Kettlebell Swing Force: Cutting Through the Noise

In this episode, Jeremiah Waylon and Roger Parks analyze kettlebell techniques, physics, and common misconceptions. They clarify how forces work in kettlebell swings, address questions about symmetry, and debunk myths about injury risks.

 key  topics

Kettlebell swing mechanics and force direction

The role of vertical and horizontal forces in kettlebell training

Addressing symmetry and injury concerns in kettlebell workouts

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Kettlebell Corner
01:17 The Weight Discrepancy Dilemma
07:42 Analyzing Kettlebell Techniques
10:25 Understanding Force in Kettlebell Swings
18:45 Understanding Kettlebell Mechanics
21:52 The Role of Arm Position in Kettlebell Swings
25:31 Physics of Force and Energy in Kettlebell Training
29:39 The Importance of Cueing in Kettlebell Techniques
32:43 Debunking Myths in Kettlebell Training

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Get Roger Parks’ book Kettlebell Essentials: Ballistics on kindle or paperback here:

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Transcript

unknown 0:00

All right.

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Kettlebell Corner where Strength meets.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

We're live now.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome to Kettlebell Corner where Strength Meets Theory, where we take you on a deeper dive into all things kettlebells. I'm Jeremiah Whalen and he's Roger Parks. And today, we're going to answer a question we got from the YouTube comment section. So put your questions there, and guess what? We'll answer them, as well as cover something popular kettlebell people are talking about, and uh we'll set the record straight. You understand? How are you feeling, Roger? You ready? I'm good, thank you. I fucking hate that. I think I'll allow one person, two people to whisper in my ear. None of them are here.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

We were having some conversation off camera. Jeremiah is not a fan of uh turning on clips, reels, videos where people are whispering. So just so you know.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Like straight away, just like hey, I just want you to know cattlebells roll. Creepy ass shit. All right, anyways. All right, let's get to this question, Roger. Why? Let's let's spare the people this. Okay, it says, gentlemen, good morning. I started double KB work last summer and discovered one of my cast iron 16 kilogram bells was about a pound and a quarter lighter than the other. This drove my OCD brain crazy. The solution was to alternate bells every set, like you would if you had mixed bells. But the weight difference still irks me. Does it really make a difference? One or two pounds? I'm trying to come up with a way to even them out. Roger, you are always talking about physics, nerd. Center of mass, lines of force. Do I risk throwing those things off in an attempt to even out the negligible weight difference? And he didn't say you were a nerd, Roger. I did. No, it's true. Thanks for that question, John. What do you say you, Roger?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Well, first of all, I think there's a lesson here. And whenever you're buying anything, be be aware that it may not weigh what you think it weighs. And that applies to kettlebells, it applies to plates. Um this is absolutely a thing. Spouses? I'm gonna leave that one alone. Um I said spouses, Roger. How many, how many people are you married to? Anyhow. Or make email. Um so we we want to make sure you do want to make sure that uh you you get reliable brands. It's gonna happen with all brands, but some brands it'll happen more than others. So um anyhow, that's that's one thing. Uh what we're really looking at is the issue of symmetry, I think. And you can look at symmetry in a couple ways. Are we symmetrical as human beings? This is the first thing that I think about. No, we're not. We've got stuff on the right side that we don't have on the left side, and we tend to carry more physical mass on our right sides. Usually we're heavier there. Um, it encourages a natural twist. It encourages what uh most people know as a scoliosis, which is really just curvature of the spine. Um, I'm not gonna talk too much about that in detail. It's beyond my scope, but I am aware that that these things are normal. So if you're looking at this idea of superimposing symmetry of weight on top of an asymmetrical person, you're running into problems right there already. So if you truly want to keep both sides balanced out, you're probably better off keeping the heavier bell on the left side because the right side's heavier anyway. So that's the first thing I'll tell you. Um, I think chasing symmetry in this sense is not fruitful. If you are worried about it, then the thing that I would definitely do is alter bells. I don't know how you keep track of them. I'm really curious. Do you do you paint one? Are they named? Um, you know, does one have a butthead? There we go. Does one does one have a chip? Um, but you can definitely do that, and you're not gonna throw anything off. Um, but again, no matter what, you're looking at kettlebells and a human as a system. A human is asymmetrical if you were to divide both halves as a system. So everything is gonna balance. If there aren't issues, then I wouldn't worry about it. You know, symmetry as it gets to what we really want to think about symmetry is as a predictor of injury. So if you look at, let's say you're on your back and you raise one knee up towards your chest with it bent, and you can get touch one knee to your chest without your pelvis rolling under, but the other one goes about an inch off the ground and then starts to roll under, that's the type of asymmetry that we're really having problems with is do your joints not work as well? If you you have very little hip flexion in one hip and full hip flexion in the other, then we might be running into some problems. That's that's by the way, that's probably never gonna happen, but we're just being hypothetical here. So if what we need to worry about with symmetry is one side taking too much load and more load than it can handle. Um in the grand scheme of things, is a pound gonna be enough? Probably not. Uh, especially again when we're not uh uh symmetrical creatures to begin with. And if it is a problem, I would just switch it, but you're not gonna do anything catastrophic uh or anything really weird. Um as a little bonus, I would recommend um insofar as they still exist, go into a place like don't say ankle weights. No, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. Go into go into a place like um uh go into a place like Target, for example, like a big a big box store, Walmart would probably do the same thing, and find two scales and put them on the floor side by side, and then stand on both and see see what they read. My guess is I've never seen them read the same thing. So theoretically, if the scales are properly calibrated and you step your 200 pounds and you step on a scale and you see, you should see 100 pounds on both scales. It's divided. That's not gonna happen. What you're probably gonna see is a significant amount of more weight on one side than the other. You'll probably see more weight on the right, but it's kind of a fun thing to see. I've seen discrepancy above 20 pounds. People have are carrying more, uh, more of their weight. 20 pounds, more of their weight on the right versus the left. So that's a that's kind of a quirky thing that you can do to you know to see. Um, for for those listening, this is lost. Jeremiah is flexing. Anyhow. Um it's interesting and and it might make your uh your OCD brain um worse, but it also might make you realize that the whole thing is kind of fruitless anyway, to worry about asymmetries. Pay attention to your body when you train. Um, you know, we we've talked about uh same gentlemen um following stop signs when it comes to pain, and those are the things we wanna we want to think about. So if you're having some pain, then maybe it's an issue. Maybe we address it. Um you could just do unilateral kettlebells, you could just do one-sided stuff. You don't need to do doubles. Um I like doubles. In that case, just switch and don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

