Starting injured

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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piperjon
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Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:10 pm

Starting injured

Post by piperjon » Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:22 pm

I'm very new to shugging. And by new, I mean, I've never shugged a single shove. But, I'm ready to start, likely tomorrow. I came to this whole thing, oddly enough, after I was jogging and got hit by a pickup truck on 12/9. 3 fractures to the right foot, a sprained ankle, a big stupid boot and cane combo later, and I'm looking for something, anything, to do to get my heart rate up and to be NOT SITTING ON MY DOOFUS.

So. Since I've never had a lot of huge core strength, I actually am starting with a 10# sledgehammer, got her today from the HD. I'll be modding it tonight after work, adding some grips high and low, maybe middle, if I get the whim. And a name, eventually. I like to name my torture devices.

The reason I'm writing, though, is twofold. Yeah, I wanna introduce myself, so I've done that, but I'm really interested to know if anyone has done this injured, particularly so if anyone has started with a pre-existing injury. I'd love to know of any modifications that have been made while maintaining good form. I'm very interested in NOT injuring myself further.

Here are my ideas thus far. I'm starting small. I'll set my timer at 14, but if I go 5, I'm good. I'm thinking 5-7 reps of each canonical movement per side, and I want to add ab-killer too. And if I don't quite get 5, then the next day will be 3 reps. Over time, I'll add and subtract, but it's a place to start.

Any of the forms that involve rocking forward on the toes, I will have to alter because I will be working out in a boot, and can only have weight on my heel on my broken foot (the right one, btw). I know I will have to study my form closely to prevent any weird torquing or twisting. I'm very open to ideas on that, too.

I'll let you all know how it goes, if anyone is interested!

Pj

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:30 pm

Welcome, piperjon!

I applaud your careful determination to "get off your doofus" -- and interesting contributions to the shovelglove lexicon -- "shug" as transitive verb, etc.

I haven't shugged while seriously injured -- I've been pretty lucky about avoiding those. But I imagine that the easiest movements for you will be the straight legged ones (tuck bails, churn butter, flip lever, hoist sack). You might want to emphasize/restrict yourself to those at least initially.

Of course, having never been in your situation, I could be totally wrong.

Good luck and let us know how it goes,

Reinhard

piperjon
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Post by piperjon » Wed Dec 28, 2011 10:09 pm

Well, okay, so today was my virgin run of SG, complete with broken foot and all. I completed all the canonical movements, and the ab killer, 10 reps each, 2 sets. It was a little slow, since I'm unfamiliar with the actual movements, and there was a lot of running to my phone to pull up youtube vids to make sure I was doing it (reasonably) right. But it totalled out to right at a hair over 14 minutes. I presumed the "reach for the phone coz I got a head like a sieve" exercise ate up the remaining hair over the 14 minutes. I did not wear my boot, but I did wear a lace-up ankle/foot brace I bought just for the occasion. (BTW, I have fractures along my 5th metatarsal: jones, basal, and avulsion [dancers]. All outside part of my right foot.) I did not plant the toes of my broken foot on the floor, instead I kept my heel down and my toes up, just like I've been doing for walking since the accdent. Very minor modifications in swing length and weight distribution were all that were necessary.

Some observations -

-It didn't hurt my foot, but everything else hurts, in the good way, like it oughta. Man, I'm outta shape! Closest I came was the ab killers, which took a little bit of coordination to get right and keep my foot out of the action.

- 10 pounds was a good choice of hammers. I was able to do more reps, and learn the moves without the possibility of disbalancing and thereby reacting by planting my toes, which I do know from experience is extremely painful.

- It feels good to be active again! HOOAAAHH!!!

Good times all, more to come!

Pj

slothlike
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Post by slothlike » Fri Dec 30, 2011 8:47 pm

Awesome. I'm glad this is going to work out for you.

Did you try the grips? I put hockey tape on my latest sledge and it really helped, almost seems like cheating.

piperjon
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Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:10 pm

Post by piperjon » Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:59 pm

I did! I used sliced up innertubes that I got on sale at Target. For that rustic edge, I used a sliploop and pulled the end down through the last couple of winds, and the rolled the outside edge down a tad, so it looks all tough and stuff. I neglected to wash off the powder, though, that comes with innertubes, so it still is a little slippy. I have a set of tennis racket wraps that I may replace these with, but it won't be until the innertubes fall off in a ragged, sweaty mess. Coz that's how I roll, yo. :wink:

I should say day two and day three have been more, well, challenging. I reviewed all of the videos, and made changes to my form to make the moves more correct on at least four of the moves. And of course, they became more hard. BooYeah! Seems I plunge ahead like a dork, and then correct as I go along as a general way of life, and this was no exception.

And I can already feel the changes in my deltoids, back, abs, triceps, biceps, trapesium... it's good stuff!

Say, has anyone done any listing of the various muscle groups that are isolated and exercised by each specific move? Just curious. I'd love to work all of the muscles used for doing pushups, so when I return to the martial arts I was studying, I'll be able to actually DO some pushups, instead of this insane grunting flolloping failure thing that I've done so far. (If someone needs to say "just use the search engine," fair enough, I've not done a search for that yet. But I will. )

So, since it's the end of a new year, I have to throw in the idiot noob question:

Anyone name their hammer?

I did... :oops:

Pj

filipe
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Post by filipe » Sun Jan 01, 2012 9:20 am

Anyone name their hammer?
yep :D

happy new year!

slothlike
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Location: Minneapolis

Post by slothlike » Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:35 am

Nope, I tried, but I couldn't commit to it.

The Shovelglove movements are multi-muscle, there isn't much isolation. In my opinion, none of the movements work the chest all that well. However, the fireman and chop tree do work the chest, churn butter hits the chest/ front shoulder junction, and stoke oven and hoist the sack hit the triceps. If you want to increase your push ups, I'd focus on those.

-ted

mattman
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Post by mattman » Thu Jan 05, 2012 1:27 pm

i agree, if you want to get good at push-ups, or pull-ups, or whatever, then you need to do a lot of that movement. Swinging the sledgehammer is an awesome exercise, but a bit different from push-ups, etc. The best would be to include both sledgehammers and bodyweight exercises.
two wrongs don't make a right.
But three lefts do.

piperjon
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Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:10 pm

Post by piperjon » Fri Jan 06, 2012 4:24 pm

Great feedback, y'all, thanks a bunch! My intent is to add push ups or even burpees to the mix once I can assume a plank position. My foot is still healing though, and while it is considerably better, I can't put that kind of pressure on my toes quite yet. I'm still weight bearing on my heel only, and am already fudging a bit to do sg. But soon, very soon I hope, ink be able.

Man, you really do get strong quickly with this thing, don't you? Already, I've gone from only being able to do 2sets of 8 reps of hoist sack to doing 3 sets of 10! Hooaah! I do two full runs of the canonical moves + ab killer, then do a set the weakest/hardest with the time left over. Schweet! I'm found to start fiddling with the non canonical moves to get more mix, then will upgrade weight to 12# by wearing a pair of 1# weight gloves. It's not a very organized plan, but it's a plan.

Thanks again for all the help and encouragement! Y'all rock!

Pj

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