Kettlebell Mistakes

2. Copyright 2020 by Phillip Banner All Rights Reserved. Thank you for downloading this ebook! This book is licensed for your own personal use but remains the copyrighted property of the author. You are encouraged to email, share and post the PDF version of this book in any way that you see fit, but you may not change any of the links or content inside. If you prefer, you can share this link with friends, or post it in forums so that anyone who is interest can download the most current version of the book for free… I won’t even ask for an email address because I want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get access to this important information. Here is the link: http://bestofthenet.info/KettlebellWorkouts/ No one associated with this book, including but not limited to the author, publisher and distributors claim to be qualified to offer professional or medical advice. If expert assistance is required, please seek out the services of a qualified professional. If you are new to kettlebells, please check with your doctor before starting your new exercise routines. Please note that individual results will vary.

3. Introduction: Hi! I’m Phil Banner, and you may find this a little surprising coming from a guy who literally wrote a book on health and fitness, but there was a time when I was FAT. I was a frustrated mess, and what’s worse, I had to work out hard for the privilege of staying FAT. Can you imagine how horrible it is to work out 8+ hours a week just to keep from sliding from fat to obese? I tried eating right, exercising, and doing all the things I was supposed to, and I just couldn’t make any progress towards getting the body I always wanted. The problem was that I had a horrible metabolism. If I slipped up even a little and had a slice of cake at someone’sbirthday, I’d see it on the scale almost immediately. It would take weeks of “being good” with my diet and regular workouts just to inch my way back to where I was, and I was getting fed up. That’s when a buddy of mine told me about kettlebells: “All that treadmill and aerobic stuff you are doing will never get you thin. If you are serious about losing weight, you gotta change your metabolism and to do that, you need strength training.” That was a game changer for me, and kettlebells turned out to be an amazing tool to get me the body I always wanted.

4. I started using them, and I started seeing progress. I started using them more and for the first time I can remember I was genuinely excited about working out. FINALLY! I could see results from my efforts. It felt amazing. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm (and in spite of the progress I was making!) I made some mistakes. Some of those mistakes just resulted in me wasting time and effort since I wasn’t getting the most out of my workouts but since I didn’t know how powerful the kettlebell fat burning workout should be, I didn’t know what I was missing. The biggest problem came when I actually hurt myself using kettlebells. That mistake left me with crippling back pain, cost me hundreds of dollars in medical bills, sent me to the chiropractor for weeks and left me unable to work out for a long time. What you have before you is the information that I would have told myself if I could go back in time and talk to the frustrated me that I was back then! Not only would it have saved me a lot of headaches, heartaches, and backaches… it would have gotten me the body I always wanted, the energy I always needed, and the confidence I always dreamed of a whole lot faster and with a whole lot less effort than what I ended up doing. I sincerely hope this book helps you get to where you want to be for all of your health and fitness goals. All my best, Phil Banner

5. Here are the biggest kettlebell mistakes in reverse order: Mistake #5: Not getting proper initial instruction Be sure to get proper initial instructions on each kettlebell exercise that you plan to do. This may seem obvious, but you would be amazed at how many people I see who are not doing kettlebell exercises correctly, even in the gym where instruction is readily available. Kettlebell exercises don’t look very complicated, but the reason they are so effective is because there is actually a lot going on with them. The devil is in the details, and proper form is essential to not only maximizing the effectiveness of your kettlebell workout, but for doing it safely. There are tons of good videos out there showing various kettlebell exercises and their proper form, but even though you know what you should be doing, it’s not always easy to spot the mistakes you are making while you are doing them. If you are exercising at home, be sure to study each exercise carefully, and note the tricky points and pay special attention when you are first starting with them. If doing a new exercise at home alone, don’t over-do it on your initial sessions or you may pay the price for bad form the next day with aches, pains, or worse! Ideally, you want to have professional instruction when first starting out, but if you can’t it is still a good idea to have someone watch while you initially do the exercise and ask them to check on specific parts of the exercise. Even if they don’t practice with kettlebells themselves, another set of eyes can help you make sure you’ve got good form. Coach them on what to look for, and ask them to watch as you do the exercises. Was the squat deep enough? Were your arms straight? Did your swing end where it should? Who knows, maybe when they see how fun they are, you might even end up with a workout partner!

6. Mistake #4: Using the wrong sized weights Another common mistake with kettlebells is using the wrong weight. Using the wrong sized weight diminishes the effectiveness of the workout, promotes bad form and increases the likelihood of injury. Particularly when starting out, most women tend to underestimate their abilities and go with a weight that is too light. Men, on the other hand, tend to overestimate their abilities and choose a starting weight that is too heavy. In general, select a weight where you can do between 10-15 reps of your chosen exercise with perfect form. If you can’t do that, go to a lighter weight. If you can do 20 reps without breaking a sweat, go with a heavier kettlebell. Here’s another pro-tip: If you are doing kettlebell swings, the weight should end up straight in front of your shoulders with the bottom of the kettlebell pointing directly away from you. Your arms should be parallel to the floor. If you find that the end of your kettlebell swing is pointing diagonally up towards the ceiling, you need to go to a heavier weight. Female beginners will often find a weight of 8 kilograms to be a comfortable place to start. Male beginners typically start with a weight between 12 and 16 kg. Beginners in excellent fitness will typically start a bit heavier, with women starting between 12 – 20 kg, and men starting between 20 – 24 kg.

