CLASSICAl mace training
Coach Rob Lewis is a certified mace training instructor. Rob was certified by long time mace enthusiast, Rik Brown, who is known around the world as Mr. Maceman.
Rob was first introduced to the mace when one of his Jiu Jitsu students, Ernest Kent, offered to teach him the mace. Rob fell in love with the intricacy of the movements involved in swinging the mace and has been perfecting his technique ever since. As a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and a martial artist in general, Rob noticed a huge benefit to training with the mace and the strength it develops. It is not just strength in a linear path, but strength in rotational movements. This is crucial for everybody as they get older but especially true for grapplers from all styles. Rob hopes to spread the love of training with the mace to grapplers and non-grapplers alike.
What is a mace?
The Mace is at least 1,000 years old and has been used as a war weapon by numerous cultures. In India, the Mace is called the Gada, and has been used as a war weapon, but is also used as a training tool by the Wrestling Gyms, known as Akharas. The Mace also appears prominently in paintings of Hindu Deities, usually held by the monkey faced god, Hanuman.
In the world of sports, India has used the Mace (Gada) to develop strength for wrestling, the worlds’ oldest sport. India has appreciated the Mace’s enormous benefits so much that Mace swinging competitions are held in India still to this day. In much the same way that the use of the Kettlebell in America was popularized by one man (Pavel Tsatsouline), The Mace was brought to the attention of America’s strength and conditioning community by Jake Shannon who first discovered it during his interviews with Olympic and Professional Wrestler Karl Gotch.
What is classical mace training?
Almost every person in the world knows what lifting weights looks like, typically using a barbell, a dumbbell, or both. The barbell is designed to make it easier for someone to lift a heavy weight, as it is balanced through equal loads (weight plates) added to each side. The weight is lifted up and down in a linear fashion. This is great for building muscle and strength for repeating that exact movement and direction.
With the Mace, everything changes. Control is most important, balance is crucial and force is directed continually. Higher reps are generally used and sets can last for minutes. When strength is controlled, when force is directed, the result is functional, usable power that carries over to applications in a variety of sports. You can casually pick up a barbell, but Mace swinging demands total focus. The Mace is a tool that takes skill and coordination to master. There is no casual Mace swinging, you must want to work with this unwieldy, unbalanced load and prolong your set longer than a mere dozen reps or so to reap the benefits of grip mastery and back, shoulder, and core strength and development.
