hello and "ow"

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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kellenheller
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hello and "ow"

Post by kellenheller » Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:44 pm

Hello. I'm kellenheller.

I just urban rangered down to walmart and picked up an 8 lb sledgehammer, and then carried it back on my walk. I thought I'd kinda count that was my first SG, but then I really wanted to try it out for real, so I set the timer and away I went.

Ow.

I can see how this could grow to be fun, but 8 lbs is pretty heavy for me! The hardest one by far was the butter churning. Apparently I have no muscles at all in that particular area.

As for my history, I have never enjoyed weight training or going to a gym, but I do realize how important all this muscle stuff is, so I try periodically, and get discouraged and quit. So I'm hoping this will fit the bill. Will be great not to go to the gym for it.

I've recently lost over 20 lbs, and still have 40 to go. I am doing the boring and repetitive counting calories thing, but other than that, what I've been doing sounds a lot like No-S. I just divide the calories up equally into four meals, so no snacks and no sugar. I'm not doing any "sometimes on S-days", but as I get closer to maintenance, it sounds like a great way to keep it off and reintroduce the occasional treat.

I've read a lot of posts on this board and the No S board before I posted, and you all seem like a very friendly and welcoming and sensible bunch.

:)
ping

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gratefuldeb67
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Post by gratefuldeb67 » Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:11 am

Ow, and hello..
LOL..

It is painful at first but the soreness goes away after the first day or two...
You will adapt quickly if you don't overdo it..

Have a fun time and good luck with your forty pounds..
I'd like to lose about the same amount..

Peace and Love,
8) Deb

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:34 am

Welcome, kellenheler.

Hope it was mostly good "ow..." Do take it slow. The trick for maintenance is how to go as slow as possible without actually stopping. Worry more about building habit than building muscle.

Thanks for telling us about your no-s sibling. I keep hearing about similar approaches, and that just increases my confidence in its general utility.

Reinhard

kellenheller
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Post by kellenheller » Fri Jan 20, 2006 6:23 pm

Day 3 - Shovelgloving must be burning a ton of calories because I have been HUNGRY!!!

Also - most strength training information I see recommends not working the same muscle groups everyday. Do most people do this every day, or alternate days? My biceps are really sore today - should I lay off the no name curls (where I really feel the pain), or work through it?
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david
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re: working the same muscles everyday

Post by david » Fri Jan 20, 2006 6:57 pm

Kellenheller,

I used to be worried about working the same muscles everyday because I read so much literature about the dangers of overtraining. So, I would shovelglove two or three days a week and do bodyweight exercises, jump rope, lift weights, etc. on the other days.

Over the past few months I have grown to like swinging my hammer so much that I really enjoyed my SG days and the other stuff was getting a bit stale. I decided to just do what I enjoy so that I don't find an excuse to drop my morning sessions (overtraining be darned!). This morning I completed my first full five-day week of SG and I don't feel overtrained at all--in fact I feel great. Also, I lost three pounds this week (NoS helped). And my shirts all feel tighter across the shoulders--since I don't think I've put on a layer of shoulder fat it must mean new muscle.

I think that most of the stuff one reads about weight training doesn't really apply to Shovelglove. One of the many neat things about using the hammer is that you can make adjustments depending on how you are responding on any given day. Biceps hurt? Maybe don't do no-name that day. Feeling sore but you think moving around will help flush the soreness away? Move your front hand forward so that the hammer feels lighter but go through your 14 minutes to get the blood flowing. Feel like Conan the Barbarian upon awaking? Do what I did this morning by increasing the leverage and going terrifically slowly through all the movements--what a pump!

That said, if you really think you may have strained a muscle or incurred some other injury take the day off! Maybe go for a 14-minute walk instead?

Anyway, I plan to do five straight days again next week--at least until I start tearing shoulder seams right and left! :wink:

thanks,
David
Last edited by david on Mon Jan 23, 2006 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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carolejo
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Post by carolejo » Sat Jan 21, 2006 11:35 am

Hi folks,

my thoughts on training every day - Shovelglove is like a work analogue, so it trains muscles in a 'functional' way. Our forefathers used to do hard physical labour for much more than just 14 minutes every day, and they didn't generally suffer from "overtraining"!

