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5 Kettlebell Exercises Every CrossFit Athlete Should Add into Their Training

Keep your training constantly varied with these highly useful 5 exercises.

Conventional Kettlebell Swing

This is such a hot topic in the CrossFit and Kettlebell community. I have previously written several articles about this, a popular one is “The American Kettlebell Swing: Why You Should Never Do It”[2].

Don’t let the title fool you, I’m not some stuck_in_his_ways Kettlebell Trainer, I’m a CrossFitter with a passion for Kettlebells, but I don’t chose sides, to me there are no sides, there is training and there is training.

The fact remains that in CrossFit, the fundamentals of Kettlebell Training are usually omitted, especially when it comes to the American Swing. And yes I’ve heard all this bull before; “We don’t do half rep pull-ups, we don’t do half rep squats, and we don’t do half rep push-ups. If there is a natural range of motion to any movement we like to complete it.” one word, Deadlift; and “Swinging feels like cheating”, one word, Kipping… Enough on that, no more excuses, you need to master the Conventional Kettlebell Swing so you can Kettlebell Clean, Kettlebell Snatch and become more proficient at your American Swing, end of story.

Be aware that there are different styles of swings, learn all, learn the reasons as to why you should chose one over the other, and you have your CrossFit Swing, the swing that changes based on the task in-front of you.

Turkish Get-up – Kettlebell Exercises

Here is a movement that is super functional: getting up from the ground. The TGU works every muscle in your body, it also works on shoulder mobility as you’ll be working to stabilise the shoulder, rotating it during the movement and much more.

This exercise is extremely good to help you with your overhead position. Most people say that it’s not a movement for CrossFit, but we’re talking about working out, not training. I hope that one day it could be included in workouts, as long as strict movements standards are adhered to, like; full-body lock-out on the top phase, head touching the ground on the end and start phase.

There is so much more that can be said about each of the five kettlebell exercises, and in no way should you take the above as the ultimate guide to either of these exercises, see it as the start of a new journey, do more research on each of them, and start using them in your training, not your workout—not until you’ve mastered them.

Yes, Kettlebell exercises come with a steeper learning curve, but once you master the fundamentals, I guarantee a whole new beautiful world will open up to you.

[1] Search Google for “Cavemantraining kettlebell grip pdf” to download the free PDF
[2] http://www.cavemantraining.com/caveman-kettlebells/the-american-kettlebell-swing-why-you-should-never-do-it/

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