Olympic weightlifting derivatives have long been celebrated as top exercises for strength training in strength and condition. There is evidence now that is probably wrong. For most people, a simple kettlebell swing is usually a better power move than any Olympic lift derivative.
Sport happens with full hip extension
The sprinting, hitting, throwing and swinging of a racket or racket is driven by your hips with full, powerful hip extension. The full hip extension is the part of the movements of the lower body in which you stand up fully and approach and reach fully stretched.
You have to catch the bar in Olympic lifts. Beginners and advanced users almost never achieve a full hip extension because they are already preparing to dive back in to catch the pole. With a kettlebell swing, it's easy for even beginners to get a full, snappy, and powerful expansion.
If you look at the end position of each repetition in the video, you will see that the body position also mimics the drive phase of a clean wood or stone load in Strongman, in which you vigorously drive your pelvis forward under the device.
In the swing you "catch" the weight with your hamstrings
One of the biggest risk of injury in sports is tearing an Achilles tendon. Recent research has shown that developing stronger and longer hamstrings is one way to minimize this risk of injury. 1
In the swing video above you can see the kettlebell coming back and I brake it, which ends the catching phase in a position where the hamstrings are on a stretch.
This strains the Achilles tendon when it is stretched, while strengthening and lengthening the muscle, just what has been shown to reduce the risk of hamstring rupture. It is also a movement that strengthens the inner Achilles tendon more than the outer hamstring2, which could also reduce the risk of hamstring. 3
No Olympic lift derivative has this weighted advantage of hamstring stretching. Therefore, no Olympic lifting variant helps to reduce the risk of hamstring injuries and at the same time train strength like the kettlebell swing.
Horizontal work
Swings have an obvious horizontal drive aspect that Olympic lifts don't. In a swing you drive the kettlebell forward powerfully, away from you, as you cannot with the pole in Oly lifts. If you did, you would not be able to catch the bar and exit the elevator.
This horizontal aspect is important for sports because the hips work the same way when sprinting, hitting, swinging, throwing, etc. There is evidence that training horizontal strength movements rather than vertical strength movements is more effective to improve sprinting. 4
This study compared barbell engines to barbell squats and the engines were more effective. It was suspected that the horizontal nature and the larger hip extension area of the engines could be the reasons why the engine was more effective.
The effect of the kettlebell swing, unlike the Olympic lifts, is that kettlebell swings have these horizontal and larger hip extension features in an explosive lift, suggesting that they are more applicable to sprint and horizontal sport movements than a vertical power lift like the Olympic lifts.
Kettlebells are easier to learn
Anyone who has ever tried to teach beginners the Olympic lifts can tell you how difficult it is. Those of us who have tried Olympic lifting can all testify to how technically demanding it is.
This can be very fun and rewarding as a separate sport, but unfortunately it massively reduces the value of the Olympic lifts for strength and fitness. A kettlebell swing is fairly simple and easy to learn until you unlock the benefits.
When compared directly in a study with participants with more than a year of lifting experience, kettlebell swings performed well compared to power cleaning and high pulling forces. 5
Although the kettlebell group used much lighter loads, their vertical jump and power clean improved at the end of the study, as did the group that trained the power clean!
Not only that, the barbell group squatted and the chalice of the kettlebell group squatted, so that the barbell group became stronger through a stronger force movement.
This raises the question of whether the barbell group squatted heavier and became stronger, but the kettlebell group still improved in vertical jumping and power clean, although it was weaker and did not practice power clean. How much more effective was the kettlebell for power development? Swing as the Power Clean and the High Pull ?! The Kettlebell group has more power from less power, so that's relatively more power!
I think the relatively greater performance advantages of the kettlebell group were due to how much easier it is to learn and train the kettlebell swing to achieve physiological benefits while the barbell group was still trying the technical aspects of the Oly-Lift – Master derivatives.
The overall conclusion from the study is that a heavy barbell movement in combination with a kettlebell movement could be the optimal combination for strength and conditioning purposes.
The reduced risk of injury
When you prepare yourself or a team to perform better in a sport, it is your focus and not the tools you use for strength and conditioning. Nobody cares how well you clean and jerk off when you're a boxer who gets knocked out in every fight.
A major disadvantage of Olympic lifts is the risk of injury that they themselves have. Even the simpler fluctuations in performance disturb the wrists of many athletes, if nothing else.
Sometimes the risk of injury that we have from working in the gym is intentionally risked to protect the athlete from injury in sports. Unfortunately, some of the risks of Olympic lifting don't go over to much else, so they only affect their value as a strength and conditioning tool.
Kettlebell swings have no such problems. As mentioned earlier, the stretched strain they create from the hamstrings is beneficial for most sports and they don't put a lot of strain on your wrists.
A lower risk of injury from the lifts themselves, a higher injury potential and a higher return through less time invested make it child's play to choose kettlebell turns as strength and fitness training.
Program kettlebells
When it comes to integrating the kettlebell swing into your workout, I have a few preferred options. Explosive exercises can have a PAP effect 6, which means that they “wake up” your nervous system and facilitate the recruitment of muscle fibers.
This makes kettlebell swings a good choice to switch between general warm-up exercises and your first main lift. If you do, go to low volume. Work through the weights with sets of 5 or 6 reps as quickly and snappily as possible. When you get to a weight that slows you down and no longer feels snappy, stop there and ride your primary lift for the day.
The other way I particularly like is to take a kettlebell with you wherever you take your primary lower body lift. Whether it's squats, deadlifts, engines, or trap bar lifts, once your set is ready, hit a series of kettlebell swings without a break.
The weight does not have to be massively heavy as long as it is heavy enough that you feel like you have to work to move it quickly. Then rest as usual before the next sentence. This is contrast training.
However, if you incorporate kettlebell swings, this combination of research should clearly show that they are not a fad. A simple and effective movement that can help your hard-earned strength to transform into powerful sports movements cannot be ignored. Swing to win!
References
1. Short bicep femoral fascicles and weakness in the eccentric knee flexor increase the risk of thigh injury in elite football: a prospective cohort study
2. Kettlebell Swing Targets Semitendinosus and Supine Leg Curl Targets Biceps Femoris: An EMG study with effects on rehabilitation
3. Biceps femoris and semitendinosus – teammates or competitors? New insights into mechanisms of thigh injury in male soccer players: a muscle-functional MRI study
4. Effects of a 7-week hip push compared to squat resistance training on youth football performance
5. Effects of weight lifting vs. Kettlebell training on vertical jump, strength and body composition
6. Ballistic exercise as a stimulus before activation: An overview of the literature and practical applications