Learn Kettlebell Training Basics

Max Wettstein: For today, we're going to talk about a piece of equipment that you need in your home gym, it's making a big come back, most of you are pretty familiar with it, it is the kettlebell. It's been around used by Russian athletes for a 100 years and more, it's making a big come back, very versatile, you can do dozens of exercises. If you're going to have one piece of weight equipment in your house, consider the kettlebell. Here with me today is Stein from Skaar Fitness and he is well trained in how to use a kettlebell. He is going to take us through a few exercises, give you an introduction and teach you the basics. Stein? Okay, this is Stein again from Skaar Fitness based in Marine County, coming down from San Francisco to workout together and make more fun in fitness videos and you're going to tell us about the kettlebell. Stein Skaar: Yeah, like Max said, in terms of having one good piece of weight equipment in your house, it's not going to cost a lot of money, but it's going to be fully functional for you and multi versatile. I would definitely get the kettlebell. The kettlebells come in weight measurements called poods, and sound sort of funny, but a pood is approximately 35 pounds. The weight that we're using today is a little bit less than one pood, it's actually about 26 pounds, one pood equals about 35. So, normally you can pick up kettlebells at weight equipment stores, fitness exercise stores for a measurements of half pood or a pood or pood and half or two pood, but it seems like a lot of fitness companies are starting to making them in odd weights these days, so 10, 20 and 30 pounds as well. Max Wettstein: yeah, today we have 26 pounder and that's going to work today. Stein Skaar: So, approximately getting close to one pood. The one thing that's great about the kettlebell that we used for a lot of traditional exercises that you might already know. Obviously, doing one arm curls is something that you can do with a kettlebell so no need to have multi dumbbells or anything like that. Also, another one that you can do is just a shoulder press, military press, unilateral military - we call it a kettlebell press, so doing that on both arms. Obviously, we can get down on our back, we can do chest presses, and all sorts of interesting exercise. I'll go into talking about some of the kettle bell exercises that you most likely see people doing around the gym. The first one that we're going to start with today is the two handed kettlebell swing. So, what I'm going to do is, once again, explaining that this is a swing, it's not a lift, alright. The two things that I want to do is I want to think about sitting into a nice horse stands here, so thinking that I'm right in a horse, that's about how my wide my legs are going to be. The second thing I'm thinking about is keeping my shoulders back. The third thing I'm going to be trying to do is really being concerned with that lower lumbar curve and keeping a nice curve in the lower back. The last thing is going to be sitting back on my heels. When I start the kettlebell swing, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and just start it as a swing and slowly bring it further and further up, you'll notice that my arms stay nice and straight. What I'm aiming to do is really just open and pop my hips everytime that I bring in the kettlebell up. You'll notice that all I am doing is working on my hip mobility, popping those hips, bringing the weight up. The goal here is to really be able to see the underside of the kettlebell. So it's not necessary to bring it overhead, but you can certainly bring it about three quarters of the way up. Keeping the arms nice and straight, shoulders back, really be focused on that lower back, you'll see that I am using my quarts, it's a pop up in my hips, great exercise with the kettlebell. Now I'm going to go into doing some of the one arm kettlebell swings. The only difference that you're going to find with the one arm kettlebell swing, obviously outside of using only one arm is the fact that as I am going to bring the weight in between my legs, you'll see that my wrist is going to turn in and thumb is going to be facing my body, alright. Same thing once again, normally I'll start on the sides here, bring it in, turn it slowly, bring it up to the front. Once again, I bring it up, arm is straight, popping the hips, shoulders are back, thinking about that lower lumbar curve. We don't want to get into this type of a thing where we're bending our back over, we want to keep our shoulders solid, bring it up to the front. This one -- we're not really aiming to see underneath it, I am trying to bring my arm perpendicular to my body. If you want to switch half way through, you can throw it up in the air and start with the other hand as well. Now the great kettlebell exercise, alright. The next exercise I'm going to show you is probably one of the more difficult exercises there is. I think that it's one of the most important exercises to include in your routine whether you're doing it with a kettlebell or whether you're doing it with a barbell, and that's the overhead squat. What I'm going to be doing is putting this kettlebell behind my wrist here and I'm going to be extending it upwards, being really active with my shoulders, bring it up overhead. The fundamentals of the squat are the same, feet are about shoulder width, the toes are going to be flaring upwards, my knees are going to be tracking over my toes, I'll be sitting back on my heels so much so that I can wriggle my toes around. Then once again, being really concern with that lower back, we're going to be shooting our blood out and back as we sit down into our overhead squat. Normally, I'll use my other hand to gain some balance as I do this move, about sitting down nice and flat the base of the squat, pushing up through the heels, coming back up to the top again. Once again, a very difficult move and a great move to be including in your routine. Maybe you can get three or five per side, switching arms active with the shoulders, feet at shoulder width, sitting back down and coming back up again. Fantastic exercise. Max Wettstein: Now that's incredible. Every muscle group activated. Stein Skaar: Definitely, definitely. Max Wettstein: Whole body functional. Stein Skaar: Let me -- I want to show a couple more Max, just because you might want to include these into your routines as well. There are some great core moves, abdominal stuff that you can do with the kettlebell that I'll demonstrate real quick. The first one is something called a halo. So I am bringing the kettlebell right in front of my neck here, taking nice tight grip on the sides. From there, I am just going to go ahead, raising one elbow, coming around the head and if you notice from the back, this is what the kettlebell is going to look like in the back. So, as I continue through, I'm just going to bring it on front. It's a great work -- the way to work on your shoulder flexibility, but at the same time you're going to find your obliques and your abdominals doing a lot of work, just to make sure this kettlebell makes it around safely. Once you do five, maybe one direction, we're going to go ahead and switch directions and come in the other way. Another great core move for the kettlebell, bringing the feet together, I'm just going to go ahead and grab one edge of the kettlebell here, alright. All I'm going to do is something called around the world, where I'm swinging around my body. Once again, I'm grabbing the corners of the kettlebell, forces my abdominals and my obliques to work. So, once again, trying to get an equal amount per side, so if I come ten times around this way, we're going to go ahead and go ten times back around the other way. So, coming through another great one, working on your coordination and also great core strength, works a little bit of the quarts as well. It's coming through the legs in a figurate, keeping the shoulders back. This time I am entering in through the front of my legs. Once again, if I want to switch, I'm going to go ahead and enter through the rear this time, coming back around. Great exercise, I often times I'll use with basketball players for coordination and core strength. Alright, two more great leg exercises, you can't enough with squats especially being a CrossFit certified instructor. So, what I'm going to show you here is the front squat. Once again, we're taking that halo position that we were talking about before; nice and tight up front here. I'm just going to be sitting down into a squat and then coming back up to the front. This is one that you probably can crank off ten pretty quickly, 26 pounds isn't too much for a front squat. Here, I'm just going to be sitting down for a squat, but at the same time bringing the kettlebell up in front of me. Extremely core move, great full body -- Max Wettstein: Bee-happy. Stein Skaar: Bee-happy, Bee-happy.