How to Hang Clean with a Kettlebell (NO WRIST BANGING!)

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What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. I’m going to show you today how to put one of the most powerful exercises, maybe, back in your arsenal because you gave up on it because it was beating the hell out of your wrists. I’m talking about the hang clean, but done with a kettle bell.

You see, the kettle bell actually allows us to do this exercise easier. So even if you’ve never tried it before it’s one of the most powerful exercises you could do and you’ll want to start doing it, but you’re going to want to learn the right way. Now, first of all, we’ll cover this in another video – the hang clean done with a barbell – but there’s a lot more involved with a barbell that might discourage people from even trying it in the first place. You have this element of triple extension from your ankles through your knees, through your hips, even through your low back. You’re trying to coordinate and then get underneath the bar and time it perfectly.

If you haven’t done lots and lots of reps of that exercise it can be very awkward and it can be very non-productive for you. So, we don’t even really include hang cleans in our early ATHLEANX programs for that very reason. We started to incorporate them after I feel we’ve built up enough of a base. I’ll tell you one of the things you can do with the kettle bell that makes it a lot easier. So, if I could demonstrate here with the little mini-bell.

The idea is this: when you go to clean the bell, here’s what people do most of the time. They pick it up, and they try to pull it back this way so they can get into this rack position. But look what happens. As they pull it up – even if they do what they’re supposed to and keep the bar close to their body, in this case the bell close to their body, when they get to the top they flip, the bell comes down and whacks into the back of their wrists. Now, you do that a few times and you’re going to hate doing kettle bell cleans.

But you don’t have to have that happen. Here’s a couple tips to make sure that it doesn’t. When you’re pulling up the first thing you’re going to want to do – the first visualizations you’ll want to have – is you’re zippering a jacket. Instead of doing this and flipping your arm away from your body, if you were zippering your jacket you’d keep everything nice and tight, right? So if I was right here I’d be zippering the jacket up.

You see as I get to the top that I actually rotate my hand. So as I rotate my hand that’s going to actually rotate the bell around my hand. So it’s not flipping it up and over, it’s coming up, rotating around my hand into this position. That’s the first thing you want to feel. The second thing you want to feel is that your – they say you’re spearing the kettle bell.

So when I come up, obviously because as I go faster with this I’m going to spear the kettle bell. Here and then spear it. So I’m actually sticking my hand into the bell, trying to push the palm of my hand into the handle. I’m not just casually just letting it flop in here. I’m actually coming in and then spearing it; going up that way, okay?

So you want to have a little bit more of an aggressive approach to getting the kettle bell around your arm. Thirdly, what you want to make sure that you’re doing is, as you pull the kettle bell up you’ve got to keep it loose in your fingers. It shouldn’t start down here in your fingers. It shouldn’t be gripped really tightly a maybe you would a barbell. What you want to do is keep it loose in your fingers so as you come up you can maneuver your hand around and get into that position.

Fourth, one of the key elements here is, what is the position of your wrist? Remember, a strong wrist is going to have slight extension in it, right? A flat wrist, or certainly a wrist that flexed here, is not going to have a strong grip as one that has slight extension. That’s why when you go to grab a doorknob you don’t grab it like this, or like this. You grab it like this to turn it so you have more force in your grip.

So when you come up, as you come up and you turn, you want to have your wrist in extension because what it’s doing is not giving you a better grip on the kettle bell when you ultimately get to the top, but it’s also giving you a platform to rest it on as you come up. So as I come up and if my wrist was flat and I got it over here it’s going to have to bang at some point, but if I came up and my wrist was in extension – as you can see right here – it’s actually almost resting on my wrist the whole time it goes around. There is no banging. So you can see, just like that. So, what does it look like in practice?

You grab a heavier kettle bell right here, you come down, and here, and up. Down, up. Your ending position is right here; right on your forearm. Now, if you want to press it, get right here, down, and press up. Come down, and down again, okay?

But again, when you bring the bell up you don’t necessarily have to worry about the timing of your lower body. You don’t necessarily have to worry about the triple extension. It’s all going to happen because you’re just going to come up forcefully, but pull the zipper, and then rotate around, and down. Pull the zipper, rotate around. And your hand lines up nice and deep in that pocket there.

Your fingers have speared the kettle bell, and again, it’s right here resting. It never flipped over the top. Especially something like this will really probably make your wrists hurt. Then of course when I’m coming back down again I just roll it off. So I’m trying to encourage you.

Make sure you do the exercise. It’s a great way to build explosives in your upper body in a way that you can actually do it with a lot less technicality than you would with a bar. If you’re looking for a way to train more explosively – to train like and athlete – and to do it in a step by step manner so you’re not jumping too far ahead before your body is ready; then head to ATHLEANX. com and get our ATHLEANX training systems. We basically take you through from AX1 all the way through AX2 and into NXT.

We’re going to take you down that path and make sure you’re doing things as you’re ready for them and making sur that you’re getting the most out of every workout that you do. Head to ATHLEANX. com for those. In the meantime, if you’ve found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below and I’ll cover whatever you want me to cover for you in future videos. I’ll see you back here soon.