STEEL MACE BENEFITS
Using a steel mace will help you effectively put a functional loading stress on your entire body. The “Sinewy old fashioned strength” results from functional training that mimics sporting and everyday actions. This affects the ligaments, tendons, and myofascial kinetic chains, not isolated muscle groups whose specific training was the norm in the 80’s and 90’s. This mimicking real world movements is very advantageous for athletes and sports persons of any discipline.
Improved Grip – Hand and Wrist, Strength and Endurance
There are actually many other things to consider when thinking of grip. Firstly grip involves using the muscles from the forearm down to the fingertips . Grip strength and endurance is an often-overlooked aspect of most fitness programs. It is also an important, and commonly overlooked, component of strength in our work, in games and in sports.
If you already lift weights using the steel mace will definitely give you greater grip strength and endurance improving your performance.
Some types of Grip Strength:
1. Crush Grip: The grip between your fingers and palm, such as what you use when shaking hands, using pliers or making a fist.
2. Support Grip: Your ability to hold something for a sustained amount of time, such as carrying or just holding a heavy weight,
3. Pinch Grip: The grip between your fingers and thumb., often used in combination with the other grips, Used in Judo, jujitsu and other grip-focused sports such as in rock and mountain climbing.
Our grip strength most often has a secondary or auxiliary function in the task we are doing or the sport we are participating in but nevertheless it plays a very important role in our ability to adequately perform these work and sporting actions.
Sports in which grip strength are quite important include the following: movement-based sports climbing, gymnastics, horse racing, powerlifting and professional arm-wrestling. Ball based sports cricket, rugby, canoeing, polo, badminton or tennis; and particularly in combat sports such as brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, fencing, judo and wrestling.
In essence grip strength is necessary for just about everything we do. For instance, rock climbers can’t safely ascend a rock face without impressive grip strength, cricketers can’t effectively swing a bat without the ability to hang onto and control the bat’s trajectory, and even basic gym exercises; pull-ups, curls, deadlifts, and rowing all require grip strength to hold our bodies or weights in position.
Better Shoulder Strength, Flexibility and Function
The very shallow ball and socket joint of the shoulder allows a great degree of movement but makes the shoulder joints quite unstable and prone to injury. Our build as bipeds, forward facing tends to strengthen the anterior musculature of our bodies and during activity and exercises we primarily use our fast twitch anterior muscles which often causes a muscle imbalance making this joint susceptible to injury. Shoulder injuries are very common especially in fit active men who regularly use the gym. If you have ever experienced shoulder pain you will know how painful and debilitating it is, severely limiting normal work activities and even basic exercises such as pull-ups, dips, and push-ups, let alone any weight training.
The two basic steel mace exercises the 360 and the 10 to 2 plus a lot of our additional mace exercises involve swinging the mace behind and around the head, When you swing a steel mace with correct form through a full range of motion you are applying a dynamic load as the shoulder as it moves through its entire range of motion provides a complete shoulder conditioning workout, improving shoulder strength, flexibility and stability, the rotational forces of the mace doing what no other training equipment does. This makes it a great for working the scapula, rotator cuff muscles and upper back, as well of course our other postural and core muscles.
Using the steel mace for a few months will noticeably increase the strength of your shoulder muscles and fascia and other connective tissue surrounding the shoulder joint – the capsule , ligaments and tendons which stabilise the joint. If you lift weights, regularly exercise or just want to improve your strength and conditioning using the steel mace is a must. For athletes with shoulder stiffness and impingement due to years of wear or simply not exercising the shoulder fully for many years the steel mace is the perfect solution. Steel maces have been used for thousands of years as a physical training tool because of the great benefits they provide.
Core workout
The size and length of the mace with the massive uneven weight distribution means that it produces very powerful forces on the body. Our specialised mace design also utilises a smaller counterweight at the handle end which provides a more effective workout enabling it to be used for the fascial exercises in our advanced Macestrength workout.
General mace training as practiced for thousands of years greatly improves functional core and upper body strength, the multidirectional mace movements in multiple planes of motion provide an incredible workout.
The rotational cross-body mace swinging motions require extensive core engagement, particularly of the obliques. This is further amplified by the uneven distribution of weight of the steel mace, the weighted head requiring greater core engagement to control because the core muscles have to adapt and handle the greater leverage and centrifugal force trajectories of the mace design. This adaptation of the bodies core produces tremendous changes in core strength.
Mixed martial artists in the West have taken up heavy mace training as a way to strengthen the muscles involved with grappling, striking and throwing. opponents to the mat. Many serious strength training athletes use the mace for its core engagement effectiveness.
Body Strength, Respiratory and Cardiovascular Conditioning
The other benefits of using a steel mace have been explained however our Mace Strength Workout exercises are a complete body strength and conditioning system. Some our exercises affecting both the upper and lower body are widely practiced, the others are unique exercises developed for us by Myofascial Correction teacher Kevin Kelly to specifically develop the suppleness, elasticity and strength of your fascial system. This produces enormous functional changes in time, difficult to achieve with normal types of training. The Mace Strength Workout exercises develop local muscle endurance enabling your body to perform at the limit.
The nature of any Mace training has a beneficial training effect on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, improving heart, lung and respiratory muscle function, during training the heart rate increases to an optimal level improving your bodies cardiovascular fitness.
The two basic steel mace exercises are expanding your chest cavity with every swing and you will be doing this weekly hundreds of times increasing your respiratory muscles function and strength. Breathing correctly whilst mace training has a huge effect on your system, this is explained in our Mace Strength Workout.