Sounds fair. All right. So don't worry. Everybody's weird and we weigh different on different sides, it turns out. I learned that today, Roger. And um, you know, and when you go to the tailor next time and they ask you how you dress, then you know which side weighs more. Okay. All right, carry on. Um, the tailor to get my clothes. I didn't know. Can you uh can you uh fit this t-shirt to me, please? I basically wear my pajamas for a living. I'm not gonna lie, Roger. I did have this particular t-shirt tailored. So that's weird. Just saying. Oh, I didn't like how long the sleeves were, and I didn't like that it said something on the sleeve. As you can see, if I roll it up, it says that thing it was supposed to say on the sleeve. I said, make it not say that, please. I don't want to advertise your force, Carhartt. Just your logo. Thanks. I'm a hard-working man from Detroit. Okay. I'm not I'm not either. Um Okay, so there's this internet going on. Uh there's this, there's this video on the internet, and every now and again we'll we'll call attention or it will our attention will be called to this. I did see this video separate from Roger mentioning that he had a client, and you can elaborate on this, they had asked about this particular video with two people that I think are pretty popular in the kettlebell world. One extremely popular in like kettlebell sport and like kettlebell fitness, I would say, and seems like an all right person. Um I can't remember his regular name, but he goes by Lebe Stark, which I think is Sweden for like hard work or something like that. Um he does put in the effort, you know, he does a lot more sport type stuff. And then the other one is I think her name is Lauren Kansky. Um, I think she works with the ladder company, which is a major performing kettlebell, or not really kettlebell, but weight training app. So screw them, download the Bells app, um, where we won't give you this nonsense you're about to hear. Um, but let's just break this down, Roger, and um let's see what's right. Because, hey, you know, we root ourselves in physics. Yeah? Okay, there's a whole book about it. Um, kettlebell ballistics, the essentials, a practical guide to mathless meethead physics by our the one and only Roger Parks.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Okay, so get that book. Let's let's stop some of the silliness. And I do want to point this out, and it does make sense because you've held up the book. The point of what we're doing now is to not call anybody out. We have um two perspectives. They do not agree with one another. Um they're they have merits, both of them, um, to what they're saying. I do think that there are some inaccuracies of both. I think one statement is more inaccurate than the other to a significant degree. Uh, but the point is to not call people out or make fun. The point is to allow whoever's watching or listening to reframe these things and say, well, wait a second. Let's take this information and put it through a filter where we can actually get some answers. Because a lot of fitness has to do with um mentors and disciples and you know, gurus and all of that stuff. And you've got a long line, um, which is sometimes inaccurate in, you know, where where people say this is the way it is, and then you don't question it because this is the person, right? So-and-so said this, and undoubtedly they've got these amazing credentials, they're in great shape. So we don't question it. So a lot of the a lot of the inaccuracies in fitness don't come down to a lack of intelligence or laziness or anything like that. It's just I never really thought to question this thing. Our approach is rooted in the idea that when we asked some of these questions to people, because I am naturally maybe more curious than other people, I didn't get good answers. And I kept asking and not getting the answers. So we found what works for us. And it is not uh anatomy, which is a great lens to look through stuff, uh look at stuff through. It is not biomechanics, it is physics in a simpler way because biomechanics has a weird way of looking at things that didn't really make sense to me. So once we figured out what it was that we needed, we can now take situations like this and put them through a little bit of a filter. So we can look at some of the stuff. I don't want to, you know, we don't have that much time today. So we're not gonna spend a ton of time breaking every little thing down, but we want to show you another way that you could potentially look at this and not get caught up in who's right and who's wrong, because it seems to me that these are both smart people and they're both dealing with this civilly. So they they see it, uh, they see it a different way. Um so don't get caught up in right or wrong. Like what are the rules that we can apply to see what this is and ultimately how it might apply to me.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

