Filming guide for KETTLEBELL MONSTER creators

You know how to coach. This page covers the part nobody taught you: getting a kettlebell session onto camera so it looks and sounds like you know what you're doing. A phone, one mic and one light are enough.

KETTLEBELL MONSTER is a platform where trainers publish workouts, programs and technique videos to a worldwide kettlebell audience and get paid for them. Most trainers who join have never filmed anything beyond a phone clip for Instagram. That is fine. Everything below is what we tell new creators, in the order they need it.

What to film with: phone video settings

A phone from the last four or five years. Its video is good enough that the camera is not what holds a coaching video back, and it is the one device you always have with you. Do not buy a camera to start. Buy a mic and a tripod instead; those change the result far more than the camera does.

Three things to check before your first take:

Check what resolution the phone is set to. Phones usually come set to 1080p, sometimes 720p. On iPhone, open the camera in Video mode and look at the top corner: it says something like HD·30 (1080p) or 4K·30; tap it to change, or go to Settings → Camera → Record Video. On Android, open the camera, tap the settings gear, and look for Video resolution or Rear video size; you want at least FHD (1080p) or UHD (4K).
Lock focus and exposure. Tap and hold on yourself in the camera app until it says AE/AF lock (iPhone) or shows a lock icon (most Android phones). Without this the phone will hunt for focus every time the bell swings through the frame and the brightness will pulse as you move.
Clean the lens. Your phone lives in a gym bag and your fingers touch it after chalk. A smeared lens is the most common reason a video looks foggy. Wipe it with a microfibre cloth, not a t-shirt or tissue, which push grease around and can scratch the coating. A drop of lens-cleaning fluid on the cloth handles chalk dust and sweat. Better still, stop it getting dirty in the first place with a case that covers the lens (see the gear section).

4K or 1080p

1080p at 30 frames per second is the default for almost everything: follow-along workouts, tutorials, talking to camera. On a phone screen at arm's length the difference between 4K and 1080p is small; on a large monitor or TV, 4K is visibly sharper. Most of your audience watches on a phone. 1080p gives you files a quarter of the size, faster uploads, and less heat and battery drain on long sessions.

Film in 4K when you know you will crop the footage later. Two cases come up all the time in kettlebell content:

You filmed the full body wide and want to zoom in on a detail in the edit: the grip, the wrist at the top of a snatch, the foot position on a squat. With 1080p there is no room to zoom before it goes soft.
You want to cut a vertical clip for TikTok or Instagram out of the same footage. Cropping 4K horizontal down to vertical still leaves you with more than 1080p worth of pixels; cropping 1080p leaves you with a soft, blocky image.

Frame rate and slow motion

30fps (or 25fps, see the flicker section) for normal content. The main reason to go higher is slow motion.

60fps slows to half speed and still looks smooth. Enough for showing a swing or clean in detail. File size doubles.
120fps slows to a quarter speed.
240fps slows to a tenth of normal speed. This is the phone's dedicated Slo-mo mode, usually limited to 1080p, and you get a few seconds per clip. Use it for the bell flip in a juggle or the catch at the top of a snatch, not for whole sets.

Vertical or horizontal

Horizontal (16:9, phone on its side) for anything watched on KETTLEBELL MONSTER: full workouts, tutorials, programs, form breakdowns. Reasons:

A person pressing a kettlebell overhead is tall and narrow, but the moment they swing, snatch or juggle the bell, the movement gets wide. Horizontal holds both.
Two people in frame, a side-by-side comparison, or you plus a whiteboard all need width.
People watching a 40-minute workout on a laptop or TV get a full screen, not a strip with black bars.

Vertical (9:16, phone upright) for short clips that go to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to pull people back to your KETTLEBELL MONSTER profile. Their feeds are built for vertical, and a horizontal clip shows up small with black bars above and below.

The simplest workflowFilm once, horizontal. Publish the horizontal version on KETTLEBELL MONSTER. Crop vertical clips from it afterwards for social media. Filming the same session twice in two orientations wastes your energy and your students' patience. 1080p cropped to vertical is fine for social feeds and is what most of our own clips are; film 4K if you want the cropped clip to stay tack sharp.

Flicker in video: the problem you don't see until you get home

Gym lights, and most LED and fluorescent lights, pulse on and off many times a second, faster than your eye can see. Your phone's camera can see it. The result is horizontal bands rolling through the picture, or the whole frame pulsing bright and dark. It is subtle on the phone screen and very obvious on a big monitor, and it cannot be fixed afterwards.

The pulse rate depends on the mains electricity in your country:

Where you are	Mains frequency	Frame rate to use
Europe, UK, Australia, most of Asia and Africa	50 Hz	25 fps or 50 fps
USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan (east), parts of South America	60 Hz	30 fps or 60 fps

When the frame rate matches the light's pulse, each frame catches the same point in the cycle and the flicker disappears.

