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Old Forum Why 1H-swing?

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Tommy84

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Hi StrongFirst Community,

today I did a swing/push up combo workout and decided to throw in some sets 1H-swings.

My "training weight" for 2H-swings is 24kg, but I increase more&more and more up to the 32kg. The frist 5x10 with the 32kg feel pretty solid and fine, and I am pretty sure that explosiveness is pretty well.

So I think 1H swings with 20kg should be no problem - but when I try them once in a while, they feel horrible!!! fell unstable, body tends to twist to one side more than it should, explosiveness seems to be impossible. I am sure they also look ugly. I tried to tip the bell on the peak of the swing with the second (free) hand, and this worked, so maybe rotation of upper body is not to extreme. But as I said, I feel like rotating way too much.

This brings me to the question came in my mind today - what are the benefits of the one-arm swing one could not get out of the "regular" 2H swing?

Grip strenght - go heavier with the 2H swing. (I do BJJ sometimes, and have really really solid grip compared to non-kettlebellers)

Hip-strenght - go havier with the 2H-swing

Conditioning - go heavier/more intense with the 2H swing

So, maybe this is stupid, but - is it worth doing the more difficult and (maybe if done with bad form) risky 1H swing?

And also, if one goes lighter with the 1H swing, do you waste some of the benefits of heavier 2H swings??

Just thinking loud, probably there are some great benefits of the 1H swing - but is it worth doing it when the trainees goal is mainly conditoning??

What are the really unique benefits of the 1H swing one could net get out of a heavier 2H swing?

Thanks for tolerating my probably stupid question ;-)

Regards,

Tommy
 
What I forgot - despite of the 1H swing beeing an intermediate excercise before mastering clean/snatch

I asked for the benefits as an excercie itself...
 
The 1H  swing recruits more muscle and forces you to stabilize. You can generate more force with a 2h Swing but recruit more muscles on the 1h swing. I do both.

 

 
 
You sort of answered your own question; the rotation. Keeping yoru upper body straight during a 1H Swing is some serious business, and that anti-rotation work is very beneficial. Some good thoughts by Bret Contreras on it HERE

The back has to work much harder to keep the shoulder packed, and the difference in grip really is pretty extreme. I find it much harder to swing the 32kg 1H than the 40kg 2H. The other bonus of unilateral exercises is that they will force you to work both sides just as hard.

Definite advantages to both variations, but the 1H swing has a lot going for it IMHO. I prefer the 2H swing for conditioning, and the 1H for strength.
 
Thomas, give yourself some time - your one-arm swings will improve as you practice them and pay attention to good form.  Use lighter than 20 kg for one-arm swings if you feel that's best for you now.

We like one-arm swings because they are more e-v-i-l.  Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

:)

-S-
 
Thomas, as  a bjj person myself, let me put it this way: do you have to do both gi and no-gi? No, you don't. There are excellent practitioners who only do one and never touch the other. Nevertheless, most good bjj people would say that ideally, it's good to do at least some amount of both, even if you lean more in one direction than another. I started with no-gi grappling, and when I first went to a gi, it was a big blow to my ego. I could have refused to do it, only attended no-gi classes, talked about mma, etc. But, by choosing to start over a bit with the gi, I ultimately became much better at both then if I had avoided the gi.

Do you have to do 1h swings? No, you'll still get a lot of benefit from 2h only. But it might be better instead of dismissing it entirely to post a video and get some feedback, or do a session or two with an SFG. Try it out, get a feel for it done correctly, then decide. The 1h swing is perfectly safe, and not that hard to learn. I recommend getting S&S and following it's approach.
 
Tommy, not at all stupid questions, I for one and am very glad that you asked as I had wondered about the same but never got round to asking since I'm not doing many swings at the moment. As for power generation, it does come once you get the groove right, I did 300 1H swings a day for 7 days at the start of March.
 
A number of good explanations have been given for why 1 arm swings are useful and often preferable.

IIRC, Pavel doesn't really talk about this, but IMO another significant feature of 1 arm swings in the context of S&S is autoregulation. For most people, grip strength will be the limiting factor in being able to 1 arm swing a given bell with authority. Thus, limiting swings to 1 arm puts a natural regulator on short term progress, and sets you up for steady long term progress.

Geoff Neupert and Tracy Reifkind take different approaches, modulating the impact of grip strength in their own ways. Geoff does this by using a lot of double bells in his programs, so the grip challenge is divided in half and a higher load can be used. Tracy uses a lot of shifting grips between one and two hands within a set and within a workout, so the grip is spared and a higher load or, especially, volume can be used.

Different ways to skin a cat.
 
@ all, thanks for the great input.

Now I am sure that from a long-term perspective, the 1H swing is worth the time invested in practicing it and getting to a appropiate weight.

So, I will start to pracitce it with low weight and improving form step by step - additionally to the 2h swings which for conditioning. Will have to see it as practice and learning technique and not get immediate benefits at all costs.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!!!

