Everyday Systems

and man, oh, man, is that thing heavy! It still counts if it takes the whole 14 minutes to get it up off the floor, right?

Seriously, I didn't get many reps or anything but I did start collecting materials to build my castle and got them back across the lake.

I feel certain I'm going to feel this tomorrow!

First day can be tough if you do too much. It's probably better to go a little slow, take breaks, or even shorten the 14 min if you need to.

Congrats on your start!

Congratulations on taking the plunge and getting a hammer!

It is certainly wise to take it easy until your body is used to shugging. I think that building the 14 minute habit right from the start is a good idea, even if that means you spend half the time swinging a broom stick or pantomiming the movements with no props at all.

yeah I should have specified shorten the time with the hammer if you need to. I think developing the habit of 14 min of exercise on N-days is an important one.

It's so cool to know that we have women doing the shovelglove too!

Congrats!
and as the others have already said, take it easy for the first weeks...

There are more women doing shovelglove here than men. Besides doing less time in the beginning, you can also choke up on the handle to get better leverage. By the way I was in Guatemala many years ago when I was in the army. It is a beautiful country.

It still counts if it takes the whole 14 minutes to get it up off the floor, right?

Absolutely!

Don't worry if it takes a week or two for you to get much beyond this. There's no rush -- on the contrary, rush is your enemy. Take it as slow as you can force yourself to be. Think "tai chi" with a sledgehammer. Just dangle the thing in your hands and concentrate on building the "temporal" habit of 14 minutes every N-day to start. That's the hardest, most important thing. Get that down and the mere musclework is easy and inevitable.

Welcome and good luck!

Reinhard

Rebeccca wrote:and man, oh, man, is that thing heavy!

Just out of curiosity, what weight did you start with?

I started with an 8 lb hammer. My upper body strength isn't too terrific, despite my free weight routine, so I started out really, really, really, really slowly with SG as I was very afraid of injury. I would say it took a month or so to build up to the number of reps I thought I wanted to do for each move.

I felt good about being so sensible (I tend to dive in head first before checking out how deep the pond is), but because even at slower/lower levels SG is such fun, I didn't mind it. Plus, I saw and felt results in my arms after the first week, which was a big motivator.

After a year, I am still on the 8-pounder and don't have any plans to move up to a heavier one. By playing with the leverage, reps, speed, and number of moves in a workout, I find I can get more than enough variation without adding weight.

But my main message is: don't get discouraged about getting off to a slower start! Concentrate on the fun and the habit-building -- the rest will come. (I also found it useful when starting out to really focus on form, so that when I built up to faster/more reps I would be doing each move correctly. I still go back maybe once a month to the videos to make sure I haven't strayed from proper form).

Enjoy! Winnie