maratoolPlyo Kettlebell Pushups
How to do the plyo kettlebell pushups
- Place a kettlebell on the floor. Place yourself in a pushup position, on your toes with one hand on the ground and one hand holding the kettlebell, with your elbows extended. This will be your starting position.
- Begin by lowering yourself as low as you can, keeping your back straight.
- Quickly and forcefully reverse direction, pushing yourself up to the other side of the kettlebell, switching hands as you do so. Continue the movement by descending and repeating the movement back and forth.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
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 chest too, using equipment this one does not:
- Plyo Push-upbody only
- Single-Arm Cable Crossovercable
- Smith Machine Bench Pressbench + smith machine + machine
- Smith Machine Decline Pressmachine
- Smith Machine Incline Bench Presssmith machine + bench + machine
Difficulty
Listed at expert level. It asks for range, stability or speed that takes time to build, and it punishes a rushed set-up much harder than an easier movement would.
Of the 105 chest exercises in this database, 2 are listed at expert level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.