I believe we all have an inner warrior.
If you haven’t heard of the steel mace – you are not alone. Itʻs an unconventional exercise implement that is starting to get quite a bit of attention. By why? They are just a long metal rod capped with a weight ball of various weights.
You wonʻt find them in your standard big commercial gym or training studio, but doesnʻt mean that itʻs something new.
When I first came across the steel mace, I saw it over at Onnit, who is known not only for their supplement line but also their unconventional training philosophy. Steel maces of have been used as weapons and training implements thousands of years ago for the Persian Warrior Elite.
The more I learned about the history of this implement, the more I felt connected to it coming from a warrior culture myself – being Native Hawaiian. But what about it brings out your inner warrior?
Everything. Just holding the steel mace in your hands brings something out of you. For many first timers, they are unsure about it because it’s something different. But once they start moving and performing exercises, they feel different. They feel like a warrior.
BENEFITS OF STEEL MACE TRAINING
Adding steel mace training has a handful of benefits amongst the whole inner warrior things.
GRIP STRENGTH
Once you grab a hold of the steel mace your hands, fingers, forearms, and shoulders will immediately turn on like a switch because of the uneven distribution of weight. Grip strength is essential for almost everything we do. A strong grip also transfers over to your performance not only in resistance training but also to your sport such as jiu jitsu, football, baseball, rock climbing, what you enjoy doing that involves need a strong grip.
The uneven distribution of weight, forces your grip to constantly be challenged and adding movement into the picture only increases your grip strength because you have to make sure you don’t let it go, especially when you are swinging it around. That’s probably why they don’t have it laying around in your typical commercial gym.
ROTATIONAL CORE STRENGTH
Through swinging motions, movements that has the steel mace move across the body, or transverse movements, the weight distribution of the steel mace takes your core strength and stability to a whole different level. The engagement in your core and be felt instantly. Remember an object in motion wants to stay in motion so when mace ball move in on direction and you have to stop it, your core immediately activates to stop the motion.
TOTAL BODY CONDITIONING
I found the steel mace to be a versatile implement. Just like with other implements like kettlebells, barbells, and dumbbells, you can perform exercises on after the other as a full body complex to improve your conditioning.
Same with the steel mace, you can perform alternating lunges, steel mace renegade rows, and go right in to tire slams with the steel mace. There are endless combinations that you can perform to challenge your conditioning and also work on your steel mace practice.
SHOULDER HEALTH
This was a big one for me. My shoulders are unhealthy and I’m always looking for way to improve them. Swinging the mace and working on decelerating the mace with your arms, can aid in improving the strength of the muscles that surround the joint an improve the joint stability.
The 360 Rotation is one of the exercise that took me awhile to get used to. After practicing it for quite some time, I have notice the range of motion in my shoulders to improve but it’s still a process for me
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Again, I don’t see the steel mace as replacing anything. It’s another tool that goes into the toolbox that has its place and time just like everything else. The biggest takeaway from the steel mace is that it adds great variety and challenges different movement patterns.
But the biggest thing I love about the steel mace is…
It makes you feel like a badass warrior.
It makes you feel Ku.
