip above knee position.
I'd like to see a video of your KB deadlift.

You are leaning back at the top of the swing quite a bit - think tall and finish with projecting you energy forward from a stable base (not leaning back or getting pulled forward)
 
@Bauer
You have a few things going here, but the most significant is to get your hinge dialed in better.

Your hinge is very shallow, and your hip movement is not coordinated with your shoulders. That is, your hips don't move back very far, and they stop moving back while your torso continues to fold forward. This sets you up for the knee scooping, bell flipping, back bending and other problems that you and other posters have observed.

First two things to try in repatterning your hinge:

--Touch the wall drill. Stand with your back to a wall, about a foot or so away. Reach back with your butt and try to touch the wall. Move a little bit further from the wall and sit back again. Try to move as far as possible from the wall and still be able to touch it without losing your balance.

This will pattern sitting back into the hinge, rather than squatting down (dropping your hips straight down instead of reaching back), and set you up for practicing the deadlift by putting the focus on moving your hips back, rather than folding your torso forward (your torso WILL fold forward to counterbalance your hips, but the attentional focus is on reaching the hips back, with the shoulders coming forward as a consequence).

--Lots of deadlifts. Start with the bell between your heels. Sit back just like in the touch the wall drill so that you are reaching straight down to the bell. Keep your weight evenly balanced over your feet, or a little toward your heels. Keep your shins close to vertical.

As you stand up with the bell, hips and shoulders should come up together and finish at the same time. Hips and knees should extend and lock out together. As you lower the bell, reverse this motion the same way: Hips should move back as the shoulders come forward (let the knees take care of themselves). Don't try to sit back, THEN fold forward.

To facilitate this, just focus on lowering the bell straight down between your heels.Focusing on where the bell is going tends to force your body to go where it should more effectively than focusing on your body position. Is may feel awkward or difficult to get the bell to go straight up and down between you heels -- it will want to drift forward toward your toes, or you will try to squat instead of hinge. Just be patient and keep working at it until you start to get it grooved.

Experiment with allowing the bell to rest on the floor between reps, touch and go reps, and "hover" reps where you pause at the bottom without quite touching the bell to the floor.

Although you may be reluctant to back off doing full ballistic swings, the repatterning effort will pay off. You can't think your way through a ballistic movement. Get your hinge patterned first and you will have a solid foundation to rebuild your swing.

I've been swinging kettlebells for over a decade and a half, but due to a recent surgery I had to go through a period where I could do KB deadlifts, but not swings. Even with my experience, I still learned a few subtle things about my hinge that have carried over into my swings, so I'd recommend revisiting the KB deadlift to anyone, regardless of experience.

Hope this helps.
 
Next time you try swinging, just focus on 2 details from all the info provided. Fix 2 details per session, otherwise you may get confused and frustrated.
Keep up the good job!
Get an appointment with a certified local instructor too.
 
Wow, you guys are awesome! Thank you for the warm welcome and for taking the time to write up all that advice.

That's a lot of great info. As @Gronk87 says, I'll try to incorporate a little here and there.

For tomorrow I plan to focus on the following cues
* New deadlift cue: Let the bell go straight down between the heels (I've been doing them more like a straight leg DL)
* New swing cues: Let the bell complete the movement --> hinge deeper + micropause at the end of the backswing.

I'll let you know if it helped.

PS: @Steve W. I should probably revisit Dan John's tips in Intervention on grinding the hinge pattern :)
 
Flexing the abs hard at the top plank just a little early keeps me from leaning back. It's the first cue I loose when fatigue sets in. Honestly, I don't find "plank" a helpful cue at the top, it makes my arms tight, and gives me way too much to think about. I usually just focus on kneecaps up and doing an ab "curl" to stop my momentum from carrying me backwards. I have to fire the abs before vertical or it doesn't work in time. Better to stop too early than too late to keep that back safe.
 
@Bauer : Welcome to the forum :)
Try to sit back a bit more in the hinge, from what I can see from your pictures is that you bend the opper body, instead of hinging. As @Steve W. said, try to touch a wall with your butt as you hinge. Drive the upward movement from the glutes, contracting them strongly.
Keep practicing, you will get there. Oh yes, and try to find an SFG instructor.
 
