Kettlebells for Olympic Weightlifting

[James Evans]

This may be of interest:

http://e-strengthsolutions.blogspot....htlifting.html

[Steve Shafley]

I think Mike Burgener's and Dan John's use of the kbs is more appropriate for olympic lifters, kind of as a synegistic accessory for the classical lifts.

While the kb might give you a feel for the lift, it's still nothing like a barbell.

It's like deadlifting a kettlebell....yeah, it's a deadlift, but the real lift is done with a barbell.

[Dave Van Skike]

Originally Posted by Steve Shafley

I think Mike Burgener's and Dan John's use of the kbs is more appropriate for olympic lifters, kind of as a synegistic accessory for the classical lifts.

While the kb might give you a feel for the lift, it's still nothing like a barbell.

It's like deadlifting a kettlebell....yeah, it's a deadlift, but the real lift is done with a barbell.

IMHO, done "correctly" the KB and BB versions lof teh snatch and c&j ook nothing alike.

[Danny John]

I wouldn't use kbells to help O lift tech...I would use them to prep the athlete for the O lifts. Hell, I can go years w/o doing an O lift and still lift well on the platform.

[Pierre Auge]

WARNING !HIJACK!

Danny,
I want your opinion on that statement you just made, relative this one:

Would that be true had you stopped lifting only a year or two after
you started. I think the answer would be no, but I'd like your thoughts.

My point is your statement is open ended, yes I agree a masters lifter after years of lifting could lay off and the neuro pathways that made you a good lifter years before are so well developed that you can call up those skills on command.

But for a very good young lifter who lays off for 20 years and comes back as a masters lifter though some of the basic kinesthetic awareness may be there, this athlete may still need some level of technical rehash. Like rebooting your computer. Clear the memory, clear the cache and load the program anew!

I may just be pondering over nothing, for I have nothing better to do!

Anyway I agree that kettlebells are not the answer to improving technical ability in the lifts. They are a great, simple tool for getting yourself into condition to lift as DJ said. But so is lifting! So whatever!!! The thing is they have a funny way of letting you work around inflexibility and injuries where dumbbells being more unstable and linear can sometimes complicate things.

I just say this about the difference:
The Kettlebell it to the long jump what the Bar is to the vertical! Neither the same but similar enough to confuse...

[Danny John]

The track and field issue is similar, but different. Throwers throw...jumpers jump. The more I can get my high jumper David Cassel to jump, the better he does. I find that Highland Games help my discus throwers as much as going to another discus clinic.

The mental cache issue is quite right, I think...let me think about this...

[Greg Everett]

kb's usefulness for the o lifts is restricted really to their ability to develop strength and power--not at all to the motor pattens since as steve, dave and danny point out, there is no kb movement that at all resembles a barbell o-lift in any genuine way. that said, their usefulness for strength and power development is not as great as other barbell accessory lifts, e.g. squats, DLs, pulls, etc. so if someone is using kbs as a primary way of developing their OLing, they either don't want to be the best lifter possible, or they're confused.

[Jason C. Brown]

How about DBs ? I love DBs as much as I do KBs. We have two full racks of DBs, 70 KBs and 2 barbells at CFP.

IMO, I see no reason to barbell O-lift other than to be good at barbell O-lifting. I think they're highly overrated and take too much time to learn. Let's not even talk about teh general population lacking wrist flexibility.

Greg,

Any reason why the girls from HQ pull outside their legs using DBs? The Snatch looks more like a curl and press. Doesn't Coach Rut pull differently ?

[Greg Everett]

I like DBs, and I think if done carefully, a DB o-lift more closely resembles the movement of a barbell O-lift, but still won't really improve the barbell O-lifts in any significant way since the loading will never exceed what's possible with a bar and the movement is just different enough to not transfer exactly.

I'd aagree that for GPP and health, the barbell O-lifts are neither necessary nor the best things out there. I'm speaking from the perspective of O-lifting as a sport or the specific development of the barbell lifts and how KBs/DBs play into that.

RE SC girls - You mean that in a 1-arm DB snatch they start with the DB outside the leg instead of between the legs? Those SC people do all kinds of goofy stuff. Seriously, I don't know. I don't approve of much of their movement interpretation (like gripping the DBs unevenly during a clean so they'll swing onto the shoulders more easily... WTF?) because too often it seems intended to simply make the movements easier and more rapid for metabolic training, but in too many cases, i think it's counterproductive certainly to developing good movement patterns and even sometimes to the metabolic conditioning they're aiming for.

Yes, Rut (and I and anyone I train) pulls a DB snatch from between the legs as we would with a KB.

[Robb Wolf]

[quote=Jason C. Brown;5942]
Greg,
Any reason why the girls from HQ pull outside their legs using DBs? The Snatch looks more like a curl and press. Doesn't Coach Rut pull differently ?[/quote.
I'm not Greg (though I play him on TV) and I love the girls at SC but the DB's by your legs, one end drooping down to the ground is RETARDED. It shifts what would have been some nice posterior chain stimulus to the quads. I hate that movement as much or more than trap bar DL's.

This reminds me vaguely of the "look at the ground while doing HSPU's to increase your ROM" that spills forth from CrossFit Santa Cruz. Put yourself in a completely fudged up orthopedic position to get 2 inches of travel when you could perform them in a sound manner elevated on some 25lb plates or Paralettes? Nein.