How to set it

iPhone: Settings → Camera → Record Video → turn on Show PAL Formats, then choose 1080p at 25 fps (or 4K at 25 fps) if you are in a 50 Hz country. In a 60 Hz country leave it at 30 fps.
Android: Open the camera app → Settings (gear icon) → look for Anti-flicker, Anti-banding or Flicker reduction and set it to 50 Hz or 60 Hz to match the table. Some phones offer Auto; pick the number instead, auto gets it wrong indoors.

Easiest fix of all: film in daylight. Sunlight does not flicker. If you have a window or can train outside, the light problem and the flicker problem solve themselves.

Framing for kettlebell work

Camera on a tripod, not in someone's hand, not leaning against a water bottle. A wobbling frame looks amateur immediately and makes form details impossible to read.

Camera height: roughly hip height, lens level with the floor, not tilted. This is the view a coach has when they watch you. A phone on the floor or on a low box pointed up at you makes your legs look long, your torso short, and hides whether your back is flat at the bottom of a swing. Filming from above does the opposite and hides the hips. If you only have a small tripod, put it on a bench, a box or a stack of plates to get it up to hip height.
Whole body in frame, including the bell overhead. Do a test press and check the top of the bell is inside the picture with space above it. Then check your feet are in with space below. The bell going out of frame during a snatch is the framing mistake we see most often.
Side angle (90 degrees to you) for swings, cleans, snatches and anything with a hinge. It shows the hip movement, the bell path and the back position.
Front angle for presses, squats, rack position, grip and anything where symmetry or hand position matters.
45-degree angle is the compromise when you can only set up once and need both.
Background: plain and darker than you. A wall, not a rack full of bells and a window. Your students need to see you, not your gym.

Audio

Bad audio loses viewers faster than a dark picture does. The phone's built-in mic records the room; a clip-on wireless mic records you. It is the best purchase you can make for coaching video.

Clip the mic transmitter to your collar or the neck of your shirt, not the chest. Bells in the rack position will hit a chest mic every rep.
Turn off the gym music. Two reasons: it drowns you out, and it is copyrighted. See the music section below.
Echo: a gym is a box of hard surfaces, and a phone mic two metres away records the room bouncing back at you. Three things fix most of it. Get the mic close to your mouth (the clip-on does this). Put soft things in the room: rubber mats on the floor, a curtain or a couple of moving blankets on the wall behind the camera. Face away from the biggest bare wall. Software can reduce echo a little afterwards, not remove it.
For follow-along workouts, coach as if the student is next to you. Cue breathing, cue the next movement before it starts, count reps out loud.
If you want clean voice-over on a technique video, record the movement without talking, then record the explanation separately with the mic held close and add it in the edit.

Gear we use

These are the products the KETTLEBELL MONSTER team films with. Each brand makes many versions; open the box below each one to see which version to pick and why. Links go to Amazon and support the platform at no extra cost to you.

Best microphone for iPhone and Android video: Saramonic Blink series

Simple to use is the reason we chose Saramonic. The receiver plugs straight into the phone, the transmitter clips onto you, they pair on their own when switched on, and the battery runs for a full day of filming.

Which Saramonic to pick

The model number tells you two things: the series (100 or 500 ProX) and the phone connector (the letter and number at the end).

Step 1: match the connector to your phone. The receiver plugs into the phone's charging port, so it has to be the right plug.

USB-C port (all Android phones, iPhone 15 and newer): choose a model ending in B5 (one mic) or B6 (two mics).
Lightning port (iPhone 14 and older): choose a model ending in B3 (one mic) or B4 (two mics).
Models ending in B1 or B2 use a 3.5 mm jack for cameras. Skip them if you film on a phone.

Step 2: one mic or two. Solo coaching needs one transmitter (B3 or B5). If you regularly film with a training partner or interview clients, get the two-transmitter kit (B4 or B6); both feed into the same receiver.

Step 3: Blink 100 or Blink 500 ProX.

Blink 100: the budget line. Built-in mic on the transmitter, about 10 hours of battery, 50 m range. This is the one to start with and the one most creators need.
Blink 500 ProX: costs more and adds a proper lavalier mic on a cable (more discreet, clips lower without being hit by the bell), a charging case, and about 100 m of range. Worth it if you film outdoors at distance or want the mic hidden.

So for a solo trainer with a USB-C phone, the answer is the Blink 100 B5.

Saramonic Blink 100 B5 (USB-C, one mic)
Saramonic Blink 100 B3 (Lightning, one mic)
Saramonic Blink 500 ProX B5 (USB-C, one mic, lav)

Lighting kit for video: Neewer

One light, set up once, pointed at you from slightly above and to one side, turns a dim garage into a set. Neewer lights are cheap for what they do and ours have been switched on almost daily for years without a fault.

