[upbeat music]
- Hi, I'm Tiffany Raggozzino
- And I'm Lee Jimenez.
Today,
we're going to teach you everything you need to know
about kettlebells before you start your workout.
- What to look for when you're purchasing a kettlebell,
all the different parts of a kettlebell,
holds, proper form, injury prevention,
and common mistakes.
- Before you can begin your kettlebell journey,
let's talk about what to look for when purchasing
a kettlebell.
The best kettlebell materials that I would go
and look for is powder coated to go
and prevent any type of slipping when my hands get sweaty.
- Totally agree [laughing].
- Of course.
And then also a cast iron option.
For me, it's because I really focus on hard style.
That means strength more
than anything else versus a rubberized.
Now, if you are at home in training,
a rubberized kettlebell is gonna protect any
of your floors, your furniture, and you can go
and find those through TRX or as well as amazon.com.
- Some of my favorite places to buy kettlebells are
through Rogue.
You can also find them on Amazon.
Your local Target.
Rogue tends to be my favorite
because it doesn't have that extra rubber on the bottom.
So when I put my kettlebell down, it's super stable.
Where do you like to buy them?
- I love to go to kettlebellkins.com
because they're gonna go and have
a various array of options that are both gonna
be powder coated as well as
being the cast iron option that I like to work out with.
- Let's talk about kettlebell sizes.
So if you notice,
Lee and I have an array of kettlebell sizes
right here next to us.
So when you are shopping for a kettlebell,
you're gonna notice, there's gonna be two numbers usually.
You're gonna have a kilogram.
So this is six kg.
And then this has underneath thirteen pounds.
Now, I will give you a heads up.
Some of them don't come in kilograms.
They might just be in pounds,
but I like to have a six kg
to start out with any of my upper body movements,
especially when they're newer and challenging,
I wanna work on my technique,
so I love having a low weight to work with.
And then as I get more advanced and stronger,
I'm gonna have some different ones.
So here I have a twelve kg, as well as a sixteen kg.
I tend to go heavier on the lower body.
So I'm gonna probably use some of the heavier ones,
but for the upper body,
I like to keep it around six and eight to start out.
How about you?
- I'm definitely more of that hard style,
strength conditioning type of kettlebell trainer.
So as we go through our workouts,
you'll notice that I'll have something heavier,
normally starting around sixteen
and I'll normally end off around thirty-two kilograms.
Again, I'm focusing on the quality of my movements,
not so much the quantity.
So depending on which direction you want to go into,
whether it's your more ballistic movement,
or your grinding movements,
is how you can go and choose your kettlebell choices.
Know that you wanna start somewhere lighter to warm
up your body,
and then slowly progress
by going to increasing the increment in weight.
- Okay.
Now that you've gotten your kettlebell
that works best for you,
let's talk about the anatomy of the kettlebell.
So this is our base.
This is the base of our kettlebell.
This is the body of our bell.
This is our handle.
Lee is holding it from the horns.
So when you were holding it with two hands,
just like Lee is right here,
he's holding it from the horns.
He can also hold it from the corner.
So now he has one thumb wrapped around single arm.
And this is from the corner.
- Fun fact, Tiffany-
- I love a fun fact.
- Are you ready for this?
- I love a fun fact!
- Do you know that kettlebells have been around
for thousands of years
and way back when,
they were used just to go
and bare weight in marketplaces in Russia
the 1800s
way before we even started to use them for
functional exercise.
- Hello, functional fitness at its finest.
- Now let's get a little bit deeper
and talk about proper technique
by our holding form of our kettlebell.
Tiffany is gonna go and demonstrate a few of our ways
of going and holding the kettlebell by starting
with holding the body of the bell.
So this is a good starting place,
especially if you're new to kettlebell training.
She's gonna have
her palms are hands wrapped around
and her elbows are in nice and tight.
She feels super duper secure.
How do you feel right here?
- Feel good.
- Awesome.
- I'm engaged.
Here we go.
- She has the base of the bell facing down
towards the ground.
Now you also have the option to go and do bottoms up.
Flip that over for us and notice
that the weight is now resting inside the palm of her hands.
It's almost like she's creating a bowl.
Okay? Beautiful, Tiffany.
