Overhead pressing is sorely underrated and oftentimes placed below horizontal pressing like floor presses, and pushups. This isn’t the case. The ability to press things overhead, when you think about it, is quite a bit more functional than horizontal pressing in every day life.

Don’t minimize the overhead strict press. It builds strength in the shoulders, triceps, upper chest, and trunk. It is a very humbling exercise and being weak in it will hinder progress with many other kettlebell lifts.

Quad Bird-Dog

Once you get the kneeling bird-dog down, feel free to humble yourself by adding the quadruped bird-dog into your kettlebell training.

Movements like these are great to pair to a multi-joint big lift in your kettlebell training, or they serve as a great active recovery exercise where you may be focusing on stability, balance, and coordination.

You may be surprised at how much you struggle with this even though you’re capable of tossing around double 53’s in your kettlebell training.

Bird-Dog Rows

This is stability challenge at its finest for your kettlebell training.
Find an elevated surface, like a bench, to perform this kettlebell training exercise.

Find your balance point, keep your glute tight in the raised leg, keep the abs firing, and perform quality 1-arm rows.
This exercise will force you to go light no matter what, because if you go too heavy, you’ll be falling all over the place.

Overhead Kneel to Stand

This kettlebell training exercise is much more challenging than it looks. It’s a great not only for the backside because you’re basically performing a reverse lunge on one leg, but great for the hip flexors as you come back up to the standing position.

Additionally, there is the stability challenge of holding the kettlebells overhead while performing the kneel to stand.

Watch Coach Brandon from every angle to ensure proper technique is performed in your kettlebell training.

1/2 Kneeling Windmill Press

This movement sequence is one that doesn’t find its way into many people’s kettlebell training; however, this is a great movement for strength and mobility.

We can’t say it enough, when it comes to kettlebell training, start light and do it right.

Watch Coach Brandon from every angle to make sure you’re performing correctly.

Incline Chest Press

Here’s another handy way you can get a different angle of horizontal pressing in your kettlebell training.

If you have access to a stability ball, which many people have one laying around somewhere, this can be a helpful tool to use within you kettlebell training.

Watch Coach Brandon as he gets set up safely into the incline position with the use of the stability ball. Start light and do it right as you implement into your kettlebell training.

Wrestler Burpees

“Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.” – Dan Gable

You’ll appreciate this beautiful blend of human movement in your kettlebell training the more you practice it. In the beginning, you’ll hate them, because it’s hard. Just like the sport of wrestling, it’s easy to hate because few are good at it in the beginning. But those who persist in the war of attrition rise like cream to the top and get to say proudly that they’ve withstood the war of attrition.

Sprawl + Sit-Out + Pushup + Jump = Wrestler Burpees

Watch Coach Brandon from every angle, then start slow to get the movement down, and then put the petal to the metal down the road in your kettlebell training.

Most people at first glance would think this would be seated on a bench press, but not in kettlebell training, we rarely use a bench for much. In kettlebell training land, when we say seated, we mean on the ground, on your butt.

Some may not have the mobility to sit in this position, which means you need to incorporate more mobility work into your kettlebell training. For those that can get into this position, sit in tall “Y” position, rack your kettlebell, and press overhead, while remaining tall in your torso.

Watch Coach Brandon from every angle, and then incorporate into your kettlebell training.

Goblet Thrusters

Another merging of two great exercises into one great movement concoction in your kettlebell training.

Goblet squats and overhead pressing are two of the fundamental movement patterns people learn when they are new to kettlebell training. These are important to learn separately before merging the two.

Once you’ve become proficient in these two movement separately, then merge the two to make your kettlebell training even more efficient.

Plank Reach

Another great bodyweight training to add into your kettlebell training is the plank reach.

Master the art of doing a great front plank first, but once you’ve done that, adding the element of instability by removing one of your posts and changing the lever (physics term), the exercise takes on an entire new challenge to the body.

Mix these into your kettlebell training to continue to build an iron mid-section.