One of the comments we get regularly when we post heavy mace swings is some version of:
“Isn’t the momentum doing most of the work?”
Yes, there is momentum.
Mace swinging is a ballistic movement. You’re intentionally accelerating a weight and allowing gravity and momentum to contribute to its movement around your body.
But saying momentum is doing the work misses a huge part of what is actually happening during the swing.
You still have to control the mace
When you cast the mace behind you, gravity starts pulling the head of the mace down. That creates momentum that helps carry it through the bottom of the backswing and up the other side.
But the mace isn’t moving independently of you.
You’re holding onto it.
As the mace accelerates, all of that force transfers back into your body. The mace is pulling against your hands, arms, shoulders, trunk, and ultimately your connection to the ground.
Depending on where it is in the swing, it can try to pull you backward, sideways, or forward.
Your body has to control all of that.
Momentum creates a problem your body has to solve
This is an important part of understanding ballistic training.
Momentum doesn't eliminate force. Momentum creates force that you then have to manage.
During a mace swing, you have to maintain your posture and stay connected to the ground while a load travels around your body on the end of a long lever.
The farther that weight gets from you, the more demanding that leverage becomes.
You’re resisting unwanted movement while simultaneously allowing the movement you actually want. You're not trying to stop the mace dead in its tracks. You're controlling its path, timing your pull, and redirecting the force into the next part of the swing.
That’s a big part of the skill of mace swinging.
There’s very little downtime in a mace swing
The backswing is probably the closest you get to a moment of reduced muscular effort.
When your arms are overhead and the mace is hanging behind you, you can allow your arms to lengthen and let the weight move through the backswing.
But you can't just switch everything off.
Your hands still have to hold onto the mace. Your trunk still has to maintain position. Your shoulders and lats are managing the load. Your entire body is still responding to a weight moving around you.
Even when the mace returns to the front and your arms straighten into order position, the job isn't over.
The weight is now sitting well in front of your body and trying to pull you forward. You still have to maintain your posture and control it.
There really isn't a point where you can completely relax and let the mace take care of itself.
Using momentum and being controlled by momentum are different things
This is probably the biggest distinction.
A good mace swinger uses momentum.
A beginner is often controlled by momentum.
As you get better, you learn when to allow the mace to accelerate, when to stay out of its way, when to pull, and how to redirect the weight without letting it drag your body out of position.
That’s also why simply picking up a very heavy mace and throwing it around isn't the goal.
The goal is to own the movement.
You should be controlling the mace through the entire swing, even when you're intentionally using gravity and momentum to keep it moving.
That’s the point of ballistic training
We don't need to pretend momentum isn't involved to make mace swinging legitimate strength training.
Momentum is part of what makes it interesting.
You create acceleration. The moving mace creates force. That force transfers back into your body, and your body has to stabilize, resist, redirect, and eventually overcome it to continue the swing.
Then you cast it again and repeat the process.
The momentum creates the force. Controlling that force is the work.
There are no free rides in mace swinging.