a look at Indian Clubs

HealthyButterBlog
Written By Chris Butterworth

I’ve been reading and learning about Indian Clubs for a few years but only recently had the opportunity need to try them out. (Not being able to workout after injury was more mentally challenging than I anticipated; I ended up practicing with very light weight - which wouldn’t require legs or knees or knee-rotation..)

What are Indian Clubs?

There are many different variations of clubs, depending on their size, shape, weight, and region of origin. (Do a search online and almost every article will offer an introductory club-history lesson.) But for our purposes we will break clubs into 2 categories:

  • Heavy Clubs: Generally 5 - 100 lbs. Also called Club-bells, Steel Clubs, Persian Meels, and other names. Swung mostly in a “mill” pattern, for strengthening shoulders and rotational force - leading to increased athletic performance.

  • Indian Clubs: Generally 1 - 3 lbs. Also called Light Clubs. Swung in complex patterns for shoulder mobility, strength, and stabilization - leading to a full range of motion in the shoulder joint. Great for rehab after a shoulder injury, or pre-hab if your shoulders don’t have full range of motion, even if you haven’t injured them - yet.

Who should consider learning and practicing Indian Clubs?

Everyone should be practicing clubs in some way, form, or manner.

We live in a time and place where shoulder health is at an historic low. We spend our days, weeks, and years hunched over computer screens with our backs rolled and our shoulders slumped forward. Then we go out on the weekend and try to play/work/compete like we did when we were younger and our shoulders were healthy. Best case: our shoulders don’t work very well. Other cases involve surgery, rehab, and neck/back pain.

Where do you fit?

  • Heavy Clubs: If you’re fortunate enough to be able to swing a 7-10 lb club, under control, with full range of motion in both arms, you should stick with heavy clubs. There are a number of programs you can follow (single arm, 2-handed, double clubs) and can work towards heavier weight, increased complexity, and/or time under tension.

  • Indian Clubs: If the thought of swinging a 7-lb bowling pin (or hammer) around in the air and behind your head sounds impossible, you should start with Indian Clubs. You can start with 1-lb clubs (1 in each hand), then move to 2-lb and even 3-lb once you get your range of motion back and they start to feel more comfortable. (But there’s never a rush - the motion is more important than the weight.)

Reminder: I am not a licensed or certified club-ologist; these are only my opinions. I am well-studied in the topic and have been swinging clubs personally for a couple of years. I have also gone through rehab for a torn rotator cuff, so I have recent first-hand experience of what working and non-working shoulders feel like. I only wish I knew about swinging clubs before my shoulder injury and rehab; I think it would have made a huge difference.

So, all this talk is nice, but how do we get started? How can we get our shoulders back into good health?

Getting started with Indian Clubs

I have yet to find a free, online, step-by-step guide offering a full program from first-time club swinger all the way up to fully recovered shoulders. Here is the 5-step plan I would tell my brother, wife, or good friend to follow:

1) Do some overview research online.

Do a search for “using Indian Clubs for healthy shoulders.” There are hundreds of articles and videos on the topic, and most of them will give some history on this ancient tool, along with an overview and some examples of exercises.

2) You’ll need a pair of clubs.

Research is great, but at some point you’ll want to actually swing a pair of Indian Clubs. That doesn’t mean you need to spend money immediately, however. Here are a few options to consider:

  • Water bottles. I had some Kirkland Italian Sparkling Mineral Water (Costco) in the pantry. These are standard 16.9 oz bottles but the neck is elongated, shaped a little like a small club. I filled them with water all the way to the top, giving them an actual weight of just under 1.25 lbs. These are what I have been using while rehabbing my knee.

  • Wine bottles. Slightly larger and heavier than water bottles, and you definitely wouldn’t want to drop one, but an empty wine bottle is shaped a lot like a club. This might be a good option for a test drive while you explore other avenues. (Truth be told, an empty bottle of Jamison Whiskey also has a nice shape…)

  • Order online. You may one day want a pair of custom hand-crafted wooden clubs. Heck, you might even start collecting them. But I would recommend starting out with a cheap, polypropylene pair from Amazon. They’ll work great and last a long time. Here is an example search results: https://amzn.to/4cRsTHq

3) Consider a paid program.

There are a thousand different ways to swing Indian clubs. Searching around online will help you find a lot of examples, but it will be up to you to take this information and build your own program: Which exercises to do and in what order? If you’re the kind of person who would prefer step-by-step guidance from a certified professional, here are a couple people I would consider looking into:

  • Mark Wildman has posted almost 1,500 free educational videos and is one of my favorite online resources. He has a program specifically created for training overweight and deconditioned (injured) individuals (he calls it TOI.) One part of this program focuses on Indian Clubs. A couple of thoughts:

    • On one hand, I have never purchased one of Mark’s programs, so I cannot vouch for it via personal experience.

    • On the other hand, Mark is a wealth of information and you can’t help but to get smarter about body-engineering and human movement patterns when you listen to him.

    • Some of his programs require a one-time purchase. As of the time of this writing, however, the Indian Club section is on a monthly subscription. This is my favorite model for any unknown value proposition arrangement.

    • Link here: https://wildmanathletica.mykajabi.com/indianclubs

  • Coach Vaughn was one of the early online resources for club swinging and mace swinging, and has detailed instructionals covering a wide range of functional movement topics. He also has a step-by-step ebook available for purchase.

4) Here are some other free resources worth checking out.

These are a few articles and videos that jumped out to me as interesting and/or worth sharing:

5) Remember, this is just the Starting point.

You don’t need to do EVERY exercise you’ve seen online. Start with 1 exercise for 1 minute (30 secs forward, 30 secs backwards), then add 1 minute (1 new exercise) every day or two. You’ll build towards being able to swing for 15 minutes at a time over the course of a month, and your shoulders will likely feel a lot better.

From there it’s time to exercise ownership of your own program. Eliminate the exercises that are too easy. Focus on the ones that feel great. Try to find replacements or stepping stones for the ones that are too complicated.

Eventually, hopefully, you’ll get to the point where you want to introduce some simple heavy club exercises as well. (But that’s another post for another day…)

Thanks for reading. Go get better.

- Chris Butterworth

Chris Butterworth
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