7. Mistake #3: Working out to the point of failure High intensity workouts are a powerful way to tone up and burn fat, but with kettlebells there is a huge downside to pushing yourself to the edge: when your muscles get fatigued, your form breaks down. When your form breaks, you don’t get as much benefit from the exercise, and you run the risk of hurting yourself. So, if you are trying to go all-out and perform as many reps as possible with kettlebell swings, the physiology of how our muscles work means that the more reps you do and the more fatigued your muscles will get, the more likely you are to have a mishap. No matter how excellent your form was when you first start, as your muscles fatigue, the hundreds of tiny adjustments that your body makes as a part of each swing start to get a little sloppier. The timing gets a little more off. Before you know it, your rhythm is off, your concentration suffers, your grip may slip, your balance may fail, or any number of little things could add up just right to end up with you getting hurt, and that’s the last thing we want! To combat this fatigue problem, make sure that you give your body enough time between reps. If you are going for strength gains, give yourself at least a minute or two of rest between reps. If you are more interested in weight loss and toning your body which entails continually moving without rest, it is important to listen to your body and stop when you start to feel your power levels dip… before your form deteriorates to the point where you could have a mishap. Don’t try to force or rescue a bad rep. When something feels wrong, stop. Put the bell down before you end up paying a stiff price in your back and joints.

8. Mistake #2: Bad Body Mechanics In spite of proper initial instruction, over time many people start picking up bad habits. This is especially likely for people who exercise alone and don’t have someone to point out bad form. It’s also especially likely for people who routinely work out to the point of exhaustion. From the last section you already know that as muscles fatigue your form starts to deteriorate. A subtle thing that you might not realize is that as your form deteriorates, your body starts doing other things to compensate. Those other things will hide the problem for a while. Your grip starts to shift, your squat might suffer, you might start swinging with the shoulders and arms instead of the hips or not engage your glutes when doing the exercise. Since you are not usually aware of these assorted tiny compensating shifts as they are happening, you may start developing a muscle-memory of the bad form. Once these bad habits creep into your workout routine they can be very difficult to correct without another set of eyes to point out what you are doing wrong while you are doing your routine. If you find yourself with aches and pains or stiff joints or back, this, or the number 1 mistake (see the next section!) is almost always the root cause of the problem. A good fix if you are working alone is to work out in front of a mirror and pay special attention to your form at the very beginning of your workout. Check each start and end position for correct posture and position. Then, get “into the zone” for the rest of your workout, but at the last few reps before you are ready to end that exercise, just watch yourself in the mirror and see if your form is still solid. A better fix, is to work out with a partner so that you can check each other’s form.

9. Mistake #1: Not warming up your flexors before you start The #1 mistake that I see people doing all the time in the gym is to start their kettlebell workout without properly stretching their hip flexor muscles first. Kettlebells provide a fierce core workout that burns a lot of fat very quickly, but because of the explosive intensity of the workout you can actually hurt yourself if you don’t warm up properly, and the odds of hurting yourself increase as the weights you use increase. Your hip flexors are the group of muscles that bring your legs and trunk together and allow that flexing movement at the hip that is so important for kettlebell exercises. The power and effectiveness of your kettlebell workout depends on a smooth hinge motion of the hips... that is where the strength, power, and fluid energy that gives such a potent workout is coming from. If you know kettlebells, you know the saying: "Everything flows from the hips!" There is only one muscle in your entire body that connects your hips to your upper body: the “mighty” psoas (pronounced “So-As”) muscle in your hip flexor muscle group. It’s so important that it’s even been called the “Survival Muscle”. If you strain your hip flexors, you are going to be in a lot of pain for a long time. The likelihood of back pain, muscle strain and developing other even nastier problems is aggravated by the fact that most of us already suffer from a weakening, shortening and tightening of these flexor muscles because we spend too much time sitting each day.

10. Tight flexors are a big problem, and not just for people with desk jobs. While sitting too much is a huge contributor, even people who are very physically active often have tight flexors unless they warm up properly. Exercises like jogging, cycling and kettlebells are prone to causing this condition. Problems with your hip flexors are likely the root cause of a lot of problems you don’t even realize. In addition to making your kettlebell workout far less effective at burning fat than it should be and increasing your likelihood of repetitive stress injuries, your hip flexors are often the root cause of unexpected problems like the ones below. Do you have any of these problems yet? **Back Pain** A bulging belly Diminished balance and coordination Lack of core definition Nagging pains in your Legs or Hips Bad posture Trouble sleeping Poor circulation Lack of Energy Loss of sexual performance Please take the time to learn the proper way to stretch your flexors and do it before every kettlebell workout!

11. Discover how to unlock your hip flexors and maximize the benefit of your kettlebell workouts with the method developed by world famous Kinesiologist and Injury Prevention Specialist, Rick Kaselj. Click HERE to unlock your Hip Flexors Right Now!