Kettlebell Clean and Press: How to Do It, Sets, Reps and Mistakes

The kettlebell clean and press is two lifts joined together: you clean the bell from between your legs up to the rack position on your chest, then press it overhead until your arm is locked out. Each rep trains your hips, back, shoulders and grip, which is why so many kettlebell programmes are built around it. If you only own one bell, this is the exercise I'd learn after the swing. The catch is that both halves need to be right, because a sloppy clean ruins the press and a bad rack bruises your forearm. Here's how to put it together.

How to do the kettlebell clean and press

Set the bell about a foot in front of you, feet roughly hip to shoulder-width apart.

1. Hike the bell back. Hinge at the hips, grab the handle with one hand and hike it back between your thighs like a kettlebell swing. Your forearm should touch your inner thigh.
2. Snap your hips. Stand up hard by driving your hips forward. The bell travels up because your hips launched it, not because your arm lifted it.
3. Keep it close. As the bell rises, keep your elbow tucked to your ribs so the bell moves in a tight line up your body, roughly like zipping up a jacket.
4. Punch through into the rack. At chest height, rotate your hand around the handle and slide it through so the bell lands softly on the back of your forearm. This is the rack position.
5. Brace and pause. Squeeze your glutes, tighten your abs and grip the handle firmly. Hold for a second so the press starts from a stable position.
6. Press. Drive the bell straight up, letting your forearm stay vertical. Finish with your arm locked, your bicep by your ear and the bell sitting over your shoulder.
7. Lower and return. Bring the bell back to the rack under control, then flip your hand and let it drop back between your legs into the next hike.

The full technique for each half is in our separate guides to the kettlebell clean and the kettlebell press. If either part feels shaky, practise it on its own for a week or two before combining them.

The rack position

Everything about the press depends on a good rack. The handle should run diagonally across your palm, deep towards the thumb side, with the bell resting on the back of your forearm and your wrist straight. Your elbow sits close to your ribs, your forearm is roughly vertical, and your fist sits just below your chin.

If your wrist bends back, the weight hangs off the joint and the press loses power before it starts. If your elbow flares out wide, the bell drifts away from your body and you'll feel it in the front of your shoulder.

Stopping the bell bruising your wrist

That bang on the forearm is the most common complaint from new lifters, and it's almost always a clean problem. The bell swings out wide, flips over your hand at the top and crashes down.

A few fixes cover most cases:

• Shorten the arc. Keep the bell close to your thighs and body on the way up. The further it swings out, the harder it lands.
• Grip loosely on the way up. A death grip stops your hand rotating around the handle. Hold it like a hook, then tighten once it's racked.
• Move your hand, not the bell. Think about spearing your hand forward through the handle at chest height, so your hand goes around the bell rather than the bell going over your hand.
• Start lighter. A lighter bell gives you more time to make the hand move. Our guide to what weight kettlebell you should use has starting points by experience.

A slightly sore forearm in your first fortnight is normal. Bruises that keep coming back mean the technique needs more work, so drop the weight.

Strict press vs push press

A strict press uses only your upper body. Your legs stay locked and your hips stay still, so the shoulders and triceps do all the work. It's the better choice for building pressing strength.

A push press adds a small dip and drive from the legs. Bend your knees a couple of inches, keeping your torso upright, then straighten them sharply and press as the bell leaves your shoulder. That leg drive lets you move a heavier bell or keep going when your shoulders are tiring, which is useful for conditioning work and high-rep sets.

Learn the strict version first. If you can't press a bell strictly for at least a few reps, push pressing it usually turns into a lean-back and a strained lower back.

Single vs double kettlebells

One bell is where everyone should start. It's easier to learn, it costs less, and holding weight on one side forces your obliques and glutes to stop you leaning, which is a decent core workout in its own right.

