I’d like to explore several angles to this issue, including whether the America swing itself is valuable or a waste of energy and why the two sides are so vehement in their respective positions, as well as offer some thoughts about the use of kettlebells in CrossFit in general.

Why People Bicker

CrossFit has been very good at absorption. It’s like 1958’s The Blob, the plot of which is described as, “an alien lifeform consumes everything in its path as it grows and grows.” CrossFit has done just that, absorbing pieces of fitness from everywhere and repackaging them as its own. This includes weightlifting, kettlebells, self defense, running, and much more. In general, this is a good thing.

The problem lies when CrossFit envelops a sport or movements from a sport steeped in rich history and tradition, with rigid rules and techniques, and then pukes all over them in the name of speed and intensity.

Weightlifting is a good example. In the weightlifting world, pressing out a lift is general cause for red lights (a “no-rep” in CrossFit parlance). People who are loyal to the sport of weightlifting are appalled by CrossFit’s application of the word “snatch” and that we give credit for reps such as those where athletes drop to their knees to save a lift (dumb) or fight a missed lift with the world’s most hideous press-out (also dumb).

Similarly, with kettlebells, there is a history, a method, and what some might describe as a beauty in a properly executed kettlebell swing. So, when CrossFittters go and bastardize those swings, it pisses off the RKC folks, whether the particular swing might be good, bad, ugly, pretty, or injurious. You may as well have painted a kangaroo into the background of da Vinci’s The Last Supper. (Monty Python fans, you’re welcome)

“The problem lies when CrossFit envelops a sport or movements from a sport steeped in rich history and tradition, with rigid rules and techniques, and then pukes all over them in the name of speed and intensity.”

On the other side of the argument, many CrossFitters claim ownership of these newly crafted movements without any real regard to their value because, well, CrossFit says so. When you read some of the disputed article and see words like, “uniqueness of line of action,” “irreducibility,” “While admitting a penchant for iconoclasm, we are not contrary solely for the sake of being contrary. Rational foundations for our programming, exercises, and technique are fundamental to CrossFit’s charter,” you can’t help but be impressed. (I had to look up “irreducibility” to at least get myself some context.)

But while “uniqueness of line of action” and “irreducibility” sound impressive, the words mean little to the majority of people. We are simply being dazzled. So instead of doing any real analysis of the value of the overhead swing, we take CrossFit’s word for it. “Hey! It’s irreducible, alright? Get that goddamn thing over your head!”

CrossFit’s Reasoning

Let’s look at CrossFit’s reasons for swinging overhead. The first stated reason is:

We don’t do half rep pull-ups, we don’t do half rep squats, and we don’t do half rep push-ups. If there is a natural range of motion to any movement we like to complete it. To do otherwise seems unnatural.

So CrossFit considers a Russian swing a half rep. There’s one of the reasons you have the RKC community ruffled, guys.

Using that logic, CrossFitters would never deadlift. Rather, they should sumo deadlift high pull the bar every time they touch it. Better yet, just execute a narrow grip snatch every time you touch the bar because that’s the way to “lengthen the line of travel of any movement” as the article justifies.

“The goal is not always simply to ‘do more work.’ And you’ll never convince a powerlifter deadlifting 750lbs that he is only doing a ‘half rep.'”

The problem with this argument is that it disregards the purpose for a particular exercise. For example, the reason you practice a deadlift is different than the reason you practice a snatch. You’re not just looking for the longest possible range of motion. Deadlifts can be trained as a piece of the snatch or as their own end-goal. There are multiple variations of a deadlift, all of which serve different and varied purposes. The goal is not always simply to “do more work.” And you’ll never convince a powerlifter deadlifting 750lbs that he is only doing a “half rep.”

But that’s the difference between CrossFit and other sports in a nutshell. Other sports, in general, seek to execute the task specific to their sport. In weightlifting, everything is done in furtherance of the goal of executing a three-white-light snatch at the highest possible level. Snatch pulls, squats, Romanian deadlifts, good mornings, you name it, are all done in support of that single execution of technique.

In CrossFit, the goal is simple: more work. That is the technique. That is the execution of the test. So everything CrossFit does is done in furtherance of that goal – to perform more work. As such, any RKC argument that the “purpose of the kettlebell swing is to develop ballistic hip power” falls on deaf ears. That’s not what CrossFitters are interested in. They are only interested in how to do more work (in less time). They’re not training pieces of movements; they’re working. And they don’t care about your sport’s protocol. They really don’t.

The CrossFit Formula

But CrossFit, as a training methodology as expressed in a mathematical formula fails to take some nebulous variables into account – namely, goals. So when it comes to the American kettlebell swing, we see this formula:

Work (W) = The weight of an object x the height that object is lifted (why CrossFit takes the bell overhead)

W/Time (T) = Power (P) or, more accurate to CrossFit’s application, Intensity (I).

The bottom line is that for this formula (and for CrossFit’s substantiating formula) to be accurate, you simply must start with “W.” This means you need to move the heaviest possible weight the farthest or highest. That is CrossFit’s entire justification for the American swing as outlined in the referenced article, aside from that half-rep nonsense.

