Creating Chaos - For Fitness & Sport Professionals

A movement that is very much associated with kettlebells and whilst it looks exciting, do the benefits match the spectacle?


Looking more closely, here's an overview of what it does for the body:

• As you descend through the movement, the shoulder shoulder forces a huge stretch through the chest and anterior aspect of the shoulder, typically tight in most people
• As well as hip flexion, there is a lot of frontal movement in this exercise which gets a great response from internal and external obliques in unison
• There is a big stretch woking through the anterior oblique sling which taps into the adductors, again, often a very tight area
• As your body negotiates downward whilst keeping the supporting arm vertical, the shoulder joint works through a great degree of rotation, stabilising and improving structure in the rotator cuff and doing this through movement, much more effective than static holds
• Whilst the legs are not fully locked out, leg position remains fairly fixed through the movement and requires a great deal of stability with saggital, transverse and frontal forces occuring, excellent for ligaments and tendons within the aforementioned joints
• The movement itself requires not just flexibility but a bank of control and balance. These are crucial for most exercises and patterns like this which demand such a strong level of these will benefit neuro-function with the body's ability to perform other patterns.
• To hit full runge through the windmill, not only does the shoulder joint require great range and flexibility,  the thoracic spine also needs to demonstrate good extension and again, this is often a problem area for many. Gradually working through more and more depth on this movement will provide a safe and functional pathway to improve thoracic range, function and ability to support extension

The above points are just a few and there's plenty more benefits to be taken from it. I'll leave it down to you to decide whether this exercise is worthwhile :)