Yeah. And these people are good at kettlebells. I mean, they they have great skills, they're strong as hell. I've seen them both. And um uh yeah, here we go. Here's the video, the moment you've been waiting for.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Talk about the point of a kettlebell swing. What are we training? We are training power and explosiveness out of the hip along the x-axis, the horizontal force. The movement pattern that a kettlebell swing is training is a broad jump. Broad jump going across for an optimal.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Okay, Roger, let's start there. Um what say you? And um, you know, the the force thing is something I know gets bantied about a lot in fitness and kettlebells particularly. Where's the direction of this force? And with the swing, it is often said a horizontal force. It's a horizontal force. Help clear this up and maybe um do you want to chime in on that?

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Okay, so um for those watching, um this this the the face he's making right now uh looks as though he's just smelled a fart and he's wagging his finger because what she's saying is is just inaccurate. Just it is physically inaccurate um about the broad jump and more specifically the the angle of force. Now, first the first thing she says is the point of a swing is. We we immediately we don't disqualify what people are saying, but as soon as someone says the point of, they might say, if the point of this is this, then we're starting to have some context. But there are a lot of reasons to do uh to do kettlebell swings and what most people call power and explosiveness, perfectly valid reason. But we we immediately want to have our ears perk up, like, well, wait a second, maybe this isn't why I'm doing swings. There are other valid reasons. Now, what we're really getting into, and I think the point that she's trying to make, is that the point of a swing is to generate power through what's called the, you know, she says, I think she says the x-axis, so horizontally. Um in terms of the kinetics of the lift, okay, and and and these are we we mentioned this stuff before, the two ways you can look at a lift, kinematically, how a lift looks, and then uh the motion you can trace. There, there are other things that go into that, but just think of it how the lift looks, and then kinetically, how you generate the forces. So she's repeating what is common with kettlebell coaches, which is a kinematic understanding of a kettlebell swing. You see the hips coming forward, you're using the glutes, you feel the glutes, therefore, um the purpose of this is to generate horizontal power. Now, that is incorrect in terms of how a swing is actually created. And um, he's absolutely right to call this out. The the study he's going to mention does does cover this, but if you understand life on Earth in motion, then it couldn't be any other way. It it has to be vertical force. This is ground reaction force. This is we're we're accelerating an object under gravity, which falls vertically. The predominant force in this case, the way humans interact with gravity, the way we would swing a bell, can only be primarily vertical. Now, this is where it gets a little confusing with people, or for people rather. The and this is where I disagree with him a little bit too. He seems like maybe he doesn't give this enough attention, maybe he understands it, but he doesn't hit it hard enough in this video. The force you're generating is vertical, right? But the displacement, the movement of the bell is both vertical and horizontal. It's not just one. So just because the force is vertical, it doesn't mean that the bell should only be horizontal, or it should only be vertical rather in the way it moves. So an example I use is you think about a cartoon. If you've watched cartoons, someone steps on a rake. It's a vertical force, it's hilarious. Okay, yeah, but what happens? You step on the rake and it swings up and slaps you in the face.

