Kettlebell workouts can be used for many aims, from crossfit esque HIIT to kettlebell chest workout for your pecs. These kettlebell chest exercises can be used to both strengthen and grow your pec muscles.
People who only have kettlebells to train with often miss some key upper body strength movements including those for the chest. There are a huge variety of kettlebell exercises for developing the chest / pectorals even if all you have are two kettlebells. Let’s take a look at 7 kettlebell chest exercises you can do at home, their benefits, when to use them and different variations.
Although they target the same muscle group, the chest (pectorals) the exercises listed below have a lot of different benefits.
Some exercises are great for developing strength or hypertrophy like the kettlebell floor press, whereas the more function style movements like the KB press in hollow hold is excellent at recruiting the chest while requiring a great deal of core stabilisation. Other exercises like the diamond kb push ups is very good for building muscular endurance through performing a lot of repetitions. Having these exercises in your pocket is great when coming up with your next at home KB session.
These can be used to create a training session just for this particular muscle group / movement category or they can be used in an upper body session or a full body resistance training session. Structuring your session with the exercises that cause the highest fatigue at the start is a great way to go, have a look at the exercise label, primary, secondary or tertiary to see how we structure where the exercise would be put in a full body resistance training session.
Warm Up
A1) KB Floor Press
A2) Single Arm Gorilla Row
B1) Diamond KB Press Ups
B2) Half Kneeling KB Press
C1) Half Seated KB Press
C2) Tall Kneeling KB Horn Curl
Yes, there are many exercises which can be used to work and train the chest muscles also knwon as the horizontal press movement category.
Yes, its a little bit more difficult to load this movement compared to a barbell or dumbells but is still an effective exercise.
These goals can be attained using kettlebells, but will also need a lot of empahsis on nutrition.
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This resource was written by Sean Klein. Sean Richard Klein has thousands of hours of coaching experience and a BSc in Sports Science with Management from Loughborough University. He owns a gym in Bayonne France, CrossFit Essor, which runs group classes and a Personal training studio.