A late hello post

Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your "shovelglove." Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, and wood chopping motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays. Baffled? Intrigued? Charmed? Discuss here.
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sgtrock
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A late hello post

Post by sgtrock » Sun Feb 24, 2008 4:10 am

Well I realized that the norm here is to check in and blow your own horn for a minute, and I don't want to seem rude... :)

I came across shovelglove a few weeks back when researching different ways to get in shape. I was especially interested in sandbag and sledgehammer training at the time because, well, I was tired of fiddling with dumbbells. Besides, everything I was finding out reinforced why I hated most modern workouts --- they are based on bodybuilding, not real strength training. So I was looking at sandbag and sledgehammer workouts and stumbled across shovelglove.com, and I immediately fell in love with the idea, especially because Reinhard approached it in such a no-nonsense (and non-expert) fashion, as an experiment-in-progress rather than some sort of workout gospel from on high. 2 days later I picked up a hammer from Home Depot and have been hooked ever since. My wife has now picked up a 4-pounder after spending 2 weeks doing the moves with a 5 pound dumbbell, and she noticed a big change in the movement dynamics just from swinging it on a stick!

This workout has been a godsend to me, as I feel like I'm actually becoming truly strong for the first time in a long long time. Combined with some nutritional research and trying to loosely follow the No-S diet (modified to let me have 5 meals a day for muscle building and metabolism boosting) I think we've finally found something that really works. Even my wife has been saying she doesn't really want any junky chocolate food much anymore after dropping it during the week. We simply cut out junk food during the week and relax on the weekends, and we both feel much better.

Incidentally, my dad built grapples for 30 years, rolling steel and swinging a 20-pound sledgehammer every day. He had biceps bigger than softballs, and was the strongest man I ever knew. To prove a point to a couple of friends he tightened his belt one day and picked up the front end of a camaro --- tires off the ground! And at work he moved a 9,000-pound grapple around on a flatbed with a crowbar!

So take it from firsthand knowledge folks --- Shovelglove will make you stronger than you can ever imagine!

Thanks Reinhard for such a great concept, and we look forward to many more workouts!
Last edited by sgtrock on Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -- Confucius, an early Everyday Systems pioneer
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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:10 pm

sgtrock,

Welcome (officially) and thanks for the intro!

I love it that your wife is doing it, too. On one level a lot of the moves seem very manly and macho, but some of them actually come from traditional "woman's work" (churn butter, right?). I've been very happy at the number of female shuggers we've had here, and at the write ups Mistress Krista gave shovelglove on her excellent women's weightlifting site stumptuous.com. My wife doesn't shug herself, but we often do our 14 minutes together (she usually does yoga).

I have no idea what "building grapples" means... but it sounds hard core (sounds like inspiration for a good potential shovelglove move too...). I'm not surprised your dad could toss around cars after swinging a 20 pound sledge every day -- I can barely manage 14 minutes.

Looking forward to hearing more,

Reinhard
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sgtrock
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Post by sgtrock » Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:41 am

My dad worked for Mack Manufacturing in Mobile for about 25+ years as a foreman building grapples. He was always very physical growing up but this was extremely hard work.

A grapple is the claw you see on the end of a crane cable picking stuff up. Some of these beasts are HUGE. You can see lots of photos of them at Mack Mfg's site: http://www.mackmfg.com/ Orange is their color, so if you see a crane with an orange grapple it was made by Mack Mfg. Dad always came home with orange paint all over his clothes.

A bit of trivia: If anyone has ever seen the 1986 B-budget movie King Kong Lives, there is a scene where Kong undergoes a heart transplant for an artificial heart. For a few seconds you see the heart carried in by a white grapple. My dad single-handedly built that grapple, painted it with three glossy coats, and signed his name on it. He has a photo of him standing under it. Then he saw the movie and saw it come out of the big ape covered in blood, and he screamed. :D
"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -- Confucius, an early Everyday Systems pioneer
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Post by reinhard » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:02 pm

That is incredibly cool (especially the king kong bit). Thanks for elucidating.

I must pass five cranes a day urban rangering. I'll look out for the orange...

Reinhard
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