SPORTS MASSAGE AND KETTLEBELL TRAINING
In this article I take a look at the links between Sports Massage and Kettlebell training, specifically:
• Benefits of exercising with kettlebells
• Examples of kettlebell exercises
• Muscles used in kettlebell training
• How massage can help those doing kettlebell training.
The Kettlebell is an iron ball with handles, offering training using dynamic moves targeting strength, balance, agility and cardio endurance. It is possible to work virtually your entire body with just a small group of kettlebell exercises. Kettlebell training is referred to as “functional” and “ballistic”. Results from kettlebell training can be extraordinary and the technique is deservedly popular. Kettlebells can be used by men and women, beginners or elite athletes, and can help you achieve your fitness goals, transform your body and provide a challenging and fun workout unlike any other! Because we typically sit so much these days, our core muscles become weaker and our ‘posterior chain’ muscles (down back of the body) become tight and stressed. Kettlebells provide a workout that addresses this imbalance. A dynamic and fun workout is also a fun and motivational way to work stress out of the body. Kettlebell training demands you maintain your centre of gravity whilst supporting a moving load. Swinging the heavy kettlebell creates a displaced centre of gravity, which the body has to respond to.
Note: This article does not relate to kettlebell technique. It is essential to work under the guidance of a qualified instructor to ensure proper technique and maximum gain and enjoyment from your sessions. A great Kettlebell instructor in Bath is Chris Rogers. I have been fortunate enough to train with Chris; his enthusiasm, motivation and knowledge are second to none. Chris Rogers’ websites are www.grablifebythebells.co.uk / http://personaltrainerbath.com.
BENEFITS OF EXERCISING WITH KETTLEBELLS
1. Fat Loss and Toning: Kettlebells are awesome for fat loss and muscle toning due to the intense workout, keeping your metabolic rate raised after you finish your session – meaning more calories also burned at rest. It’s great for weight loss and body shaping.
2. Functional Fitness: Kettlebells work the body through functional training, using movements our bodies were designed to do in real life: bending, squatting, twisting, swinging, pressing, pulling, pushing. Gym equipment isolates specific muscles, whereas functional training and compound exercises target muscle groups and the body as a complete unit.
3. Increased Strength and Power: Kettlebell movements are ‘ballistic’, a form of strength training applying force, using fast twitch muscle fibres, where an athlete lifts, accelerates, and then releases weight, rather than slowly lowering it. Ballistic training requires muscles to contract quickly and forcefully, effective to develop muscular strength and power.
4. Condition, Stamina, Endurance: Kettlebell training can increase your condition, stamina and endurance enabling you to work out longer and harder, with less fatigue.
5. Core Strength and Stability: Kettlebell training encourages core stability, improving posture and alignment (by working postural muscles in a functional way), helping reduce lower back problems, as core muscles strengthen and stabilise the spine. Weak and unbalanced core muscles are linked to low back pain as they are unable to help maintain appropriate posture and reduce strain on the lower spine.
6. Strong Posterior Chain: Muscles down the back of the body: back muscles, glutes, hamstrings and posterior calves play a key role in many lifts, promoting a stronger posterior chain. Our sedentary lifestyles often lead to muscle imbalance where muscles down the back of the body are weak and tight – kettlebells help address this.
7. Fun! The gym can become monotonous and boring – kettlebells workouts are dynamic, varied and fun.
EXAMPLES OF KETTLEBELL EXERCISES
1. KETTLEBELL SWING: Embodies speed, power, strength, and endurance. The perfect blend of cardio and strength training as it leaves muscles fatigued and your body catching its breath. Swings can be one or two-handed, working core, back and shoulders, arms, glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps and hips. The hamstrings are used powerfully, driving through the hips as the ball is raised to chest level.
2. ONE-ARM KETTLEBELL CLEAN: An excellent exercise to build strength and endurance, involving both a swing and a lift component. The upper body gets a workout as the kettlebell is lifted up against your upper arm.
3. ONE-ARM KETTLEBELL SNATCH: Builds explosive strength, power and endurance. Similar in form to Swing, the Kettlebell Snatch differs in the end point, where the kettlebell is punched overhead, making core muscles work hard to keep your body stable through the punch. The lower body also gets a thorough workout.