unknown 15:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

It's hilarious. If you look at the handle of the rake, it traces an arc, right? Or part of a circle. The vertical force has to act along this lever based on the shape of the rake. So it's vertical force, but the the rake doesn't go straight up and down. It goes up, it goes in an arc, which is a combination of, if you, if you were to trace it, both vertical and horizontal movement. So it's not horizontal force. He's correct about that. It is vertical force primarily. But what really moves a bell is torque. And that's when force moves through basically other objects when there's an axis of rotation and and those things don't completely line up. So if you you can think of another example of, let's say, a catapult or people, someone out there is gonna correct me and say it's a trebuchet, whatever. The when you look at these things, when you look at these things, when when when you think about these things, um, what you essentially have is a medieval siege instrument, right? You're you're you're launching boulders at a at a castle, and there's a boulder, let's say, in a basket, and there's some sort of force, whether it's a spring or there's a weight holding it in place and or a rope, and when you cut the rope, this thing drops vertically. All of that vertical force is going to be translated into an arm, right? You can't you can't create just direct vertical force with this thing because these objects have substance, right? Our our bodies have our bodies have mass. So when we're we're using our legs to push down and create this vertical force, it can't act directly in the vertical way. It has to go through our bones, which have pivots and they have length and mass. So as these things, as we go from, let's say, a bent position in the backswing, like you can see in the video now, she's getting ready to go into the backswing. She's bent, and as she straightens up, she's gonna be putting vertical force into the ground, just like stepping on that rake. And then her torso is going to swing. If you look at it, it's gonna swing just like the the handle of a rake, right? Or an arm of a catapult. It's gonna swing, and along with it, it's going to propel her arms, which are in front of her torso. That's how kettlebell swings happen. So when you look at the forces, they're absolutely, they're absolutely primarily vertical, but the vertical force causes torque to happen, or we can call it angular acceleration, acceleration in in a portion of a circle. And that's really where our kettlebell swing comes from. So, first point, he's definitely accurate. Uh, but I'd like him to be a little more accurate, is is you know, yeah, let's keep watching the video. Let's hear what he says.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Optimal swinging to happen. We want the kettlebell to get as far away from our body as possible, which means we need to extend our arms. If you were to let go of the kettlebell, please don't.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Let's stop this. Optimal, I think, is the word here, okay? Optimal to who, to whom.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Or or for what. Yeah. Or for what. And he's already he's already making faces as though, you know, the the kettlebell shouldn't get that far away from the body. Now, this is what we need to think about. As the kettlebell gets away from the body, as it moves away from the body, the vertical force has been put into the ground with your legs. It channels upward, the ground reaction force kind of channels upward, transfers from from joint to joint to joint. You have an acceleration of the torso, which causes the bell to swing. And the arms being at length, um, can be useful. This is where I disagree with him about this. And this is going to be context dependent. You you may want some situations where the arms are closer. You may want some situations where the arms are farther. So let me preempt and talk about some times where I would prefer someone going to the length of their arms. One, we want to think about um repeatability. If you have a standard where your swing ends up at least at chest level and your arms are straight out, then you have a gauge. Have I have I put enough force into the floor to make this bell swing? So let's say you are doing really well and you got your 24 kilo bell and you're swinging to chest height, then all of a sudden you pick up a 28 and you're not getting it there. If your arms are bent, you don't understand the degree of the bend. And now that doesn't mean that the exercise is useless. But there is a scenario where if you get it to the same height every time, there's a monitoring process. You can see, am I actually generating force to achieve the same objective? Now, think about running a race, right? If if you if you want to time yourself and see if your times improve, you've got to run, you know, the whole track 400 meters. If you're running the same time, it's like, well, today the track is, you know, 300 meters and tomorrow it's going to be, you know, 476. Then we don't have the same context. So the arms getting to the same, roughly the same place does give us some repeatability. It also makes sure that the body has gone through its natural arc because when you do swing, now what she suggests, and some other people I know she's aligned with do suggest is that you flip the arms up, which I don't agree with. I don't think that makes sense to to emphasize the the reach. I don't think that that's right. I don't think there's a point to it. I think that what they're doing is I think they're misreading the scenario and and they're trying to generate what they think is horizontal force when it's actually vertical. But if if you let everything just happen, um the arms will yeah, the arms will want to go to their natural length, and there's nothing unsafe about it. Um now, in incorrect, if your form is incorrect, then yes, you with the arm straighter, there will be more torque uh on the spine. That's absolutely true. But if the swing is safe, and that's really important for context, then it it's not any any less safe. So um that's the second reason is we're we're expressing full force. Say we're we're letting all of the force we generate uh be expressed and we're not putting brakes on it. The third thing is in physics there's something called work, and work isn't just doing something hard. If I pick up a 40 kilo kettlebell and I'm holding it in the rack position, I have done work to get the bell to from the floor into the rack. If I have to hold the bell in place and it does not move for 10 minutes, I am not doing any additional work from a physics standpoint. It might be hard, I'm burning calories, but I'm not doing more work. So that's just a basic idea of what work is. Work requires energy. The more work you do, which is which is um calculated based on distance or displacement that an object moves, more work means you're you have to generate, uh, you have to use more force and you do have to use more calories. So if you want to make it harder, let's just you know keep it simple. If you want to make it harder, um, then you have to do more work. And the bell going uh farther is is something that you can talk about that. Now we can talk about the way back, um potential energy of the bell farther falling from farther away. If you want to maximize your stretch shortening cycle, maximizing potential energy. There are a lot of arguments for letting the arms go straight as long as you can control it. So we'll we'll we'll leave it there for now. So I've kind of preempted some of this other stuff, so let's let's let's let this play.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

