Chest exercise?

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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BitterCupOJoe
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Chest exercise?

Post by BitterCupOJoe » Fri Dec 09, 2005 5:08 pm

I understand that the point of shovelglove is to mimic real-life movements in order to build useful strength. I started it this week, and think it's a marvelous system. I used to do weightlifting, and find this to be tons more fun.

However, I do have a concern. I've tried all of the exercises listed on the site, and none of them seem to include the chest in a way that is noticeable to me. Is my form wrong, or is it just that until I move up to a heavier hammer, I'm not going to feel anything? My upper back, biceps, lower back, and especially my shoulders are definitely feeling it, but at no point has my chest ever felt tired or sore. I don't know if it's because I already had a fair amount of chest strength built up or if none of the motions use the chest, but I figured I'd check in here.

Oh, and a potentially new exercise. This one is primarily meant for grip strength. I tried it last night as a freestyle, and it seemed effective. I called it Turning the Valve.

Stand, one arm parallel to the floor, directly to the front, gripping the shovelglove, palm down. Rotate the hand without moving the arm from its current position until the hand is face up. Then return the hand to a palm-down position. This is one rep. The motion is more difficult the further the hand is from the head of the shovelglove. For those of you considering going up to the next hammer weight, it might be a good way to make sure your grip can keep up.

Thanks!

Minor edit: When gripping the handle on Turning the Valve, the head of the hammer is meant to be on the thumb side of the hand, ie the normal way you'd grip a hammer.
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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:27 pm

Welcome, Bitter.

I definitely feel "butter churning" in the chest, and it seems like "the fireman" should also hit it pretty directly. But both these movements also clobber plenty of other muscles that may be less used to being clobbered and so get more noticeably sore. There's nothing like stubbing your toe to make you forget a toothache :wink:

That being said, if you want to give the chest more direct attention, you don't have to be a shovelglove purist: there's a great non-shovelglove exercise that doesn't require any special equiptment that you could throw into your routine: pushups.

I do think regular shovelglove must hit the chest a reasonable amount, because though I don't do pushups regularly enough for them to count as constructive exercise, I can bang out a lot more than I used to when I do them just to see how many I can do. Also, my brother, who has always done a lot of pushups, finds "butter churning" the easiest movement, whereas for a while I found it one of the toughest.

Thanks for "rotate the valve," but my "grip strength" is too puny the do many of these with my 12 pounder. Man, that's hard. I'll see if I can get somewhere with it with a little more practice. Great name/image, and worthy cause -- useful set of muscles.

Looking forward to hearing more from you,

Reinhard

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gratefuldeb67
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Post by gratefuldeb67 » Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:37 pm

Hi Bitter cup o joe! LOL..
I'm having mine now!

I agree with Reinhard that "Body weight" exercises like pushups are very challenging and not only will tone your muscles there, but will encourage you to pay attention to form as well... I do partial pushups in Yoga and often "hold" myself just a few inches from the floor for a while, to feel that burn and strengthen the arms and chest...

Is "rotate the valve" like this?:

The head and handle are horizontal and your arm is extended in front of you level with the shoulder...
Then you altenate supination and pronation of the forearm to bring the head up and over 180 degrees to the opposite side and then you bring it back again..
(I know you said rotate but I think you mean supinate in this case.... Or in laymans terms "go from palm gripping/fingers side down, to up"...)

I'd just say watch the shoulder... If you do it fully horizontal to the floor, then you are also really working the rotator cuff muscles and not just the grippers of the hand and wrist...

Have fun!!!
I'm going to try it...

Peace and Love,
Deb

Kevin
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Pushups

Post by Kevin » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:29 am

I find shovelglove a great exercise, but you're right: it doesn't hit the chest very hard. I do lots and lots of pushups. 500 two days a week in 10 sets of 50, two sets of 75 every other day of the week (one in the morning, one at night).

I think if you want that really big chest, barbells is the only answer. I'm not after big, I'm after functionally strong, so pushups are fine for me.
Kevin
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BitterCupOJoe
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Post by BitterCupOJoe » Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:11 pm

reinhard wrote:Welcome, Bitter.

I definitely feel "butter churning" in the chest, and it seems like "the fireman" should also hit it pretty directly. But both these movements also clobber plenty of other muscles that may be less used to being clobbered and so get more noticeably sore. There's nothing like stubbing your toe to make you forget a toothache :wink:

That being said, if you want to give the chest more direct attention, you don't have to be a shovelglove purist: there's a great non-shovelglove exercise that doesn't require any special equiptment that you could throw into your routine: pushups.

