Are you a swinger and December Challenge!

Are you a swinger?

Ben Dearman

KDR Fitness

Kettlebell swinger that is! Or the other kind…it’s 2015 people, lighten up a little bit!

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No judgements at KDR!

At KDR we believe in following primal patterns – also known as the most common human movements. So, that means every work out needs to include a these movements:

Squat – holding something at chest level or higher and squatting to the ground while maintain as vertical a chest as possible. Think – carrying a child and squatting down to pick up something they dropped.
Push – pushing something away from you. Think – falling to the ground and reaching out to brace your self, or pushing someone away from you.
Pull – pulling something to you or you to something else. Think – climbing a tree or reaching down to pick something up.
Hinge/lift – same as a squat, but this time holding the weight at hip level or lower. Think – picking something up from the ground that is heavy.
Lunge – Alternating between having weight on one leg and having weight on the other leg while moving. Think – walking up a flight of stairs, or stepping over a big hole.
Rotate – any movement that causes rotation to occur at the midsection. Think – throwing a ball.
Carry/crawl – carrying something or crawling on the ground. Think – carrying groceries to your car, or looking for something on the ground that is very small (and expensive!).
Locomote – moving from one point to another point, under control and as quickly as possible. Think – running.

Of those 8 movements, the hinge/lift is, in our opinion, one of the most important lifts because a good hinge/lift (think picking something up from the ground) looks a little like a squat, we get some pulling involved and we also get some carrying involved.

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Not bad…not great, but absolutely not bad. We will fix the “tail” in our video.

Our primary hinge movements that we use are deadlifts and the Kettlebell Swing. Even though they are both hinge movements, they offer a different training stimulus. In fact, the KB swing is our go-to for hinge movements because:

The swing allows the production of large amounts of power generated by your glutes, hamstrings and core: the main muscles that essential keep us healthy and injury free in most activities.
Because that same power has to be controlled in the opposite direction, what comes up must come down, those same muscles now get the chance to decelerate all of that speed and power. Deceleration is SUPER important in injury prevention, because generally, it’s the slowing down phase that most people get injured.
As we age, we lose muscle, but (more importantly), our ability to display large amounts of power like sprinting or throwing a ball is diminished. That means, our ability to SLOW down quickly is also diminished. The KB swing helps us build that ability back up
Swinging a KB with great technique looks bad ass. And who doesn’t want to look like a bad ass?
Grip strength has been correlated with being the number one indicator of overall health in numerous studies (see below for the links if you are interested in reading more about that nugget). Swinging a 50-pound weight around is a great way to improve grip strength!
The KB Swing is one of the best exercises (for multiple reasons) for building a strong and shapely posterior. In other words, it helps you sculpt a nice ass.
The swing has practically no impact on the joints if done correctly.
The swing can TORCH calories. In fact, when we have our members wear heart rate monitors, if we someone burning over 15 calories per minute sustained for a few minutes, it’s a rarity. You are motoring above 15 calories! Do the swing in a 45 second, 45 second off format for 5 minutes and most people can hit 15 calories per minute. That means in 5 minutes you just burned 75 calories! Do that for an hour and you’re burning upwards of 900 calories while RESTING for half the time and with NO IMPACT on your joints. That’s trucking.

Enter the December Challenge!

3100 swings by December 31^st. That’s 100 swings per day. Totally do able and manageable! Put your name up on the board at the gym and start swinging!

Stay tuned for a great swing tutorial that we will post tomorrow!

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