Summah Tiiimmmmeee & the Mace is Swinging

It's all I've done this week. I've been training daily, and my shoulders are freaking tired.

It started on Wednesday, I suddenly had a hair up my ass to get some Mace work in, and I wanted it to burn. I wanted to feel it aching deep in my shoulders. Something about training Mace has me feeling like the baddest beastliest Valkyrie, and I'm so determined for it to be my weapon this summer.

I started with some lunges and squats, some ballistic Mace spins, and shoulder presses, and I realized I'm strong enough in my core now that I don't have to grip right next to the mace bell. I can hold it from the very end, so the bell is far away from my body.

That changes the weight from 10lbs to 32lbs because of the force of gravity working against me.

Then I tried out swings. I couldn't believe it, because I've never really even tried them before, but damnit I DID them. I did 8 reps before my shoulders wanted to fall apart.

Following approximately 25 minutes of Mace Drills, I finished. I strolled around my 9-acre property to relax and got bitten by mosquitoes before going indoors. I tallied up 57 mosquito bites. Reminder to self: perspiration lures insects.

And that's been my everyday this week, with the occasional addition of some sword drills for about 20 minutes or so. Instead of running through drills, I've taken to breaking down the moves into repetitions. So for strike 5, The Stab, I'm lunging and stabbing with my sword in hand, completing the twist in my obliques and the push with my sword arm into one solid, controlled motion over and over again until my ribs ache and my arms want to fall off.

And then I switched sides.

I've broken down the 8 points every day, isolating the muscles required to smooth out the movements so that I feel less clumsy about swinging my sword around. it's working. One week of this and every single motion of the 8 points has become sharper, cleaner, smoother, and more controlled.

One of my hang-ups over sword training has been that I don't want people to see me do them. I feel clumsy and goofy and like such a dweeb doing it because I recognize the need for the movements to be better, significantly so.

So breaking down the movements and isolating the muscle groups in the moves this week has already yielded great results and I'm really excited to keep going.

I have another photo dump I'm meaning to do, but my internet has been spotty with all the storms that have nailed us this week.. One of these days at the Library when I'm working on the cookbook I'll have to upload a bunch of pictures.