Your option number two,
from the body of the bell,
is to go and hold it by the horns.
So she's gonna flip it over again.
Her hands are wrapped over and again,
she has it bottoms up
or she can flip it with the base down towards the ground.
Amazing.
Now your third option as you slowly start to go
and progress with single handed work,
where she'll have the thumb coming underneath the corner
of the bell,
her elbows are in nice and tight.
I also want you to notice
that her wrist right now
isn't going and popping out.
She's keeping the wrist engaged nice
and straight with her knuckles coming in towards her chin.
This is gonna be the safest way to go
and hold your kettlebell with a single handed work.
We now know how to go and hold our kettlebell.
We understand the anatomy
of our kettlebell,
and let's take it even further
to prevent injury with proper form.
Tiffany, do you mind going and demonstrating a few stances?
- I got you.
- Beautiful.
We're gonna start with our kettlebell stance.
I want you to think that you wanna look
down at your kettlebell and you wanna have about distance
from your kettlebell that you're creating a triangle shape.
So your kettlebells gonna be the tip of the triangle.
Your feet are gonna be the base of that triangle.
And then Tiffany's gonna hinge
from her hips and keep a nice long spine.
Her chin is parallel to her chest.
Her shoulders are down and back
and notice that she's protecting her cervical spine
by looking down.
Now Tiffany,
what's two things that you can go
and do to go and show improper form?
- So one common thing I see is people looking up.
So now I do not have a neutral neck right here.
Another common thing I see is a rounded back.
- Those are two things that we wanna stay away
from the entire time in any of our kettlebell stances.
Okay?
Now she's already
in the perfect position for a deadlift.
So Tiffany, if you would demonstrate a deadlift,
stand up nice and tall,
and then hinging as she reaches for the ground.
She wants to go and feel this in her glutes,
her quads and her hamstrings,
and keeping the core engaged the entire time.
One of the things that I see often
in these deadlifts is people hyperextend
by leaning all the way back.
Tiffany, can you show that?
We don't want that at all.
You wanna stand up nice and tall
engaging your core at the top rather than leaning back.
Perfect.
Thank you so much, Tiffany.
The next thing that I want us to focus on
is our kettlebell swing.
So she's already standing up
and I want you to see what most people go
and do with the kettlebell swing
starting from this position.
Go ahead for your swing.
Right?
It's flailing.
It's not in control.
You're not going engaging your hamstrings, your glutes,
or even your core.
Now Tiffany, take it back down to your kettlebell stance.
Shoulders are back
and now demonstrate the kettlebell swing from here.
She's increasing her range of motion
and now she's hitting those three points
that she should be feeling in her kettlebell swing.
How do you feel right now?
- Feel good.
I love that this is a total body movement.
My core is super engaged.
My glutes, my hamstrings, everything.
- Beautiful.
Tiffany, if you would bring that kettlebell
to your chest and now we're gonna go
and demonstrate our kettlebell squat, right?
Her feet are right underneath her hips.
Her toes are slightly turned out
so that she has more hip space.
And now go for your range of motion in your squat.
Notice that her chest is off,
her chest is nice and tall.
Her belly is off for her thighs,
shoulders are down and back
and the elbows are in.
Make sure that her core is engaged the entire time.
How does this feel?
- This feels great.
And one thing to remember,
if your core is not engaged at the bottom,
you're probably gonna see a lot
of rounding and the kettlebell is going to pull you down.
So make sure that upper back is engaged.
Core is engaged so that you're nice and upright.
- Amazing. Thank you so much, Tiffany.
Last and final movement is gonna go
and be our isometric movement to go
and really find those muscle imbalances.
We call this our staggered stance.
So Tiffany's gonna place one foot in front
and then she's gonna step one foot diagonally behind her.
Notice how she's going, keeping her feet apart.
Kind of like the two railroad tracks that we referred
to before, okay?
You never want to feel like you're on a tight rope.
The kettlebell is gonna go
and be inside of the ankle of the front leg
and then she's gonna reach for it for either one hand
or two hands.
Right here in this position already,
what can you go and feel engaged?
- I feel my hamstrings, my glutes,
everything's fire up [laughing].
- Beautiful.
