How To Prevent Back Pain While Performing A Kettle Bell Swing

The Kettle bell Swing is now a hugely popular exercise and looks fantastic when performed correctly but it also has the potential to cause lower back pain if performed poorly.

Here are some tips and a good photo to help if you are some who gets back pain while doing this exercise.

The picture above shows a good finishing position for the Kettle Bell Swing. I am showing this because normally people think it is the bottom of the swing where the back is most at risk but everyone seems to forget about the top position also.

When you stop at the top of the movement you have two options.

1. You can do a strong, muscular contraction where you brace your abs and glutes and keep everything nice and tight - which is what we want.

2. Or you can do a soft ending where people sway their hips forward and kind of sag into their back joints. It looks like the person is bent outwards from the waist.

Now, this might be okay for 10-20 swings but it can become a problem when you are doing 100's of reps every week.

So here are some tips to help for the Kettle Bell Swing:
​
1. Your back should not be rounded at the bottom of the movement.

2. At the top you should not have your hips pushed was forward like many people do.

3. Your shoulders, hips, knees and ankles should be directly under each other and you should consciously squeeze your glute/bum muscles as can be seen in the photo above.

If you sway forward you will compress your back joints together and eventually get pain. I have heard many people complain of this sort of pain and the finishing picture above is one of the best ways to stop that from happening.

If you are unsure - get your form checked.

This is a great exercise for many reasons. Hope these tips help.