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What is the Best Kettlebell Exercise For You?

Kettlebells have risen from an obscure old style strength and fitness tool, used primarily by Soviet athletes, to a mainstream fitness tool that gets results for everyone from housewives to Hollywood stars.
kettlebell exercises

But with the abundance of trainers and so called guru's, what is the best kettlebell exercise to get great training results?

Whenever "best of" lists are generated there is always plenty of discussion and disagreement. I mean best for what, getting fit, burning fat, martial arts or what? Well if we narrow it down to best overall kettlebell exercises I reckon you can't go past the ...(pause for effect)... kettlebell swing.

Sure the kettlebell snatch is a great exercise for building super fitness and functional strength, but watch those forearms don't get banged up, those shoulders tweaked or those hands blistered up, especially if you are new to kettlebell lifting and haven't had any proper instruction.

What about the Long Cycle Clean & Jerk ("LCC&J") I hear people say. Sure the LCC&J is a fantastic exercise, particularly for fighters, but perhaps not so for beginners as it is fairly technical to learn.

So for my money, and pretty much every other RKC trained kettlebell instructor you simply can't go past the kettlebell swing.

The main reason is that the swing is so effective yet so versatile. You can do 2 handed swings, 1 handed swings, hand to hand swings, double kettlebell swings (ie, with 2 kettlebells), walking swings and much more. You can then go heavy to develop strength or power, train with high reps to develop fitness and burn body fat or do catch and release movements to develop hand eye coordination.

The kettlebell swing also teaches the user how to snap the hips and use the power of the posterior chain and core (ie, the muscles at the back of your body eg, hamstrings, glutes, lower back muscles and abdominals) to swing the kettlebell. This hip snap is the foundation of a high number of exercises such as the One arm snatch, the Clean or the High Pull and it is very effective at developing the muscles and movement patterns that transfers over to many sports.

The kettlebell swing is a relatively straight forward exercise that is easy to do ... but not so easy to do well. I have lost count of the number of trainers trying to squat swing a kettlebell and its worth saying that swinging a kettlebell and doing kettlebell swings isn't always the same thing.

However, if you can squat down and pick a box up off the floor with a relatively flat back, or crouch down and jump into the air you can pretty much learn to do a kettlebell swing. Of course proper guidance from a qualified instructor will go a long way to perfecting your technique and really getting the most out of the swing. Alternatively you can purchase any number of quality DVD's to assist your training technique.

To summarize, the kettlebell swing is an incredible effective exercise that can be used for fitness and conditioning, strength and power or to develop the posterior chain to benefit any number of sporting activities.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Capper

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