Swinging objects around in a circular pattern builds real-world strength, and is what I call circular strength training. Lifting up and down shiny chrome objects, while sitting in a chair or resting part of your body on a bench, builds gym strength — only useful in a gym. If the training goal is pain-free movement, longevity, and useful strength I think an everyday athlete would benefit from including some circular strength training in their weekly program.

Although many training tools can be swung in a circular fashion (kettlebells, Bulgarian bags, beer kegs, etc), clubs and maces are the best tools for the job. The lightest of which are Indian clubs starting at around 0.5 kg / 1.1 lbs. The heaviest gadas or steel maces can reach up to 20 kg / 44 lbs. But there are a number of other circular strength tools of varying weights in between, such as steel clubbells, karlakattai (India), mugdar (India), axes, sledge hammers, meels (Iranian) and jori (Indian).

An everyday athlete can achieve the greatest bang for their training buck by training at both ends of the circular strength weight spectrum: light clubs and heavy maces. If you’re already doing complex patterns with very light Indian clubs for high reps (continuous reps for several minutes at a time), and complimenting this with simple patterns using very heavy maces for low reps (sets of 5 or 10), I don’t believe there’s much extra benefit in training with mid-range clubs. There are so many other forms of exercise to leave time for!

Light Circular Strength Training (Indian Clubs)

There are a huge range of highly beneficial patterns available with light clubs that simply aren't possible, with heavier ones — even for the strongest of people. Benefits of training with light clubs include:

Healthy, stable shoulders
Increased shoulder mobility
Increased mid-spine mobility, leading to healthier necks and low backs
Healthy hands, wrists and elbows
Stronger ligaments and tendons in the hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders
Better grip endurance
Better coordination and brain health

Indian club swings are one of the most effective movement snacks that desk-workers can splice into their day and mitigate the ill-effects of their occupational posture. They’re also perfect for climbers and other athletes who value hand, grip and shoulder health. I personally use Indian clubs for warm-ups and for active recovery between heavy strength sets. One of my favorite things to do with Indian clubs is run/bike them to the top of a mountain and use them for a moving meditation.

Swinging above the clouds on Mount Tamalpais summit

Buying Indian Clubs

I teach new starters mostly with 1 lb clubs, but move them up to 2 lbs as quickly as possible, for better neurological feedback. I rarely swing clubs heavier than 5 lbs for my own practice, because going much heavier than that reduces the training benefit. Wooden clubs have a far superior feel and swing. Recommended suppliers: Body Mind Fit, Revolution Clubs, Rosewater Kinetics. Heroic Sport (in Denmark) makes and supplies Pahlavandes — perfect for traveling!

Yes you could buy wooden clubs on Amazon. You might save a few dollars, get faster shipping, and wouldn’t know the difference (having no point of reference). But the beautifully crafted clubs I recommended are handmade with love, swing better, and are probably the only piece of exercise equipment that you can get away with leaving in the living room, because they look like ornaments.

Heavy Circular Strength Training (Maces/Gadas)

One of my most memorable personal training consultations was when I met an actor who was preparing to play King Henry V in London’s Globe theatre. I asked him what his training goals were and he said, “I have to be able wield a real broadsword on stage, with physical prowess and grace.” My face lit up and I responded, “Mace training!”

I put all mace/gada training into one of two categories: traditional and dynamic. Traditional mace training involves mostly standing in one place and swinging a really heavy weight using one of a handful of different patterns (such as, 360s and 10-to-2s). Dynamic mace training involves moving into various multi-planar lunge patterns, using a much lighter mace and performing one of hundreds of different movements (such as jousting, chopping, and shoveling). Personally I favor other tools (such as the ViPR) for strength training in multi-planar lunge patterns. I mostly only practice and teach the traditional style of mace training.

Benefits of heavy mace training include:

Beastly upper body strength
Highly transferrable core strength
Grip power / crushing grip strength
Serratus anterior, oblique and lat development
Shoulder girdle strength in all planes
Badassery

The improvement curve is quite steep for new starters, ie. a beginner will need to learn with around 10 lbs to 12 lbs. I teach my newbies with a sledge hammer. But as soon as they begin to pick up the technique, their weight should also increase. As a general rule of thumb, if someone can do 30x 360s each way without stopping, or if they can do 10x one-handed 360s each way, they need a heavier or longer mace/gada.

I think wooden shafts have a far superior feel. Also, the higher the weight differential between the shaft and the ball, the better it swings. Metal shafts are heavier than wooden ones, so the ball doesn’t swing as beautifully. Unfortunately, wooden-shaft maces are less available for purchase than metal ones. This is why I favor hickory-shaft sledge hammers for rookies and love Onnit’s quad mace for myself. Mind Body Fit also make a selection of beautiful wooden maces and even have an adjustable one! There is, of course, the option of being an old-school Indian street gangster and making your own with a hardwood stick and a bucket of cement.

General History of Indian Clubs

Clubs are one of the oldest tools that humans have used for physical training.

A gada (mace — a long handle with a ball or head on the end) is a Hindu ceremonial implement that can be seen in the arms of statues and paintings dating back to 1500 BC. Evidence suggests that gadas have been used for mindfulness, strength and battle training since before 500 BC.

The great Persian army, under King Xerxes (circa 480 BC) used clubs not only to build circular strength for wielding heavy weapons, but for building hand strength for crushing the skulls of their adversaries. Theatrical!

