Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

Reclaiming our Primal Health Club

The first weapon, the first martial art, the original strength conditioning tool and exercise, wasn’t even one’s own bodyweight. No, my friends, we’re tool-users. We need to see outside of ourselves to discover what’s within. And in that quest to discover the world to discover ourselves, we picked up the most primitive tool: the club.

Once an Olympic Games sport, club swinging remains an ancient tradition around the world in India, Persia, Russia, Burma, and others… For thousands of years, we intuitively realized the functional nature of this type of tactical training. These traditions were interwoven into the cultural fabric: to be an adult, meant to possess the power to protect the community, and the will to do so. Specific trials by fire provided neophytes with rites of passage to demonstrate their competency, and as a result their membership as a senior member of the tribe.

Here one of the oldest traditions in ancient Persia, Zurkhaneh or the “house of power” -

Despite the wisdom in these traditions, we wanted to become free of cultural baggage. Unfortunately, we have “thrown the baby out with the bathwater.” By emancipating ourselves from the unnecessarily restrictive and evolutionarily unstable behaviors, we’ve indiscriminately lost touch with what makes us human.

In the past 100 years of gloriously worshiping technology, we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by the over-complicated hyperbole of machines. Recognizing our folly - through injuries, pain and dissatisfaction - we’re sprinting back to our primal natures. Including returning to the “original health club”…

No matter where you go now, you can see people rushing to embrace club swinging again. Even if they don’t yet understand the science behind it… Even if they haven’t received instruction in safe usage. Just 2 days ago, another new video appeared which demonstrated someone’s intuitive recognition - like an old, lost friend - of the value of this discipline:

If you intend on progressive resistance to heavier clubs, there are problems with the technique in the above video; lack of shoulder pack and hip recruitment for instance. As we discovered in our martial art training in Russia, progression to heavier clubbells can be dangerous if there are any weak links in the kinetic chain. But watching the video highlights that club swinging has returned to mainstream, and now many different approaches are beginning to bubble to the surface of public awareness.

There can be a marriage of old and new, of ancient discipline and modern science. Just because a technique has been performed for centuries, doesn’t mean it can’t be refined. That’s why our Olympic athletes perform better. That’s why the RMAX International faculty and coaching staff have invested their collective education in refining. Medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, kinesiologists, biomechanists, exercise physiologists, strength and conditioning specialists… each of these professionals contribute another lens in bringing science to tradition… Bringing engineering to even the design of the tool: in the Clubbell.

I invite you to join us… in the original martial art, the first fitness… and reclaim your membership in the primal health club.

(BTW: if you can’t participate yet, at least come cheer on the athletes at the Cross-World Clubbell Competition on July 11, 2009!)