4. DEADLIFT / STIFF LEG DEADLIFT: Help tone and strengthen hamstrings, core, lower back and glutes.
5. WINDMILL: Involves twisting to touch your opposite foot, placing emphasis on abdominals (particularly obliques) and building a strong back, arms and shoulders – with the bonus of working on balance and stability.
6. KETTLEBELL LUNGE: By extending a leg and lowering the body’s centre of gravity, resistance is displaced onto the leg muscle areas and distributed to firm the lower body.
7. KETTLEBELL SQUATS: Work your quadriceps, gluteals and hamstrings.
8. ROWS: Works latissimus dorsi (sides of the back).
9. HALO: Strengthens core muscles (abs and back) and builds arm and shoulder strength while improving balance. Consists of holding kettlebell overhead, circling over the head.
10. TURKISH GET-UP
By holding weight over the head throughout the movement, you engage almost every muscle – legs, core and arms – while building strength, endurance and coordination. This is a great functional exercise, taking you from lying to standing and integrating every part of your body. This exercise requires concentration as well as coordination.
MUSCLES USED IN KETTLEBELL TRAINING
Many muscle groups are used in Kettlebell training; massage will help keep these flexible and supple:
Hamstrings
The hamstrings flex the knee and get called into play when your knees go from a straight to bent position. This means any squatting exercise will recruit the hamstrings. They are also contracted for stabilisation with exercises like one/two arm swings, single or double snatch, and clean and press.
Quadriceps
The four large quadriceps on the front of the thighs primarily extend the knee. One of the quads (rectus femoris) also crosses the hip joint and is a hip flexor. Any type of squat exercise with kettlebells will activate your quads. You can increase muscle activity of the quads by bending your knees more or adding a squat as part of the movement.
Back Muscles
The majority of classic kettlebell movements like snatch, clean and swing involve heaving the kettlebell from the ground up into the air, so your lower back muscles are always involved. Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids and erector spinae get recruited with any exercise that involves a pulling motion toward your body. It is important to warm up well and use your legs during lifts and as the kettlebell is lowered back to the floor, to keep strain off the lower back.
Shoulders
The overhand grip for the swinging type of kettlebell exercises works your shoulders and arms. Gripping the kettlebell will tone muscles of the forearms. The overhead pressing movement of a clean and press, or even the basic snatch, works your shoulders: levator scapula, trapezius, deltoids (anterior, lateral, posterior) and rotator cuff (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis). Shoulder muscles are used as stabilisers with all kettlebell exercises and are primary movers with any exercise involving an overhead movement.
Gluteals
The gluteals (maximus, medius, minimus) are located in the buttock region. Different fibres of these muscles flex, extend, abduct or externally rotate the hip, so your glutes get recruited when your thighs go from a close body position to a straight leg position, or vice versa. These muscles are also recruited for stability when doing swings and deadlifts.
Core
The core muscles are the basis for every kettlebell exercise. The “core” actually consists of many different muscles that stabilise the spine and pelvis, and some run the entire length of the torso. When you lift, swing or even hold the bell, you contract your abdominal muscles to maintain proper postural alignment and stability, and create a solid base of support, allowing you to generate powerful movements of the extremities whilst protecting the back. Rectus abdominis (the “six pack”), obliques, transverse abdominis and erector spinae are all examples of core muscles. A two-arm swing is an example of a core stabilisation exercise where all parts of the core are activated. Returning to a standing position during the windmill technique will involve squeezing the abdominals as well as hamstrings and glutes. You can create more core emphasis by tightening your abdominals during all kettlebell movements.
