Double Kettlebell Clean
This week I started working on my Competition Kettlebell lifts – Snatch and Long Cycle Jerk. I said in my last post (Training Long Timed Kettlebell Sets, Part 1) that I was going to get myself established with a baseline and I did that today. (It would have been done much sooner but I dropped myself back into overtraining AGAIN and needed a few days to come out of it and feel like I was up for hard training.)
So, the first thing I came up with while training the Long Cycle was – this is DAMN hard work! I have two 16kg AKC Competition Kettlebells, so these are what I was training with. Not terribly heavy by any means but, when you get into LONG TIMED SETS with two of them, it gets ugly pretty fast.
I started off training the full Two Handed Long Cycle. The lift was OK, but I realized that I lacked a lot of precision. My swings were decent, but I didn’t have the fine control that would have made me feel very comfortable doing the lift. Also, my press was somewhat sloppy once I got the reps going and got into the set.
I switched to the One Hand Long Cycle and did a set. It felt A LOT better.
I also worked on the Two Handed Clean. What I discovered is that my Two Handed Clean gets a lot better when I take out the Press and just focus on the Swing and Clean portion.
Here’s what I ended up doing as a workout after my experimenting:
- Double Clean with 16kg Kettlebells – 3 min at about 12 reps per min
- Single Handed Long Cycle with 16g Kettlebell – 6 min at about 10 reps per minute with hand switch each minute
Neither set was to the limit. I was glad when they ended but I surely had more to give if pushed.
So, here’s what I learned:
There’s a lot “going on” with a full Two Handed Long Cycle Jerk. There’s a lot to manage and it can quickly become overwhelming when you haven’t trained a lot of Two Handed Swings and Two Handed Cleans.
An initial period of training the Two Handed Long Cycle in pieces – Two Handed Clean and One Handed Long Cycle – seems to be a good strategy for me. Getting a lot of practice handling the two Kettlebells in the Two Handed Clean seemed right and seemed like it would bring me benefits later when I’m training the full Two Handed Long Cycle. Right now the Two Handed Clean is a movement I need to perfect and refine so I have a good base for the Long Cycle later.
The One Handed Long Cycle is MUCH easier to train than the Two Handed Long Cycle. This was a bit surprising to me since my long weightlifting background would have me think there was little difference other than using two Kettlebells instead of one. You wouldn’t expect doing dumbbell curls with two dumbbells to be MUCH harder than with one. Yet another sharp contrast between Kettlebell training and weightlifting.
It MIGHT make sense to invest in a pair of 12kg competition bells. I haven’t decided if this is something I want to do yet. I’ll spend a week or so playing around with the two 16kg Kettlebells and see. If I gain strength as fast on the Long Cycle as I have on other Kettlebell movements I shouldn’t need the 12kg bells and I can start thinking about a pair of 20kgs.
So, going forward here’s what I’m going to do:
- Train SHORT timed sets of Two Handed Long Cycle Jerks with the 16kg Kettlebells. This will get me training the movement and the shorter length of time will keep fatigue from becoming a factor and degrading my form. I’ll slowly increase the time and reps on this one.
- Train longer sets of the One Handed Long Cycle with the 16 and 24kg Kettlebell.
- Train longer timed sets of the Two Handed Clean with the 16kg Kettlebells.
That’s it for now. I’m off for a run followed by some Kettlebell training!
ttys
Adam
