I’m betting, off the top of my head, that most of you are doing two hand swings exclusively. I know I did for about the first six months of my kettlebell training.  Although the two hand swing is great, so are the variations of it – especially for increasing involvement of your grip and your core muscles, for fixing side-to-side imbalances, and more. And plus, two hand swings day in and day out just get a little boring after a while.  Let’s quickly cover some common variations – and a few you may not have heard of.

The One Hand Swing

A fundamental variation on the two hand swing.  Mechanics on this exercise are identical to the two hand swing, except for the fact that you’re obviously only using one hand, and that you’re turning the hand in slightly  as you bring the kettlebell down – this ‘pre-stretches’ the rotators.  The one hand swing certainly works your grip more and your core muscles -the abs, obliques, hips, glutes, etc.

The Hand To Hand Swing

Here, you simply perform a one hand swing and switch hands mid-air on each rep.  The key is to make the kettlebell float and simply ‘pluck’ it out of the air with the opposite hand at the top of each repetition.  Make sure you practice this one outside to begin with 🙂

The Traveling Swing

You can perform the traveling swing a lot of different ways – check out the first video below for some inspiration.  A couple of tips for two of the basic variations – if swinging side to side, the key is to step with the back foot first – otherwise you might be in for some disasterous results 🙂  On the forward walking swing, make sure to take quick steps.  

Here’s a couple of cool videos with even more swing variations:

There are a lot of swing variations to play around with – focus on learning one at a time to master your form, stay safe, and get the most you can out of your training. Did I miss any swing variations? What are your thoughts?

P.S. If you need a guide to help you learn the basics of kettlebell training the right way, check out the KettlebellBasics.net Quick Start Guide here: http://kettlebellbasics.net/kettlebellbasics-net-quick-start-guide/