I bought my first pair of kettlebells in 2015. Sidelined by injury, I hadn’t run consistently in a few months, and the lack of movement was negatively impacting my mental health. I had tried to substitute riding a bike and hiking for running, but I didn’t particularly enjoy either.
Besides, winter was around the corner, and as someone who passionately hates the cold, I wasn’t eager to cycle in sub-zero temperatures or hike for hours through the snow.
While joining a gym crossed my mind, I couldn’t yet bring myself to sign up. Being bullied in school and at home for being “hopelessly unathletic” and “the fatty,” I developed an intense fear of exercising in public.
Running was perfect since the streets of the small town I lived in and the forests that were my playground were empty in the dark morning hours.
One fateful day, I procrastinated on work by reading fitness articles online and stumbled upon an article describing the kettlebell swing as the perfect cardio exercise.
Supposedly, it burned 1000 calories per hour—more than running.
“Perfect,” I thought. I had put on a few kilos in the previous months, and these swings would help me lose them quickly. One week later, a pair of kettlebells arrived at my home, along with a book that would help me get the fundamentals down.
I have been training with kettlebells ever since, and I have used them to lose body fat and gain muscle and strength.
The nine years of almost daily kettlebell training are the main reason I have been able to run ultramarathons injury-free for the past four years despite quickly ramping up mileage.
However, kettlebell training differs from the more common strength training protocols that utilize barbells or dumbbells – especially for runners. Since I couldn’t find any comprehensive resources explaining how to combine kettlebell training with long-distance running, I designed my own programs based on the knowledge I had acquired through various trainings and years of practice.
This guide is meant as an introduction to kettlebell training for runners interested in trying a different approach to strength training than the more traditionally prescribed routines.
Why Kettlebell Training for Runners?
For most runners, kettlebell training is a better choice than traditional strength training that utilizes dumbbells and barbells. That’s a bold statement, but I have three arguments to support my opinion.
Firstly, the kettlebell is the most versatile training tool. You can train primarily for power, muscle building, strength development, or mobility, depending on your goals.
Secondly, kettlebell training is more time efficient than the more traditional strength training with barbells or dumbbells.
Many runners already struggle to find the time to get their run training in, and adding 1-3 strength training sessions that last 45-60 minutes each is almost impossible for every runner I know. However, fitting in 1-3 kettlebell sessions that last 20 minutes each is much more manageable.
You don’t really need much more than 20 minutes for maximum benefit since you can easily design a complex that covers strength, power, and mobility. Most runners use strength training to support their running, not to get as strong or muscular as possible. The kettlebell is the best all-around training tool to achieve that goal.
Thirdly, kettlebells take up very little space. They fit into every home, and you can take them outside to train. I often take my kettlebell for a short hike to a nearby soccer field, do my kettlebell workout, and then walk back home. That way, I even get two workouts in one—the kettlebell workout and a “rucking” workout, which serves as an additional muscular endurance workout.
What Are the Unique Characteristics of Kettlebell Training?
Kettlebell training differs from other forms of strength training in its use of ballistic exercises. This is a crucial aspect if you want to understand the benefit of kettlebell training for runners.
Generally speaking, kettlebell exercises can be categorized into ballistic and grinding exercises.
Ballistic exercises, like the swing, snatch, and clean, are explosive exercises that combine strength and speed to lift the weight.
These exercises help develop the fast-twitch muscle fibers, enhancing explosiveness when you need that final kick at the end of a race. These movements will also strengthen your legs to efficiently power you up the hills in a trail race. Kettlebell ballistics are similar to Olympic lifts but less technically demanding, which makes them an excellent alternative for runners who want to develop their explosiveness and power but don’t have the time, money, or resources to learn Olympic lifting.
The second category of kettlebell exercises is the grinds.
These are more strength- and muscle-building-focused exercises similar to the traditional strength training exercises most runners perform. Squats, presses, and rows are all grinding movements. Contrary to ballistic exercises that train your body to generate and absorb power dynamically, grinds train your body to generate power in a tense or contracted state.
If your main goal is to build muscle and strength, then you’d focus primarily on grinding movements. And yes, you can build muscle with kettlebells. My own transformation is proof.
But if you want a well-rounded strength training program that improves your ability to run long distances as fast as possible, you need to include both ballistics and grinds in your routine.
The following section will cover the main exercises you should focus on as a runner before I give you a basic template for designing your kettlebell training program as a runner.
The Best Kettlebell Exercises for Runners
Open your favorite social media video platform, and you will see a myriad of kettlebell exercises, including various flows, juggling, and feats of strength. The few articles on kettlebell workouts for runners in running magazines, on the other hand, demonstrate various movements that could easily be done with a dumbbell-only set-up, such as single-leg deadlifts, lunges, and overhead presses.
