Shovel!! page

[Mr.Perfidy]

Totally devastating exercise, enhanced by visualizing various swings as weaponized strikes.

I was planting today and had the shovel, and a vaguely worded Tolstoy? quote that I read about regreting compliance to the emergent soviet tyranny came to mind. Some of you might be familiar with it, him wondering how the trajectory would have gone if the terroristic political police in the beginning were not met by shuddered and cowed villagers, but groups of men "in every alley way" (maybe is the exactish wording, for the search curious) with farm implements and shit resisting them.

So then I thought of Mao saying that all warfare was an extension of the sword, spear or bow, and then of the movie Troy, and how devastating the spear fighting in it was, and how they must have trained to fight with such weapons.

So tada, grabbed that shit and went around the building in the dark and started some basics that will become a more comprehensive routine.

Warm-up was 2-hand grip over the head in like a kendo stance, just whirling it in a circle over the head to loosen the grips and familiarize with grip. X number (I did 20) of rotations with each handedness.

FIrst exercise was jabs. It is pretty difficult for people without much arm and shoulder and core strength to hold a shovel out at all maybe from the neighbor kid that tried and failed. So I held it crouched halfway maybe between the middle of the handle and where you would crouch a lance, and shot it outward with a throwing motion forward, but catch the back of the handle, so the shovel is fully extended and in one outstretched hand. So, 20 of those with each hand. Then 20 of the same but from a crouched, squat, as-though-picking-it-up-of-the-floor position.

After that I was pretty pumped up, but my curiosity and playfulness got the better of me, so I just experimented with the weight of it, swinging it around my waist or upward in an arc levered against my ribs under my arm pit, working out foundational perspectives of hypothetical multiple opponents for shovel katas and shit.

Alas, now my entire upper body feels muscle-fuzzy, which is the best kind of soar when you feel all expansive fluffy cloud-webbed under your skin. So, I will be developing it more along the routine of the jabs as I play with it more.

I am going to do a youtube search for shovel training now.


edit: obviously, no solidarity in me : (

[twa2w]

you may want to look up shovel glove, both the website and the threads on this forum on it. Also a Dr Schwartz who invented Heavy Hands in the 70s started by using a shovel with a weight attached to the blade part and did a series of swinging exercises.
Dr S was one of a few people who had huge success in his research using exercise only to lose weight. To bad most people did not use the HH properly and his system fell into disuse.
Cheers
J

[little vase]

I will need to see a video of this. For science.

[awok677]

Ahah, training for the zombie apocalypse! Smart man.

I'm planning to try shovelglove, but I like the idea of spade training as well. Sounds like it would involve a bit more flexibility than the sledgehammer moves, simply because the shovel is a lighter weight. Also the back garden is fairly enclosed so no one will see me killing imaginary zombies!

[Mr.Perfidy]

Why would you relate it to a popular (imposed) media fantasy when in real life, real people lamented not fighting real oppression with their shovels?

[awok677]

Why would you relate it to a popular (imposed) media fantasy when in real life, real people lamented not fighting real oppression with their shovels?

Ah, that would probably be because really fighting real people with a shovel would get me arrested. Being as how if you walk down the high street with a spade nowadays and haven't got a good reason for carrying it, the boys in blue are likely to get nervous.

Also ... playing is primal!

[Mr.Perfidy]

Why is everyone incapable of even seeing the part about tolstoy and the arrests and the lamentations about NOT fighting with shovels....?