This Kettlebell Grip Cue May Change Your Training for the Better
#kettlbell has garnered over three million posts on Instagram. Your favorite fitpo is probably (definitely) overhead swinging and lifting kettlebells, and you've been officially convinced to swing and lift kettlebells. If this sounds like you, you've probably encountered an annoying and unexpected problem: your grip is bad.
Kettlebells aren't the easiest tool to grab, and the ballistic nature of many kettlebell moves makes them even more difficult to hold on to. what's more Your ability to grab and hold tight actually makes it easier stronger and more powerful elevators. And it all starts with your muscle fascia.
The importance of the handle
The fascial lines of the body are diverse. This article is not meant to be an introduction to fascia, but rather a better understanding to improve our training. The arm lines are particularly relevant to our grip needs. There are four of these lines and they all play some role in grip and its impact on increasing our performance.
This experiment uses the principles of irradiating muscle tension to demonstrate the importance of grip:
- Let your arms hang loosely at your side and be aware of any tension. Now make a fist. Notice that it's not just the hand muscles that are tight. The tension travels up your forearms.
- Get your grip even tighter now. Notice that the abdominal muscles are tight. Notice how the tension is now not only in your shoulders but also in the muscles within your shoulders. How You Grip The grip has the potential to activate every muscle in your body.
Let's try our experiment again, this time to demonstrate the importance of the arm lines:
- grab as tight as you can However, focus on squeezing your thumb and forefinger the hardest. You should feel the pectorals and deltoids tighten powerfully.
- Now focus on gripping hardest with your pinky and ring finger. This time, you should feel the muscles in your back—the lats, rhomboids, and rotator cuffs—tense.
Applying this knowledge to exercises is common sense, but few people do it. The conclusion from these tests is that when the body is ready to push (via the pecs and shoulder muscles), your grip needs to involve the index finger. The opposite is true for pulling movements, where we want to make sure the pinky and ring finger are in direct contact with the bar or bell.
Hand position for smarter grip
The most common hand position when using kettlebells is a grip, sliding the wrist into the corner of the bell where the handle and body of the bell meet. This allows the handle of the bell to run diagonally across the hand and minimizes discomfort on the back of the wrist.
Then most people wrap their index finger and thumb around the handle. You might mistakenly believe that this grip is acceptable. It's not acceptable. This grip will actually decrease performance while increasing the risk of injury.
MDV Edwards/Shutterstock
Here's why: When you press, you need to address not only shoulder flexion but also shoulder stability. If the pinky doesn't grab the bell, the rotator cuff will not fully engage. And when it comes to swinging or squeezing a heavy object overhead, you definitely want all of your shoulder muscles engaged.
A better way to To squeeze (or stand up or snatch) a kettlebell, hold it so that the handle of the bell goes directly over your hand, in line with the calluses. This handle enables both the use of the prime movers and the optimal functioning of the stabilizers.
Stronger grip for better movement
If we extrapolate this to other kettlebell exercises like squats or swings, we can see that these fascia lines connect the fingers to the muscles around the shoulder and also become muscles of the core on either side. The front and back feature lines form two large Xs, one on the front of the body and one on the back.
Proper use of the grip will engage our postural control muscles and enhance all of our larger lifts. Again, for kettlebell squats, the flat grip (as opposed to the diagonal grip) is a better option because it activates most of the supporting muscles.
Once you get used to gripping this way, you'll find that your performance improves while your risk of injury decreases. Changing your hand placement might make a difference in how much weight you can lift, but that shouldn't be a problem unless you're a powerlifter. Focus on how well your body can move and function as a unit.
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