It’s for increased fitness, not competition. Let me be clear – I did NOT train for Kettlebell Sport or Girvoy Sport (GS). As in martial arts, the kettlebell hard style chooses "power production over power conservation." This style, put most simply, focuses on power production, not power conservation. Hard style training is mainly done by Pavel Tsatsouline and his group known as the Russian Kettlebell … Breathing is one big difference between Hardstyle and Girevoy. Here’s what the hardstyle swing looks like: â? (Randy Hauer, RKC TL) The statement above is from the RKC manual and provides a starting point for understanding what has become known as Hardstyle Kettlebell training. That is, the stomach is pressurized with air and the air is released in small amounts as the movement is conducted (almost as little grunts).. The Bell often comes over the top on the drop as your hips hinge during the downward swing. The first style I’ll cover is the hardstyle, or RKC swing. Safety is the key, whatever you do. ?Hardstyle is a stripped down version of original kettlebell lifts. Hard-and soft-style kettlebell training are both fantastic training approaches. Before finding my way towards Pavel Tsatsouline, the RKC now SFG and hardstyle (HS) kettlebell training, I went to ‘YouTube School’ to learn what I later found out was a soft or more fluid style of lifting kettlebells. I mean that as literally as you can take it: In hardstyle training, you generally try to engage as much muscle as possible to build as much strength as possible. So there is a lot of talk in the kettlebell world “Hard Style / Soft or Sport” There is no right or wrong method as many have argued in the past. Softstyle lifters may in fact be able to achieve a greater training volume given their slower pacing. This is the swing style we teach here at kettlebellbasics.net. Softstyle kettlebell lifters use lighter weights for many repetitions while experienced hardstyle kettlebell lifters favor heavy weights for fewer repetitions. In Hardstyle, the breath is used to bring more power to the movement. One method focuses on building strength and tension; the other, endurance and relaxation. The difference between a kettlebell sport and a hard-style swing, a heart cell swing is all about speed and power, and is what most people are familiar with when they think about kettlebell swings. One is the actual authentic methods used by Russians and one is wellâ?¦ another way of doing things. The difference in hard style and soft style kettlebell training is mostly the use of tension vs. relaxation.