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Kettlebell Heavy Club: mixing 2-Hand with 1-Hand movements

jayjo

Level 5 Valued Member
OK this is my 4th post on Heavy/Steel Club.
I have been working with Mark Wildman videos and feeling good about 2-Hand Heavy Club.
Just now began doing a few 1-Hand movements and boy does the weight feel different.
The club is really tearing my joints apart (that is good for my tight, compressed joints).

My question to the community is:
1. Should I first master the 2-Hand Club program/movements and then begin working on 1-Hand Club?
2. Can I mix both 2-Hand and 1-Hand movements in the same workout?
3. Do people consider them so different, or is 2-Hand just building up/prepping for the 1-Hand?
 
1. Should I first master the 2-Hand Club program/movements and then begin working on 1-Hand Club?
IMO, no. I think of them as separate skills (albeit overlapping). I don't think of one as a prerequisite for the other, or one as a regression or progression of the other.
2. Can I mix both 2-Hand and 1-Hand movements in the same workout?
Sure, even in the same set if you really wanted to. I don't do this because if a club is light enough for me to use 1-handed, I don't use it 2-handed. But I can see how in a long continuous set, you might want to vary the grip from one hand to 2-handed to the opposite hand. Tracy Reifkind did this a lot with long sets of KB swings.
3. Do people consider them so different, or is 2-Hand just building up/prepping for the 1-Hand?
2-hand lets you go way heavier because two hands gives you better grip security and better stability/steering strength. So you can hold on to a heavier club, and with two hands one above the other, you have better leverage to stabilize the club in a stationary position (such as the order position), and better leverage to steer the club through the groove.

1-hand has a higher grip demand, and requires more precision in staying in the groove because course correction on the fly is more difficult.

In other words, you can muscle your way through 2-handed drills to a greater extent.

To me, this doesn't mean 1-hand drills are more "advanced." It means you can't go as heavy and they have different demands. They're just different items on the menu. Pizza isn't more advanced than a burger. IMO, there's no reason to wait to start learning 1-handed drills, unless your only available club is just too heavy to handle with one hand.

I learned 1-handed drills first and learned 2-handed drills later after I bought heavier clubs. In fact, I learned double club drills (one in each hand) before ever swinging a club with two hands.
 
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I also learned 1-handed club drills before 2-handed. Of course at that time if you wanted a nice club for training, only RMAX clubbells were available and I think 25 lbs. was the heaviest. The 45 lb. "bruiser" for 2-hand training was introduced later, eventually followed by a 35 lb. for those who wanted a lighter club for 2-hand.

I like Mark Wildman's ideas but may just go back to one of the Shane Heins programs I bought years ago when I get back into club training. It's a triple program package - a double light club one for mobility/restoration, a double 10-15 lb. one, and a 2-hand heavy club one.
 
Great thanks for the input.
Mark Wildman is taking me back to school. He tediously breaks down each part of each move but I need that. Its how I learned the Turkish Get Up from Megsquats.

I feel I am putting on muscle with the Club. So does anyone have an opinion on looking at a Club workout as Upper Body and using Kettlebell for Swings & Get Ups for lower body. So there is a S&S Kettlebell day and a Club day. Does that sound complete?
 
IMO, no. I think of them as separate skills (albeit overlapping). I don't think of one as a prerequisite for the other, or one as a regression or progression of the other.

Sure, even in the same set if you really wanted to. I don't do this because if a club is light enough for me to use 1-handed, I don't use it 2-handed. But I can see how in a long continuous set, you might want to vary the grip from one hand to 2-handed to the opposite hand. Tracy Reifkind did this a lot with long sets of KB swings.

2-hand lets you go way heavier because two hands gives you better grip security and better stability/steering strength. So you can hold on to a heavier club, and with two hands one above the other, you have better leverage to stabilize the club in a stationary position (such as the order position), and better leverage to steer the club through the groove.

1-hand has a higher grip demand, and requires more precision in staying in the groove because course correction on the fly is more difficult.

