Kettlebell Cleans

The original purpose of the kettlebell clean was to provide a safe way to get 1 or 2 kettlebells in position for overhead pressing.  A it turns out the kettlebell clean is a great stand alone exercise as well.  It may look like an arm exercise but similiar to the swing the arm acts only as a link to the posterior chain, basically the back of the body.  The clean is in fact a swing with a smaller arc.  When done properly the bell should not smash heavily the forearm but instead land lighlty on the back of the arm. It is important to keep a loose grip on the bell!  If you take a death-grip on it the bell will smash your arm every time.  Try to think of moving your hand around the bell as it moves though the arc you sent it on when you had it in the backswing.  You need to be experienced with the swing if you want to learn the clean, this is why all of my students start with the kettlebell swing before learning the clean.  Practice with a light weight first.  Clean technique and form with smaller bells will help you tremendously when you start pushing the bigger weights.

This 40 lb bell is the bell I hurt myself with recently lol.   It was my fault I got injured because I was overhead pressing this bell and doing turkish getups with it too.  It's too heavy of a weight for those exercises for me but I feel that I am ready to do some cleans with it.  I did 3 sets using the 26, 35 an 40 lb bell, 7-12 reps each arm with each bell for a total of 9 sets and probably about 150 cleans.  I also did about 50 double bell (26 lb bells) clean and presses which are quickly becoming one of my favorite exercises.