Kettlebell Juggling - Fedorenko Flips 72kg Kettlebell

Valery Fedorenko, Honoured Master of Sport and revered kettlebell sport athlete, has recently, single handedly flipped a 72kg kettlebell.

To put this into perspective, the heaviest kettlebell in existence in Australia is 64kg and there is probably only a handful of people who could manage to swing it with one hand - swinging it, letting go of it while it rotates in the air and then catching it mid flight is an unimaginable feat of strength, power, coordination and balls.

So Fedorenko flipping the 72kg flawlessly is mind boggling.  Towards the end there is some super slow motion footage that shows how much power and skill is involved in this feat.

Kettlebell Juggling

While flipping the 72kg is out of the question for the vast majority of us, kettlebell juggling is something that pretty much anyone can do.

Kettlebell juggling is heaps of fun and provides some significant training benefits:

• Trains hand/eye coordination and agility.
• Trains joints through several different planes of movement (something that is often missing in people's training) so builds stonger, healthier more mobile joints.
• Provides a mixture of cardiorespiratory, strength, power and endurance training.
• Develops stong connective tissue particularly in the wrists, elbows and shoulders (areas where the connective tissue is prone to injury).
• Builds great grip endurance.

The beauty of kettlebell juggling is that it's so much fun you barely realise you're getting a workout done at the same time.

Kettlebell Juggling for Beginners

This short video shows you some simple juggling moves that you can try.  Make sure you're somewhere you can drop the kettlebell if you need to!

Here are some more tips for beginners from World Champion Vasily Ginko:

Best Kettlebells for Juggling?

Pro Grade Kettlebells are undoubtedly the best for juggling for a few reasons:

• Pro Grades are designed specifically for ballistic movements, so are balanced perfectly and move through the air better than Classic Kettlebells.
• The standardised size and shape of Pro Grades means that juggling technique remains the same as you progress through the weights, whereas the differing sizes of the Classics mean the different weights behave quite differently (for example the smaller the body of the kettlebell the faster it will spin through the air)
• The handle of the Pro Grades can be chalked for better gripping, which definitely comes in handy with juggling.

You can still use Classic Kettlebells for juggling, but the Pro Grades are certainly superior for this activity.

What Weight to Start With?

Generally, women should start with an 8kg kettlebell and men with a 12kg or 16kg kettlebell.  Juggling requires a lot of skill and practise, so it's worth erring on the side of using a light kettlebell to get off to a good start.

In the juggling competitions in Eastern Europe, women compete with 8kg and men with 16kg doing longer routines (usually around 3 minutes).  However, you may progress with some of the simpler movements (like single flips) to much heavier kettlebells.

Ginko doing a juggling routine with 16kg:

So...

Go grab a kettlebell, find a patch of grass somewhere and have a go!  It really is a lot of fun.

You might even want to get some mates involved...