I've been working on defining these terms and would appreciate your thoughts and input on it.
What Makes a Kettlebell Exercise, Workout or Program "Beginner"?
Beginner is one of the most used words in kettlebell training. It sits on workouts, on exercises, on sign-up forms and on programs, and it does two different jobs. It describes a person: you are a beginner at something, and the word only means something once you say at what. And it labels a thing: a beginner kettlebell exercise, a beginner workout, a beginner program. Used that way, it has to pass a test.
Beginner at what?
Beginner on its own tells you very little about a person. You are a beginner at something.
I have trained for over twenty years and I would call myself advanced. Give me an exercise I have never done and I am a beginner at that exercise. I have the strength and the body awareness to get there quickly, but on day one I am learning it from nothing like everybody else.
The same word covers very different situations. Somebody who has never done any physical training is a beginner at training. Somebody who has trained with barbells for ten years and picks up a kettlebell for the first time is a beginner at kettlebell training, and not a beginner at training. Somebody who has swung a kettlebell for three years and has never snatched is a beginner at the snatch. Somebody who has done the single kettlebell snatch for years and has never done the double is a beginner at the double kettlebell snatch.
Programming gets missed. You can be good at the exercises and a beginner at programming them: deciding what to train, how much, how heavy, how often, and how a week fits together. A strong, experienced trainee who asks for a program is usually a beginner at this. If I had never programmed anything, then the day I started I would be a beginner at programming, however long I had trained. Programming splits the same way training does. Somebody who has programmed barbell training for years and has never programmed kettlebell training is a beginner at kettlebell programming, and not a beginner at programming.
So the first question is always: beginner at what? Training, kettlebell training, an exercise, a variation of that exercise, programming, or kettlebell programming. You can be advanced at one and a beginner at another on the same day.
Years do not make the level
The usual way to sort people is by time. Less than a year, you are a beginner. A few years, intermediate. Longer, advanced.
Time says how long somebody has been doing something, and nothing about what they can do. Twenty years of training and zero snatches makes you a beginner at the snatch. Six months of daily swing practice with a coach watching can put you well past somebody who has swung badly for five years.
Years do count for something when they were consistent. Twenty consistent years make you more advanced at training in general. You know how to brace, how to breathe under load, how your body responds, how to recover. That carries into anything new you pick up, and it means you learn a new exercise faster. It does not make you advanced at an exercise you have never practiced.
The sign-up form at KETTLEBELL MONSTER™ asks for your level with a time attached. A sign-up has to make an assumption, because you cannot ask somebody twelve questions before they have even seen the site. That assumption is a starting point. To get the real answer you have to go into depth, per thing: what have you done, what can you do, and at what.
What a coach needs to know
A coach needs two facts about you.
First, how experienced you are in general. This decides how fast I move and how much I explain. Somebody with twenty years of training who is learning the snatch does not need to be taught how to brace, how to breathe, or how to hinge. The complete beginner does. Both are beginners at the snatch, and I coach them differently.
Second, whether you have done this exercise. This decides what I teach. Your years decide how fast you get there. The snatch asks the same of everybody.
A good coach holds both facts and keeps them apart. An app that coaches has to do the same.
What makes an exercise a beginner exercise
Now the word describes the exercise, and the question is different. Here "exercise" means a specific variation, such as the two-hand swing rather than every kind of swing, because the level sits with the variation.
A beginner exercise is one that is suitable for somebody to start with when they enter the kettlebell world. After those come the intermediate exercises, and after those the advanced ones. The test I use is practical. Hand the exercise to somebody in their first kettlebell session, with a load, and watch what happens. If they perform it and the reps have training value from that session, it is a beginner exercise. They will not be good at it. A first-session swing has a soft hinge and an early arm pull. It is still a swing, and it still trains them. You correct it over the following weeks while they get stronger doing it.
By that test the two-hand swing, the goblet squat, the strict press, the bent-over row, the deadlift, the suitcase carry and the assisted dead clean, where the other arm helps the kettlebell up, are all beginner exercises. There are more. Apply the same test to anything not on the list.