I'm inclined to agree with David that most of the stuff about weight training doesn't apply to SG. Most of that overtraining stuff relates to specific, artifical exercises that are designed to hit only a limited number of muscles at once. With Shovelglove, if something is hard, then you'll automatically and (relatively safely) co-opt other muscle groups into helping because of the 'free form' nature of the equipment. This is something you just can't do with standard gym equipment, because it's set up so that you can only do the exercises in a specific way.

Yes, freeweights are also unfixed, but there the emphasis is on the weight and the number of reps and often the weights are much heavier than what you would actually usually move on a given day during "work". Your sledgehammer though is a fixed weight. The variation comes from leverage and hand positioning, therefore you're unlikely to encounter problems with overtraining. As David says, you simply listen to what your body is telling you and adapt accordingly.

have fun and train safely!
C.
CaroleJo

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:40 pm

When one takes a mechanistic view of exercise in which you isolate muscle groups and work them individually with anaerobic weight training, it is important to let muscles rest. Work one group one day, another group the next.

But shovelglove is what I'd call organic (as opposed to mechanistic) exercise. You aren't really targeting one specific muscle group; when I shovelglove I use all of my arm muscles, my shoulders, my chest, my abs, my back, my legs, etc etc etc. So in that sense, isolating the muscles just doesn't come into play.

Furthermore, once you adapt strengthwise to the shovelglove motions, shovelglove is almost more aerobic than anaerobic.

Don't worry so much about whether or not to do it every day. Just do it, and if you need to take it easy or skip the occasional day, that's fine.
JWL[.|@]Freakwitch[.]net

Big Phil
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Overtraining

Post by Big Phil » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:51 am

Interesting discussion,
The sports trainer Vern Gambetta (he trained the US Olympic soccer team for a while) makes the distinction between isolating and integrating exercises, much like Freakwitches "organic" and "mechanistic" distinction. One of his favourite admonitions is "Train movements, not muscles" as the motor cortex of your brain is organised to carry out movements rather than isolate individual muscles. This is part of the reason bodybuilders and people who try to cross-train with body-building type exercises get injured so much, they learn to isolate muscles and basically F**k with the program, creating incorrect motor programs that put their joints at greater risk of injury. With shovelglove, as different muscles get fatigued the load is spread out to others. For example, if you are shoveling, can you tell whether some days you are giving more with your legs initially and just riding it through with the arms at the end of the motion? You probably can't because we are not set up that way, but I bet that is what happens when you arms are tired. This is why people in the old days could work hard day after day. They also probably got more skilled and co-ordinated as different parts of their body learned to co-operate to lessen the load on any individual link in the chain. I think the increased integration of the whole body has a lot to do with the "country-strong" or "cowboy-strong" phenomenon mentioned on another thread. Balance, co-ordination, timing and strength beats strength alone anyday!

Basically, do stuff that works your whole body as a unit and don't do stuff that trys to isolate individual muscles.

Hope you all have a great Shuggin' year - I hope to!

Phil.

kellenheller
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Post by kellenheller » Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:58 pm

The isolated vs integrated difference makes a lot of sense and I will not worry. I felt much better this morning after the weekend off, and although it was definitely effort, it wasn't so bad.

I also warmed up for a minute beforehand (since I am SUCH a bad morning person) by bouncing around and stretching on a big exercise ball. I tried to think what natural or functional exercise it would relate to, and two came to mind. The first would be riding a horse or a bronco - using all those ab and lege muscles to balance and stablize yourself. The second thought...well, I suppose sex is a functional exercise :D
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gratefuldeb67
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Post by gratefuldeb67 » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:35 pm

I wish it was an everyday exercise!!! LOL..

Have a great day Kellenheller, and don't have too much fun...

LOL..

Peace and Love,
8) Deb

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Tue Jan 24, 2006 3:13 pm

Phil, thanks for that that Vern Gambetta quote, "Train movements, not muscles." It's a more concise (and authoritative) formulation of what I was trying to get at here.

Moving it to the top of my long list of pending homepage updates...

Reinhard

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