Light, Mid and Heavy Exercise Club Training

 Whether you call them Indian clubs, or how I prefer - Exercise clubs, they are invaluable to total body conditioning. As you extend an exercise club away from your body's centerline and feel your core engage you know that the whole body will feel the benefits of this type of training. After all, exercise clubs have been around for centuries and with good reason - they work!

Lunges with Clubs

 While some disciples preach using the lighter weight clubs (1-5 lbs) which free up joints and increase mobility, there are others who love the feel of the powerful, full body movements of a heavy club. Everyone has their favorites but it is necessary to train with both heavy and light exercise clubs. Total body conditioning is the goal and activating all of your receptors is a big step in this aspect.

Adex Adjustable Exercise Club 3.5-25lbs

 Having a few different weight clubs in your training arsenal is akin to having a turbo placed on an already high performance engine. The coordination and mobility that is developed during fast, high rep multi-joint light weight club movements become evident in daily motions. Trainees using light clubs regularly will find that they become more graceful and agile. Long before the movements are mastered, the benefits become evident which carry over into heavy club training.

Cynthia Aguilar 

 The term heavy is relative to the trainee, not the weight. Never let anyone tell you what heavy is - though I consider light 1-5lbs, medium 6 - 14lbs, and heavy over 15lbs as a guide. Form is crucial in exercise club training. Just as it is in weight lifting, it is easy to get injured using poor form swinging the clubs! Heavy clubs will build a controlled explosiveness for the trainee that comes from the core out and the ground up. When a trainee uses a heavy club in the circular patterns the muscles contract and relax throughout their natural, complete range of motion. Movement in this manner stimulates more fast twitch type 2b fibers and the median 2a fibers because of the greater range of motion offered by club exercises over weight training. Adding an exercise club program into an existing training regiment will boost the total performance of the trainee.

 Mid weight clubs undoubtedly build endurance and mobilize joints. A great way to accomplish this is to each set for as many reps as possible in a given time. A good beginner starting time is 3 minutes then work up to a longer duration set or multiple sets. Make sure that form for the exercise is proper to avoid possible injury. Think of it as jogging for your arms.

 These examples are to get the word out about exercise club training. The benefits mentioned above are only some examples of what the clubs can do for you. There are multitudes of exercises on YouTube with some great instructors putting the clubs through the paces. Get some clubs, watch their videos, practice the movements and get the edge over your competition. And remember, the biggest challenge is life itself-stay healthy!

About The Author

 Don Giafardino is a long time fitness enthusiast who developed the Adex Adjustable Exercise Club to treat his injured shoulder. Years of heavy weight training left Don living with chronic shoulder pain rendering him unable to perform a simple push up. Don searched for an alternative way to exercise and came across club training. He began by using a loadable dumb bell with 2.5lbs on one side to experiment with the club movements and noticed quick relief. Don was eager to heal his shoulder and looked into purchasing a real club to train with but was disappointed at their cost thinking that he’d most likely outgrow the first club  in a relatively short time. Then begins a pattern of buying another and another, and paying for the shipping on each new club ordered. Being inventive by nature and having the incredible luxury of a friend who owns a welding shop, Don set out to make his own club that was adjustable. The first designs were from T ball bats with weight plated sandwiched in them. Don refined the design a few times until he reached what is know today as the Adex Club. A solid steel club with six weight settings that change quickly and safely by hand. It is a whole set of 10 clubs in one 25lb unit that goes from 3.5, to 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, 15, 17.5, 20, 22.5 & 25lbs that ships flat rate insured for $24! 

Your Way

 Each day someone new to the fitness world walks into a gym or tries yoga in front of the T.V. And each day, someone else sets a new PR for themselves. Still, each day, many more know that they need to start working out but never do, and I feel for these people. I feel for these people greatly for I know that they know something has to begin for them and soon. You see we as humans are all athletes but thanks to societal evolution most of us aren't required to be. Time is ticking my friends...

 I am not going to give a workout lecture here. I am going to straight forward tell you that you have to exercise, we all have to. Mother Nature, the Good Lord, or whatever cell that mutated to create us developed us to be perfect athletes. Our athleticism was made for survival and since we've "evolved" that athleticism is slowly fading away. Only a few hundred years ago, men walked miles to go hunting and carried back their prize on their back. Women with a baby on hip, foraged and gathered food. We know the story, but more often than not must be reminded that we are athletes.

 For everyone who exercises regularly, you are dismissed from the rest of the article, but those who are thinking about it follow along. The most important step that you will ever take in your health, in your spirit, and possibly in your life is to make the choice of how you want to exercise. Most head straight for the mega-gym, only to fizzle out after a few short months left with annoying calls from dues collectors which is the only tangible thing to show for their attempt at exercise. Others try to join whatever fad gym is hopping this year and hopefully that fad will continue into next year. And the story goes...

 The best advice that I ever received about exercise was "don't worry what the other guy is doing, beat yourself." This tidbit came to me years ago from a friend's father, who began exercising under the correspondence tutelage of Eugene Sandow (the man whom the Mr. Olympia trophy is modeled after) and lived to be 103! Simple exercise, diligently performed, a natural healthy diet gave him 30 years more than the average life expectancy. So, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. Look on Meetup.com, go to a different gym or class four nights a week for a month until you find that one workout that you really feel right with. Instead of doing it their way find "your way."