Experiment - Warrior Arts - The Mace
I’m a big fan of projects, if I haven’t got focus and novelty in my life I tend to drift off course. From today, taking inspiration from Raptitude and his series of experiments in life, I am going to start documenting these experiments more formally here in the blog.
As lockdown started back in March I thought it would carve out a chunk of time and therefore an opportunity to learn a new skill. I opted to learn how to swing a pair of Indian clubbells. We are a few months on now and while I still swing clubbells consistently, I can’t claim to be very good.
I’ve heard that we are likely to remain working from home at least until Christmas so the absence of a commute means I should squeeze in another learning opportunity.
Rather than continue with an existing project and set my first challenge to attain mastery, I thought I would continue with my time honoured path of seeking new and shiny things to play with. So experiment No 1 is to:
Learn how to Swing a Mace 360
….in 30 days
The gada or mace is an ancient weapon used by Hindu warriors and is still studied as a martial art. Nowadays the mace is used a functional fitness tool.
The mace’s weight imbalance and swinging motion has impressive benefits for the body including shoulder, strength and mobility, core rotational strength and a killer grip.
More importantly it looks blinking cool when you can swing it properly and any self respecting warrior woman ought to be able to swing a weapon with grace.
Here’s Steph Sorenson swinging Mace 360s with consummate grace.
So in readiness for the challenge, I have prepared my own mace. I’ve made it with a handle from an old garden tool and embedded it in a ceramic pot of concrete.
Concrete mace and rubber practice model
My first attempt at mace making was not successful, so for this mace I followed instructions from Bill and Steph Sorenson (see the instagram post above) and I have been much more successful. In fact it was such fun that I’m tempted to make my experiment to make a new gada everyday, it’s amazing the things people throw away that would make perfect mace bases.
The homemade mace has had 3 days to dry and is now ready for Operation 360. I’ll do a wrap up post showing my Day 1 to Day 30 progress shots but I will also attempt to write up daily(ish) progress reports on my experiment log.
Resources for learning to swing a Mace
Mace Video tutorials
- Nourishing Moves – How to Swing a Mace