Everyday Systems

After contemplation of one of Reinhard's posts about indian club exercises, I'm doing some exercises with my hammer that stretch the original shovelglove concept of simulating hard labor. I thought hard about whether to post this. I'm no apostate.

These do feel really good, though.

I do a slow drive-the-post exercise, but bringing the hammer all the way back, directly overhead, until I have to bend backwards at the torso and the hammer is hanging almost vertical behind me, then bring it slowly forward to the post height stopping point, keeping my arms extended as much as possible through the whole motion 35 of these with each arm on top is challenging, and the stretch feels great.

I do something similar with each arm singly, but the hammer stays in a plane way away from my head, beginning with the hammer head pointing straight down, ending with it almost vertical behind me. This one you can't do with your arm completely extended, and you really have to choke up.

Then I swing the hammer from a starting position on my body centerline, head pointing to the ground out to the side and then to a position just shy of vertical above my head.

There is something pleasing about these exercises. Mostly, it makes my shoulders feel absolutely great, which for me is a big deal, and seems to be increasing my range of motion.

I'm beginnning to look like Popeye - well, my forearms are getting ripped, anyway. If I were planning on doing these overheads to exhaustion, I'd definitely put on my bike helmet.

I should have noted in my previous post that these exercises could be dangerous - truly - given that the hammer spends much of its time directly over your coconut.

Think many times before you try them yourself.

Don't worry about being an apostate, I'm not excommunicating people (yet). I think you'd have to steal the shovelglove idea and start charging money for it for me to resort to that (very effectively, I'm sure). And anyway these new moves may not be perfect simulations of hard labor, but neither are the moves I post on the web site. They keep the basic inspiration (kind of hard to get away from when you're using a sledgehammer). If they're also cross-inspired by the indian exercise clubs, I've got no problem with that. The more I read about them the more intrigued I get. Here's another good link, from an antiques perspective:

http://www.antiquesjournal.com/Pages04/ ... clubs.html

Pretty, aren't they?

Thanks for the coconut warning. If you wind up using the helmet, you *must* post pictures!