Double bells are much harder. You clean two kettlebells at once, they sit in a double rack against your chest, and you press both together. The total load goes up a lot, your stance needs to widen slightly so the bells clear your thighs, and any difference between your left and right sides shows up quickly. Move to doubles once you can clean and press the same bell for 5 to 8 reps on each arm.

You'll need two matching bells, so look through our best kettlebells UK guide before buying. An adjustable kettlebell is a cheaper way to cover several weights, though two adjustables for doubles costs about the same as a pair of fixed bells.

Breathing

For heavy, low-rep work, take a breath in at the rack, brace your abs against it, press, and breathe out at or after lockout. Take a fresh breath before each press.

For lighter, faster sets, sync it with the movement. Breathe out sharply as your hips snap on the clean, take a quick breath in the rack, then exhale as you press. Holding your breath for a long set of conditioning reps will leave you dizzy, so keep it moving.

Muscles worked

• Glutes and hamstrings power the clean through the hip snap.
• Upper back, lats and forearms guide the bell into the rack and keep it close.
• Shoulders and triceps do the pressing, with your serratus and traps rotating the shoulder blade so the arm can get fully overhead.
• Abs, obliques and glutes brace your trunk so you don't bend sideways under the single bell.

Kettlebell hip-hinge work does build strength in its own right. In a six-week trial, practitioners doing kettlebell swing training raised their deadlift 1RM by around 8% to 9% and their jump height by 9% to 10%, and the clean uses the same hip drive.

Common mistakes

Curling the bell up. If your bicep is lifting the bell, your hips aren't doing their job. Hike it back properly and let the hip snap send it up.

Pressing from a bad rack. Starting with a bent wrist or a flared elbow means the press begins out of position. Pause in the rack for a second and check it before every press.

Leaning back to finish. Arching your lower back to complete a press means the bell's too heavy for strict work. Squeeze your glutes harder, or switch to the push press and call it what it is.

Losing the lockout. Stopping with your elbow soft or the bell drifting forward of your head robs the top of the rep. Finish with your arm straight and your bicep near your ear.

Rushing the drop. Letting the bell fall from overhead straight into the hike is hard on the shoulder and back. Lower it to the rack first, then start the next clean.

Variations

• Clean and push press. The same lift with a small leg drive. Good for higher reps and heavier bells.
• Double clean and press. Two bells at once. A big strength and conditioning step up.
• Clean, squat and press. Clean the bell, do a front squat from the rack, then press. It turns the lift into a full-body complex.
• Bottoms-up clean and press. Clean the bell so it finishes upside down, base pointing at the ceiling, then press it. Use a much lighter bell. It's brutal on grip and shoulder stability and punishes a sloppy clean straight away.
• Half-kneeling press after the clean. Clean, kneel down on one knee, then press. Taking your legs out of it makes leaning back impossible, which helps if you can't stop arching.

Sets and reps

How you programme the clean and press depends on what you want from it. The ACSM position stand on resistance training recommends heavy loads of 1 to 6 reps with longer rests for strength, and lighter loads for 15 or more reps with short rests for muscular endurance, and the same logic works here.

• Strength: 4 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps per arm with a heavy bell, resting 2 to 3 minutes. Clean before every press.
• Ladders for volume: do 1 rep each arm, then 2, then 3, then start again at 1. Three to five ladders of 1, 2, 3 add up to a lot of quality reps without grinding. Once that feels easy, build the ladders up to 5.
• Conditioning: set a timer and do 5 reps per arm at the top of every minute for 10 minutes with a moderate bell. Or work for 30 seconds per side, rest 30 seconds and repeat for 8 to 10 rounds.
• Learning the move: 3 to 4 sets of 5 per arm with a light bell, focusing only on a soft rack and a clean lockout.

Train it two or three times a week. When you can finish all your sets with clean reps and no lean-back, go up to the next bell, which is usually 4kg heavier.

Recommended reads

1. Kettlebell clean
2. Kettlebell press
3. Kettlebell swing
4. The best kettlebells in the UK
5. What weight kettlebell should I use?