Bimetallic Strips and Your Kettlebell Training
There are a few common errors that can have a huge impact upon the safety and benefit of your kettlebell training. Some of them are about your breathing, some are about positioning, and a few relate to your mindset. The one that we are going to think about today is focused upon your positioning but is also heavily influenced by your mindset as well.
Bimetallic strips are a combination of two metals that respond to heat at different rates, often steel and copper. They are useful for tasks where you want changes in temperature to trigger a mechanical response, things like turning off the electricity to your kettle once the temperature hits 100º. Basically, as the temperature changes, the metal that expands more quickly leans towards its lazier counterpart, often breaking a circuit.
Many people perform their movements as though they are bimetallic strips. As stress is applied to their movement, instead of reacting like a piece of solid steel, they bend either toward or away from the stress. In good kettlebell training, we want to use a spine that is solid and supported. Under stress, it shouldn’t bend towards the front or the back, or from side to side, but rather, braced by our large muscles and supported by intra-abdominal pressure, it should retain its shape and continue to facilitate strong, efficient movement.
Here are some of the times that you might find yourself behaving like a bimetallic strip!
Swing
People are often pulled forward or hyperextend back in the lockout of their swing. The top of the swing is a plank where your crown should extend away from your stable, planted feet. You should see natural curves in the spine throughout the movement and the bell should project in a straight line from the shoulders, when this doesn’t happen, injury often follows.
Press
When people perform their military press, it’s not unusual to see them initiate the press and then lean either back or to the side to facilitate the movement. This usually happens when people are either pressing a bell that is too heavy for them, or they don’t understand how leverage can act upon the body. There are a few ways of dealing with this:
You can shift your hip slightly underneath the weight so that as you press, your centre of mass is still centred under the bell (a slight lean beforehand with a straight, stable spine is much less likely to hurt you than falling away during the movement).
Keep the bell pressing straight up initially until your fist goes past your eyes (usually the right spot, but if it doesn’t work for you, we’re hunting for when our elbow is approaching or at 90º when we are transitioning from a bicep supported position to a tricep driven position), as it goes past the eyes, allow the bell position to shift out from your head.
Make sure that everything is active and engaged. Geoff Neupert in one of his resources (I believe it’s the Kettlebell STRONG resource) talks about the pillar of power. This is where everything is stacked and engaged. Fire your butt, abs, and squeeze your fists, and feel both sides of your body turn into solid steel!
Clean
Cleans bring out the disco in people. The number of people who end up waving their hips around because they think that they need to pull with their shoulder to bring the bell up is astounding. The clean starts off with a solid hip drive, your arm (which has never left your body) then retracts slightly, before swinging swiftly and smoothly into position welded to your “Pillar of Power”. The bell is manipulated by your hand, rather than being let loose or allowed to dominate the sequence. It should 100% land softly!
Turkish Get Up
The Turkish Get Up tends to have a few spots where people begin to bend and fold under stress.
Roll to Hand: Maintain your upper body structure and focus on rolling across with your lats helping your upper arm to become a post that levers you up into position. There is no need to roll up your thoracic spine or extend out your neck.
Low Sweep: As the leg comes underneath the body, people tend to attempt to rotate it too quickly. Bring the leg through so that it puts that half of the body into something resembling the quadruped position. By doing this, your upper leg (femur) is still resting where it should be, and you aren’t torquing on your body in a way that curves your spine.
Hinge to lunge: As the hand comes off the ground, make sure that you hinge so that the weight ends up above your hip (supported by your knee) and then hinge back so that your hip carries the load into the tall kneeling position (your legs will be perpendicular, or almost perpendicular, to each other).
Windmill
The windmill is a stretch. Your goal is to find and gently expand your range of motion. If you are moving so far into the windmill that your spine is changing position, you’re not likely to be stretching the right things. If you can, get someone to keep an eye on the relationship between your rib cage and your hip. As long as that relationship is consistent, you can keep going. If it changes, stop! See if you can add range without it changing by playing with your breath or how you hinge, but don’t artificially create range as it will likely not do anything for you that you want it to do...
This article and the subsequent video, have looked at a few ways in which people have allowed stress to make their body behave like bimetallic strips... (and adversely affected the structure and integrity of their movement). Your goal in life should be to have a strong, stable body that is able to resist all the stresses that life throws at it which is a big part of the philosophy at Queensland Kettlebells. Training is where we develop this capacity, hopefully to a point beyond what we’ll see in the course of our life. Focus upon excellence in your training so that you can resist and stand strong when the heat is on!
To find out more about kettlebell classes, get in touch or register for the beginner kettlebell workshop and trial month of unlimited group classes at our East Brisbane gym.