 
 
^ From a non-expert and fellow traveler, for what it's worth my personal experience was that with regular practice, the one-handed swings tightened up and became crisp much faster than I would ever have expected based on how awkward and inept they felt when first attempted with more than a token weight, and that the retractors, cuff muscles, grip, obliques, etc. that first felt a bit over-challenged came up to speed over the course of a few short weeks of progressively adding more one-handed swings.   For whatever reason, the glutes and hams felt like they were getting hit a lot harder at first with the ohs's, but they caught up in terms of recovery pretty quickly as well to the point where it feels back to level with where it was with the two handed swings.

Efficacy with the one-handed swings felt pretty distant when I first started using them with the 24 on S&S (doing them with 16's in the past had never been too much of an issue, as I recall), and like everything else I've experienced with S&S, doing something every day felt like a whole new ball game as well.  My experience was that with  a bit of patient practice for a while, keeping faith in the system and listening to my body, it came up to speed surprisingly quickly.
 
I agree with Greg above.

I've always had a hard time building strength. I currently only have a 16kg and a 24kg, and from advice here (and my wallet) I decided to go straight to the 24kg rather than buy a 20kg.

I started by just working in sets of 5 per arm with the 24kg. I was able to increase this in almost every workout and am now doing all sets one-handed with the 24kg. It came faster than I thought it would. Plus, I think I'll be ordering a 32kg in the next week or so. Honestly, I thought the 32kg was something I would never get to.

Also, my sessions are pretty sporadic due to my home life. I probably average three sessions per week, but the reality is that I may get 4-5 one week, but only one the next week, then two, then four, etc. There have even been a couple of weeks where I didn't work out at all.
 
Would it be possible to say that if a person trained exclusively with double kettlebells, with cleans and presses, that they would miss out on a particular aspect of strength provided my single handed swings?
 
Jeffrey - only if he skipped one-handed swings entirely. Neupert makes it abundantly clear that his double bell programs are for intermediate kettlebellers only. I'm pretty sure intermediates have done plenty of one-handed swings.
 
My experience with doing more 1H swings per set is instructive as to their value.  I was doing 5L/5R with 24k and my getups with 32k.  I had no problem continuing to do my getups with 32k while I was integrating more and more 2H 32k swings until I was doing all 2H 32k.  Then through this forum I realized the intent was that I do all ten swings per set on one side and then transition to one handed with the next bell.  So I dropped down to 24k again to grind in that standard.  The thing is that this also required that I drop down my getups to 24k again.  I tried to start throwing in some 32k getups again and found that something made it much more difficult post 10/10 one handed swings.  This taught me something about the value of this movement.  If one movement is forcing you to back off on another movement, it's probably doing good things for you.

 
 
there has been a lot written here recently on the benefit of 1H swings and I was definitely stuck on the idea that I had to really own the 2H before I could try the 1H.  In S&S Pavel has us abandon the 2H after the intro phase (other than special days every couple of weeks where we use the 2H), but I was so stuck on moving the weight up that I couldn't see/hear the magic of patience.  just these past few days I have finally come around, dropped the weight back a bell and started S&S the way it is written.  thanks to Pavel and Joe Gruginski, and many others on this forum who hold steadfast to the benefit of the 1H swing if you are following the S&S protocol.  I have already noticed that my muscles from armpit down to hip are being hit differently due to the work the body needs to perform to keep the bell from twisting you, plus, my grip, which is rarely taxed doing 2H swings, has been working as well.  I am sold after just a few days - once again it comes back to what is so often stated on these pages.  Do the program as it is written and stick with it, no additives, sweeteners or fillers necessary.  it's so simple.  it's so easy.  it's so sinister.
 
MARCHESE makes a good point; as Pavel says, "when all else fails, follow the directions" : )

Charles, there was a lot of great insight in your post, but one bit of food for thought; while there's been some debate about it, my reading of S&S is staying with 1o sets of 10, even when moving to single handed. It sounds like you're doing back to back 10. Doing 10 each hand, but taking 10 seconds or so in between, might allow you to work the 32kg get ups back in.

Jeffrey, I've taught the swing to a lot of people. I start everyone off with two handed (I know a lot of GS coaches don't; apples and oranges). Some people move to one handed, some then move on to two bells, or other variations. Not everyone does, but that's always the order I follow. I get a lot of people that skip one handed to go straight to two bells, and they always have a lot of issues to correct.
 
I don't fiddle too much with the programming of my Simple workouts, but what I do fiddle with is the bell sizes and 1H-2H. I've got 16-20-24-28kg bells. I'd have a 32, but the place I buy them from was out last time I went. Anyway, I can make myself plenty sore with what I have.

I can do 5x10L and 5x10R right at 5 minutes with the 24kg bell, but I'm pretty gassed at the end of that 5 minutes. I want to get to where I can really 'own' the 24 before taking the next step. In an attempt to get there, I'm mixing 1H swings with the 24 and 2H swings with the 28.  As has been mentioned, grip strength is my limiter. As my grip strength fades in later sets, then I naturally compensate by reducing hip drive. By incorporating the 28 and 2H swings, I can really challenge my hip drive without being grip limited. It seems to shift the workload from your forearms to your hip hinge and I think it's beneficial.

On de-load days, the 16 or 20 kg bells are really not much less of a workout. Because they're lighter, you can accelerate the hell out of them and the instantaneous loads they produce are probably surprising close to the bigger bells at some points of the swing.
 
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