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Train Your Back with Kettlebells

Jun 12, 2025
1 min read

Many kettlebell lifters train a lot of presses – specifically overhead pressing variations.


That's all fine and dandy. Pressing weights over one's head is a delight. Pressing kettlebells overhead are a great use of training time. 


However, where there are presses, there must be pulls. And no, those ballistic pulls like swings, snatches, and cleans aren't going to cut it. 


Many kettlebell lifters press a lot but don't pull or row a lot. And this is a major mistake from a muscular balance, hypertrophy, and injury prevention standpoint. 


Don't fall into the common kettlebell lifter trap of doing many presses and few pulls. Heck, pulls are easy to add into a program and the pulling exercises are simple to learn and perform, with multiple variations, regressions, and progressions. 


Do your pullups or lat pulldowns. These include pillows of all hand positions, assisted pullups, and weighted pullups. 


Do your rows. Rowing a kettlebell is super natural and a fantastic exercise that'll build your back, arms, and rear delts. It'll prevent you from getting wonky shoulders because rows build resilient shoulders and back muscles, focusing on antagonist movement from pressing. 


Some great kettlebell rows include single arm rows, single arm alternating dead stop rows, bent over 2 arm rows, pendlay rows, and gorilla rows.


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