Doug Szolek
09-25-2003, 07:01 PM
By Coach Szolek (Szolek) on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - 09:03 pm:
A super fun discovery :idea: that I happened upon at the end of my evening session today. As I came to my last set of 6 Mills with my last arm I still had much energy to spare because the numbers in this "baby-steps" approach to grooving high endurance in the Mill are still low. So I started to work the Mill with one arm until it came near to fatigue and then switched to the next arm and did the same this went on for about 5 minutes or so as I worked out the best way to switch hands without loosing the inertia of the original hand.
I knew this would need to be figured out sooner or later because of the scoring structure of Olympic Clubbell Sport as it pertains to the Mill. You see you basically have to do as many as you can with both arms in 10 minutes without setting the Clubbell down. So it only makes sense to make the transition from hand to hand as smooth as possible to keep your energy output relatively low in restarting the motion.
What I found is that as the Inward Pendulum portion of the Mill reaches it's highest point out from my side, instead of bending my elbow to beging the Shield Cast portion of the movement I let gravity stop the Clubbell at a point of weightlessness and then accelerate it back across my body as it would in an Outward Pendulum. Now as it passes my center line I smoothly hand it off to my left hand which is waiting to continue the momentum up, out, and eventually behind my head to perform the Mills with the left side.
The biggest trick here is to make the arc along the frontal plane of my body as smooth as I can. This can be helped by loading my right hip out to the side at the before mentioned point of weightlessness then as the Clubbell arcs down infront of my shins I begin to weight transfer to my left hip to flatten out the bottom of the arc and make the hand off seemless.
Another obvious point is to keep the Clubbell acting as an extension of my arm as much as possible. So that with the elbow locked it should be a straight line from my shoulder to the head of the Clubbell. To keep too much unnecessary movement from infecting the Clubbell I began to grasp my left hand from the pinky first near where my right middle finger was. As the switch was made I let the pinky gently slide to the knob of the handle and quickly confirmed the rest of my grip from there.
As I began to work the kinks out of this transition I felt as though I could have done the Mills all night because as I neared fatigue with one arm I smoothly handed the Clubbell off to the other and slipped right into the groove of the movement. I can't wait till I get to apply this to a competition :) , I hope to see you all there!
sincerely,
Coach Szolek
A super fun discovery :idea: that I happened upon at the end of my evening session today. As I came to my last set of 6 Mills with my last arm I still had much energy to spare because the numbers in this "baby-steps" approach to grooving high endurance in the Mill are still low. So I started to work the Mill with one arm until it came near to fatigue and then switched to the next arm and did the same this went on for about 5 minutes or so as I worked out the best way to switch hands without loosing the inertia of the original hand.
I knew this would need to be figured out sooner or later because of the scoring structure of Olympic Clubbell Sport as it pertains to the Mill. You see you basically have to do as many as you can with both arms in 10 minutes without setting the Clubbell down. So it only makes sense to make the transition from hand to hand as smooth as possible to keep your energy output relatively low in restarting the motion.
What I found is that as the Inward Pendulum portion of the Mill reaches it's highest point out from my side, instead of bending my elbow to beging the Shield Cast portion of the movement I let gravity stop the Clubbell at a point of weightlessness and then accelerate it back across my body as it would in an Outward Pendulum. Now as it passes my center line I smoothly hand it off to my left hand which is waiting to continue the momentum up, out, and eventually behind my head to perform the Mills with the left side.
The biggest trick here is to make the arc along the frontal plane of my body as smooth as I can. This can be helped by loading my right hip out to the side at the before mentioned point of weightlessness then as the Clubbell arcs down infront of my shins I begin to weight transfer to my left hip to flatten out the bottom of the arc and make the hand off seemless.
Another obvious point is to keep the Clubbell acting as an extension of my arm as much as possible. So that with the elbow locked it should be a straight line from my shoulder to the head of the Clubbell. To keep too much unnecessary movement from infecting the Clubbell I began to grasp my left hand from the pinky first near where my right middle finger was. As the switch was made I let the pinky gently slide to the knob of the handle and quickly confirmed the rest of my grip from there.
As I began to work the kinks out of this transition I felt as though I could have done the Mills all night because as I neared fatigue with one arm I smoothly handed the Clubbell off to the other and slipped right into the groove of the movement. I can't wait till I get to apply this to a competition :) , I hope to see you all there!
sincerely,
Coach Szolek