Shovelgirls? Or is it a guy thing?

Mounted Ranger! · Post by **Mounted Ranger!** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 7:47 pm

just curious.

sophiasapientia · Post by **sophiasapientia** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 8:01 pm

Welcome Rebecca! I believe there are a number of "Shovelgirls" out there. I'm pretty new to Shovelglove myself. This is my 4th week but I really enjoy it and can see definite tone. (I use an 8lb sledgehammer.)

ams09 · Post by **ams09** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 8:08 pm

Shannon, do you mind telling what your routine is? I'm not really sure where to start. I already have a simple dumbbell routine but it takes me 20-30 minutes. The 14-minute shovelglove routine is very intriguing. I don't have much time after work (that I'm willing to give to a set amount of exercises) but I would like something that is still weight-bearing and tones and strengthens.

Thanks!

sophiasapientia · Post by **sophiasapientia** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 8:20 pm

Hi Ams09 -- I'm doing a very, very basic routine to start. I plan on trying other movements later on. I do chop the wood, churn the butter, shovel the snow and flip the lever. For the first few sessions, I did reps of 7. Now I'm doing reps of 30 and then start all over again until the timer goes off. Normally I get through 2 complete sets plus a third set of chop the wood, sometimes a bit more. The 14 minutes is great because I can sneak it in while my daughter is playing and do my cardio before she wakes up in the morning.

ams09 · Post by **ams09** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:07 pm

Oh, this is great, Shannon, thanks! I don't have a sledgehammer yet. I think I'll start out with a mop or broom as others suggest until I can get the moves down.

la_loser · Post by **la_loser** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:13 pm

The gals are definitely involved in Shovelglove. . . I've had mine for nearly a year although I had a medical issue (unrelated to the sledge!) that kept me from using it for a while. I have only a six pound hammer but I'm pretty much of a wimp. . . I hope to move up at some point.
Check up Paul's wife and mother-in-law's pics as they shovelglove in Thailand. . . pretty impressive!

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5167

jules · Post by **jules** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:59 am

Yup there's definitely women who shovelglove. I use an 8 lb hammer. And I really do love it. I've been doing it very steadily since Dec. 2008 though I discovered shovelglove a couple of years earlier. In fact, I learned about it from a weightlifting site for women: mistress Krista's http://www.stumptuous.com

Not sure how many of us there are, but there's definitely several shovelgals.

jules

dittany · Post by **dittany** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:30 pm

I came over from Stumptuous too. This is the most fun training I've ever done. I do a mixture of everything, between ten and twenty reps, and quite a lot of Hindu squats too, in fact out of all of me my legs have got the most muscly doing this.

I started out at eight pounds, I'm on ten now and I just bought a 14lber today. It's heavy, so I'll be working my way up to it.

jules · Post by **jules** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 10:02 pm

I've been thinking about upgrading my hammer for a while now -- moving up to a 10 lber. However, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be living where I'm living now. And I sort of anticipate moving hundreds or even a couple of thousand miles when I do, so I'm waiting to upgrade for now.

My usual shovelglove routine is 14 minutes of hammer work. My default setting is the shovel movement so if I can't remember what else i'm wanting to do, I throw in a set of shoveling until I think of something else to do.

My most frequent moves:
shoveling
tuck bails
churn butter
chop tree
flip the lever/no name

and some non-canonical moves: (if by canon, I mean developed by Reinhard)
gondola rowing & reverse
canoe rowing & reverse
pumping water

and I do what are basically squats and stiff-legged deadlifts with the hammer -- alternating hammer head to left and hammer head to right. I make these moves full body. So I squat and then when i stand up, I lift the hammer over head. I do the same with the deadlifts.

I also do one handed shoulder presses, left and right. I'm sure I could come up with an analog for this but I haven't. So there!

