Kettlebell Snatch

Single-motion overhead lift — the tsar of kettlebell exercises and the most metabolically demanding KB lift.

· 3 min read

kettlebell · ballistic · hip drive · power

The lesson

  1. 1

    Start lighter than you think

    Lighter than your swing bell. Your forearm learns this before it earns weight.

  2. 2

    Hike and snap

    Bell back between your legs, thumb behind, then a hard hip snap.

  3. 3

    Straight up, close in

    The bell rises up your body, not out in an arc. Wide arcs waste power and punish shoulders.

  4. 4

    Spear your hand through

    As the bell floats past chest height, loosen your grip and punch your hand up through the handle so the bell rotates around your hand rather than over your fist.

  5. 5

    Finish tall

    Arm straight overhead, shoulder pulled down into your back, eyes forward. One still moment.

  6. 6

    The test

    The bell should settle onto your forearm with barely a sound. A bang means your hand went through too late, or the bell travelled too wide.

  7. 7

    Come down with it

    Relax the arm, let your hand flip out of the handle, and guide the bell down close to your body into the next backswing. Park it from a swing at the end.

Kettlebell Snatch

How to do it

Swing the bell between your legs with one hand, thumb pointing behind. Snap your hips forward — the bell rises straight up your body, close in. As it floats up past chest height, loosen your grip and spear your hand up through the handle so the bell rotates around your hand and settles onto the forearm, arm locking out overhead. Shoulder pulled down into the socket, eyes forward. Control the drop back into the next swing.

Why it's good for runners

The snatch is the most demanding kettlebell movement — pure hip power producing an overhead lift in one motion. It builds the explosive hip drive and conditioning that translate to faster paces and stronger finishes.

Common mistakes

If the bell crashes onto the back of your wrist at the top, your hand went through too late — you gripped the handle and the bell flipped over your fist instead of rotating around it. Loosen the grip and spear the hand through earlier, while the bell is still floating. The other cause is a wide arc: keep the bell close to your body on the way up, or it will both waste power and stress your shoulder.

Appears in these routines

Power · 02

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Dead snatches that switch hands every ground touch. The same all-out floor-to-overhead pull, alternating sides rep by rep.

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Dead Snatch

Floor to overhead in one explosive pull, from a dead stop. Strength-power with no rebound — every rep starts from zero.

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An explosive one-arm pull from the swing to chest height — the swing's vertical big brother and the bridge to the snatch.

Back to Kettlebell exercises