Which Neewer light to pick

Neewer sells three shapes of light. Pick the shape first, then the size.

Flat LED panel (the 660 and 480 series): a rectangle of hundreds of small LEDs. Soft, even light straight out of the box, no extra parts needed, runs cool and silent. Dial on the back changes warmth from daylight to tungsten so you can match a window or a bulb. Best for a fixed indoor spot within about two metres of the camera. This is the one to start with. The bi-colour 660 comes with a stand, barn doors and diffuser in the box; the "Pro II" version adds RGB colour you will not use for coaching but costs little more.
COB light (the CB60, FS60, CB100, FS150 series): one big LED chip in a can, like a small spotlight. Much brighter than a panel of the same price, so it works from further away and can light a whole training area, but it is harsh on its own and needs a softbox on the front (often included). It has a fan. Choose this if you film a large space, move around a lot, or the panel is not bright enough.
Ring light: made for faces at a desk. It flatters a talking head and does nothing for a full-body shot, and the camera has to sit in the middle of it. Skip it for training video.

Size: 660 LEDs or 60 W is enough for one person indoors. Go bigger (RGB1200, 100 W+ COB) only if the room is large or you want to overpower daylight from a window.

Power: all of them run off the mains adaptor in the box. Most also take Sony-style NP-F batteries, useful if your training space has no socket nearby.

Neewer 660 bi-colour LED panel kit
Neewer 60 W COB light with softbox

Tripods

We use two, no particular brand. The requirement that matters is the phone clamp: it must rotate between vertical and horizontal without you having to re-mount the phone. Check the product photos for a clamp on a ball head or a rotating bracket before you buy.

Which tripod to pick

Small flexible tripod (bendable legs, about 30 cm): wraps around a squat rack post, a fence, a tree branch, or stands on a bench. Fits in a gym bag. This is the one to buy first if you are unsure whether you will keep filming; it costs little and works outdoors where a full-height tripod blows over. One thing to know: on the ground it films upwards at an angle, which distorts your proportions and hides your back position. Outdoors, wrap it around a tree or post at hip height. Indoors, stand it on something.
Full-height tripod (extends to about 1.5 m or more): for indoor filming where the phone needs to sit at hip height with nothing to lean it on. Look for a fluid or ball head, a phone clamp that rotates, and legs that lock with a flip rather than a twist (faster to set up with chalky hands).

Whichever you buy, check the clamp opens wide enough for your phone with its case on. Many cheap clamps stop at 85 mm.

Flexible phone tripods
Full-height phone tripods

Phone case with a lens cover

Every phone ships with its camera glass exposed, which makes no sense for something that lives in a gym bag next to chalk and keys. A case with a sliding door over the lenses fixes it: close it between takes, open it to film. Ours has kept the lens clean and unscratched.

Which case to pick

The search term is slide camera cover plus your phone model. Two brands that make them well for most iPhone and Samsung models: Nillkin CamShield (slim, the cover slides with a thumb) and TORRAS (thicker, more drop protection, magnetic ring on the back). Check three things in the listing:

It is made for your exact phone model. Camera bumps differ between the base, Plus, Pro and Ultra versions.
The cover locks in both the open and closed position, so it does not slide shut mid-set.
The case still fits a tripod clamp. Very thick rugged cases with kickstands can be too wide.

Nillkin CamShield for iPhone Nillkin CamShield for Samsung
TORRAS slide cover for iPhone TORRAS slide cover for Samsung

Lens cleaning

A microfibre cloth costs almost nothing and belongs in the gym bag next to the chalk. A small lens-cleaning kit adds a bottle of fluid and a brush for the grit that a dry cloth just drags across the glass.

Lens cleaning kits

Storage: Samsung portable SSD

A few sessions of video fill a phone. Once a session is edited and uploaded, move the original files off the phone (or computer) onto an external drive and delete them from the phone. That keeps the phone empty for the next session and keeps the originals in case you want to re-cut them later. Samsung's portable SSDs have been fast and, in our experience, never lost a file.

Which Samsung SSD to pick

Three current models. All use USB-C, all come in 1 TB, 2 TB and (except the basic T7) 4 TB.

T7: the basic one. Its weakness is long transfers: after roughly 80 GB in one go it slows down a lot, so copying a full day of 4K footage takes a while. Fine if you film 1080p and copy session by session.
T7 Shield: same speed as the T7 but wrapped in rubber, rated against dust and water splashes, survives a 3 m drop, and holds its full speed for the whole transfer. This is the one for a gym bag. It is what we recommend for most creators.
T9: about twice as fast as the T7 models, but only if your computer has a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port (most laptops do not, on which it runs at T7 speed). Also not water resistant. Choose it only if you copy large amounts of 4K footage regularly and know your computer supports the faster port.