In other words, you can muscle your way through 2-handed drills to a greater extent.

To me, this doesn't mean 1-hand drills are more "advanced." It means you can't go as heavy and they have different demands. They're just different items on the menu. Pizza isn't more advanced than a burger. IMO, there's no reason to wait to start learning 1-handed drills, unless your only available club is just too heavy to handle with one hand.

I learned 1-handed drills first and learned 2-handed drills later after I bought heavier clubs. In fact, I learned double club drills (one in each hand) before ever swinging a club with two hands.
Steve W.,
I am learning 2-Hand with the 15 lbs Club.
Do you think I can skip to the 25 lbs.....or should I move more slowly and get a 20 lbs. next?
 
Great thanks for the input.
Mark Wildman is taking me back to school. He tediously breaks down each part of each move but I need that. Its how I learned the Turkish Get Up from Megsquats.

I feel I am putting on muscle with the Club. So does anyone have an opinion on looking at a Club workout as Upper Body and using Kettlebell for Swings & Get Ups for lower body. So there is a S&S Kettlebell day and a Club day. Does that sound complete?
I think that could work. Maybe also mix in some squat variations as well.

I agree that clubs build muscle, I have been mixing in high repition club work since just around the same time which you picked them up as well. My entire uper body is def. growing, it is strange how challenging just an 8k club has been especially on single arm movements with my left.

You can also do high volume leg work mixed in with your club work (I recommend it if you have been bit hard by the club bug). For example you could throw casts and cleans into every lunge and squat variation which you can imagine, quickly turns your session into a full body strength and conditioning workout, it is amazing how difficult this can become.

I like your learning approach, you are on a path to mastery.
 
OK this is my 4th post on Heavy/Steel Club.
I have been working with Mark Wildman videos and feeling good about 2-Hand Heavy Club.
Just now began doing a few 1-Hand movements and boy does the weight feel different.
The club is really tearing my joints apart (that is good for my tight, compressed joints).

My question to the community is:
1. Should I first master the 2-Hand Club program/movements and then begin working on 1-Hand Club?
2. Can I mix both 2-Hand and 1-Hand movements in the same workout?
3. Do people consider them so different, or is 2-Hand just building up/prepping for the 1-Hand?
In response to your 3rd question, which Steve W. already provided awesome insight on, I think the beauty of a club is very similar to a kettlebell.

Like a kettlebell, you can get excellent workouts for years doing mid-heavy weight circuits. You can also grow into a wieght over time. The double handed work can be used in higher volume, and the single handed work can slowly be progressed over time within the same workouts.
 
I feel I am putting on muscle with the Club. So does anyone have an opinion on looking at a Club workout as Upper Body and using Kettlebell for Swings & Get Ups for lower body. So there is a S&S Kettlebell day and a Club day. Does that sound complete?
Sure. I think that's a sound plan.

Personally, I'm not a swing and get up guy. My mix of drills is KB double front squats, double C&Ps, single snatches, and double outside the legs swings, plus weighted ring dips and ring pullups. Basically covering squats, ballistic hinges, and grinding press/pull. S&S covers most of the same bases, with goblet squats in the warmup and with get ups as sort of a press.

Steve W.,
I am learning 2-Hand with the 15 lbs Club.
Do you think I can skip to the 25 lbs.....or should I move more slowly and get a 20 lbs. next?
Once you start doing 1-arm drills with 15lbs, you will easily be able to handle 25lbs for 2-arm drills. But then 20lbs will be great progression from 15lbs for 1-arm drills. In other words I don't think 15 to 25 with two hands is a huge jump once you get comfortable with 15.

With one hand, 15 to 25 is a big jump. And with two hands 25 to 35 is a big jump, especially with the classic Rmax clubs, which are longer than most others and where the 35 and 45 have much thicker handles.
 
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Sure. I think that's a sound plan.

