How to do the Kettlebell clean

 

 

 

The purpose of the clean is to quickly lift up the kettlebell up in front of your shoulders, resting it on top of your forearm [3], in order to perform front squats or the kettlebell press. Unlike barbell cleans, the kettlebell clean is not an exercise in it’s own right, but is essential to learn in order to perform the other lifts.

Note in figure [3] this is called the racked position (or clean position), note how the wrists are straight, in that the forearm and hand are in light, it’s important to keep that position for safety.

You begin in the dead lift position with the kettlebell in-between your legs [1], however instead of the slow movement the clean is a fast movement, and you should be practically doing a vertical jump on the spot, but instead of jumping the kettlebell should be propelled up the kettlebell.

See [2] for the mid position, the arms do not perform the lift, they are passive and are like a rope in the move, they simply carry the weight.

When the kettlebell reaches your chest height, you must then quickly tuck your arms underneath the kettlebell in order to lock it into position.

However, before you begin to learn how to do the clean, you must learn to lower the kettlebell from the rack position, with two arms place the kettlebell in the rack position [3] and then maintain the rack position with one arm and use the other arm to carefully push the kettlebell over the holding hand and then lower the weight back to the dead lift position, and then onto the floor.

Repeat the descent several times, until you get it right, and then practice the ascent of the lift.

Now, the complete kettlebell clean detailed with video instruction.