If you have ever climbed a tree and then thought, ‘How do I get down from here?’ Then you might have had the same thought the first time you snatched a kettlebell overhead.

How do I get this thing down from up there?

The drop of the kettlebell snatch is no joke. Dropping a kettlebell from overhead creates a lot of momentum, and you must absorb and redirect all that energy in the loaded eccentric position. This stresses the grip, skin, and skill of efficiently absorbing the force without taking the impact of the drop into the body.

Enter the progressive drop from StrongFirst Certified Team Leader, Jose Luis Cortina. If you learned the progressive clean from the Speed Metal online course to work on the half snatch, then the progressive drop is its “mirror.”

After performing your first reverse half snatch, instead of returning fully to the rack position after the first press, you will almost reach the rack and then drop and clean the kettlebell into another press. Then, on subsequent reps, you lower the bell less before dropping into another clean and press until you are dropping from the top into the next clean.