You are squatting and deadlifting. There is a very high probability that you are bench pressing. If you are serious, you are also overhead pressing and doing pull-ups. You are doing all this consistently. Congratulations. You have laid a solid, strong foundation for your overall strength development.
The moment you need to swing an axe to chop wood or fell a tree, shovel snow to clear your driveway, or kick a soccer ball while playing with your kid, you notice that the strength you’ve developed does not translate well to these movements. This because they all use rotation and none of the big lifts prepare you for it.
This is a serious gap in modern day training regimes.
A lot of our daily movement, whether for sport or in practical life, call upon rotational (circular) strength. From throwing a ball to a hook. Paddling a canoe to swinging a baseball bat. Even something simple as walking and running. Sitting in chairs for the majority of the time, doesn’t only mess up our postural balance from front to back, but also limits the twisting mobility of our spine.
Without that mobility or range of motion, you can forget developing strength in those ranges. It will be non-existent. It is at that moment that your kid wants you to play catch with him, and you pull a (rotational) back muscle.
The Ancient way
Luckily, people have found the remedy for this issue thousands of years ago. Way back in Ancient Egypt, India, Persia and Greece, men were swinging heavy clubs to prepare for that sad day, they had to swing it at a foolish enemy’s head. The heavy club, probably the oldest weapon known to mankind after the random stone, is an unexpected strength training implement.
As almost all unarmed martial activity (punching, throwing, kicking) utilizes, the rotational (circular) force the body can generate, training with the first melee weapon, puts us on the right track of how to fill the gap modern strength training is leaving us with.
In the modern day gym, the first training implement which comes to mind when using the concept of swinging weight of any significance is the kettlebell. And while the kettlebell is a fine tool to create a strong and functional body, it:
– is primarily designed to develop the posterior chain muscles. The same, you are training with the squat and the deadlift,
– it provides less stimulus to the development of grip strength than the club.
– it’s design makes it less safe to use when swinging across different spatial planes than the club. (that is, if you love your knees).
Some modern exercise variants of the ancient war clubs, are the Indian and Persian Meel variations, and the mace (which is very akin to a sledgehammer). There are also different western brands, such as ADEX, Roque and Orion, producing club bells and mace bells to train with.
The Modern way
Of course, we can also train the muscular systems responsible for our rotation capability with modern options, such as cable machines. You can set up the pulley system, high, low or at shoulder height, and practice rotation.
Yet probably the most accessible version of modern rotational training is rope flow, as developed by David Weck, who essentially modified trick rope jumping by removing the jumping part. The result is a rotational movement discipline, which reintroduces the modern human with holistic rotational movement patterns.
While club bell swinging requires you to get yourself at least one club bell, or something which can substitute for one such a short sledgehammer, you can start rope flow with the jumping rope you have right now. Yes, there are specialized flow ropes for sale. Those are probably a bit heavier than your standard jumping rope.
This increase in weight results in a slower moving rope, giving you more reaction time and feedback. The weight of the rope also impacts your muscles more, the heavier it gets.
Implementation
Like all other training modalities, rotational strength training is safe to do, when keeping your ego in check and starting light. Whether you choose the ancient or the modern way to train, when done right, the results will leave you stronger and moving better.
There are some detractors who claim that there is no such thing as rotational strength or power. According to them, there is just power and one’s ability to channel that power, guided by one’s coordination.
The thing is that strength and power can only manifest within the confines of the available movement patterns. So if I can’t raise my arms above my shoulders, there are no overhead squats in my future, however strong I might be in the deadlift.
So to be strong in every movement pattern the good Lord has designed our bodies to move, we need to work to become strong and powerful in all of them.