How to combine bodyweight exercises and kettlebell training?
I published a big article on combining weights and bodyweight training recently, that’s been well received, but this time I’d like to focus on combining a specific form of weight lifting, kettlebells, along with bodyweight training.
As I mentioned in the article above, there are many ways you could combine these two types of training, but the most important benefit of kettlebell training comes from ballistic exercises – the swing, the clean, the snatch and the jerk. There is also kettlebell juggling which essentially combines all these movements. Generally, these types of movements work the posterior chain, including the hips, the glutes, the back and much more. You can’t really replicate this type of movement with any bodyweight exercise. Even though squats or pistol squats work the same muscles, there is a big difference between the squat movement and the swing movement.
Having said that, if you combine various bodyweight exercises with high repetition kettlebell swings & snatches, you’ll end up with a pretty solid program. For instance, combine four exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, pistols and kettlebell swings to create a basic version of the program and take it from there. Of course, you can add more kettlebell workouts in and still have a solid program, but the main idea is to make the most out of kettlebell training (those ballistic exercises) and combine it with bodyweight training to get a whole body workout routine.
Make sure to check out my YouTube Channel for tons of videos on these two subjects.