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  • No worries - one of the instructors at the gym I go to is proper old school & has loads of great tips for proper technique, if I remember any good ones I'll throw them in here - I've been doing kb regularly for a a few years and every now & again she'll walk past & say "try this..." and it'll be a proper lightbulb moment...

    To get into good swinging technique, try wrapping a small towel round the handle, it makes it impossible to grip the bell tight enough that you'll be able to pull up with your arms / shoulders & you'll learn to rely on your posterior chain to drive it - hump it

    Good one to watch out for hypertension at the top of the swing is to stand perfectly straight & have someone behind you with a loosely clenched fist positioned in between your shoulder blades 2/3 inches away, start swinging & every time you start to lean back & arch your spine you'll know about it as you'll get a dull one in the back.

    For your cleans, try starting in the rack position holding a towel between your elbow & side, use your shoulder to nudge the bell forward to into a small swing & try to generate enough momentum with the hip thrust to get the bell back up to the rack position without dropping the towel, keep a loose-ish grip and the bell should slide over hand back into the rack position without smashing your forearm / shoulder, a little dip when comes back to the start position will cushion it a bit - try not to lean back when it comes back up - start / finish position should always be a vertical plank.

  • Cool, cheers.
    Swings I'm alright with - I think I'm reasonably well trained to get the drive from the hips/legs from doing Olympic lifting. Gonna take some video side on to check everything's in the right place. I have done a bit of kettlebell over the years via crossfit and other things, although never with a 28kg bell.
    The other issue is that the grass that I'm lifting on is very uneven - so stabilising the weight is even harder. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Either way - lots of time to practise at the moment.

    I'm mostly just excited about all the different exercise to learn and get better at. Looking forward to being able to actually do some higher intensity circuits and stuff once I've adjusted to it. Plenty to keep me busy.

  • If you've done proper lifting before you'll have decent core strength to begin with - just start off slowly with simple things like 10 X 10 Russian swings & built it up from there

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