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Probably the best addition to my home gym in some time (that fucking Bulgarian bag has become a hardcore draught excluder), clubbells are well worth investing in. And investing is the right word, since the price of the things means you'll probably have to get them on layaway - but read on for why you shouldn't bother with the heavy, prohibitively expensive bells anyway.
Cut through the bullshit claims about the magical properties of "circular strength" and ancient training methods derived from the wisdom of Hanuman's monkeys, and what you have is an iron weight, affected by the same kind of gravity you're already familiar with, plus -once you pick it up and start swinging it- centrifugal force. The latter, along with the distance of the weight from your hand, adds up to a significant difference that makes even a 5kg CB slightly less deserving of the laughter you would aim at the cardiofag swinging it.
Like a dildo, every part of the standard clubbell, from the pommel to the muzzle, is logically designed. Yet there's a tendency to think a home-made piece of shit that omits all these details is just as good. You wouldn't presume to make a respectable oly bar out of scrap iron, nor dildo out of an aerosol can wrapped in sports socks and a rubber glove. Likewise you're not going to MacGuyver up your own CB with less stress and expenditure than just buying one. A sledgehammer is not a viable alternative, neither is a weighted baseball bat, a tin of beans duct-taped to a stick, or even a novelty dildo. Either buy a CB and learn to use it properly, or forget about it.
You're also not going to listen to your ego and buy the most fucking ginormous clubbell you can find because you're swole beyond even having to learn stuff. Yes, I know you can pick up 10kg. Now pick it up and swing it around as fast as you can for an hour without putting it down. I'll come back when you're done crying, vomiting, praying for death and having a miscarriage, and we'll order that 5kg club that's more appropriate to your beginner level.
What's it for? Convenient, zero-impact, full body, silent, stationary aerobic work. I defy you to name any other exercise that nails all those points. A fucking Nunavut eskimo with teething triplets, agoraphobia and a broken foot could bust out a solid 90 minute cardiac output session at 3am without leaving the igloo. Unless he drops the thing, the level of disturbance will be less than the average wank session.
Too fat to run? Too pencil-calfed to jump rope? Too balloon-thighed to cycle? Too consumed with psychosexual shame to expose yourself at the local pool? All of the above? You need a clubbell.
What's it not for? Getting stronger in any sense of the word: there's some challenge to grip endurance before you find your groove, and your shoulders might get a bit fried before you learn that moving a weight around your body at speed should be a full-body dynamic movement that requires you to generate power from the legs, transfer through your core and maintain control with the arm(s). You're not doing curls for an hour, you're keeping every muscle in smooth, constant motion. And goddamn it, it's fun.
Just as with kettlebells, years of zealously wrongheaded marketing of CB's as strength tools engenders a lot of kneejerk prejudice in sensible athletes. In an attempt to sell to everybody, and so lying, they obfuscate the genuine uses and it ends up getting sold to nobody, until it's just a weird fringe pursuit practiced only by the angry schizophrenics who buy Scott Sonnen's commando tutorials. It shouldn't be so.
Some apposite demonstrations of the manful art:
And at max level you can just use trees, and you get a backing band who play badass ragas while you mill all day...
Cut through the bullshit claims about the magical properties of "circular strength" and ancient training methods derived from the wisdom of Hanuman's monkeys, and what you have is an iron weight, affected by the same kind of gravity you're already familiar with, plus -once you pick it up and start swinging it- centrifugal force. The latter, along with the distance of the weight from your hand, adds up to a significant difference that makes even a 5kg CB slightly less deserving of the laughter you would aim at the cardiofag swinging it.
Like a dildo, every part of the standard clubbell, from the pommel to the muzzle, is logically designed. Yet there's a tendency to think a home-made piece of shit that omits all these details is just as good. You wouldn't presume to make a respectable oly bar out of scrap iron, nor dildo out of an aerosol can wrapped in sports socks and a rubber glove. Likewise you're not going to MacGuyver up your own CB with less stress and expenditure than just buying one. A sledgehammer is not a viable alternative, neither is a weighted baseball bat, a tin of beans duct-taped to a stick, or even a novelty dildo. Either buy a CB and learn to use it properly, or forget about it.
You're also not going to listen to your ego and buy the most fucking ginormous clubbell you can find because you're swole beyond even having to learn stuff. Yes, I know you can pick up 10kg. Now pick it up and swing it around as fast as you can for an hour without putting it down. I'll come back when you're done crying, vomiting, praying for death and having a miscarriage, and we'll order that 5kg club that's more appropriate to your beginner level.
What's it for? Convenient, zero-impact, full body, silent, stationary aerobic work. I defy you to name any other exercise that nails all those points. A fucking Nunavut eskimo with teething triplets, agoraphobia and a broken foot could bust out a solid 90 minute cardiac output session at 3am without leaving the igloo. Unless he drops the thing, the level of disturbance will be less than the average wank session.
Too fat to run? Too pencil-calfed to jump rope? Too balloon-thighed to cycle? Too consumed with psychosexual shame to expose yourself at the local pool? All of the above? You need a clubbell.
What's it not for? Getting stronger in any sense of the word: there's some challenge to grip endurance before you find your groove, and your shoulders might get a bit fried before you learn that moving a weight around your body at speed should be a full-body dynamic movement that requires you to generate power from the legs, transfer through your core and maintain control with the arm(s). You're not doing curls for an hour, you're keeping every muscle in smooth, constant motion. And goddamn it, it's fun.
Just as with kettlebells, years of zealously wrongheaded marketing of CB's as strength tools engenders a lot of kneejerk prejudice in sensible athletes. In an attempt to sell to everybody, and so lying, they obfuscate the genuine uses and it ends up getting sold to nobody, until it's just a weird fringe pursuit practiced only by the angry schizophrenics who buy Scott Sonnen's commando tutorials. It shouldn't be so.
Some apposite demonstrations of the manful art:
And at max level you can just use trees, and you get a backing band who play badass ragas while you mill all day...
