How Bad Is It to Lose Your Grip on Kettlebells?
I remember the first time I saw kettlebells in a commercial gym. I heard about it , I thought and decided to try the swing. I raised one of the bells and turned to the mirror – wait, no, I didn’t want to drop it and break the mirror. So I turned left and realized that if I lost my grip, he would fly to the dude in a cable rowing machine. Each direction in which I turned, presented its own particular danger. If you are currently swinging kettlebells in your apartment, you may have similar thoughts when choosing whether to face the TV, the window, or the wall.
This is a common fear. When you swing a kettlebell, you are transferring serious strength to it from some of the strongest muscles in your body (mainly from your glute), and you only contain that strength with the strength of your tiny fingers. Of course he will fly if anything goes wrong. Or … will it be?
Flying weights are very, very rare.
I ran an unofficial social media poll asking people on Twitter, Instagram, and the r / weightroom and r / kettlebell lifting subreddits if they were ever afraid of losing their grip on kettlebell swings, and if it ever actually happened. …
Almost everyone answered “yes” to the fact that they were afraid of this or thought about it. But in reality, incidents were rare. I received 34 no, never, and only a few to the contrary. I got responses from several trainers and gym owners who said they didn’t even see this happening.
However, this is not unusual. Two people reported that they faced the same scenario that we are all afraid of. One sent a kettlebell to the mirror in the gym; another harmlessly threw it in his yard. Some others saw how it happened, or heard about such cases first-hand.
Eric Addis, a personal trainer and kettlebell lifting coach based in Los Angeles, told me that over nearly a decade of experience, he personally saw two flying kettlebells fail. In both cases, the grip was unusually slippery. One day the instructor had just applied sunscreen and was immediately asked to demonstrate the swing. On another occasion, a student in the class “experienced severe sweating that I have personally seen and used the bell a little harder than recommended.”
In both cases, the bell flew forward, but no one was in the line of fire. (He estimates that the bell, thrown by the instructor oiled with sunscreen, traveled about ten feet.)
All this does not mean that failures with kettlebells are generally rare. I have heard many stories about people who dropped a weight, passing it from hand to hand behind their backs, or how they needed to be saved during the Turkish ascent. There were a few people who lost their grip during the swing, but on the part of the movement where he just fell to the ground.
… even on YouTube
After reading dozens of answers, I realized that I needed to travel to the darkest corner of the Internet: YouTube. I entered “Kettlebell Failure” into the search bar and braced myself for the worst.
I realized that kettlebell failures are boring, and that most videos don’t really fail. People drop their bells on the ground in celebration or drop them at the end of the elevator when they are tired.
There were a bunch of videos of someone not quite doing the dash or juggling by causing them to drop the bell. Sometimes a person falls in the process and, apparently, is not injured. I would say that if you’ve reached a point in your kettlebell career where you juggle bells as hell or do high-rep snatches in competitions, you’ve already come to terms with the possibilities.
The only genuine flying kettlebell failure I’ve found is the 1:31 mark in this video . The competitor performs a snatch – a movement that begins as a swing of a kettlebell with one hand and travels overhead. She loses her grip during the swing, and the bell flies several feet forward. She hurries to pick it up, and there comes an awkward moment when she and the judges laugh. It’s all.
But enough theory, we need experimental proof
This information should pretty much solve this question, but I couldn’t leave this question without throwing a few dumbbells in my backyard. For science.
I have two weights. On a scale of small to medium to large, one is what I would call medium (16kg or 35lbs; popular for people my height) and the other off the charts in honkin ‘ginormous (40kg ). , or 88 pounds).
The results in the big slaughterhouse were final: no matter what I did with him, he was not going anywhere. Several times I swung hard and loosened my grip; he drove maybe a couple of inches. There was simply not enough strength to overcome its mass.
Think of this for a moment as a physics problem. It takes a lot of effort to move a heavy weight. If the bell in question is really massive, you will need all your strength to reach it at arm’s length. There isn’t enough extra power to go very far. So if you find it difficult to grab a large bell and hold it in the first place, you are not going to send it flying.
Let’s move on to a more common scenario. I managed to move the middle bell some distance, but not as much as I feared. My best shot – with a lot of force and letting go at the worst possible moment – was just under seven feet. (I measured patches in the grass to arrive at my conclusion, but if you want to visualize, the garden shed behind me is exactly eight feet long.)
While seven feet may seem like a lot, any gym wall or mirror I’ve ever encountered while doing a swing would be fine.
I tried several other variables, but they all resulted in a shorter journey. For example, if you lose your grip when the bell is at the top, it has already lost most of its forward motion and can only fall straight down.
How to prevent this rare occurrence
So what does this mean for the average risk and somewhat funky kettlebell swinger? Aside from the fact that this information should calm you down by now, there are several precautions you can take to make things even safer.
First, be aware of what is in front of you. If you’re wondering how far you can actually throw a bell, take it to a park or backyard and try the same experiment I did above. This is not forbidden knowledge.
If you manage to send the bell flying, it could roll or rebound after a short flight, potentially hurting others or equipment. Even a dropped bell can scratch the floor if it’s heavy enough. So this is an additional reason to be aware of your surroundings.
Second, remember your grip. ( Chalk or liquid chalk can give you extra grip if you’re worried.) Addis says people usually know when they’re losing their grip, and all you have to do is put the kettlebell down instead of swinging it again. …
He agreed that when rocking a very heavy bell like the one I demonstrated above, there is not much risk of unsuccessful flight. There is not much of a chance of disaster with a very light kettlebell, especially if you’re just training by accident when you first pick up such a kettlebell. In this case, the bell is so small that you simply don’t give it much strength, so it doesn’t have much push to go somewhere.
The bottom line is that a flying kettlebell requires the perfect storm: a lot of strength from your hips, a bell that can be heavier but not huge, loosening your grip and, in the event of a real disaster, something that can be smashed right in front of you. … Avoid coming up with this scenario and you will have nothing to worry about.