There aren’t many exercises you can’t do with a kettlebell. Whether you’re loading up with one or two weights, the best kettlebells for weightlifting allow you to push, squat, pull, lunge, swing and deadlift through a whole library of muscle-strengthening exercises.
But which kettlebell exercises are most effective? And what moves do personal trainers do themselves? Before I dive into specific examples of exercises you can do with a kettlebell, there are fundamental movement patterns that kettlebell exercises all fall into.
If strength and conditioning training is your bag, the exercises below are need-to-know movements that will allow you to build out kettlebell workouts, complexes, flows and more while building strength, endurance and muscle from head to toe.
Learn the five basics properly, and you can try a whole host of kettlebell exercises as you get fitter and stronger. Here they are.
What are the five most effective kettlebell exercises for building strength and muscle?
The basic movement patterns — the fundamentals — are squats, cleans, snatches, swings and presses. While I’d usually include deadlifts (one of the core compound exercises or “big 5 lifts”), I wouldn’t prioritize using kettlebells for them over barbells, especially for maximal strength training.
I also find many short clients (like myself) end up standing on plates or creating a deficit of some kind to get a better range of motion during kettlebell deadlifts, making them fussier for everyday deadlifting.
Learning your foundations will allow you to transition into many super-effective strength and endurance kettlebell exercises while single or dual-loading weights. That isn’t to say other exercises don’t hold value — they absolutely do — I just recommend learning these first, alongside how to hold a kettlebell properly.
It’s also worth noting that the many variations of the moves below are used for specific training stimulus, whether that includes targeting the core muscles, building upper-body strength, or improving lower-body endurance. Choosing the best kettlebell exercises for you comes back to your goals and the focus of your sessions.
1. Kettlebell squats
Kettlebell squats build lower-body strength, core stability and joint mobility. They also work large, powerful muscle groups like the quads, hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes.
Kettlebells are hugely versatile, meaning you can explore different positions and grips to change the emphasis on your muscle groups. Variations I recommend include single-arm kettlebell front rack squats, goblet squats, overhead squats and back squats.
I like to include unilateral loading when performing kettlebell squats as this teaches balance, stability and control by loading one side of the body at a time, requiring plenty of core activation while you work. In fact, studies suggest unilateral training encourages “cross-education,” meaning you can stimulate the same muscle groups on the opposite side of the body.
2. Kettlebell presses
Pressing exercises that target the upper body, namely the shoulders, triceps and pectoral muscles, also build a stronger core.
The overhead press is a great kettlebell exercise for strengthening your shoulders while requiring help from the shoulder stabilizers known as the rotator cuff — a group of muscles surrounding the scapulae. That’s why learning an overhead press can also improve shoulder function and mobility.
The single-arm press, see-saw press, thruster, push press, clean and press (demonstrated in the video above) and strict press are all examples of effective pushing movements you can practice using kettlebells to strengthen your upper body.
I prefer loading one side at a time during kettlebell presses as it helps me avoid my dominant right side taking over the move; this has also helped me to strengthen my left side more equally over time.
3. Kettlebell cleans
The clean acts as a gateway exercise or transition into other kettlebell exercises and crops up in kettlebell flows and complexes because it helps link other moves together, including lower-body movements like squats and upper-body movements like presses.
Cleans are fluid pulling motions, lifting the bell vertically from the floor to the shoulder in one movement, a bit like zipping up a jacket.
The goal is to keep the bell close to your body the entire time, racking it to the shoulder in the front rack position at the end of the exercise pathway. They’re technical, but once you understand the movement pattern, they’re fun to play around with and can be used as a standalone exercise in their own right.
Exercises I recommend trying include the clean, clean and press and the squat clean. However you choose to use the kettlebell clean, it’s a full-body exercise that works your arms, upper and lower body and places demand on your core muscles to drive the powerful movement.
4. Kettlebell snatches
I’d argue learning how to snatch correctly with a kettlebell is the toughest movement pattern to learn, and the dreaded forearm slap is not an experience you want to have (when the kettlebell hits your arm...hard).
With power, you’ll use an overhand grip to pull the kettlebell from the floor to an overhead position while keeping it close to your body and “flipping” the kettlebell on the way up. It combines the beginning of a swing with a clean and press, but all together in one motion.
Snatches improve total body power and strength, working muscles from your shoulders, upper traps and arms to your core and quads. I strongly advise lifting a light weight to begin with and building up load slowly.
5. Kettlebell swings
Finally, the kettlebell swing. Swings create an arc as you drive the bell between your legs, then upward toward your shoulders or overhead, depending on the variation you choose. It’s a brilliant core-torcher and drills into the posterior chain muscles located down the back of your body, including your back, glutes and hamstrings, plus your hip flexor muscles.
Swings, although used often, don’t really get the recognition they deserve for developing “powerhouse center” muscular power. By that, I mean the entire movement is driven from the space between your ribs to your hips and around the torso. A full-body muscular stamina and strength-building movement.
The most important coaching cue I can give you is to think of swings as a hip hinge rather than a squat. Although you want to maintain a soft bend in the knees, you don’t want to sit your butt down into squat. Instead, send your butt backward and imagine crushing a can of cola between your hips and quads.
Once you’ve learned how to do Russian kettlebell swings, American swings will engage more of your upper back, shoulders and arms, and teach shoulder mobility and stabilization as you momentarily shelve the weight in the overhead position. I also recommend learning lateral swings, single-arm swings and alternating swings to challenge coordination and balance using one arm at a time.
Do I need one or two kettlebells?
I like to train with one kettlebell, but it comes down to the exercises you enjoy. There’s research to suggest unilateral training improves coordination, balance and core stability and promotes cross-education.
That’s because your body must work harder to stabilize you when one side of the body is loaded and the other isn’t. Plus, learning to alternate between your left and right side is a skillset worth learning. Dual loading can help you work with heavier weights and learn to use two kettlebells together.
Can kettlebells build muscle?
The process of building muscle is called hypertrophy. Your muscles must be subject to certain stimulus to grow, and you'll need to adopt some basic principles, such as progressive overload. Here are 3 simple rules to follow if you want to build strength and muscle.
That said, kettlebell training can certainly contribute to muscle growth and strength as a form of resistance training, helping build power, endurance and stronger muscles. Explosive exercises like swings, snatches and cleans train the fast-twitch muscle fibers used to perform fast movements like jumps and sprints.
Kettlebells are more technically demanding to learn than dumbbells, which is why many personal trainers train as kettlebell instructors on top of their standard fitness qualifications. The bells encourage greater range of motion, too, making them perfect strength and conditioning tools for improving mobility and joint health.
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