The kettlebell is a steel weight made of cast-iron that is used to do ballistic exercises for developing cardiovascular muscles, overall strength and flexibility of the body.
Kettlebells when used in the correct way help to increase and develop muscles and at the same time they also helps us to shed weight. However, exercising with a kettlebell can be dangerous and cause injury if the correct way is not adopted. Here are a few mistakes that you should avoid while you are working out with a kettlebell.
Improper Body Posture
It is important that you keep the correct body posture during exercises with a kettlebell. Keeping your spine in proper alignment during movements like the kettlebell swing or clean and snatch and high pull will avoid injury to your spine.
Proper Lifting of the Kettlebell
In order to exercise with the kettlebell, it is important that you have to pick up the kettlebell. While performing this movement as well as while dropping off the kettlebell on the ground, you should be careful to execute both movements carefully, so as to reduce or eliminate the risk of injury.
Mistake of too Wide a Stance
While performing the kettlebell exercises, for most of the executions, your feet should be shoulder width apart. This stance is the ideal as it makes you adopt a powerful stance that is grounded and centred by not being either too close or too wide. This kind of stance will greatly reduce your chances of an injury to your back, hips or knees.
Training up to a Point of Failure in Muscle Power
Kettlebell exercises are meant to increase your power by toning them and not leave you feeling weak and exhausted. Exercises involving kettlebells should be done in moderation in order to avoid injury to the muscles. The weights used should correspond to your level of fitness and make you stronger instead of feeling weak.
Using the Upper Body Mainly to Perform the Exercises
During the execution of kettlebell exercises, you should make sure that your neck, shoulders and the upper body are relaxed and not taking the brunt of the entire exercise routine. Make sure that the effort and weight is distributed on your torso, hips and knees. This will help you avoid injuries to the muscles in the upper body.
Your Grip on the Kettlebell Matters
Gripping the kettlebell too tightly may not be the best thing to do if you want to avoid being injured while exercising. Keep a medium grip on the kettlebell to execute the exercises.
Using Improper Footwear
Wearing proper footwear while exercising is necessary as this distributes the weight equally on your feet and prevents injury while executing kettlebell exercises.
Inventing New Exercise Moves
When you try to invent swanky moves with your kettlebell thinking that they are going to give you better results, you might be inviting trouble for yourself. Try increasing your fitness level by increasing the weights while executing the moves that experts have taught you and refrain from trying to improvise on them. Otherwise you may end up with back, shoulder or hip injury.
Photo Credit By: rdellatraining.com
