Showing posts with label kneel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kneel. Show all posts

Monday, August 25, 2008

Increase the Weight and Challenge of your KB's: Kneel!

Some have shown that if you want a cheap way to increase the weight of your upper body Kettlebell work, go "bottom's up": hold the handle so the butt of the bell is in the air, rather than hanging down. Here's another that can increase the effort on your presses, whether with dumbbells or kettlebells: kneel. If you want to challenge your stability as well as strength, genuflect.

Taking the legs out of the equation to induce more of an upper body challenge is not new: Pavel Tsatsouline in More Russian Kettlebell Challenges uses various seated presses; Mike Mahler does likewise at least once in most of his DVDs.

The difference is that these are seated variants, and kneeling is the kind of halfway house between standing and sitting; kneeling vs genuflecting provides even more opportunities for working balance and motion. In the CK-FMS, more about these challenges are taught as corrective strategies for mobility and stability.

But even without such study, you can give kneeling/genuflecting a try: you'll be surprised no doubt at how the bell you feel comfortably challenged pressing from your feet becomes impossible on one's knees.

This simple positional change adds a radical new dimension to one's training. I'm personally blown away by how an adaptation that costs nothing gives me a whole new way to practice familiar moves with a new perspective, as shown by Rif here



Give it a try. Let me know what you find.

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