rbibbs
03-28-2004, 09:27 PM
Greetings gentlemen. Congrats to Delta Cadre. Marvelous tool you sent me, love them! Got my hands on a 15 this weekend and discovered everything I can do with 10s I can also do with 15s, whereas just holding on to 15s was a problem 3 months ago. I tried to abbreviate this post, but "the devil's in the details" as they say.
Background: I'm 5'11 140# 58yo and been that size since my first driver's license at 16. I was 'pathologically inarticulate' three-years ago. Given that, I'm above-baseline susceptible both to joint/muscle strains and to feeling them, a little slow to recover from any exertion, and training BJJ 2-3 nights a week in addition to CST. I've been lifting 10 and 15# handweights (DBs), passing them behind my head and over the opposite shoulder back to front (5-15 reps, then reversing that circle) for roughly a year. 2 months ago I got 10# Clubbells. Confessions of an unemployed fightbum, I pinched my checkbook so I wouldn't have the expense of the tools AND the instructions hit all at once. Did get access to CST book and video this weekend, raises several questions.
After I got the Clubbells out of the box, and weighed them because I thought you'd sent me 20s... I did a few swings, swings-to-order, and swipes, then I immediately did the behind-head-over-far-shoulder exercise with Clubbells, first with two hands, then with one, first at low-speed at which the Clubbell always remained perpendicular to the floor, then progressively faster as my neurology caught up with the demand of the exercise and I could do it without whiplashing wrist/elbow/shoulder, until now the Clubbell is almost PARALLEL to the floor. It's an extremely satisfying exercise for grip (tool is trying to escape me centripetally), core/periphery (having to counterbalance, articulating down to my ankles), delts/pecs/lats, and neurologically sophisticated (having to do a dynamic shoulder-pack instead of a static one, and the wrist rollover, among other things).
BUT... and pardon my slight impairment in terms of visual interpretation of motion... the exercise I'm doing seems to most closely resemble "parry casts", which come with warnings that the Clubbell should remain perpendicular to the floor, and that the forward direction is "advanced" and the reverse direction "extreme".
Questions: Does that sound like what I'm doing? I feel no strain after 15 reps in each direction, quite energized, enormously strong in the shoulder-girdle the next day. In fact if I could only do one Clubbell exercise, that would be it.
Am I just getting away with this because the weight is 10 or 15? I'm essentially doing WW helicopter shoulder ROM motions, single-club, both arms together or one arm alone. I call the 2-arm version 'helicopters', and the one-arm version 'lassos' (like the rodeo rope-articulation).
OK, so I love the exercise, and it doesn't "seem" to damage me, even though I'm at least an '8' on the scale of 10 when it comes to sensitivity to joint/muscle strain. I'll be very hard-pressed to stop doing it myself, no matter "how bad" it is.
Ultimately, what I need to know is this: Should I be demonstrating this exercise to others and encouraging them to do it? So far, my experience is this-- three 18-19yos no bigger than I am, love it as much as I do. I monitor them closely for fatigue, overexertion, how comfortable they are with the positions when they're cycled-through slowly, and letting them practice with one-pound dowels (especially the neurology of the wrist-turnover) before they try it with weight. Still, if I'm inadvertently overstressing shoulder (especially RC) structures, I really need to know this.
Thanks very much.
Background: I'm 5'11 140# 58yo and been that size since my first driver's license at 16. I was 'pathologically inarticulate' three-years ago. Given that, I'm above-baseline susceptible both to joint/muscle strains and to feeling them, a little slow to recover from any exertion, and training BJJ 2-3 nights a week in addition to CST. I've been lifting 10 and 15# handweights (DBs), passing them behind my head and over the opposite shoulder back to front (5-15 reps, then reversing that circle) for roughly a year. 2 months ago I got 10# Clubbells. Confessions of an unemployed fightbum, I pinched my checkbook so I wouldn't have the expense of the tools AND the instructions hit all at once. Did get access to CST book and video this weekend, raises several questions.
After I got the Clubbells out of the box, and weighed them because I thought you'd sent me 20s... I did a few swings, swings-to-order, and swipes, then I immediately did the behind-head-over-far-shoulder exercise with Clubbells, first with two hands, then with one, first at low-speed at which the Clubbell always remained perpendicular to the floor, then progressively faster as my neurology caught up with the demand of the exercise and I could do it without whiplashing wrist/elbow/shoulder, until now the Clubbell is almost PARALLEL to the floor. It's an extremely satisfying exercise for grip (tool is trying to escape me centripetally), core/periphery (having to counterbalance, articulating down to my ankles), delts/pecs/lats, and neurologically sophisticated (having to do a dynamic shoulder-pack instead of a static one, and the wrist rollover, among other things).
BUT... and pardon my slight impairment in terms of visual interpretation of motion... the exercise I'm doing seems to most closely resemble "parry casts", which come with warnings that the Clubbell should remain perpendicular to the floor, and that the forward direction is "advanced" and the reverse direction "extreme".
Questions: Does that sound like what I'm doing? I feel no strain after 15 reps in each direction, quite energized, enormously strong in the shoulder-girdle the next day. In fact if I could only do one Clubbell exercise, that would be it.
Am I just getting away with this because the weight is 10 or 15? I'm essentially doing WW helicopter shoulder ROM motions, single-club, both arms together or one arm alone. I call the 2-arm version 'helicopters', and the one-arm version 'lassos' (like the rodeo rope-articulation).
OK, so I love the exercise, and it doesn't "seem" to damage me, even though I'm at least an '8' on the scale of 10 when it comes to sensitivity to joint/muscle strain. I'll be very hard-pressed to stop doing it myself, no matter "how bad" it is.
Ultimately, what I need to know is this: Should I be demonstrating this exercise to others and encouraging them to do it? So far, my experience is this-- three 18-19yos no bigger than I am, love it as much as I do. I monitor them closely for fatigue, overexertion, how comfortable they are with the positions when they're cycled-through slowly, and letting them practice with one-pound dowels (especially the neurology of the wrist-turnover) before they try it with weight. Still, if I'm inadvertently overstressing shoulder (especially RC) structures, I really need to know this.
Thanks very much.