Personally, I'm not a swing and get up guy. My mix of drills is KB double front squats, double C&Ps, single snatches, and double outside the legs swings*, plus weighted ring dips and ring pullups. Basically covering squats, ballistic hinges, and grinding press/pull. S&S covers most of the same bases, with goblet squats in the warmup and with get ups as sort of a press.


Once you start doing 1-arm drills with 15lbs, you will easily be able to handle 25lbs for 2-arm drills. But then 20lbs will be great progression from 15lbs for 1-arm drills. In other words I don't think 15 to 25 with two hands is a huge jump once you get comfortable with 15.

With one hand, 15 to 25 is a big jump. And with two hands 25 to 35 is a big jump, especially with the classic Rmax clubs, which are longer than most others and where the 35 and 45 have much thicker handles.
OK this is the kind of explanation I was hoping for. I was trying to see if I could save money and avoid getting every size club....but if I'm going to train 1-arm as well as 2...then I cannot skip the 20 lbs. OK then.
 
Thank again for everybody's feedback. It's not so easy to find someone I can talk to about Heavy Club.
 
Thought I'd throw in 2-cents (maybe a little less than 2-cents). I stumbled onto a used 20# RMAX club on Craigslist a couple years ago. I'm "a pretty strong guy" with zero club swinging experience, and figured 20# would be perfect (since starting with 15# seems to be widely recommended for "average male" and I am, well...., "pretty strong"). My results:

1. 20# is too heavy for me to do almost ANYTHING with, one-handed.
2. 20# seems too light to do much of anything (that seems useful anyway; maybe with much longer sessions it'd be better, but I don't have enough patience) with 2-hands.
3. As a result of #1 and #2, I still have almost zero club swinging experience, and my conclusion is that starting with a 20# club is not a great idea (which is funny, because, as I recall, the guy I bought it from was kind of attempting to point that out to me when I picked it up).
 
This thread inspired me to (in no particular order), watch more Mark Wildman videos, take another shot at 1-arm shield cast with the 20 (I think I mildly strained something) and stop holding out for the discovery of a used 15# club on Craigslist and just order one new from Tacfit.

Baby-steps.
 
This thread inspired me to (in no particular order), watch more Mark Wildman videos, take another shot at 1-arm shield cast with the 20 (I think I mildly strained something) and stop holding out for the discovery of a used 15# club on Craigslist and just order one new from Tacfit.

Baby-steps.
Chances are you're actually plenty strong enough for the 20, you just need to learn the technique. Learning the technique means learning to keep the club in the groove, where you are steering it instead of muscling it, exerting force where you have good leverage and not where you don't. That's why it's hard to learn with a heavier club, because if your groove is all over the place (which it is when you're learning) the leverage of the club makes it hard to get it back where it should be.

It's not necessarily that you're not strong enough to swing the club in the RIGHT groove; it's that you're not strong enough to swing the club in the WRONG groove and get it back. With a given weight, the less strength you need to use, the better you're doing it. Not that club swinging doesn't take strength, you just want your strength to go into a smooth and efficient groove, flowing with the club, instead of struggling against it.

With a heavier club, baby steps to build technique is the right approach. I haven't paid much attention to Mark Wildman's technique videos because I learned long before he made them, but from what I have seen, he takes a pretty step-by-step, slow-building approach (my impression is that it's actually a lot slower than I'd normally advocate, but if you're club weight is a reach to begin with, it makes more sense). I'd start with cleans, swinging the club along the side of the body and then catching it in the vertical order position. Then inside and outside circles, catching the club in the order position each rep. Then shield casts, and then mills.
 
1-hand has a higher grip demand, and requires more precision in staying in the groove because course correction on the fly is more difficult.

In other words, you can muscle your way through 2-handed drills to a greater extent.

+1.

I would go so far as to say I didn't really "get" clubs until I got reasonably adept at the 1 hand moves.

1 hand (at non-trivial weight) really requires you to master the momentum, timing, the arc path, and contract/ relax of the grip.
 
