Here is a list of the reason the kettlebell windmill is such a great exercise.

1. Decrease Back Pain
When we have lower back pain it is usually a sign of a couple of things taking place or rather not taking place in the body. Lower back pain can be caused by limited range of motion of our hamstrings. Improper function of our glutes muscle and weak core muscles. By increasing the range of motion and increasing flexibility in your posterior chain muscles like the hamstrings and glutes the lower back is alleviated from pain. The windmill position causes us to put a great stretch on our hamstrings which will usually take some stress off of the low back. What it also does is require us to brace our core in order to perform the movement and when we strengthen the core we are decreasing the amount of load gets displaced in the low back causing our pain.

2. Increased Range of Motion in the Hamstrings
The kettlebell windmill will primarily work on increasing the range of motion in your hamstrings. You cannot perform this exercise without it doing so. What I really like about the windmill is it stretches each leg individually instead of together. This allows for greater increases in each hamstring muscle because one leg is not compensating and doing the work for the other. The other nice thing about this movement is it teaches us how to fire our hamstring and glute muscles from a stretched position. In order to get up from the bottom position of the windmill you must ground your heel into the ground and fire the hamstring and glute muscles of the single leg.

3. Glute Activation
Much like the hamstring each glute muscle is being worked individually teaches us how to contract the glute muscle from the bottom position in order to get back up. This is extremely important for pretty much anyone. Without glutes being fired, you can forget about jumping, running, hitting, getting out of a chair or enjoying the midnight move:) O yeah and that back pain we talked about, that will still be present without working glute muscles.

4. Core Strengthening

The windmill is what we consider a Dynamic Integrated Stabilization exercise. While the main focus of the core is to protect your spine and back by bracing the core muscles, we are doing this in a dynamic way. Our hips are moving while our shoulders are stabilizing causing our core to work even harder to maintain it’s control of the movement being done.  This is a much more effective way of taking a basic core strengthening exercise and progressing it to increase the strength of the core musculature.

5. Shoulder Stabilization

Another awesome component of the windmill is the shoulder stability practice you get.  In order to hold a kettlebell in an over head position you are working all the stabilizers of the shoulder joint.   The windmill teaches one to pack the shoulder into it’s proper position and hold that position for a period of time while moving your body into different positions.  This will greatly decrease the risk of injury to the shoulder and give you a much healthy shoulder.

Here is a video of 3 progressions of the Kettlebell Windmill:

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Here is a few tips that I think can help anyone out with their conventional deadlift.

1. Foot Position

There are two ways to figure out where to place your feet for a conventional deadlift. One way is to hang from a pull up bar and let go and land on the ground. When you land freeze and take not of where your feet landed. This is usually a good position for you to use in the conventional deadlift.

Another way which is shown in the video below is to squeeze your glute muscles and rock back and forth from foot to foot continuing to contract your glutes as hard as possible. Once you have contracted your glutes as much as possible stop rocking and take not of your feet. This is a great stance for the conventional deadlift because it allows you to be in a position to allow for full contraction of the glutes in the lift itself.

2. Bar Placement

Many times I see people place the bar extremely too close to there shins. This doesn’t allow the lifter to pull the bar at an angle toward his body. Many times if the bar is too close to our shins when we pull our hips will shoot out the back and raise up instead of contracting forward and under the bar.

Place the bar an inch or so away from the shin to start the lift. A good recommendation is to place the bar just across the back of the toes. This gives just enough space for a lifter to have a better angle of pull with the bar.

3. Tighten up the bar

The texas deadlift bar has a good amount of flex to it as do many bars made specifically to deadlift. This can cause a whip in the bar when pulled improperly and the whip can end a heavy rep real quick as well as potentially be dangerous. Most bars will bend given a certain amount of weight on them. A good tip for this is to get rid of the slack in the bar before leaving the ground. Once we set our feet, get in position and ready to pull I will tighten up my body and pull the slack out of the bar before I get the bar off the floor. I feel this creates tension in your entire body and through the bar.

4. Press Away from the Floor

Many times we are so caught up in the posterior chain and how we need to get the back of our leg muscles doing most of the work for a deadlift that we forget that we are still in somewhat of a squat position. What I try to teach and think about when I am deadlifting is pressing my heels into the ground at the start of the lift and pushing myself away form the ground. Your hamstrings and glutes will absolutely be working during this but if you can think about pushing yourself away from the ground through your quads the start of your lift will be much stronger and your posterior chain will finish the lift with much more in the tank. It can almost be taught like a leg press machine. If you have ever used a leg press and can think about when your legs are bent and the weight is close to the chest you have to push your feet into the platform of the machine and press that weight away from your body. When down in the start position of the conventional deadlift if you can think about the ground being the platform of a leg press machine and you have to push yourself away from the ground you will start the lift much stronger with more muscles involved.

Here is a video demonstrating these tips I have discussed. Leave a comment or if you have any questions just put it below in the comment section and I will be glad to help further.

Try practicing these 4 tips next time you deadlift and I think you will find that it will help a great deal. They have helped me close in on a 600 lbs pull which is more than 3x my bodyweight. Here is my latest pull of 580.

1. Free Squat: barx10, 145×5, 195×5, 235×3, add briefs: 285×5, 325x5x2, 375×5

* this was performed to practice form more than anything else, I used the competition squat bar so the bar weighs 10lbs more therefore my numbers look a bit different. I also used my competition briefs which are metal ace briefs

2. SSB Reverse Lunge: bar x 10 each leg x 3 sets

* this was just to get some blood flow in my quads and some single leg work which I do less of during a competition cycle.

3a. GHR: BW x 10 x 3

3b. Fwd/Bwd Sled Drag: 3 Plates x 10 yds (2 laps) x 3

4a. Reverse Hypers: 200 x 12 x 3

4b. Pushups: BW x 20 x 3

4c. Seated Rev Grip Cable Row: 160 x 15 x 3

I did a little upper body to get some blood work in and break a little sweat.

Over all it was a really nice workout and I have been feeling really good. Looking forward to my meet in November.

Post your Workout in the Comments Below!

A typical lower body workout for us may look something like this:

1. Deadlift off 4 mats – work up to a 3RM
2. Sled Drags – Down & Back x 2 trips x 3 sets
3. GHR – 3-4 sets of 8-12
4. Back Extension -  3-4 sets of 8-12 reps
5. Hanging Leg Lifts – 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps

Please feel free to comment questions below!

Click here to view the embedded video.