What's up vikings, Coach Vaughn. Today I want to get into Why Your Kettlebell Windmill
Sucks. Now, the big confusion I'm seeing with this is everyone's treating it like a triangle
pose as you would see in yoga with lateral lumbar flexion and well there's nothing wrong with the
triangle pose it's NOT the same thing as the windmill. A windmill is a simultaneous hip
hinge with spinal rotation as it's overhead keeping your lat packed with the arm locked.
It's not just a side bend movement like a side crunch as you would see in other false media.
So the best one to start with for beginners and I recommend using a knee pad for this- is starting
in an open kneeling position. So this is the half kneeling position and I still see people
do it in a half kneeling and they try to shove it right here. Remember all that hip hinge has
to have some traction so you got to open that rear foot right there...see that. So now my hip
can push back and I like to find that crease in my hip to push toward the wall you see here and
my spine will rotate and I'll look gently up and down. Once you understand that, then you can add
the kettlebell. What I like to do is just get it in the cheat clean position. The meat of it should
be at the heel of my palm - get a nice vertical forearm. Press it overhead, fully lock it out,
with your lat packed. It should not have any less space like this. It should be nice and driven
down, arm locked wrist neutral, and you want to focus having the eye gaze forward, and then you're
going to gently look up and if you want you can put this base hand down and then gently load it
like a Get Up and then you can unload this hand . . .come up look forward. So notice how my eye gaze
looks gently up. I'm not shoving my head up there or kinking my neck. I'm looking up
more so with my eyes and creating that nice solid stability and then when you own it.
Use this hand like a "bow & arrow" to pack this lat and see if you can do it without it.
Coming nice and gently up. Fully extend that hip, squeeze the glutes,
lats packed, gently look up at the bell, gently "look at the horizon" straight forward.
And for you coaches that like to coach this. You can be behind someone hold it with one hand make
sure it stays stacked in alignment and then pull their shirt so that forces them to go on that hip
hinge. You'll get a much better feedback and get a better path guided for that. Now if you don't
have a partner with this, you can use a band as you see here. Anchor to the wall and you just put
it around your mid thigh and that's going to go on the extending leg. Make sure you get your feet
at a 45 degree angle and then you'll pick up the kettlebell. Once again, get that cheat clean,
press it overhead, and now on this Level 2 - we're gonna focus now still using that band to pull you
to keep the hips stacked over doing the same thing as we did in the open kneeling position, but now I
really gotta squEEze that glute - because I don't want to finish like this. Squeeze that glute with
FULL hip extension and what's hard about the windmill and why it requires so much flexibility
is as I'm rotating this load is now going on this foot. So you have to press this heel down
HARD into the ground, and then come up with that tension - same thing as we did with the
eyes looking up, keeping that spinal alignment, looking up. What you don't want to do is let it
win and then you dump your shoulder and you're going like this. This is NOT the same thing.
Going with the side bend, that's more lateral lumbar flexion. . .that's what we don't want.
So notice the difference between that and then drive that heel. Drive, drive ,drive, drive,
come up nice and tall, squeeze that glute, gently bring it down. And that is how you get a stronger
kettlebell windmill using the open kneeling and standing with the band as we did there.
Now if you'd like to see more, check out my new book, The Kettlebell Awaits,
features over 100 different pages breaking down your swings, cleans, snatches, get ups, squats,
all in detail - all on one source. You can get now on Amazon.com.
This is Coach Vaughn signing off - hope you have fun with that.