She's gonna stand up nice and tall.
And then she's gonna hinge again.
She's making sure that she's distributing weight
not only through the front heel
but also through her back toes the entire time.
This is a great way
for you to go and improve any muscle imbalances
and really strengthen again, your quads, your hamstrings
and even your glutes.
Great job, Tiffany.
[kettlebell clanking]
And those are some options for our proper form
when you're working with your kettlebell.
Now, one of the questions that I get all the time is,
"Lee, what is the benefit of working
with the kettlebell versus with working out with dumbbells?"
And it's really, really simple.
The moment that you pick up your kettlebell,
you're having to go and stabilize your core as well
as all your intrinsic muscles.
The reason being is that you have the handle
on one side and then the weight on the other.
When you're working with a dumbbell,
your hand is already in the center of two weights.
And so the weight is already balancing itself.
You want to go and dig a little bit deeper
and really focus on your core engagement.
- One of my favorite things
about training with the kettlebell compared
to other types of workouts is the stability factor.
My core is engaged the whole time, shoulder stability.
There's so much going on and I really get to focus
in on my stability overall in my body.
- I couldn't agree more.
I feel that the effectiveness of how my body responds
to a kettlebell workout versus a dumbbell workout
is tenfold.
I always like to go and think a hundred kettlebell swings
versus a hundred dumbbell swings
and how my body responds is
like nothing else that I've ever seen before.
The kettlebell is definitely my go-to.
- Let's talk about some common mistakes we see when
people use kettlebells and how to avoid them.
So one of the number one things I see is
the kettlebell swing being done as a squat.
So Lee is gonna show us incorrect form for that.
So he's gonna do a kettlebell swing
but he's gonna be squatting.
So this is what we want to avoid
because our kettlebell swing is not a squat movement.
It is a hinge.
So Lee is gonna show us how to properly do it,
take out the squat and include the hinge.
So he is hinging at the hips.
Good.
Bringing that up.
So be super careful with this one.
It's probably the one I see the most.
- I have to agree.
- It is not a squat.
- Not a squat.
- It is a hinge, friends [laughing].
- 1000%.
The second thing that I normally go and see is how
people focus on their holds, okay?
So let's talk about that single arm hold.
So she's gonna go and bring that over to her chest.
And the very first thing that I see is wrist is out
and also it's out by your shoulder.
That's a big, big no-no.
You wanna bring your thumb towards your chest
and start to go and fix your wrist so that your knuckles
are right underneath your chest.
That's gonna go and activate your wrist as well
as your forearm and protect any potential shoulder
impingements or injuries.
Focus on your swing, focus on your single arm hold.
Make sure that you have that nice and close
to your chest and don't let your wrist fall out.
Another common mistake is how people go
and hold their kettlebell.
So let's talk about that single arm front rack.
So one of the things that people do is that they have it out
by their shoulder and then the wrist is out.
This can go and create injury as well
as shoulder impingement.
What you want to do is you wanna bring your thumb
to your chest,
elbow into the ribcage,
and start to straighten out your wrist
so that your knuckles are pointed towards your chin.
This is what's gonna go and protect you from any type
of shoulder injury and keep you engaged throughout
your exercises.
- Another common mistake we see is overtraining.
[Lee sighing]
Lee, how do you feel about overtraining?
- So I am 1000% guilty of overtraining.
- Me too.
- I train for marathons.
I do different type of athletic competitions.
And there's just times where my body just
says enough is enough.
So my rule of thumb is three days of training,
one day off,
because although we work out hard,
we have to recover even harder in order to go
and see any type of improvement in our performance
as well as in our endurance or in our athleticism.
- And something else to think about
is listening to your body.
So if you were like,
wanna do a lower body workout today
but you are so sore and you can barely walk.
[Lee sighing]
Like baby giraffe, maybe leg day isn't for you today.
Maybe you switch it to upper body.
You focus on something else.
So really listen and check in with your body
before you start your workout.
That's everything you need to know
before you start your kettlebell workout.
I'm Tiffany Ragozzino
- And I'm Lee Jimenez.
And now that you're armed
with all this fantastic kettlebell knowledge,
let's get into our five workouts right here
with Sweat with Self.
See you soon.