Clubbell® - Natural Athleticism:
Why do they seem so heavy?
The displaced center of mass makes it very challenging to lift like a conventional dumbbell, and that’s the primary benefit. The more actual weight you place on your body, the more it compresses the joints and potentially injures your soft tissue. However, because the Clubbell® is swung instead of lifted, and because the center of mass is away from your grip instead of between your fingers, the Clubbell® itself is very light compared to the strength, power, stamina and muscle development you receive.
I'm afraid I'm going to hurt myself = How can I be sure I'm using them safely?
Practice the 7 Key Components of each exercise. Use the online support community for feedback. Enlist the aid of a certified instructor or coach in your area.
What do you do for your legs?
Every Clubbell® exercise incorporates your legs. It’s impossible to “isolate” one part of your body. With clubbells you train “all your body all of the time.”
Sure, you develop fantastic arms, shoulders, backs and chests with clubbells. However, as soon as you pick up your clubbells, you join the ranks of other Clubbell® athletes across the world, who are known for their strong, supple legs, butts and abs.
What weight should I start with?
If you’re new to the “iron game” and a male, start out with two 10lbs clubbells and / or one 20lbs Clubbell® for two handed work; or a female, start out with two 5lbs clubbells and / or one 15lbs Clubbell® for two handed work.
If you’re an athletic male you can start out with two 15lbs clubbells and / or one 35lbs Clubbell® for two handed work; and if an athletic female, two 10lbs clubbells and / or one 25lbs. Clubbell® for two handed work.
When I’ve used weights, I get soreness similar to tennis elbow, will I get that with clubbells?
Yes, if you bring one bad habit into your Clubbell® training. The problem is a carry-over from conventional training. Because barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells all pull against the grip to lift them, athletes often develop a “death grip” through the entire movement. However, a Clubbell® doesn’t pull against the grip, but through the grip. If you keep that bad habit of a “death grip” from conventional training, you won’t be able to use the Clubbell® properly.
You will learn an “intelligent grip” technique with the Clubbell® which will actually give you the opportunity to increase the health of your elbows as well as your shoulders and wrists.
Why is the Clubbell® so expensive?
The Clubbell® is typically the price of a one month gym membership which you never get back even if you do use it several times, whereas the Clubbell® is a gift to yourself which lasts for the rest of your life.
It is the pinnacle of engineering savvy developed by Dr. Sonnon’s work with an engineering firm whose regular contracts were in aerospace and high performance racing engine design.
Can't I just use my homemade club or stick?
We could mix our own prescription medicine at home, but we don’t take those kind of risks with our health. Considering the dangers of homemade concoctions, we suggest commercial grade engineering.
What's wrong with plate loading versions?
Besides everything? Barbells and dumbbells were made “plate loadable” so that it was easy to adjust the intensity of the lift. However, you don’t lift clubbells; you swing them. The faster you swing them, and the farther away you grip from the center of mass, the higher the intensity of the exercise. Basically, if you swing the Clubbell® twice as fast, you produce four times the force! That means that actual weight of the Clubbell® can be very small, to prevent the aches, pains and injuries which come from compression of the joints with heavy weight.
Imagine holding a stack of plates over your head like a torch and the only thing holding the plates from sliding down and smashing first your fingers then your face is a “collar.”
That’s not the only danger. When you’re moving weight perpendicular to the plates loaded, they don’t move; like in picking up a barbell off the floor in a deadlift, or squatting underneath it. Even in those very short ranges of motion, there is product failure and plates slide off one end and suddenly you have lethal flying heavy weight everywhere crashing down causing property damage and worse… bodily harm.
Now, imagine swinging a stack of weights. Even if the product doesn’t fly apart, if you’re swinging the weight in an arc over your head and the space between the plates shifts, the sudden change in torque is like when you’re a passenger in a car when they suddenly slam on the breaks and turn the car sideways to try and avoid hitting another car. The soft tissues seize up trying to protect themselves causes micro if not macro tears.
Basically, the genius behind the Clubbell® is that the more movable parts there are in a piece of equipment is directly related to the product failure. There are NO moving parts on the Clubbell®!
It looks like it’s just using momentum; doesn’t that make it easy?
Is developing strength faster and easier a bad thing? Developing strength, power and stamina is about producing force. You can produce force by adding monstrously heavy weight and moving it in a very small range of motion; however, you only develop that strength in that range of motion, and the more actual weight you add, the more you compress the joints and strain your connective tissues.
Instead, due to the special combination of leverage disadvantage due to the displaced center of mass coupled with the “club-like” neck instead of a barbell handle pulling through the grip, when you swing a Clubbell® you dramatically increase how much force you can produce. Basically, swinging the Clubbell® twice as fast, produces four times the torque!
What's better dumbbells, kettlebells or clubbells?
That depends upon your training goals. If you’re interested in functional strength, then you need to train in the most degrees of freedom. Dumbbells typically move the least free, kettlebells next, and clubbells with the greatest degrees of freedom. Sure, you can force a dumbbell or kettlebell to move through a Clubbell® exercise, but never safely and never as effectively.
Remember the purpose of strength training is force production and injury prevention. Due to the combination of displaced center of mass, club-like neck, leverage disadvantage and swing torque, the Clubbell® produces superior force without the adverse affects of adding weight in order to increase intensity.
Can I integrate clubbells into an existing program?
You can add clubbells to your current program, or they can be used as your stand-alone strength and power development tools since no other piece of equipment can be moved in 3 dimensional range of motion like the Clubbell®.
Even if you didn’t choose to use clubbells as the stand-alone complete fitness tool which they are, you can indeed incorporate them successfully with other more conventional strength tools.
clubbells are uniquely powerful in giving you true, three-dimensional functional fitness. Therefore, whatever areas you find in your strength which are weak links, the clubbells can tap into.
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