With a heavier club, baby steps to build technique is the right approach. I haven't paid much attention to Mark Wildman's technique videos because I learned long before he made them, but from what I have seen, he takes a pretty step-by-step, slow-building approach (my impression is that it's actually a lot slower than I'd normally advocate, but if you're club weight is a reach to begin with, it makes more sense). I'd start with cleans, swinging the club along the side of the body and then catching it in the vertical order position. Then inside and outside circles, catching the club in the order position each rep. Then shield casts, and then mills.

I actually progressed faster when I *stopped* watching training videos.

They were causing me to think too much, instead of feeling.
 
Thought I'd throw in 2-cents (maybe a little less than 2-cents). I stumbled onto a used 20# RMAX club on Craigslist a couple years ago. I'm "a pretty strong guy" with zero club swinging experience, and figured 20# would be perfect (since starting with 15# seems to be widely recommended for "average male" and I am, well...., "pretty strong"). My results:

1. 20# is too heavy for me to do almost ANYTHING with, one-handed.
2. 20# seems too light to do much of anything (that seems useful anyway; maybe with much longer sessions it'd be better, but I don't have enough patience) with 2-hands.
3. As a result of #1 and #2, I still have almost zero club swinging experience, and my conclusion is that starting with a 20# club is not a great idea (which is funny, because, as I recall, the guy I bought it from was kind of attempting to point that out to me when I picked it up).
I feel like I am ready to move on from the 15 lbs. for 2-hand Club. But the 15 lbs. seems pretty heavy for the 1-hand. Mark Wildman says the club tears your joints apart and I can feel it.
 
I haven't paid much attention to Mark Wildman's technique videos because I learned long before he made them, but from what I have seen, he takes a pretty step-by-step, slow-building approach
Thank you so much for your input and help. The value in training with these things is starting to come into focus, but there's definitely a barrier to entry (this reminds me a little bit of my half-@$$ed attempt at taking up whitewater kayaking as a hobby ~25 years ago). And, the more I think about it, it's pretty obvious why these wouldn't be in most (any?) commercial gyms...... too dangerous, if not for the user, for anybody else just walking around..... nevermind that, they're so cheap and easy to store and transport, once someone learned how to use them, the necessity of the gym itself drops a bit.

Maybe I'm watching the wrong videos. I haven't really seen anything that looks like a progression to a shield cast or a mill; only an explanation and demonstration of what they are, and a recommendation to use a light enough weight when starting to not hurt yourself. Choking up on the club a hand-width is a significant progression (or regression, I suppose).

Everything you said about grooves is dead right. I can certainly tell what the issue is (I've managed it with my strong hand a couple times, but too often I don't start pulling it from behind my back soon enough......, I think because I'm afraid I'll hit myself in the head....., but by the time I do start pulling, it's so far askew that I have no leverage at all and it just ends up down at my opposite ankle), but going lighter seems the only safe approach.

Those guys on youtube (Wildman and the English guy with the shaved head) make swinging the 35 or 40 look so doable (of course, world class weighlifters make snatching my max deadlift look easy too......)
 
Here is another question....my wife has "loose" joints. Her shoulders dislocate easily for example. I have stiff, compressed joints and Heavy Club work feels great. Would Heavy Club work for her with Loose joints? Or would it make things worse?
 
Maybe I'm watching the wrong videos. I haven't really seen anything that looks like a progression to a shield cast or a mill;

Progression for shield cast as I learned it:

Clean to order -> Arm Cast (Wildman calls it a pullover I think) -> Shield Cast

Mark Wildman's progression is a little different in that he has you do the 2-hand version of everything first, then repeat with 1-hand versions.

Progression for mill is spread across a bunch of Wildman's videos. I learned it as a 1-hand move, but his way is probably safer because with 2-hand movement you have that 2nd hand for extra security from hitting your head or other accident.

Inside and outside circles and shield cast all practiced individually -> "hemming" inside circle and shield cast together into mill
 
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