It would travel far across the room. It doesn't go up towards the ceiling. The minute when it's loading your lower back, it's throwing off your mechanics and it's just making it more of a vertical form.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

So the the the throwing off the throwing off the the lower back is not right. You know, his assumption that the arms being long is injurious that he makes later is incorrect, but hers that you know when you have a more vertical trajectory of the bell uh is bad for your lower back, this is this is kettlebell nonsense that's been around for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

This whole idea Because then every clean would be the worst thing you ever did, and every stats would be the worst thing you ever did.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

So this whole idea of you know, don't squat your swings. Now, there are reasons why you may not want to squat your swings, which is when they move more up and down rather than front to back. Um but but doing this does not inherently expose you to injury. There's just there are too many factors that are going to determine determine when you get injured. And an incorrect technique exposes you to injury. The the the path does not, because there are plenty, you know, you you spending time, for example, learning kettlebell sport, you do a lot of vertical trajectory and your your back doesn't hurt, does it? No. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

That is not accurate. Ground reaction forces in the swing, the clean, as well as the snatch are predominantly vertical. Roughly 80 to 90 percent. And the heavier the bell gets, the more it goes upward. A paper by Neil May highlights this.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

So you can look at you can look at the study, it does highlight that that that's that's true with reality. But an interesting thing about a heavier bell requiring it to be more vertical, um it it it's you you're gonna need to stay a little more vertical in order to stay balanced. The if you've got a bigger, heavier bell surging in front of you and it wants to pull away from you. If if you keep your arms really straight, you might get to a point where you're strong enough to swing the bell, but you don't weigh enough in order to offset it. So you'll see when people get really heavy bells, um, I'm probably fine for some reps with, let's say, a 52 kilo. But if I go above that, I have to bend my my elbows or I'm physically pulled off balance. And it's not that I'm not strong enough, it's that I don't weigh enough. So if somehow I were strapped in place, I'd be okay. Otherwise, I've got to I've got to shorten the elbows, make it a little more vertical, or it's gonna pull me forward. Um the the energy when we look at really tight language, it is less efficient, meaning to to get the to accomplish the objective, meaning the swing as or the rep. Now he's a kettlebell sport athlete and he fo he thinks in reps. So if you're just thinking how much energy does it do you need to use a swing, he's correct in that this is a less effect, that's a less efficient way, and we can talk about wasted energy. But what I would say why I don't like this framing is what if you want to waste energy? What if you want to burn calories? What if you want to get tired? Now, you could have a counter-argument to that. Well, why not just do more reps the other way? Totally fine. It's a valid counterargument, but you may not want to. You you may want to do fewer reps, you may want to express that force a little bit more. Maybe you don't have as much time. So there's a valid argument going either way. But I do, I do I'm reluctant to talk about again, we're we're talking out of context here. So some contexts would allow you to do this, and other contexts in in kettlebell sport, this would be silly.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Yeah. And and that's you know, sometimes that's if your bias is in kettlebell sport, then you're going to say, well, the efficiency is off with that long arm. But where absolutely in the hard style way, you know, that's the moment your arms are at their length and the bell is floating, that's like the moment of the rest, so to speak. So wouldn't that equate to efficiency then?

