The Evolution of Club Swinging: Ancient to Modern
Thousands of years ago, club swinging began as the first form of weighted exercise. But if you don't understand how culture can negatively impact evolution, it can appear that one "leap" improves upon an earlier level without it being the case. Some cultural influences can cause devolution - a backslide of development. And this is precisely what happened to the club swinging tradition when it encountered the Victorian Era of Great Britain and USA.
view this Victorian castration of movement potential on a thousand year old tradition:
Despite the shrill, codified routine of robotic motions, in the rush to fulfill the demand for club swinging education, people are moving backward rather than forward in our movement evolution. Just because something is older, doesn't mean it's better. Vintage does not mean ancient. And even if the tradition dated back thousands of years (though the Victorian club swinging hiccup of constrained movements was less than 50 years in lifetime), that doesn't mean that we should not refine movement. Think of all of our athletic development in the past 200 years due to the modern sciences of biomechanics and biotensegrity. Our understanding of human movement like our understanding of the body itself has vastly evolved.
Consider this video of traditional Indian club swinging used by yogis and vyayam / kushti athletes:
Firstly, the heavier weight doesn't offer the practitioner the deception of aesthetics. Every movement demands full attention to the whole body: to grip confirmation, to arm lock, to shoulder pack, to spinal alignment, to core activation, to hip recruitment and to leg drive. The "fancy" twirling that some are trying to resurrect lacks any effective adaptive stress to the organism... and amounts to nothing more than nostalgia at worst, and joint mobility for the arms at best (and joint mobility which can more effectively be performed without the light-weight bowling or juggling pins.)
When I first encountered club swinging, I dismissed it as a form of exercise until years later... because I learned it as a weapon in Russia called "bulava." Besides light poles for staff fighting and bayonet fencing, we were taught heavy sword, heavy log and heavy club swinging. Of course, I saw the conditioning benefit from the traditions...
However, it wasn't until several years later encountering the Tajikistani Team at World Police Sambo Championships in Kaunas, Lithuania, did I realize the extreme advantage of this form of exercise for athletic sports performance, albeit still within the confines of combat sports. This form derives from ancient Persia, as part of their physical culture called Zurkhaneh with swinging heavy clubs rhythmically to chants:
Movement can evolve, but also it can backslide into regress due to institutional and cultural dogma. You, just by your very following of my blog, joined the new renaissance in human movement potential. It is neither a return to the past, nor a better understanding of what we've been capable of all along. The capability of your level of sophistication is truly... new under the Sun.
- Due to the sexual suggestibility of pelvic mobility, the lower body was held rigid and fixed in one plane. The hips became so immobilized that all rotations was prohibited.
- Spinal rotation and diagonal/angular movements were deemed to be "unaesthetic" and excised from the catalog of canonized movements, as evidenced by the very "stoic" position forcibly held, and made possible only by the use of light weights.
- The effort of using heavy clubs were considered barbaric and lacked the beautification and order of light-weight versions. Light-weight movements transformed even into juggling having little value over hand-eye coordination, and as a result little to no health benefits.
- And due to the removal of heavy clubs, the movements themselves that were preserved became perverted by the ability to overpower the movements; and so, the entire body was no longer required - no leg drive, no hip recruitment, no core activation.
- Improvisation and individualization were negatively stigmatized in favor for synchronized group behavior. Swinging speed became determined not out of athletic necessity, not out of health requirements of the tissues, but out of the pace of the group-think.
- Horizontal exercise was eliminated in favor of the much more "regal" vertical movements; as were lunges or split stances removed in exchange for neutral, fixed stance.
view this Victorian castration of movement potential on a thousand year old tradition:
Despite the shrill, codified routine of robotic motions, in the rush to fulfill the demand for club swinging education, people are moving backward rather than forward in our movement evolution. Just because something is older, doesn't mean it's better. Vintage does not mean ancient. And even if the tradition dated back thousands of years (though the Victorian club swinging hiccup of constrained movements was less than 50 years in lifetime), that doesn't mean that we should not refine movement. Think of all of our athletic development in the past 200 years due to the modern sciences of biomechanics and biotensegrity. Our understanding of human movement like our understanding of the body itself has vastly evolved.
Consider this video of traditional Indian club swinging used by yogis and vyayam / kushti athletes:
Firstly, the heavier weight doesn't offer the practitioner the deception of aesthetics. Every movement demands full attention to the whole body: to grip confirmation, to arm lock, to shoulder pack, to spinal alignment, to core activation, to hip recruitment and to leg drive. The "fancy" twirling that some are trying to resurrect lacks any effective adaptive stress to the organism... and amounts to nothing more than nostalgia at worst, and joint mobility for the arms at best (and joint mobility which can more effectively be performed without the light-weight bowling or juggling pins.)
When I first encountered club swinging, I dismissed it as a form of exercise until years later... because I learned it as a weapon in Russia called "bulava." Besides light poles for staff fighting and bayonet fencing, we were taught heavy sword, heavy log and heavy club swinging. Of course, I saw the conditioning benefit from the traditions...
However, it wasn't until several years later encountering the Tajikistani Team at World Police Sambo Championships in Kaunas, Lithuania, did I realize the extreme advantage of this form of exercise for athletic sports performance, albeit still within the confines of combat sports. This form derives from ancient Persia, as part of their physical culture called Zurkhaneh with swinging heavy clubs rhythmically to chants:
How has club swinging evolved in the 21st century?
Movement can evolve, but also it can backslide into regress due to institutional and cultural dogma. You, just by your very following of my blog, joined the new renaissance in human movement potential. It is neither a return to the past, nor a better understanding of what we've been capable of all along. The capability of your level of sophistication is truly... new under the Sun.
flow thyself,
Tags: balance, barefoot, career, club, clubbell, clubbells, clubs, conditioning, courage, development
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