Heavyhands Education - Fitness

We have been reading too many articles lately about the threat to health that obesity has become. It's our mission to share Heavyhands Walking (http://www.heavyhands.org/hhwalk.htm) with as many people as possible. It is such a beneficial system for those wishing to add exercise to a healthy life style. If you want to learn more, please ask questions here.
Kate

This message is for Troy.
Your question of December 27 did not get answered, and for that we apologize. You seem to have the right idea about varying the intensity of your workouts so that you do intervals of the high intensity work that gets you out of your aerobic comfort zone. (Of course, you should check with your doc first to be sure that this is safe for you). Boosting the intensity of your workout will keep you from hitting a training plateau. There are three ways you can do this with Heavyhands.
1. You can add more hand weight
2. You can increase the range of motion of the hands, add body leans and flexion, or add knee dips and leans
3. You can increase the frequency of the move or stride/stroke combination
For more detail take a tour of our website

Bruce, I really like that new V shaped movement. I am going to try it out. I often do different variation on swing and sways, accentuating the range of movements in different ways -- dips, waist bends and exaggerated circles.

I have been using a couple of different variations recently. One is a lat flings - cross-over variation. Instead doing it across my chest standing straight up, I bend at the knees and the waist and fling the weights up and back. This can give good abdominal work, as well as working the chest and the shoulders from a different angle than regular lat flings. You do need to be careful moving the weights as they cross each other. It is easy to bang them together, especially larger weights. You also need to be aware that this works your trapezoids and deltoids pretty hard, so don't overdo or you will be very sore there the next day. I know this from experience.

Another move that I have been doing recently is what I call "pass the ammunition". I discovered this while shadowboxing. Essentially, it is the same as throwing crossbody punches from side to side but you use both hands in each direction. The movement reminded me of the movement the you see in old military movies where they form a line to move ammunition from one place to another. One person passes it to another who passes it to another down the line. Throwing in deep knee bends and accentuated trunk twisting adds alot work to this exercise.

Dr. Schwartz may have written about similar variations, so I cannot take credit for them, but it really points to the beauty of heavyhands workouts. With a little care and thought there are endless possibilities. As Dr. Schwartz said once there are few ways to go wrong and thousands of different ways to do heavyhands right.

I am thrilled that there is now a place for us HH'ers to talk with each other about this most powerful exercise program.

I am interested in whether anyone out there is trying moves not contained in the two HH books.

I've taken Dr. Schwartz' figure-eight swing and sway (a tremendous exercise in itself) and have created a variation which is more radically rotational at the trunk.  With hands together, I start with a pair of five to eight pounders and swing them at arms length in an arc from side to side around my body, feet planted firmly at about shoulder width.  I try to bring the weights all the way behind my back, swing them from left to right at about mid-chest level in an arc at arm's length all the way around to my back on the right side, and go back and forth.  A mean variation is to make the starting point a point somewhere way behind your left ear and take it all the way to the other side, behind your right ear (basically doing the same move but not at waist level or chest level but at eye level).

Then, knowing what Dr. Schwartz has written and I've experienced about velocity and stopping, I've tried the mid-chest level exercise but rather than nice circular arcs, I thrust the two weights to a point in front of me, almost like I am swinging a bat.  It's more like making a "v" with the point of the "v" out in front of me, and then pulling back to the other side before thrusting forward to the point of the "v" .  Maybe this is something like a two-handed backhand followed immediately by a two-handed forehand in tennis, but you always keep your body facing the net, so to speak.  And you focus on extreme rotation at the trunk.  And when I do it using the weights up high above my shoulders, WOW!  The feeling is something like a combination of punching, hitting a baseball and hitting a tennis ball.

What other moves are people trying?

I too am looking for heavier weights beyond my ten pounders.