Both of these approaches are far from optimal for most runners.
Unless you fall in love with kettlebell training as much as I did and want to develop your skills and master another sport besides running, you don’t need complicated flows, flips, or juggling routines. You also don’t need the more advanced kettlebell exercises, like the snatch or the jerk.
However, using only grinding movements—as many articles on kettlebell training for runners outline—severely limits the performance gains you could make. It also defeats the purpose of training with kettlebells in the first place. If you have a tool made for ballistic exercises, why not use it that way?
So, which exercises should you focus on if you are a runner and want to get the most out of your kettlebell training sessions? I have all my athletes start with three basic exercises, and if you’re new to kettlebell training, I suggest you follow the same pattern. Those exercises are:
- 2-Hand-Swing
- Goblet Squat
- Farmer’s Walk
The first training sessions are for skill development. Once you have the technique down, you can adjust weight, sets, and reps.
2-Hand-Kettlebell-Swing Benefits for Runners
The 2-Hand Swing is the fundamental kettlebell exercise for everyone, not just runners.
Make sure you master the technique. If you have never swung a kettlebell before, get coaching or film yourself to review your technique and compare it to the ideal 2-hand swing. Focus on these critical points:
- Hinge from the hips, don’t squat.
- Keep your arms connected to your torso for as long as possible. The hips power the bell upwards but don’t lift it with your arms.
- When the bell travels down, wait as long as possible before pushing back your hips to let the bell travel behind you.
If you execute the swing correctly, you should feel soreness in your glutes and hamstrings, not in your (lower) back.
The kettlebell swing strengthens your whole posterior chain and your core. This makes it an ideal exercise for runners with a desk job who typically have the same weaknesses non-runners have: relatively weak glutes, hamstrings, and upper back musculature. A strong backside is critical to perform at your best, as these muscles propel you forward.
Goblet Squat Benefits for Runners
The goblet squat is a highly underrated exercise. It’s not as sexy as a barbell squat or kettlebell front squat. Still, it has a myriad of benefits and is an ideal squat variation if you are just starting your strength training journey. As you can see from the video below, you’re holding the kettlebell in front of you while lowering yourself to a deep squat position. This strengthens your quads, glutes, core, and upper back while putting much less stress on your lower back and spine than a barbell back squat.
Another massive benefit of this exercise is improved hip mobility. Many people find that they can sink deeper in the goblet squat than when they’re back or front-squatting, and goblet squats help them improve their hip mobility under load.
Farmer’s Walk Benefits for Runners
The farmer’s walk is one of the most simple yet most often overlooked exercises for building strength throughout the body. Also called farmer’s carry, all you need to do to execute the movement is to pick up two kettlebells and take them for a walk.
At first glance, this may look like a movement that primarily strengthens your arms and shoulders.
However, the main focus is on the legs and the deep stabilizing muscles of the core. Doing farmer’s walks with heavy weights – or with lighter weights for a more extended set – also simulates that “heavy,” exhausted feeling you get when you run extremely long distances.
Often, runners slouch when they tire, and having a strong core helps prevent form breakdown in long events. When you’re new to strength training, start with holding two light kettlebells – one in each hand. Once you feel comfortable with the movement, you can either opt for heavy and short sets (for building strength) or for lighter weights and slightly longer sets (for building muscular endurance).
Other Exercises
When you have laid the foundations with the 2-hand swing, the goblet squat, and the farmer’s walk, you can broaden your exercise selection and explore the variety of kettlebell exercises and flows. Maybe you will even discover that you enjoy kettlebell training just as much as running, start to play around with different styles and explore the world of kettlebell juggling.
Here are a few suggestions for progressing beyond the basic 3 exercises.
Once you are comfortable with the two-hand hardstyle swing, proceed to the one-hand hardstyle swing. It’s an excellent anti-rotation exercise and better for power development than the two-hand version.
Learning the kettlebell clean is essential to unlocking all the benefits of kettlebell training and gaining access to a myriad of strength exercises (such as overhead presses and kettlebell front squats). It is a technically more challenging exercise, but everyone can learn it with patience and good instruction. The clean lets you move the kettlebell into the “rack” position. This is the starting position for any overhead pressing movement, the front squat, and racked carries.
The kettlebell snatch is a great conditioning exercise, but I don’t prescribe it to my athletes unless they want to and have the necessary shoulder mobility and stability to execute the movement safely.
What About Unilateral Movements?
It’s often said that unilateral movements are the best exercises for runners because running is a single-leg activity.
That argument is flawed because it is a bit too simplistic.
Yes, single-leg strength is important, and if you have significant imbalances, you will undoubtedly benefit from a strength training program that focuses heavily on single-leg training (if programmed correctly).
