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Kettlebell Teaching the hinge as internal rotation?

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Dorian

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As many instructors I have regularly come across the well-known problem of outward knees on the downswing (making it more squat-like, even if people seem to hinge correctly), very often accompanied with people also sitting on the outsides of their feet. One way of dealing with this has been to teach the concept of looking at the hinge (KBS & DL) as a movement based on internal rotation. This idea is originally posed by Julien Pineau of StrongFit.

It sounds a bit abstract perhaps, but if you translate it into a practical cue of 'imagining a line from the top of your big toe to the inside of your heel and sitting back along these 2 lines in the backswing', it very often fixes the problem.

Although it is currently not taught as such on certs or courses, I have found it a very interesting take on coaching both the KBS as the DL (and its variations) – by explicitly working on this concept - and have had success with it to teach people proper powerful hip movement and preventing that outward movement at both knees and feet.

Any thoughts, comments or other people with the same experience?
 
Honestly, I haven't seen this problem very often, and mostly in people who have read or been coached to "push the knees out" when squatting and have fixated on that cue to an excessive degree, and/or who have been indoctrinated with the idea that they should be using a strictly parallel stance.

More often, good alignment gets establised through lots of time with various patterning drills, KB DLs, and goat belly swings, and refined through adjustments in stance width and foot turnout.

If the cue you mention works for you, then great, but I'm not sure how it relates to internal rotation, and personally I find it confusing.
 
^ Wider stance/knees out recruits more glute.

Honestly I find I often have to throw all manner of cues at people to get a proper swing hinge sometimes.
 
Dorian
Do you have video of the "knees out" or movement you are trying to coach people out of vs. the internal rotation movement you are liking?
 
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Perhaps I should have explained myself better, i.e. really highlight the concept of the hinge movement as IR (internal rotation) - more so than losing focus on the cues or visuals. The reason that I mentioned the sitting on the outsides of the feet and the accompanying knees going out is that this is what triggered my thinking (I have no video currently at my disposal though. I will sort this out.)

First and foremost, it is all about the idea of looking at the hinge as an internal rotation at the hips - as if you would screw your legs into the ground with the heel 'turning' outward (again, I say this purely for making a rather abstract idea more practical, not to get lost in semantics). It is not about the cues.
It is rather another idea so as to not only look at the hinge as 'sit back/fold/bend/...at the hips'. This is my main point.

If I understand the concept of ‘making space in the hips’ in the squat correctly (as explained by senior SFG Jason Marshall in a video), the squat would be external rotation/ER - whereby the hinge as IR could be seen as the ‘antagonist’ of the squat.

When people
have read or been coached to "push the knees out" when squatting and have fixated on that cue to an excessive degree, and/or who have been indoctrinated with the idea that they should be using a strictly parallel stance.
, I would argue they have indeed been conditioned to externally rotate (squat) and apply this to all their lower body movements, even when they hinge. Thus, working on the IR idea to teach the hinge.

Which lastly brings me to
I pull with knees out, due to my Olympic Weightlifting background. Knees out is safer for the knees, and helps recruit more glutes.
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The 1st pull in olympic lifts would be a squat (ER), indeed recruiting more glutes as you squat the weight up. Once the bar passes the knees it becomes a hinge (IR) at the hips , to go into triple extension.

It doesn't make sense to just discard this idea because it is confusing at first sight
 
@Dorian

First and foremost, it is all about the idea of looking at the hinge as an internal rotation at the hips - as if you would screw your legs into the ground with the heel 'turning' outward (again, I say this purely for making a rather abstract idea more practical, not to get lost in semantics). It is not about the cues.

I can appreciate your logic and where you are coming from, although I respectfully disagree with you on "it is not about the cues."

I personally prefer external cues to internal as I find them the most effective in getting the student to "feel" where I want them to be. Great example of an external cue is the "face the wall" squat. Don't slam face into wall = hip hinge back into squat pattern.

Coaching IMO needs to be simplified as much as possible for the student. 99% of them could care less about the anatomy, and rather "don't make me look or feel stupid while I'm learning this stuff."

As many instructors I have regularly come across the well-known problem of outward knees on the downswing

This is a foot issue first, then a hip issue second. Training and strengthening weak feet will correct the rolling onto the outside of the foot and thus assist in correcting patterns up the chain.

All the best to you and your practice.
 
Hi Dorian,

This makes a lot of sense for me personally. I'm not SFG or certified in anything, I'm just a guy who likes working out. But one of my issues for years has been a finicky right hip. At times swings seemed to help, at other times swings made it worse. For a while I was focusing a lot on the ER approach in the bottom of the swing. Things would get tight in that hip, and opening the hip up at that point logically made sense (as it works well in the prying goblet squat).

However, that approach led to more problems with my hip, and I ultimately took many months off from all form of hinging as I could not get it right. During those months I spent a lot of time running, and for some reason that was making my hip feel great. Particularly running up hills or doing hard tempo runs. It got me thinking about how my hips were moving in the run v. the swing, and it led me to think of the bottom of the swing as a more internally rotated set up. I didn't have the words to describe what I was even doing until I read your post. But I'm now almost a month back to swinging and my hip is feeling more free than at any other time in the past. So thank you.
 
@Dorian

This is a foot issue first, then a hip issue second. Training and strengthening weak feet will correct the rolling onto the outside of the foot and thus assist in correcting patterns up the chain.

@natewhite39 A little off topic; could you point me to some weak feet exercises? As somebody who has always had a problem walking on the outside edge of my feet and slightly turned out I'd love to add a few moves to my toolkit.
 