Capacity: 1 TB holds roughly 60 hours of 1080p or 15 hours of 4K. 2 TB is the sweet spot if you film weekly.

Samsung T7 Shield 2 TB
Samsung T9

Music

Where to get music you are allowed to use

YouTube Audio Library (inside YouTube Studio): free, large, and each track states whether it needs a credit line. Safe on YouTube and on KETTLEBELL MONSTER.
Pixabay Music: free, no credit required, licence allows commercial use.
Uppbeat: free tier with a credit line, paid tier without.
Paid subscriptions such as Epidemic Sound or Artlist cover your channels on all the major platforms under one subscription. Worth it once you publish weekly.

Not allowed, however common it is: the gym's radio, Spotify, a song from your phone, or "no copyright music" ripped from someone's YouTube channel. Automated matching on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram will find it, mute the video, redirect its earnings to the rights holder, or remove it.

Do not bake music into your master file

This is the mistake we see most often. The temptation is to add a track once in the edit and post that file everywhere. Here is why it backfires:

TikTok and Instagram both have free music libraries built into the app, including well-known commercial tracks, and using one boosts reach there. That is because they license the music for use inside their own app only. That same track is not licensed for YouTube or for KETTLEBELL MONSTER, and a track you licensed elsewhere may be flagged inside TikTok.
If a claim lands on a baked-in track, every copy of that video on every platform is affected, and you cannot remove the music without re-editing from scratch.
Students following a workout often want your voice only, or their own music.

The workflow that avoids all of itExport your master with voice only. Upload that clean version to KETTLEBELL MONSTER. For each social platform, make a copy and add music from that platform's own library inside its app. If you need music on the KETTLEBELL MONSTER or YouTube version, add a licensed track from the list above to a separate export.

Editing and compression

You do not need to edit much. Trim the start and end, cut the moment you walked to the phone, and leave the training alone. Free tools that do this well: CapCut (phone and desktop), DaVinci Resolve (desktop, more powerful), iMovie (Mac and iPhone).

Chapters

The KETTLEBELL MONSTER player shows chapter markers so students can jump to the warm-up, the main block, or a specific movement. While editing, note the timestamp where each section begins and keep that list with your master file; chapter entry for creators is being added to the upload step.

Export settings

A phone file straight out of the camera is usually 2 to 4 times bigger than it needs to be. KETTLEBELL MONSTER re-encodes every upload for streaming, so extra size only costs you upload time, it does not add quality. Export with these settings:

Setting	1080p	4K
Format	MP4 (H.264)	MP4 (H.264 or H.265)
Video bitrate	8 to 12 Mbps	35 to 45 Mbps
Frame rate	same as you filmed	same as you filmed
Audio	AAC, 128 to 192 kbps, stereo	AAC, 128 to 192 kbps, stereo

Compressing with HandBrake (free, Mac and Windows)

If your editor's export is still huge, or you are uploading unedited phone footage from a computer, HandBrake shrinks it without visible loss.

Download it from handbrake.fr and install.
Open HandBrake, click Open Source, pick your video file.
In the Presets panel on the right, choose General → Fast 1080p30 (or Fast 2160p60 4K HEVC for 4K).
Click the Video tab. Set Framerate to Same as source. Leave Constant Quality at RF 22 for 1080p or RF 24 for 4K.
At the bottom, click Browse and choose where to save the new file.
Click Start Encode. A 30-minute 1080p file takes a few minutes and typically ends up a third of the original size.

Uploading straight from the phone with no computer involved is fine too. Use Wi-Fi, plug the phone in, and let it run.

Uploading to KETTLEBELL MONSTER

Sign in to your creator account and open your media vault, on your phone or on a computer, and upload the video file. MP4 and MOV, the files phones record, both work, and so do M4V, WebM, AVI, MKV and 3GP.

Size and length: up to 8 GB and 90 minutes per video.
Big files: they upload in parts. If the connection drops or you close the tab, the upload carries on from where it stopped.
Thumbnail: pick one of the frames from your video that the uploader offers you.
Processing: when the upload finishes, the video is encoded for streaming. You will see Starting encoding... and then Done!.
Onto your workout: once the video is in your vault, the KETTLEBELL MONSTER team attaches it to your workout.

Before you press record

Lens cover open, lens wiped with microfibre
Phone on tripod at hip height, horizontal, locked in the clamp
Focus and exposure locked on you
Resolution checked (1080p or 4K), frame rate set for your country's mains (25/50 or 30/60)
Test press: bell overhead and feet both inside the frame
Mic receiver plugged in, transmitter on collar, both lights green
Gym music off
Light on, from slightly above and to one side
Enough storage and battery for the whole session
Say the workout name and date to camera at the start, so you can find the file later

Ready to publish?
Create your creator account on KETTLEBELL MONSTER, upload your first workout, and reach kettlebell people worldwide.

Sign up as a creator

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