One of the most common comments we get on mace and club videos is some version of:
āI'd rip my shoulder out of its socket doing that.ā
And here's the thing: if you've never swung a mace before and you immediately grab a 50 pound mace, you very well might hurt yourself.
But that's not how you're supposed to approach mace and club training.
You start light.
You learn the movement. You develop the range of motion. You build strength and control in those positions. Then, as your body becomes more capable, you gradually add load.
That's where the value of mace and club swinging for the shoulders really comes from.
Your shoulders are supposed to move
Think about a single arm club mill.
Your upper arm travels through a huge circle. It moves overhead, behind you, back around, and forward again.
Compare that to a lot of traditional strength training.
We press forward. We press overhead. We row. Maybe we do some lateral raises.
Those are all great movements, and we should absolutely keep doing them. But the shoulder is capable of significantly more movement than that.
Maces and clubs give us a way to progressively load some of those larger, circular movement patterns.
You can almost think of club swinging as a much more advanced, loaded version of the arm circles you've probably been doing since gym class.
Except instead of simply moving your arm through the range of motion, you're learning to control an external load through it.
The weight has to be earned
This is the part that gets overlooked when someone sees a video of an experienced person swinging a heavy mace.
You don't start there.
The goal isn't to force your shoulder into a position it isn't prepared for. The goal is to gradually increase what your shoulder is capable of doing.
Start with a manageable weight and range of motion. Learn the technique. Give your body time to adapt.
As your mobility, strength, coordination, and control improve, you can increase the challenge.
Eventually, movements that looked insane when you started can become completely normal.
That's capacity.
Don't confuse training with treatment
We hear from people all the time who tell us their shoulders feel dramatically better since they started swinging maces and clubs.
That's awesome, but we're also careful about how we frame that.
Maces and clubs aren't a guaranteed treatment for frozen shoulder, rotator cuff injuries, or any other medical condition. If you're dealing with significant pain or an existing injury, that's something to discuss with an appropriate healthcare professional.
But if your goal is to build strong, mobile, capable shoulders and keep using them through a wide range of motion as you get older, mace and club training gives you a pretty unique way to do it.
Start light. Learn the movement. Build the range.
Then earn the heavier weight.