The upshot of this is that CrossFit will never not do the American swing, so we can all stop talking about it. It fits their math, so it’s going to be done. You can do more “work” with the American swing, and they have the anecdotal tables of data to prove it.

You Have a Choice

Here’s where I have an issue, though. There must, as some point on the matrix, be a place where W/T=P(I) crosses with Goals (G). That point in the matrix is the point at which the risk of injury becomes unacceptable.

More succinctly, you have to weigh the value of a particular movement against your goals. The value of a particular movement is its ability to provide the desired response, taking risk into consideration. In the case of the American swing, perhaps you can make the argument that more work is being done, the net result of which gets you “intensity.” But can you get the same level of intensity, the same ultimate power output, by doing Russian swings and not put your shoulders at risk?

“[Y]ou have to weigh the value of a particular movement against your goals. The value of a particular movement is its ability to provide the desired response, taking risk into consideration.”

Absolutely. Why not make up the alleged “loss of work” somewhere else? If the workout is kettlebells and burpees and you choose to do Russian swings but turn up the heat on the burpees – by resting less, going a little faster, or wearing a vest – can you, in theory, do as much “work” while keeping the swings from causing an uncomfortable shoulder impingement overhead? Yes.

Ultimately, it’s exercise. And you are going to get fit either way. So feel free to advise the coach that you are going to do Russian swings if you so choose, and then crank those burpees.

More Like This:

• 2 Safer Alternatives to the Overhead Swing
• Rationalizing the Swing: Why the American Swing Is Wrong
• 12 Sets of Advice on the Kettlebell Swing
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 by Justin Connaher via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo 2 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

Photo 3 by Cpl. Skyler Tooker via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Why CrossFit Will Never Just Cool It With the American Swing appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Maybe it’s the OCD in me but I get great pleasure from putting the square peg in the square hole and seeing it slide into place just so. I get the same pleasure from working with a client and changing one small aspect of their plan and seeing a much greater response – all because it just fits right.

In the personal training world it seems that most trainers feel like they need to entertain rather than improve their clients. They seem to take delight in using as many pieces of functional equipment as they can – tires, TRX, kettlebells, and anything else they can come up with.

But do those tools really fit?

Let’s look at the kettlebell swing (because when I write about that it never causes any controversy). What do we know and like about the swing?

The first thing is that we know it’s a great hip hinge exercise. We know that Stuart McGill says that it can be helpful in healing and strengthening backs. We know that it helps with grip strength, vertical jump, and flexibility too.

So then let’s look at two ways to swing and ask ourselves whether we’ve really got the exercise to fit what we need or if we’re trying to make it fit, like a laborer smashing the square peg into the round hole with a mallet. Hey, Whac-A-Mole is fun, but I’m not sure that it’s going to help make your posterior chain stronger.

Let’s start with heavy swings. Awesome, right? Grab a heavy bell and get stuck in. But let’s look at a few things that might help us to understand that maybe, in our hurry to use a favored tool, we’ve lost sight of what is smart and what really fits.

The first thing we need to remember is that the swing is a ballistic exercise. A ballistic exercise is a bullet, not a missile. The bullet is fired once, has one single moment of acceleration, and is then decelerating from there. A missile is constantly being pushed by its jet engine. So a swing needs to be like a jump in terms of how we do it – one moment of acceleration or force production and then you’re in the air, waiting to come down and jump again.

A heavy swing can’t be done that way. The moment you lose that pop from your swing, the float at the top of the movement where you can stand and admire your work, is the moment you stopped doing productive swings.

If you’re going to do a slower movement that is heavy you should be using a barbell and doing a deadlift. Look at this video we did a while ago talking about the force velocity curve and how to maximize the way you swing in terms of all round development. You need a bell you can really accelerate hard and for most this is nowhere near as heavy as they think it is.

If you’re going to move something slowly, you may as well deadlift and really move some weight. There’s nothing impressive about deadlifting kettlebells unless you’re a six year old.

This leads me to my next point, which is once again the American swing. One of the problems with this type of swing right now is that there is no force plate data for it. However, we do have data from what we’ll call an RKC swing. Lake and Lauder have generated research on this as has Brandon Hetzler, and they’ve found that when you go too heavy you lose speed. Brandon found that the sweet spot for force production – the skill of being able to quickly generate power – was lost when the bell was heavier than a third of the user’s bodyweight. For most men that will mean using a 24kg bell.

Now, in the American swing the bell has been swung and the action is finished. There’s no way to get it higher once the hips are all the way forward without pulling on it with your arms. But that’s not going to help you produce more force in the lower body. Even without data to back it up I can watch and see that the bell speed is lower, meaning power production is too.

And this is, I think, where a lot of people become confused. If you picked the American swing because it’s harder to move the weight further, then you picked it for the right reason. However, if you picked a swing variation in order to increase athletic development and force production, then I think you’ve chosen incorrectly. What you want is a lighter bell that you can really explode out of the hole with like Shannon does in the video above.

Make sure that you’ve got the right tool for the job, that the exercise fits what you need it to do. If you’ve done heavy and slow, like a deadlift, you need light and fast. Read this for more ideas on picking the right exercise.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Good Swings Are Fast Swings appeared first on Breaking Muscle.