I do think regular shovelglove must hit the chest a reasonable amount, because though I don't do pushups regularly enough for them to count as constructive exercise, I can bang out a lot more than I used to when I do them just to see how many I can do. Also, my brother, who has always done a lot of pushups, finds "butter churning" the easiest movement, whereas for a while I found it one of the toughest.

Thanks for "rotate the valve," but my "grip strength" is too puny the do many of these with my 12 pounder. Man, that's hard. I'll see if I can get somewhere with it with a little more practice. Great name/image, and worthy cause -- useful set of muscles.

Looking forward to hearing more from you,

Reinhard
Perhaps I'm not doing butter churning right, then. I feel it mostly in the shoulders and to a lesser extent the upper chest. Rotate the Valve is very difficult. I can't do more than a half dozen or so at a time easily, and 10 on each side is about my limit. Doing it with the arm in the curl position might be easier and also make it less reliant on some of the non-forearm muscles.
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BitterCupOJoe
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Post by BitterCupOJoe » Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:15 pm

gratefuldeb67 wrote:Hi Bitter cup o joe! LOL..
I'm having mine now!

I agree with Reinhard that "Body weight" exercises like pushups are very challenging and not only will tone your muscles there, but will encourage you to pay attention to form as well... I do partial pushups in Yoga and often "hold" myself just a few inches from the floor for a while, to feel that burn and strengthen the arms and chest...

Is "rotate the valve" like this?:

The head and handle are horizontal and your arm is extended in front of you level with the shoulder...
Then you altenate supination and pronation of the forearm to bring the head up and over 180 degrees to the opposite side and then you bring it back again..
(I know you said rotate but I think you mean supinate in this case.... Or in laymans terms "go from palm gripping/fingers side down, to up"...)

I'd just say watch the shoulder... If you do it fully horizontal to the floor, then you are also really working the rotator cuff muscles and not just the grippers of the hand and wrist...

Have fun!!!
I'm going to try it...

Peace and Love,
Deb
I'm currently trying to avoid pushups. While I used to lift a lot and be in pretty good overall shape, I'm now very overweight (60-70 pounds) and my elbows tend to hurt in a really bad way if I try push-ups when I'm this big. And not muscle ache, more like "I think I ground part of the joint down" pain. I'll worry about the chest later, and probably do pushups then, but for now the shovelglove is helping me lose the weight and put some muscle back on, so that's good enough for me.

As far as "Rotate the Valve," that's a good, more detailed explanation of the movement, yes. And, yeah, if you want to isolate the forearm muscles a bit, do the movement in the curl position. Just watch about smacking yourself with the handle.
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BitterCupOJoe
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Re: Pushups

Post by BitterCupOJoe » Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:17 pm

Kevin wrote:I find shovelglove a great exercise, but you're right: it doesn't hit the chest very hard. I do lots and lots of pushups. 500 two days a week in 10 sets of 50, two sets of 75 every other day of the week (one in the morning, one at night).

I think if you want that really big chest, barbells is the only answer. I'm not after big, I'm after functionally strong, so pushups are fine for me.
Yeah, it's not something I'm very concerned about. I've still got some of the size in my chest from before, and I'm sure the shovelglove exercises will allow me to maintain that size. If/when I care about building back up, I'll just take a few weeks and hit the weights again, but I find this set of exercises to be a lot more enjoyable. Or, alternately, I'll just do a bunch of pushups, like you suggested.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."

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gratefuldeb67
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Post by gratefuldeb67 » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:03 pm

While I used to lift a lot and be in pretty good overall shape, I'm now very overweight (60-70 pounds) and my elbows tend to hurt in a really bad way if I try push-ups when I'm this big. And not muscle ache, more like "I think I ground part of the joint down" pain. I'll worry about the chest later
I started out here around 225 or possibly 230 and after a year and a half of NoS and various exercises, SG for a while and now Yoga, I'm down to 206... But I'm wearing clothing which fit when I was closer to 185-190...
So I definitely gained muscle over time...
Good plan to forgo the really painful exercises till you feel ready for them... You might have hurt your joints if you used to lock up when you were lifting heavy weights...
But don't underestimate pain from tendonitis and triggerpoint activity... You could be tight in a bunch of muscle groups and that can cause a substantial amount of weakness and discomfort.
SG will probably help you rehabilitate that area...
Have fun Joe...

Peace and Love,
8) Deb

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