Drop Squat + Trunk Twists

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Rostam
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:35 pm

Drop Squat + Trunk Twists

Post by Rostam » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:08 pm

I wanted to mention two particular movements that I'm using that I really like:

1) Drop Squats: instead of just doing normal squats with the hammer, every 2nd squad I release my grip of the hammer at the top of the movement and catch it again on the way down. This adds a little extra oomph for the legs :) I only did these after being confident with normal squats with the hammer, but I still do fewer.

2) tentative name: "Trunk Twisters". Basically hold the sledge hammer parallel to the floor, elbows bent 90 degrees, arms in a natural position relative to your body as if no sledgehammer were there. Hand closest to the hammerhead should be gripping such that if it were open the palm is facing upward, other hand is palm-facing-down. Then, twist your trunk! If the hammer's head is on your left, start by twisting to the right, then back, repeat. Vice versa for the other side. The main thing is to make sure that your arms DONT move relative to the torso, this keeps the emphasis of the movement on the abs/lower back/side muscles.

#2 is one of my favorites, I feel like it works out all of the muscles around the base of the torso. It also seems to work out the forearm that is closest to the head of the hammer quite a bit, since it has to carry the hammerhead as well as the downward force of the other hand; sometimes my arms will get tired faster than my body.

Also, I've been experimenting with holding the hammer at slightly different heights, and it seems to emphasize slightly different sections of the torso, but I'm not sure yet.

Any feedback/thoughts on the movements above?

addendum: I just remembered that I got #2 from a video on youtube that was linked somewhere in these forums. It was the guy who had 23 techniques and hadn't initially given credit to Reinhard. It's about 2/3 into the video and he calls them Hammer Twists. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MYjTG4130g I don't do them anywhere near as fast as he does though.

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