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Split Swings: Build Balanced Glutes and Hips With This Tweak of a Classic

by — 2014-02-12 in Workout & Exercises
Split stance kettlebell swings recruit one glute at a time while testing balance. That means you can use them to straighten out your stance and help low back problems as well as overloading your glutes without overtraining your low back.

Kettlebell swings are one of the most effective exercises out there. 

They take a bit of skill, but not as much as highly technical lifts, and you do them for high reps, so you can drill the movement home as you’re doing it.  They’re efficient, fairly safe and give a good opportunity to build some strength and some cardio at the same time.  They emphasise a movement that helps with other moves and has great athletic and real-world carryover – swings make your levers, deadlifts and rows better, make your tackle better, your clean, and if you find yourself throwing a sack of logs into a truck you’ll find yourself thinking how similar the movement is. 

So if it ain’t broke, why isn’t this article just called ‘even more reasons to love the swing’?

Swings are a bilateral movement.  You pull equally with both shoulders and drive equally with both glutes.  Or do you?

The trouble with unilateral movements I that they usually can’t support anything like the same loads as bilateral ones.  There are exceptions, but the trouble with bilateral movements is that they’re often actually neither unilateral nor bilateral: they’re ambilateral. 

You use both sides, for sure: but you don’t use them the same. 

Think of a bench press, an easy movement to visualize.  If you can bench with two dumbbells the same load as with a bar you’re an unusual case (and you know what you’re doing in the gym!) – and if you try it, you’ll see why.  One side works more than the other and pulls the slacker side up after it. 

In the swing, we’re using and conditioning many of the most important muscles of the body at once.  The hamstrings and core muscles get a solid workout – even if you think your legs are in good condition, if you do a big swing workout you’ll have trouble walking up the stairs the next day!  And the swing is good for the upper back as well as he low back.  It’s general core and posterior chain conditioning.  But what it’s all powered by is what you’re sitting on. 

The swing uses the glutes as its prime movers.  When you drive up out of that bottom position it’s your glutes that do the driving.  Like many muscles though, the glutes aren’t just one muscle and they don’t have just one job. 

Glutes stabilize your knees and your lower back as well as being big movers.  And if you have uneven glute development you can have a bunch of other issues to go along with it.  Tight iliotibial bands trying to compensate for uneven gluteus medialis development isn’t fun but it’s a tilted and torqued pelvis that’s going to give you a pain.  Many over-tight hip flexors are really caused by uneven glute development; so is a lot of lower back pain.  How can we fix this?

Well, ideally we’d use a unilateral swing –not just one-armed but one-legged too, so one glute was preferentially powering the movement. 

That’s going to be the split swing – a swing in a split stance. 

Read More: Tighten a Loose Butt and Change the Shape of Your Buttocks

First, how do you tell if you’ve got uneven glute development?  Here are two simple hacks to find out – not foolproof but they’ll give you a working idea:

1: Broomstick survey

Stand in front of a mirror with a broomstick.  Put one side of the broomstick on the crest of your hip on one side, and the other in the same place on the other.  You now have a line through your pelvis.  Is it higher one side than the other, or further forward or back? 

2: One-leg bridge

Do a one-leg glute bridge with your other leg bent up toward your chest.  If you’re weaker one side than the other, or tighter one side than the other, that can be a sign of uneven glute development.

The Split Swing: How’s It Done?

I’ll assume you already now how to do a swing.  If you don’t, check out the site for how-tos or ask me in the comments or on Google+ and I’ll put some tutorial material your way. 

Set up to do a swing as usual.  Now take a short step forward with one foot and a short step backward with the other.  That’s it.

You should end up ‘square’ – that is, with about as much width between your feet side to side as length from the front foot to the back. 

This isn’t a split like a split-jerk: you need room to put the kettlebell between your legs!

If you can use a bell a little lighter that you’re used to til you get used to the movement.  Try a couple of two-handed swings in each stance – left and right leading - finding out where you need to be balanced to do it right. 

Chances are you need to bend your legs slightly more than usual.

 The next step is to do the split swing with the bell in your back hand.  If you’re standing with your left foot forward, hold the bell in your right hand.  Swing as usual, except for foot placement. 

At the top, make sure that you fire your right glute hard, as hard as you can.  Feel a slight stretch in your right hip flexor, and make sure that your hips are square at the top of the movement.

Just like when you do a normal swing, you want the low back locked out tight, and the spine arched slightly back and the core tight. 

When I did these the first time I found out that I have a weak left glute and a weak right hamstring. 

Since glutes and hamstrings are synergetic one often covers for the other; your weak glute and strong hamstring will typically be on the same side, pulling your whole lower body out of alignment. 

If you’re anything like me, then, this exercise will be kind of humbling to begin with.  To make sure that you’re not making things worse, take a break between sets and do the classic static hip flexor stretch or the box hip flexor stretch if you prefer it, and test your stance before you swing.  Keep your back heel off the floor and your lead leg in a straight line from your hip to your middle toe.  Knee tracking over your toes is much less of an issue than letting your lead knee track from side to side or your lead foot turning.  That’s your knee getting hurt down the line, so don’t let it happen. 

Read More: Debunking The American Swing

Your back leg should be in charge of the ‘up’ portion of the swing, while your lead leg should deal with the ‘down’ part. 

I’ll follow this piece up with another showing the carryover possibilities of the split swing, but if you’ve found your own uses for it why not let me know in the comments?

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