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Um, well, to to argue with you is you would get you would get the same with your elbows bent, you'd get the similar rest. The rest has to do with the the acceleration of the kettlebell. So once it's I mean, I I I do this thing just to show my clients that you don't need to use your arms to get a bell to the top of the snatch. So I start the movement and then I actually let the bell go and then catch it at the top. So you don't need when your your arms, if your arms were attached to the bell, as long as you get that speed up enough, like the acceleration up enough, it's gonna go on its own. So you're still gonna have that float, regardless of whether the arms are straight or um whether they're straight or they're bent. There's there's one other thing that we can talk about. I don't want to forget about this. This is kind of a a simple thing, but when we we look at the let's just call it speed. This is I'm gonna get inaccurate from a physics standpoint, but I'm trying to explain this to people who, you know, like me who don't have a background in this stuff. Have you ever been on a merry-go-round? Heck yeah. Okay. I love it. So when you're a kid, where do you stand?

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Well, when you're a kid, you stand uh, I guess at the edge. I don't really. I mean, in the middle, I I know where this is going. So Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

So then let me then you're you then you should. Thanks for nothing, jerk. All right. So if you stand on the edge of a merry-go-round, which makes a circle, this has to do with rotational mechanics and angular momentum and some other stuff. But if you're standing on the edge of a merry-go-round, you're going to feel more forces. You're going to feel like you're going faster, because you will be, um, than if you stand in the middle. And and and I mean that in a in a literal way. The whole, the whole merry-go-round has mass. And if you were to draw a line, let's one one line that goes from the middle of the merry-go-round to the edge, and you were to stand on the edge, then you need to actually cover more distance than the middle. If you're actually, if you see how much, how far, how far these two points travel. The point on the edge of the merry-go-round is going to cover more physical distance than the point in the middle to make one revolution. And it's really easy, it's really easy to to see this in in person if you have uh if you have an example. You could look at a turntable, you could look at a merry-go-round, but the center of an object, in a sense, is moving slower than the outside of an object. Um, so if you want to feel the full speed and you and you're a kid like I was, you go way to the edge. And because you want to you want to go fast. Now, when you've been there for a while and you feel like you're gonna throw up, then you crawl or pull the bar and you get to the middle, and then you close your eyes for a little bit, and it's a little bit easier to handle. Um, another practical another practical example would be a baseball bat. So when you swing a bat, the end of the bat is moving farther than the handle of the bat. It physically goes farther. And it's all one thing, right? So the whole all the points on the bat need to go through the same, the same plane of motion at the same time, but the ends of the bat have to go farther. And that greater distance traveling at the same speed means it needs to if or for Let me let me back up. In order for all the points on the bat to go through one full swing, the end of the bat needs to be going faster than the handle. Or the end couldn't keep up, because how else would you be able to, um, how else would you be able to complete one revolution in the same time in the same moment if you weren't going faster? If you were going through if you were running a shorter track and I was running a longer track, you know, if we're if for any any track athletes out there, they know that the lanes are not all the same, right? The the ones toward the middle are actually a little bit shorter. So for me to stay on the outside lane and to run the same race, I'll technically have to go faster. So this is one other point when you're looking at distance, and this is this is the real point of this, is the the distance that you travel, okay, when you have a longer arm, if you want to, for whatever reason, your goal is to accelerate the bell as much as possible. If that is part of your goal, then you are going to do so with a straight arm because the end of your arm will literally and physically be moving faster than your shoulder. So if that is part of your goal, then you want a straighter arm because it's going to accomplish that. And it's going to require more muscle, it's going to require more energy in order to make that happen. So you shorten your arm, then you shorten the distance you need to go. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