Hi there
based on your feedback I've started to repattern my hinge.

Here is a video of a practice set with slow deadlifts (@Brett Jones) and dead-stop swings (starting at 00:45):
https://goo.gl/photos/XrZMo14Mqe2rbsxS9

I did about 10 of those sets, looking for loaded hamstrings. I also did hinges against a wall, as suggested by @Steve W.

Do you think I am headed in the right direction?

I'll probably have to hinge even deeper when swinging back. Working on the hinge pattern I feel that I have lost sight of some other cues (bracing the abs etc.).

Meanwhile I am looking for Kettlebell instructors. Unfortunately there are no SFG instructors nearby my city in northern Germany. I have contacted some RKC guys, though, hoping they'll host weekend seminars in cities that are within reach.
 
@Bauer
Much better. Keep on drilling it until you have it grooved.

Personally I don't like the dead stop swing, even though it seems to be an SFG thing to use it in the teaching sequence.

Two common and related problems people have on the down/back swing are breaking the hips too early with the bell too far out in front, and letting the bell drop too low between the knees, instead of higher in the triangle between the groin and the knees. IMO, the dead stop swing makes it hard to avoid these problems because you HAVE to start with the bell out in front and low on the floor with your hips already fully hinged.

I think a good down swing is a big key to a good swing. If the the down swing is good, most of the time the rest of the swing will fall into place. IMO, the dead stop swing is counterproductive in teaching a good down swing, and therefore is not a great drill for people learning to swing.
 
Steve W. said:
@Bauer
Much better. Keep on drilling it until you have it grooved.

Personally I don't like the dead stop swing, even though it seems to be an SFG thing to use it in the teaching sequence.

Two common and related problems people have on the down/back swing are breaking the hips too early with the bell too far out in front, and letting the bell drop too low between the knees, instead of higher in the triangle between the groin and the knees. IMO, the dead stop swing makes it hard to avoid these problems because you HAVE to start with the bell out in front and low on the floor with your hips already fully hinged.

I think a good down swing is a big key to a good swing. If the the down swing is good, most of the time the rest of the swing will fall into place. IMO, the dead stop swing is counterproductive in teaching a good down swing, and therefore is not a great drill for people learning to swing.
Click to expand...
This is all so true. I struggle with dead-stop swings for that very reason, especially now that I'm working on one-arm 32kg swings.

I am also learning with these heavier swings that I have to be so much more intentional about guiding the bell back where I want it to go in the down-swing; if I don't, I get yanked down and then my back is compromised. I didn't notice it as much with two-arm swings, but certainly with one-arm.

@Bauer, I struggled with the same patterns when I started (also with 16kg like you). The four-count method in another video by @Pavel Macek is really good. "Play chicken" with the bell on the downswing and really sit back in the hinge ("load up the bowstring") to initiate the upswing.
 
@Sean M Thank you Sean. Lots of positive comments to the video, I am glad it is useful.
 
Tobias Wissmueller said:
Just a beginner here myself, but I see the following points because I was doing them myself:
  • Go deeper into the hinge and stay there longer. You are coming out too early from the hinge. Noticeable by the bell swinging/flapping when you change direction.
  • Stay longer in the top plank. Initiate the hip hinge when your arms reconnect with your torso.
And welcome to the forum, @Bauer !
Click to expand...
Is that what causes the bell to flap at the bottom of the swing? I notice my wife doing that occasionally and haven't figured out why. I've kept @Brett Jones article in mind about the perfect swing and how it varies from person to person. Mostly I seem to remember it saying "hips above knees, shoulders above hips" as being the only ground rules that everyone should follow to the letter. This bell flapping at the bottom of some of her swings has been bugging me with how to fix it, but I've pretty much left it alone. Looking at her from the side she definitely goes deeper in the swing than @Bauer. Sometimes I ask her to correct one thing and it messes up two other things, so I leave it alone.

One thing I noticed about @Bauer is he seems to really be trying to yank the bell on the upswing, rather than driving it forward and using the arms as loose ropes to guide it. When I do that my knees bend and my shoulders go way past vertical in the top plank position. I say this and yet I can't remember the last time I video'd myself, lol.
 
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