maratoolKettlebell Windmill
How to do the kettlebell windmill
- Place a kettlebell in front of your lead foot and clean and press it overhead with your opposite arm. Clean the kettlebell to your shoulder by extending through the legs and hips as you pull the kettlebell towards your shoulders. Rotate your wrist as you do so, so that the palm faces forward. Press it overhead by extending the elbow.
- Keeping the kettlebell locked out at all times, push your butt out in the direction of the locked out kettlebell. Turn your feet out at a forty-five degree angle from the arm with the locked out kettlebell. Bending at the hip to one side, sticking your butt out, slowly lean until you can touch the floor with your free hand. Keep your eyes on the kettlebell that you hold over your head at all times.
- Pause for a second after reaching the ground and reverse the motion back to the starting position.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range.
The triceps take a share of the work as well.
Every exercise for:AbdominalsGlutesHamstringsShouldersTriceps
How this movement works
The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
A kettlebell's mass hangs below and outside the handle, so it pulls away from the grip and the wrist has to stay packed. That offset is why racked and swinging variations feel nothing like the dumbbell version.
Every exercise using:Kettlebell
These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:
- Kneeling Cable Crunch With Alternating Oblique Twistscable
- Landmine 180'sbarbell
- Leg Pull-Inbody only
- Medicine Ball Full Twistmedicine ball
- Side Bend with Dumbbelldumbbell
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 17 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.