• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle

  • Fitness
  • Workouts
    • Best Shoulder Workouts
    • Best Chest Workouts
    • Best Leg Workouts
    • Best Leg Exercises
    • Best Biceps Exercises
    • Best Kettlebell Exercises
    • Best Back Workouts
    • Best HIIT Workouts
    • Best Triceps Exercises
    • Best Arm Workouts
  • Reviews
    • Supplements
      • Best Pre-Workouts
      • Best Whey Protein
    • Equipment
      • Best Home Gym Machines
    • Certifications
      • ISSA Review
  • News
  • Exercise Guides
    • Legs
      • Back Squat
      • Bulgarian Split Squat
      • Goblet Squat
      • Zercher Squat
      • Standing Calf Raise
      • Hack Squat
    • Chest
      • Bench Press
      • Dumbbell Bench Press
      • Close-Grip Bench Press
      • Incline Bench Press
    • Shoulders
      • Overhead Dumbbell Press
      • Lateral Raise
    • Arms
      • Chin-Up
      • Weighted Pull-Up
      • Triceps Pushdown
    • Back
      • Deadlift
      • Trap Bar Deadlift
      • Lat Pulldown
      • Inverted Row
      • Bent-Over Barbell Row
      • Single-Arm Dumbbell Row
      • Pendlay Row
Train

This Kettlebell Grip Cue May Change Your Training for the Better

Coaching grip the correct way will have a profound impact on your athletes' performance and longevity.

Andrew Read

Written by Andrew Read Last updated on January 29, 2022

#kettlbell has accumulated north of three million posts on Instagram. Your favorite fitspo is probably (most definitely) swinging and hoisting kettlebells overhead, and you’ve been officially convinced to swing and hoist kettlebells. If that sounds like you, you probably have run into an annoying and unexpected problem: Your grip sucks. 

Man gripping a kettlebell in a Turkish Get-Up position

Kettlebells aren’t the easiest tool to grab, and the ballistic nature of many kettlebell movements makes them even harder to hang onto. What’s more, your ability to grip, and grip tightly, actually facilitate stronger and more powerful lifts. And it all starts with your muscle fascia.

The Importance of Grip

The fascial lines of the body are many and varied. This article isn’t intended to be a primer on fascia but on better understanding it to enhance our training. The arm lines are particularly relevant to our grip needs. There are four of these lines, and all play some part in grip and its effect on supercharging our performance.

This experiment uses the principles of irradiation of muscle tension to demonstrate just how vital grip is:

  1. Let your arms hang loosely by your side and notice where there is tension. Now make a fist. Notice it’s not just the muscles of the hand that are tight. The tension travels up your forearms.
  2. Now grip even harder. Notice the abdominals engage. Observe how the tension is now not just in your shoulders but also the muscles within your shoulders. How you grip grip has the potential to activate every muscle in your body.

Let’s try our experiment again, this time to demonstrate the importance of the arm lines:

  1. Grip as hard as you can, but focus on squeezing the thumb and index finger the hardest. You should feel the pec and delt engage forcefully.
  2. Now focus on gripping hardest with the little and ring fingers. This time you should feel the muscles in the back — the lats, rhomboids, and rotator cuff muscles — engage.

Applying this knowledge to exercise is common sense, yet few people do it. The conclusion to make from these tests is that if the body is ready for pushing (via the pecs and delts being engaged), your grip needs to have the index finger involved. The opposite applies to pulling motions, where we want to make sure that the pinky and ring finger are in direct contact with the bar or bell.

Hand Position for Smarter Grip

The most common hand position when using kettlebells is a grip that slides the wrist into the corner of the bell where the handle and body of the bell meet. This allows the handle of the bell to run diagonally across the hand and minimizes discomfort on the back of the wrist.

Then, most folks will close their index finger and thumb around the handle. You may mistakenly believe this grip is acceptable. It’s not acceptable. This grip will actually decrease performance while increasing injury risk. 

