|
Pretend the shovelglove is an axe, and that the log you're spliting is a little below knee level. Use your legs to take some of the strain off your back. Slow down as you approach the imaginary point of impact. The stop should be smooth, not jerky. Pull straight back and repeat. New! After about 2 years of doing this movement, I've recently started doing a modified form of it as proposed by John Enzinas here. He's come up with a great name for it too, which makes it easy to imagine the distinction vs. regular old wood chopping: "swiss automaton" (the bell ringing kind). The difference is you just raise the shovelglove higher than I do in the video, over your back. This simple little change makes the exercise much harder, and engages a whole new system of muscles. Is it something that any human being every actually did during the course of his daily activities? Maybe not. It's a little exaggerated, hence the name. It's the imitation of the imitation of a natural movement. Very meta. But what the hell, I like it. Be especially careful to take this movement slow. You *will* kill yourself (or severely damage your ceiling) if you do it too quickly. Credits: thanks John Enzinas for the swiss automaton variation and Mike Hillyer for pointing out a glaring typo on this page. |
|