A beginner exercise still has something before it. Everything in kettlebell training has a bodyweight pattern underneath it, and you learn the bodyweight version first. For the hip hinge swing it is the hip hinge, with no weight in your hands. For the squat swing it is the squat, and the squat swing is also a good place to start, and the right one for anyone whose back complains about the hinge. For the goblet squat it is the squat too. For the deadlift it is whichever movement you make the deadlift with, hinge or squat, without weight.
For the press the bodyweight pattern is reaching overhead with a straight arm, and the way to check it is a test. Stand facing a wall and take your arm overhead, straight above your shoulder. What you are looking at is the distance between you and the wall. If the arm does not get fully overhead, your shoulders end up further from the wall. If you can stand tall with your chest against the wall and your arm overhead, without pain or discomfort and without it being a struggle, your overhead mobility is good. There are degrees. Being close is different from being far off, and being off does not mean you can do nothing overhead. It means the press is not the place to start.
Somebody will say: so the hip hinge swing does have a prerequisite, the hip hinge, and that is another exercise. Yes, it is, and it is a bodyweight exercise. You can learn it in the same session, with nothing in your hands. It is not a kettlebell exercise you have to go away and learn first, and that is the difference. A beginner exercise has nothing before it that needs a kettlebell. Its prerequisites are movements you own already, or can learn standing in your living room without a kettlebell.
Intermediate and advanced exercises
An exercise stops being a beginner exercise the moment another kettlebell exercise has to be learned first.
The snatch is the clear case. Before you snatch, you clean. Before a swingclean, you swing. Before you swing, you learn the movement the swing is built on, the hip hinge or the squat, with nothing in your hands. That chain is visible, and the snatch is not sold as a beginner exercise.
The get-up gets filed under beginner all the time, and its chain is longer than the snatch's. The snatch builds on another kettlebell exercise, the clean. The get-up needs three: a stable overhead hold, a windmill, and a reverse lunge with a kettlebell overhead. The movement is also long in its own right: seventeen bodyweight positions, and another eight steps of setup once a kettlebell is in your hand. By the guidelines below, the loaded get-up is advanced. The bodyweight get-up is where a beginner can start, and the loaded get-up is something a beginner works toward. I have written that argument in full in Is the kettlebell Turkish get-up a beginner exercise?
The level belongs to the variation. The snatch has many variations. A single kettlebell snatch, learned after the swing and the clean, is intermediate. A double kettlebell snatch is advanced. The same goes for the swing: some variations are for beginners, some are intermediate, some are advanced. You can take an intermediate variation and make a harder one from it: add a second kettlebell, use a harder position, and so on.
So, as guidelines rather than a rule book:
- A beginner exercise needs only bodyweight patterns.
- An intermediate exercise builds on another kettlebell exercise, the way the clean can build on the swing and the snatch builds on the clean.
- An advanced exercise combines several kettlebell exercises at once, the way the get-up combines the overhead hold, the windmill and the overhead reverse lunge, or it takes an intermediate one further.
None of this is black and white. It gives you boundaries to work with.
What makes a workout a beginner workout
A workout has its own level, separate from the level of the exercises in it.
A beginner workout has to pass two tests. It is built only from beginner exercises. And its demand, the reps, the time, the weight, is something a beginner can finish with every rep still looking like the exercise. A beginner edition rebuilds the reps, rounds and rest so the demand fits, as well as choosing the appropriate weight.
It fails the label when either test fails. A "beginner snatch workout" fails the first, because the snatch builds on the clean. A forty-minute swing grinder fails the second, even though the two-hand swing is a beginner exercise.
What makes a program a beginner program
The same two tests as a workout, applied across the weeks. Every session is built from beginner exercises. And the demand, per session and across the week, is something a beginner can recover from and finish with every rep still looking like the exercise.
Why this matters
The word is used to make decisions. A beginner picks a "beginner workout" built around an exercise they have never learned, and the workout fails before it starts. Somebody advanced reads "advanced" on their own profile and skips the bodyweight step on an exercise they have never done. A sign-up form tells an app somebody is intermediate, and the app never asks at what. In each case the word was used without saying what it referred to.