Man pressing a single kettlebell over his head outside
MDV Edwards/Shutterstock

Here’s why: During pressing, you need to address not only shoulder flexion but also shoulder stability. If the pinky doesn’t grip the bell, the rotator cuff won’t be fully engaged. And when it comes to swinging or pressing a heavy object overhead, you definitely want all the musculature of your shoulder to be engaged.

A better way to grip a kettlebell for pressing (or get-ups or snatching) is with the handle of the bell going directly across the hand, in line with the calluses. This grip allows both for use of the prime movers and for optimal function of the stabilizers.

 

Stronger Grip for Better Movement

If we extrapolate this for other kettlebell exercises, such as squats or swings, we can see these fascial lines connect the fingers to the muscles around the shoulder and also become muscles of the trunk on both sides. The front and back functional lines create two large Xs, one on the front of the body and one on the back.

The correct use of grip will switch on our postural control muscles and enhance all of our bigger lifts. For kettlebell squats, the flat grip is once again the better option (as opposed to the diagonal grip), since it activates the most support muscle.

Once you’re used to gripping this way, you’ll find your performance improves while your injury risk decreases. Changing your hand placement will perhaps make a difference in how much load you can move, but that shouldn’t be a concern unless you’re a powerlifter. Focus on how well your body can move and function as a unit.

More on Breaking Muscle:

  • Get a Grip: 3 Ways to Grip a Deadlift and How to Get Your Grip Stronger
  • More Insight Into Developing Grip Strength: Your Hand Digits
  • Beyond the 2-Handed Swing: 5 Effective Kettlebell Movements You May Be Neglecting
Andrew Read

About Andrew Read

Andrew Read is like that old guy in the Rocky movies - he has a funny accent, hates everyone, and no one ever knows if he's happy or sad. But just like Mickey, he knows training.

Even back in grade school his teachers would complain he was spending too much time reading bodybuilding magazines or trying new exercises in the gym. These days nothing has changed and even after a lifetime of competitive martial arts and some time spent in special forces he still maintains that same passion for increasing human performance, especially that go all day, out run a zombie, live in an apocalyptic wasteland kind of fitness.

Having been a Master RKC, Andrew is recognised as one of the best kettlebell trainers in the world.His specialty is elite performance and he has been involved with training three world BJJ champions.

View All Articles

Recommended Articles

Injury Prevention Exercises
5 Exercises to Help Athletes (Possibly) Prevent Injury
Benefits of Hill Running
The Benefits of Hill Running — More Speed, Better Mechanics, and Power
black and white image of long-haired person performing chin-up
Try These Biceps Workouts Without Weights for Muscle, Strength, and Fat Loss
person in white tank top presses two dumbbells over his chest on an incline.
The Ultimate At-Home Chest Workout for Bodybuilding

Primary Sidebar

Latest Articles

Justin Medeiros Walks Through a Full Tour of His Home Gym Before CrossFit Season

Powerlifter Jimmy Kolb Logs 612.5-Kilogram (1,350.3-Pound) Equipped Bench Press World Record

The Ultimate Back and Biceps Workout for Every Lifter From Beginner to Advanced

Strongman Legend Hafthor Björnsson Receives International Sports Hall of Fame Induction

Latest Reviews

ISSA Personal Trainer Certification Review

ISSA Personal Trainer Certification Review

Best Whey Proteins for Packing on Muscle, Shredding Down, Meal Replacement, and More

Best Pre-Workouts for Building Muscle, Running, Taste, and More

Best Home Gym Machines

Best Home Gym Machines

woman lifting barbell

Be the smartest person in your gym

The Breaking Muscle newsletter is everything you need to know about strength in a 3 minute read.

I WANT IN!

Breaking Muscle is the fitness world’s preeminent destination for timely, high-quality information on exercise, fitness, health, and nutrition. Our audience encompasses the entire spectrum of the fitness community: consumers, aficionados, fitness professionals, and business owners. We seek to inform, educate and advocate for this community.

  • Reviews
  • Healthy Eating
  • Workouts
  • Fitness
  • News

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS Feed

© 2023 · Breaking Muscle · Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · Affiliate Disclaimer · Accessibility · About