You can squat, but it creates unnecessary effort because as you move outside that vertical line, your body has to struggle to stay inside of it. So if the bell is already traveling at a vertical path, do not go outside of it.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Let's let's pause this. So this is this is true in a way where you want to minimize torque and make things um you know with certain lifts, if the goal is to lift heavy, then you you want to respect these lines. But you're never going to be able to, you're never going to be able to do uh true vertical. And in fact, the only way to maintain a pure vertical trajectory in a swing, which you wouldn't be able to do, you'd have to lean way back because the the bell can't go from the feet all the way up through your body. It's got to go through some, it's got to go through some. You basically have to limbo to make that happen, essentially. You have to go, you have to go through some arc. So again, it's you know, is it wasted effort? That might be bad for your back, Roger. It might be. Um there are certain things that will be and certain things that won't be, but you may want, you may want things to be harder. You know, if you look at um certain exercises, if I wanna, if I want to do a bench press, right, then I'm gonna want to have things in a particular way. But what if I want what if I do a fly? You know, I don't know anyone who could, let's say, let's take, you know, try to compare apples to apples. If we're looking at a dumbbell chest press where you bend the elbows, I don't know anybody who can fly the same weight that they can press, right? And that has to do with the lever arm being longer and and you know, you're you're not getting the benefit of extra muscles, et cetera, et cetera. Um but in certain situations, you want to make it harder to get a training effect. That is a perfectly valid uh point in fitness, is that sometimes we want to make things harder in order to achieve a particular objective.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

True that. True that. All right, do we need to continue on with this guy? There's about twenty seconds left before he advertises something.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Uh let's let's give him twenty seconds and see if there's anything else.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

I don't over straighten my arms, I just keep them loose because the focus is here. On the boots. And above all, make sure your hinge is crisp. She responded, by the way, but saying that I do it like this because that's how I've been taught is not a valid argument. If you want to learn more about Captain's.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Come on, bro. I meant to edit that out, but I was like, yeah, Sarah, we'll stop it. Um first off, yes. You shouldn't wear underwear and a sweatshirt for a video. I'm just saying. That's what it looks like. And the I'm no fashion police, as you can see. I did tailor my t-shirt.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

You correspond with him directly. I I'm not gonna wait on that. Uh no, no.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

He he we'll get him on the show, Roger.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

