New girl - thinking about shovelgloving

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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blairloren
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Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:21 pm

New girl - thinking about shovelgloving

Post by blairloren » Tue Jun 12, 2012 2:05 pm

Any advice for a 25 year old female with limited to zero upper body strength? I would love to try this but I fear:
1. Injuring myself
2. Injuring someone else.
2. Doing it incorrectly

JayEll
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Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 10:54 am

Post by JayEll » Tue Jun 12, 2012 2:16 pm

Hey there!

You are good to be cautious, but the biggest danger is using too much weight to start. You aren't likely to injure anyone else as long as you have an open space to work in. And, you can use the videos to guide you in terms of form.

I suggest you start with just a pole! for example, a painting extension pole or a hiking pole. or for that matter, you could use any household cleaning device with a long handle, such as a broom or a sponge mop. Don't worry about going fast--just do the movements for 14 minutes.

Once you get used to them, you can think about whether to get something with more weight. I use an actual shovel, total weight about 4 pounds.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:44 pm

Welcome!

Ditto JayEll's pole idea. That's enough to start carving time out for the routine, building the habit, figuring out the movements, and getting some exercise benefit.

Any when you feel ready to use a sledge, placing your hands near the head makes it significantly easier.

Another data point to put the danger of shovelglove in perspective: I've been doing this for over 10 years now; I've never injured myself or even strained myself beyond having to take a single day off (and even those have been very, very rare). By way of contrast, when I decided to try to start running a few years ago, this common exercise that millions of people do, I almost immediately injured my IT band to the point where I was considering seeing (and really ought to have seen) a physical therapist and have had recurring problems with it since. I don't want to minimize the dangers of shovelglove -- of course swinging around a sledgehammer is dangerous -- just to emphasize that pretty much ANY exercise is dangerous, including, and perhaps especially, the most popular varieties. In some sense, shovelglove might actually be safer than most kinds of exercise, simply because the dangers are so obvious that one can't become complacent.

Best of luck, and keep us posted,

Reinhard

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