However, bilateral movements are the foundation, as they are easier to perform. They also put more load on the spine and upper body, which means strength gains in your core will be higher than if you’d only do single-leg exercises. So, the truth is that both are beneficial.
How many single-leg exercises should you include? This depends on how much time you have and if you have significant strength imbalances.
In my own training, I rarely include single-leg exercises anymore, but I also don’t have considerable muscle imbalances in my lower body.
Kettlebell exercises for single-leg strength include the single-leg deadlift, lunges, and split squats. Another great exercise is the single-leg squat, where you can further progress to the pistol squat and hold a kettlebell throughout the movement. This advanced move requires good mobility, coordination, and strength.
How To Structure Your Kettlebell Training Program as a Runner
Structuring a kettlebell training program for runners is not as straightforward as selecting the right exercises and progressing them. Because runners will start their kettlebell journey with different strength training backgrounds, injury histories, and running goals, I can only give general guidelines and reference my own training as an example.
However, a few principles apply to every runner.
The most important principle is specificity. Prioritize your running. Your strength training program should complement your running, not distract from it. That means you likely won’t lift five times per week unless you fall in love with the training and have the necessary time to train and recover adequately from the training load.
The second principle is that of periodization. Just like you must follow a structured, periodized running plan, you must follow a structured periodized plan with your kettlebell training. Too often, I see runners following the same strength training routine, doing the same exercises, and doing the same number of sets and reps per exercise for months. If you just move for the fun of it, this may be fine, but don’t kid yourself – your running won’t benefit much (if at all) if you approach your strength training without an element of progression.
A good rule to follow is to include more and heavier strength training at the beginning of your training cycle (when your run volume will be lower) and gradually reduce the strength training volume as you’re nearing race season. When the running volume is highest at the end of your training cycle, your strength volume should be lowest.
For example, let’s say you’re a runner who already has some experience with strength training and wants to switch to using kettlebells as their primary tool. If I were programming for you, you’d be lifting in the 3-5 rep range with a heavy weight for strength development in the early months of the running year. In addition, you’d have power days, where we will use the beauty of kettlebell ballistics to train your force production. You would have 2-3 strength training sessions per week. Depending on your goals, strengths, and weaknesses, we might start with a muscle development focus instead of a max-strength focus.
As the year progresses, we’d reduce the number of kettlebell workouts to 1-2 and lower the weights. We might add a focused muscular endurance block depending on your goal race and your strengths and weaknesses. However, you will be lifting throughout the year, and you will be lifting relatively heavy for most of your workouts.
Weekly Training Structure
How should you combine running and lifting within the same week? This, too, depends on your goals and what your body can handle.
An often repeated mantra is to “keep the hard days hard and the easy days easy.” Based on that, many people recommend doing your strength workouts on the same day as you do your hard running workouts. That way, your body gets a chance to truly recover on the easy days.
And while this approach works well for many, it doesn’t work for everybody. I have found that for myself, and for some of my athletes, a heavy strength session on the same day as a hard run workout on top of high-life stress is simply too much stress in one day. I program one day per week where I do only strength and add the other 1-2 sessions on an easy run day.
However, whether you prefer the “hard days hard, easy days easy” approach or prefer to add your strength sessions on your easy run days, make sure to schedule them so that they don’t interfere with the quality of your run workouts or your long runs (ideally, leave 36 hours between a hard strength session and a run workout or long run).
Kettlebells – My Secret Weapon for Injury Prevention and Performance
When I started kettlebell training in 2015, I was looking for an alternative cardio workout. Sidelined by injury, I hadn’t run consistently for many months.
Little did I know that performing hundreds of swings in my living room would soon light a desire to become strong.
Six years later, I decided to give running another go and jumped straight into ultramarathon training. Eight months later, I podiumed in my first 61km trail race, and 4 weeks later, I won a 50K. One year later, I podiumed in the 24h German Championships and finished my first 100 miles in 20:04h. More podium finishes (including a win in a 24h trail race) followed.
It’s been 4 years now since I started running again, and I have yet to sustain an injury. I believe kettlebell training is my secret weapon to staying injury-free and regularly placing in the top ten in mountainous ultras, despite living in a pancake-flat big city (and having lived at sea level all my life).
While more traditional strength training with barbells and dumbbells can help you build strength and muscle, the beauty of kettlebell training is that it goes beyond that. Kettlebell training is perfect if you have little time to dedicate to strength training, want to include training power, and develop high levels of athleticism.
Kettlebells won’t turn you into a champion powerlifter or help you put on as much muscle as possible. But if running is your primary sport, kettlebell training is an excellent tool to help you stay injury-free, improve your performance, and add variety to your training.