Right now i'm doing a 6 week program of bodyweight squats. I'm basically using the hindu squat. http://www.twohunderedsquats.com which I learned about in another thread on this forum -- though the focus of the thread was the onehundredpushups.com site. I'm keeping this squat portion of my workout separate from shovelglove. So basically 3 days a week i do the bodyweight squats and then i do 14 min of shovelglove after it. With the other two N-days I'm just doing 14 min of shovelglove.

I just started the squat thing this week. Based on my initial test, i was supposed to start with week three of the program. I did and I'm surprisingly not very stiff today. Woot!

At any rate, I credit shovelglove with the majority of the inches I've lost around my bust, hips, and waist. I still have a ways to go, and I am doing no-S as well. A couple of times a week I work out with my adjustable dumbbells -- but was mostly doing deadlifts and squats with that. During this bodyweight squat program, I'm skipping all other squats (so no hammer and no dumbbells.)

Post by **reinhard** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:57 pm

On the surface it might seem like shovelglove is some ridiculously macho-nerd man thing, but the manual labor movements that inspired it are by no means exclusively masculine (churn butter, in particular comes to mind) -- and as you can see from the responses here, there are in fact quite a few "shovelgirls."

We did not, however, have such an awesome term for them. So thank you!

Reinhard

morganalefay · Post by **morganalefay** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:29 pm

I'm very proud to be a Shovelgirl. Genius!

Huffdogg · Post by **Huffdogg** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:50 pm

jules wrote: A couple of times a week I work out with my adjustable dumbbells -- but was mostly doing deadlifts and squats with that.

This part caught my attention. What kind of adjustable dumbbells do you have?

Huffdogg · Post by **Huffdogg** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:53 pm

jules wrote:I'm basically using the hindu squat. http://www.twohunderedsquats.com which I learned about in another thread on this forum --

FYI=This is a bad link. You need to edit the spelling of "hundred."

chiangmaiboss · Post by **chiangmaiboss** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:10 pm

This is sort of a warning message. I read about the 200 squat thing so I did 200 squats. I figured since I am always hiking in mountains I would not have problem. I did 14 minutes of shovelglove then 200 squats without stopping and then 14 more minutes shovelglove. The problem is that I used to do hindu squats every day but have not done them for a long time, so even though I did the 200 squats without much problem, for the next 4 or 5 days I was in great pain. I am almost 56 years old and do not recover so quick. Funny thing was next day I went to Buddhist temple with rest of village(though I am not myself a Buddhist) and when I knelt down like everyone does in wat I could not get back up due to pain in my legs. So if you do 200 squats I would say work up to it slowly and don't do what I did.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 12:20 am

Hope you feel better Chiangmaiboss.
That amount seems very extreme to me.
I see no reason to have to do such a quantity of squats to achieve healthy strong legs.
I'm sure if a person did 30 to 50 squats per day they would be fine.
For me I can really feel it if I do 50.
Most important is maintaining a habit, not having five minutes of glory and then 3 months of pain from an injury.

Debs

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:40 am

I have read some horror stories about excessively high reps on exercises if it's done regularly. One particularly nasty one that comes to mind was a guy that did 1000 pushups a day. His elbow cartilage basically disintegrated. Once in a while as a feat of strength and endurance is cool but as a regular part of a training regime itâ€™s pretty stupid.

chiangmaiboss · Post by **chiangmaiboss** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 11:05 am

When I used to do the combat conditioning program I used to do 100-150 hindu squats a day but some people do much more than that. I only did the 200 squats the other day because it was a PT test on the internet site and I just wondered how I would do. The fact is I now do the elliptical machine at gym 45-60 minutes a day plus hiking in mountains, so I probably won't keep doing the squats regularly any more. I am almost 56 years old like I said and I am not trying out for the Olympics, just trying to keep healthy as long as I can. Especially since here I do not have health insurance.

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 11:14 am

Yeah. I knew you weren't doing it as a regular thing. Just wanted to let the less knowledgeable people know about the potential issues.

Everyday Systems

Shovelgirls? Or is it a guy thing?

Shovelgirls? Or is it a guy thing?

Shovelglove-definitely for the gals as well!