But you know, the the idea of it being the glutes, I I also I also have a little bit of an issue with that. Um not that it's it's not, not that that, you know, that's probably not your prime mover, but it's also the quads, it's also the hamstrings. And the focus being on the glutes or this idea of a hinge, I also don't like uh a swing being called a hinge because it it simplifies things um and it takes away the muscles that can generate vertical force. So I'm not a big fan of that. And one thing to remember that a lot of people don't necessarily get is they think that the the glutes, because the they extend the hip and the pelvis moves forward and back when they contract, they think it's a horizontal force. It's not. It's still creating vertical force. If your glutes contract and your feet are touching the ground, then your glutes are going to be a very powerful, what we call knee extensor. When when your glutes contract and your pelvis comes forward, everything's gonna happen at the same time. And they're gonna be very effective at straightening the knees, basically. So the the swing is about bending in a position to load it and then straightening really fast. And the glutes are going to uh they're going to work with hip extension, but they're also gonna work with knee extension. So um really important, again, he's not wrong about these things. And and I'm okay with with the language, but I do think that that language somewhat undermines his point in terms of practice. When one of the the problems I have in the kettlebell world, especially specifically the hard style world, is so much emphasis on the glutes and thrusting hips forward and horizontal force, it will actually make your swing less effective. If your goal is to push the hips forward rather than drive the legs down, your swings will be worse. If your goal is to just stand up really fast, your swings will be better. Um, and there there's a lot of there's a lot of physics that will go into that that I don't want to talk about because I've probably already tested people's patience enough as it is. But we want force down. We do not want the hips surging ahead of the feet that causes problems with the low back. It takes away, it takes away your your force production and it makes things worse. So all in all, I think his I think his points for the most part were valid, although there is a completely valid reason to have the arm straight. And there's some physics reasons too. So these are going to be context dependent. Um his argument about the the forces being vertical rather than horizontal, that's true. And and what she's repeating is a very common, um, very common in the hard style world, and it just isn't accurate. You get a lot of top-tier strength and conditioning coaches that talk about horizontal force production. Running is not horizontal force production. Just because you vertical. Just because you were moving horizontally or displacing horizontally does not mean that you were producing horizontal force. Most of the force you were you were producing is down to cause ground reaction force and you're essentially jumping forward. A bunch of times. Yeah.

unknown 38:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

So hopefully hopefully that answered the question. Um there was one other part of the question uh that I got. This is actually someone contacting me on Instagram. Um the the cues do matter, and that that was that was a that was uh a point of this from a practical standpoint. Do does cueing matter? Cuing absolutely matters. And that was the last point, really. If your goal is to push the hips forward of the feet, you you will lose force production. And you can try this. If you you can just standing up unloaded, you can push the hips forward without straightening the knees. It's not going to be uh very effective. If you get into the bottom of what most people would call a hinge position and straighten the knees enough, what you will probably do is fall over. You'll probably fall forward. What you need to do is you straighten the knees. Your hips need to shoot forward in order to balance you. It's gonna happen reflexively, it's gonna happen automatically, it's gonna happen as a a byproduct of your shape and how you're engineered, how you're built, where your joints have that motion, just like the rake or the catapult, the the the trajectory of the object is going to depend on the direction of the force, which is down and the shape of the object. So we don't need we don't need the the um the broad jump cue unless it's somehow relevant in context, because I will I will still say the best cue is the one that works. So it can be incorrect, but if I have someone who's not, let's say, bringing their hips all the way forward, which is common, if I have someone who is doing too much of a squat, which will rob you of your total distance, which robs you of your ability to generate force optimally, then I might say, let's bring the hips forward more, as long as nothing else changes. I might try it. If it's the right thing, I'm gonna do it. I don't care about physics and I don't care about anatomy or studies. What I care about is does my client get a better experience of the swing? And do they have that moment where like, oh, that felt so light? That's what I'm after. I don't care about all the other stuff. So yes, the cues matter. Um, but in this case, the cue would be technically incorrect, but that doesn't mean that it's also not useful.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

All right. And uh if you want your swing to be better and you're listening to this before March 28th, you can come join us in Woodland Hills at the Los Angeles area at Ionix, uh, and uh get your swing tightened. Remember, the swing is the best exercise on earth. Always just kidding for everybody. Yes, for everybody. And uh again, get this book. You know, the stuff he talked about, this isn't even a long book. It's 120 pages. It's worth your time, maybe an hour and a half of a once-through, and then a ten-year dive in deep afterwards. Anyways, that's on Amazon. It's always in the link. Download the Bells app, all that good stuff. We appreciate you listening. And uh, if you have some videos that you need some clarification on, you can always send us to us. Instagram's an easy way to do that. And uh maybe we'll address it. But if you have a question, we will address it. So put it in the comments or email, you know the deal. All the links are here in the description. So handle it. All right. Anything else, Roger? No, I think we're good. All right, stay strong, everybody. Bye, everybody.