Not natewhite39, but I thought I'd chime in with an exercise I've been doing as part of my warmups. As he mentioned above, the feet have a huge impact on the hips, and not surprisingly the troubled right hip I mentioned in my previous post is connected to a foot that doesn't do it's job quite as well as the other foot.

This article has a broad overview of feet and strengthening them, and the passover drill at the end has helped me a little bit, and I anticipate it will keep helping me over more time.

Strengthen Your Ankles & Feet To Improve Performance & Prevent Injuries

I'm very curious to hear what other thoughts Nate has on this.
 
@pronounjim Of course, to begin very simply I would recommend training with shoes off in bare feet. Just having that connection alone to the ground will be huge in developing your feet for everyday training.

If bare feet is just too uncomfortable then try a pair of zero drop flat soled shoes such as Chuck Taylor's or Vibram Five Fingers.
 
@natewhite39

I understand your interpretation of me saying "It is not about the cues.". However, that is besides the point of this thread (Why don't we look at the hinge as a movement based on internal rotation?).
"It is not about the cues" is a sentence of me saying that focus should be directed towards a discussion on the idea of hinge =IR, squat = ER - and not on the semantics of thecues in the way previous reactions by Steve W, Geoof Chafe and North Coast Miller did. The last part
It is rather another idea so as to not only look at the hinge as 'sit back/fold/bend/...at the hips'. This is my main point.
was sadly missed. So, yes, this discussion is not one about cueing.

So far @brian d had some input on the question at hand.
It got me thinking about how my hips were moving in the run v. the swing, and it led me to think of the bottom of the swing as a more internally rotated set up.

Perhaps a video of Julien Pineau himself can help,

Again, if I can understand the concept of ‘making space in the hips’ in the squat correctly (as explained by senior SFG Jason Marshall in this video), the squat would be external rotation/ER.


Consequently, than what is the hinge? Internal rotation/IR, no? I'm merely drawing parallels here, asking if these are correct.
 
"It is not about the cues" is a sentence of me saying that focus should be directed towards a discussion on the idea of hinge =IR, squat = ER - and not on the semantics of thecues in the way previous reactions by Steve W, Geoof Chafe and North Coast Miller did.

That's what I WAS addressing. My points are:
--I don't see the problem you are trying to address, so I don't see the need for a solution.
--I don't agree that thinking about internal or external rotation in understanding or (especially) coaching the squat or hinge is useful.
--I think you are creating a false dichotomy between the hinge and the squat. I see them as variants of the same pattern (coordinated hip, knee and ankle flexion and extension), not "opposites." Calling the squat and hinge opposites and asserting that external rotation is an essential quality of the squat seems to be your basis for concluding that internal rotation is an essential quality of the hinge. My take is that this isn't logically sound and would make no practical difference if it were.

Some additional comments, based on the videos:
--The "making space" video above does not address internal OR external rotation. It illustrates the cue of "pulling the hips out of the sockets" (a visualization, not a literal instruction). At no point does he mention or demonstrate rotation of the pvc pipes he is using to represent the femurs.
--I admittedly did not watch through the whole Pineau video. But I did see the part where he cites Kelly Starrett's prescription of squatting with parallel feet, one I strongly disagree with. And he cites the rationale that sprinters do not run with their toes out (although he asserts that sprinting is more of a hinge than a squat anyway). However, I have often observed both elite sprinters and (American) football players sprinting with a large degree of turnout. So, if these are the kinds of premises he is starting from, I don't have a lot of confidence in anything he might conclude.

I was going to refrain from responding further to this thread, but I guess I'm not as mature as I pretend to be. Again, if you are getting good results from your students based on this model, then I sincerely think that is a good thing. But I don't buy it and can't offer any validation of it. If you still think that's because I just don't understand what you're saying...I guess I can live with that.
 
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@Dorian

--I don't see the problem you are trying to address, so I don't see the need for a solution.

I agree with Steve here so my apologies for not following what you are trying to get at. In my coaching experience, the only time I have had to deal with issues concerning IR of the hip is with students who think they have FAI (Femoral Acetabular Impingement) which can cause the femoral head to glide anterior during a squat or hinge resulting in pain.

Beyond that, in a healthy hip there is a bit of ADduction occurring at the femoral head when one sets up in the hinge. If the student gave into this then their knees would fall in or go valgus. As you know this setup is not favorable to healthy pelvis / spine mechanics so therefore you have all the cues previously talked about to counter this.
 
As many instructors I have regularly come across the well-known problem of outward knees on the downswing (making it more squat-like, even if people seem to hinge correctly), very often accompanied with people also sitting on the outsides of their feet.
I didn't understand the original post but I will chime in here about its first sentence. @Dorian, I hope I don't seem harsh here, and perhaps it's because I, too, don't understand what you're getting it, but what you're getting at seems a flawed concept to me, at least as I understand it. All the following IMHO:

Knees moving outward on the downswing does not make a swing more squat-like.

Knees moving outward on the downswing isn't a problem - watch some of our Master SFGs do a kettlebell swing and you'll see this. It's normal, natural, and generally not needing to be noticed or paid attention to.

I cannot think of a single student I've worked with in the 13 years I've been teaching this who I have seen "sitting on the outsides of their feet" when they swing. Even I don't do that, and I'm bowlegged enough to look like I spent my life riding a horse.

@Dorian, if you can show us a video of someone's problem swing and your correction, that might help us understand what you're talking about.

-S-
 
I suppose I understand and appreciate Dorians concept if the knees out are combined with lower than optimal hips, the inward rotation cue of the hips will help the hips stay optimal?
 
I actually did try this cue and found it useful, so thanks OP.

This might be a good one to recommend for people who do squat or knees-out too much
 
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