This week’s video is a treat! We are going old school with FTI founders Tarek and Dan in a never seen before Kettlebell Workout. Tarek is not only put through a brutal workout but he is to cope with Dan’s banter and insults.
Kettlebell Walking Series: Farmer’s Walk
http://functionaltraininginstitute.com: Watch Dan perform the Farmer’s Walk and combine other walks to provide different impacts to our body. This terrific workout is great for strength, posture, grip, and so much more.
The Functional Training Institute are pioneers in the Functional Training industry, creating some of Australia’s first ever certified CEC accredited courses around the instructional use of functional training equipment including kettle bells, power bags, barbells, battling ropes and more.
Movement Prep for Overhead lifting or Receiving – Lat stretch vs Prone reach and lift
First off, there is never a bad exercise, but there may be a more efficient choice.
Let’s compare the common banded clam exercise with a banded squat as a warm-up to activate the glutes, particularly the glute medius. Performing a banded clam can be challenging for some individuals, as the tensor fasciae latae (TFL) muscle can sometimes overpower the glute medius, especially during the hip flexion involved in the clam exercise. If the person performing or coaching the exercise doesn’t understand the difference, it’s easy to mistake the TFL for the glute medius.
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Squat Warm Up – Banded Clams vs. Banded Squat
First off, there is never a bad exercise, but there may be a more efficient choice.
Let’s compare the common banded clam exercise with a banded squat as a warm-up to activate the glutes, particularly the glute medius. Performing a banded clam can be challenging for some individuals, as the tensor fasciae latae (TFL) muscle can sometimes overpower the glute medius, especially during the hip flexion involved in the clam exercise.
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Bench press Warm up Do’s & Don’ts
First off, there is never a bad exercise, but there may be a more efficient choice.
Take a look at this Bench Press example. While it’s common for people to warm up using the banded external rotation drill, most people don’t know how to effectively engage their shoulder blade and thoracic during the movement. The problem is that this can lead to an anterior shear of the glenohumeral (ball & socket) joint, exerting excessive force on the shoulder joint instead of properly stretching the pec muscle.
Choosing an exercise that mimics the bench press movement and incorporating tools to activate or ‘wake up’ underdeveloped muscles will have a much better transfer to the strength exercise that follows.
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Improving the Kettlebell Snatch Part 4: Pull & punch to lock out
Kettlebells are a great way to learn how to relax and move with momentum. We’ve all grown up being taught that we have to brace a lift, which isn’t wrong… but, kettlebells aren’t a max effort lift, they are a sub-loaded momentum based movement.
We can observe the gen pop struggle with this in the stiff, straight arm they may have braced as the bell travels overhead. Downside to this is we now have a circular weight path going up and over the head. We want to teach a near vertical weight path, close to the body and punch upwards towards the sky.
This will reduce the risk of people damaging their shoulder or lower back.
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Improving the Kettlebell Snatch Part 3: Pull the bell back, don’t drop it down
A way to improve the power aspect of the snatch is to increase the tension the glute/hamstring complex receives, we can do that by actively pulling the bell back between the legs.
Not only does this increase power & performance but does help a common fault of the less efficient vertical pull of the bell you may notice in fatigue or if someone is lacking the ability to load/stretch the glute/hamstring complex.
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Improving the Kettlebell Snatch Part 2: Predicting the bell
A common fault you may notice in your clients snatch is breaking at the hip early in anticipation of the bell path.
Breaking into the hinge early may actually leak energy by losing integrity of the spines stability and/or a less efficient weight path. Wait for the bell to hit the hips and let it do the work.
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FTI: Accredited Barbells Course
The Functional Training Institute are pioneers in the Functional Training industry, creating some of Australia’s first ever certified CEC accredited courses around the instructional use of functional training equipment including kettle bells, power bags, barbells, battling ropes and more.
Check out our official website at:
Improving the Kettlebell Snatch part 1: Hand insertion
A good hand insertion is paramount to a clean & stable Snatch.
Because this is done at speed and in free flight it can take awhile to master, give yourself permission to take a long time to practice but once attained you will notice a difference in performance.
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