Fast forward to around 1700, during the British colonization of India. The British soldiers were impressed at the strength and physicality of the local Indian wrestlers who trained predominantly with large clubs, known as karlakattai, mugdar and jori. These generally weighed upwards of 5kg 11lbs each.

Indian club training began in the ranks of the British army during this period. The clubs were made significantly smaller and lighter (at 2 kg / 4.4 lbs per club) for the purpose of cheaper mass production and large group training (hundreds of soldiers). Besides, I hazard a guess that the invading British soldiers were comparatively weak next to the local Indian strongmen and wrestlers. The Brits clumsily renamed their new lighter clubs, Indian clubs.

Indian club swinging remained part of the British military physical training curriculum and became an especially popular pastime for Victorian women (1800s). In the late 1800s an American, Sim D Kehoe, learned Indian club swinging patterns from the British military and took the concept to America, where he sold clubs to the US military and trained them. Good deal!

Indian club swinging was even an Olympic event in 1904 and 1932! I would love to know how the athletes’ scores were determined. Indian club use sadly began to dwindle in the 1940s. Since then, all sports teams, educational establishments and military units in the west gradually disbanded club training. Well… all but one… The Royal Marines Commandos.

If a serving Royal Marines Commando wishes to become a Physical Training Instructor (PTI) they must pass a grueling course. This culminates with pass-out ceremony, demonstrating mastery of their strength and movement execution. An element of this ceremony is a rather impressive synchronized club swinging performance. Here’s an amateur YouTube video of a RM PTI pass-out ceremony. Fast forward to 5:37 for Indian clubs.

They still use the standard issue 2 kg / 4.4 lbs club plus a hard plastic + ceramic coating, making the total weight per club 2.3 kg / 5 lbs. The badge of the Royal Marines PTI branch contains a pair of clubs and PTIs are collectively known as club swingers. However, following their qualification as illustrious PTIs, many seldom touch clubs again, unless they become rehabilitation instructors… this is where I came in.

My Club History

Being a tall kid, I grew up with sloping (protracted) shoulders which did no favors for my sports performance. I would sublux both shoulders frequently during my teens when skiing and playing rugby. In my early 20s a physiotherapist told me I’d need new shoulder sockets if I continued such endeavors. I subsequently took up boxing and became a Royal Marines Commando.

Fast forward a few years, to 2008, in a riot-training serial within the Royal Marines. I sustained a nasty dislocation of my right shoulder which involved the head of the humerus pertruding through the deltoid (but not breaking the skin). One of the UK’s leading shoulder specialists told me that I should reconsider my career aspirations within the Royal Marines and that I should avoid ever working overhead with anything heavy.

This news was rather a blow. In rebellion I began self-educating on shoulder and spine mechanics. At around the same time a Royal Marines Rehabilitation Instructor taught me how to swing clubs as part of my healing process. I practiced these swinging patterns several times per day for many months. During the months and years that followed I’ve enjoyed stronger and more stable shoulders than ever before.

It was a memorable moment in 2012 when a UK Osteopath informed me that I had textbook gleno-humeral rhythm — meaning, the bones of my shoulder and arm move in the most optimal way for producing stability and strength. Score! I attribute this success to regular and frequent Indian club practice.

Club swinging has been one of my favorite pastimes ever since. I started teaching club-swinging patterns to sports rehab patients and personal training clients in 2013 and began teaching group swinging sessions in London’s Hyde Park. In doing so I developed my own teaching protocols and technique breakdown methods.

In 2017 I developed the first Indian club certification program for NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) and had the great honor of teaching my syllabus to fitness and medical professionals in health clubs, sports facilities and medical centers all over the world. Now as a corporate wellness provider, I enjoy teaching clubs at company off-sites and team building events.

Macebell certification at Team Moljo, NY, 2020

Indian club certification at Unique Results, Essex UK, 2018

Indian Clubs for Rehab and Prehab

Generally speaking, as soon as a physical therapy patient is pain-free, the case is closed. The patient tends to go about their business as though nothing ever happened. I think most people live very close to pain and injury, but tend to not care because their day-to-day lives aren’t affected enough. After all, we humans are the great adaptors and we become used to our discomforts and incapabilities …until they bite us in our ass later in life.

There’s a significant difference between living in this state, close to injury, and being functionally strong, capable and resilient to injury. How to differentiate these in terms of performance metrics is food for another blog. Indian club swinging is one of the best ways to achieve capability, resilience and strength for the hands, arms and shoulders.

As a trained and experienced sports and remedial massage therapist, I can attest to the effectiveness of Indian clubs as also being one of the best rehab tools for hands, wrists and shoulders. Call me a dreamer but I’d love to see Indian club training being included in physical therapy programs, or at least as CEU credits for DPTs.

There are many great club-swinger accounts to follow on Instagram but the one that sticks out above the rest and deserves recognition is that of the great Paul Wolkowinski (@wolkowinsk i), based in Perth, Australia. The initial training I received within the Royal Marines was basic compared to the extremely useful content, techniques and patterns I learned through studying Paul’s many YouTube videos. I hope to learn from him in person one day. Thank you, Paul!

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this please share and I’d love to read any comments. Happy swinging.

Phil

Circular Strength Training: Indian Clubs and Maces

Phil McDougall Personal Training

philip.r.mcdougall@gmail.com