HOW MASSAGE CAN HELP THOSE DOING KETTLEBELL TRAINING
Kettlebells is a demanding form of training using the whole body. Many of us who enjoy exercise sit down all day for a desk-based job, then go and train rigorously and physically, placing two very different sets of demands on the soft tissues of the body. If muscles are already stiff and tight, we risk injuring ourselves and our recovery from exercise will be slow – and sore! Any new form of training places the body under mechanical stress, and although movements in kettlebell training are what our bodies were designed for (see ‘functional training’ above), they are not what our bodies are necessarily used to doing any more, as modern lifestyles mean we sit a great deal, get stiff and inflexible, and do not move enough. We need to ensure our bodies are in the best shape for the training we love to do, and regular massage will mean you enjoy training sessions more, as muscles will be supple, flexible and better able to cope with the demands of your sport. Massage reduces micro-scarring and adhesions in muscles from day to day posture, lifestyle or existing injury, and gets blood flowing more easily through tissues, allowing oxygen and nutrients in that blood to feed muscles and aid repair, ensuring tissue health. Christina will examine demands not just of your training / sport, but your lifestyle outside sport, which may also contribute to muscular tightness and imbalance, and work with you to address these.
Massages should form part of your training plan when you undertake a new exercise regime. It plays a crucial preventive role: don’t wait until you have an injury – this is about maintenance, keeping muscles flexible and supple in the first place, minimising joint and muscle stiffness and reducing ‘pull’ on tendons so you can work your muscles harder in training sessions. Regular massages maintain tissue health and assist with recovery, flexibility, prevent injury and ensure muscles are relaxed for future training. It identifies small problems before they develop into an injury. Sports massage is also key for injuries already sustained, but don’t let it get to that stage!
Tight, tired muscles do not work as well and are more prone to injury.
Benefits to regular massage – Recovery | Injury Prevention | Rehabilitation | Body Awareness | Psychological
• Stimulates blood circulation, increasing flow of oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues
• Restores flexibility to tight, sore muscles; enhances flexibility
• Relieves chronic muscular stress; breaks down scar tissue and adhesions of micro-scarring through ‘stuck’ muscle fibres. Loosens bound fascia and alleviates trigger points within muscles, which affect muscle function.
• Encourages flow of lymph towards heart, helping metabolic waste be drained away
• Reduces pain by stimulating release of endorphins (the body’s natural painkiller)
• Tailored techniques: Deep tissue massage, Muscle energy techniques, Soft tissue release, Neuromuscular techniques, Joint assessment, Postural assessment.
• Psychological: you’ll feel good and in peak condition; a confidence booster. Massages can be an enjoyable and well deserved rewarding aspect of your training regime. See them as part of your training schedule.
• Every treatment can be tailored to be relaxing yet deeply effective, or more technical.
Does sports massage hurt?
No! Christina creates bespoke treatments using techniques and pressure that’s right for you, without a “no pain, no gain” approach; even soothing Swedish massage incorporating deep tissue work can be effective, whilst also deeply relaxing. Technical work and advanced stretches can be incorporated. A little aching or soreness can be experienced particularly after the first session where we’ve worked through tight tissues, but this gets less as sessions go on and tissue health improves. Massage tackles micro-trauma muscles are put through day to day in our lifestyles and training so you can train at your full potential at your next kettlebell session! Remedial work where an injury already occurred hurts more, but preventive work should be comfortable and helps avoid getting to that stage in the first place.
I’m not a serious athlete; surely I don’t need massage?
Whether you’re an Iron Man or Sunday morning footballer, massage can help. It helps address muscular imbalance and emotional stress caused by our lifestyles OUTSIDE sport as well as within it, perhaps a desk-based job or young family. Muscle imbalances occur between muscles on the left and right sides of our bodies, or front and back. They may originate from structural issues (old injury or leg length discrepancy, for example), environmental (sitting at a desk with poor ergonomics) or emotional (high stress leading us to hunch our shoulders); massage helps address them all.
When during my training should I have a sports massage?
Have your massage on a “rest day” from training; your muscles will be in a state of repair after massage and you do not want to put them through more stress by exercising immediately afterwards. Massage temporarily reduces “explosive” quality of muscle fibres by separating them, which would make your training session less effective and more tiring. So have your massage on a rest day, put your feet up and allow your muscles to rest and repair.
Where can I find more information and how do I book a massage with Christina?
Contact Christina at Pure Urban Massage on 07739 572985 or see www.pureurbanmassage.com.
Clients training with Chris Rogers Personal Training in Bath or who mention Bath Life when booking get £5 off their first 90 minute massage.
