Everyday Systems

Howdy,
Today is day 2 of SG. DH got me a 4# (5# total weight) foot long sledge hammer from Sears for about $13. Anything heavier and I couldn't have managed it.

I did the gym thing for years. So glad that is behind me. Walking, biking, swimming and now SG suits me better.

(belated) Welcome!

You were wise to start with a lower weight -- it's always much harder than you think it'll be from just jiggling around the hammer in the store.

Reinhard

It's Day 3 of Shovelglove for me ... what fun it is! I really look forward to getting up in the morning and doing it while my oatmeal cooks.

However, I don't have much upper-body strength, (I'm a 55+ woman), so am starting VERY SLOWLY, and I was wondering if anyone thinks this might be too slow, or totally incorrect:

I started with my 6 pound dumbbell and plan on doing 7 minutes per day for the first week, 10 minutes for week 2, then 14 minutes for week 3, then decide whether to repeat that process with my 8 lb dumbbell, or perhaps get a 6 lb sledgehammer. (I have an 8 lb sledge but cannot imagine being able to use it for quite some time).

I feel that I am getting a good approximation of the Shovelglove moves even with the shorter dumbell, i.e. I think I can feel the appropriate muscles working.

I forgot to mention that I did try using a broom, but it was just too light. I didn't feel like I was getting any workout at all, and not having at least some weight didn't seem to give me a good sense of what the moves are about.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you, MitchellKing! You encouraged me to give my 8 lb sledge a shot, which I did yesterday, VERY SLOWLY, for 7 minutes. You are, of course, absolutely right -- the sledge works quite differently from the dumbbells. This morning I can feel it a little, but am not stay-in-bed sore, which I thought I would be. Repeated same routine this morning.

Will stick with plan to gradually increase amount of time each week -- I wonder if it's better to increase reps in each time goal before proceeding to the next, or better to keep moving very slowly and increase the time ... may have to play with that.

Anyway, thank you for your encouragement ... I'm sometimes more timid than I need to be.

I am new to this myself, so I'm hardly an expert; but what I have been tryint to do is adjust the ammount of reps in a set to get my muscles to feel a bit of fatigue before the end of the set.

So let's say for example I start a basic routine of shovels then hoist the sack.

So I do my first set of shovel to the left side and I notice that by the 7th rep my biceps are burining a bit. I figure that's good. I stop at 7 for now then do 7 to the right.

Now it's time for my forst set of hoist the sack reps. I do 7 reps with the left arm and I notice that I'm really not feeling any burn. It was pretty easy. So, I go to 14 reps and there it is. The triceps start to burn. Okay, my number for these is 14. Then I do my 14 with the right arm, and it's back to shoveling.

This is basically what I have been doing to find my number of reps. Now actually I do quite a few more moves than that and at this point I am doing most of them at 14 reps for the first set. However, I've found that when I start the second time around my muscles are tired enough that I get that burn after only 7 reps, so I reduce my reps to 7 the second time around.

I don't know if I described that well enough, but basically I try and find the burn point and make that a signal to move on to something else. I try to keep it multiples of 7. I'm not sure why other than it is a 14 minute exercise, and I think that is what Reinhard had posted. I don't remember.