The Steel Mace is rapidly gaining popularity in the fitness world for its strength and conditioning benefits – Steel Mace Flow is a style of working out with a Steel Mace, but what makes it so unique, and why should you try Steel Mace Flow?
In recent years, there has been an emergence of unconventional exercise methods. Steel Mace Flow is one of these new modalities and is an incredibly effective form of exercise and movement due to its focus on balance, coordination, and flexibility.
Here are just a few reasons why Steel Mace Flow should be a part of your training:
it's A Full-Body Workout
Steel Mace Flow is an all-encompassing functional movement practice with cardio and weightlifting elements that build muscle from head to toe. With various motions, such as overhead swings, side swings, and figure eights.
Compared to other mace workouts, Steel Mace Flow stands out because it uses combinations of different mace movements in lengthy and complex flows that are repeated over long periods.
More traditional mace workouts focus on a few body parts at a time, focusing on precise movements repeated in a more rep and set style workout.
As a training tool in both styles, Steel Mace effectively increases proficiency in balance, coordination, endurance, and flexibility. Whether someone decides to practice one or the other is mainly a preference.
Cardio Without Impact
The beauty of using a Steel Mace lies in how accessible it can be. Using a Steel Mace for exercise provides a cardiovascular challenge less damaging to your joints than jumping rope or running.
In Steel Mace Flow, you constantly move against gravity, which requires coordination between your arms (mace)and legs. There are many ways to increase intensity, making it an excellent form of cardio. Steel Mace Flow enables you to not only challenge multiple parts under a single workout session, but it also can help you reach peak heart rates quicker, leading towards maximizing caloric burn in shorter sessions.
Core Strength
Core strength is essential for total-body fitness because it supports every other athletic movement you may perform! Whether you are a runner focusing on endurance or a weight lifter stacking plates, your core creates stability, improving your effectiveness in any activity you're taking on.
Steel Mace Flow requires participants to constantly produce torque while moving through multiple planes. Performing circular movements around shoulder height, such as 360s and mills, also helps target core engagement.
Balance Improvements
Steel Mace Flow is an effective way to improve balance. When you are in flow, your body is constantly in motion, controlling rotation and tension with the mace.
You must continually adjust to maintain balance because although you are swinging the mace, the mace wants to swing you. This dynamic helps to strengthen stabilizing muscles responsible for keeping the body upright while in motion. By strengthening these muscles, mace users improve their balance, agility, coordination, and posture.
Strengthens Joints and Secondary Muscles
Another benefit of working out with a Steel Mace is that it reaches muscles and joints that traditional weight lifting does not. The rhythmic and rotating motion from Steel Mace Flow works small, isolated muscles that are not often engaged with conventional weightlifting. This helps to increase overall muscular endurance and also increases flexibility. This increased strength in mobility can reduce the risk of injury during exercise and physical activity in any athletic endeavor.
builds coordination
The coordination required to perform Steel Mace Flow derives from the combination of multiple movement patterns. It requires that you memorize movement combinations. To flow, you must move your arms, legs, and torso in specific ways to keep the mace in motion. You must keep track of the timing and angles of the movements to ensure that the mace does not hit any part of your body. To flow fast or fluidly requires dedication and practice, and focus.
Relieves Stress and Anxiety
Lastly, Steel Mace Flow is excellent for stress relief. Combining strength drills and various range-of-motion exercises can help keep the body and mind connected. You must focus and stay present, creating an almost meditative state when you flow. As a Steel Mace Flow practitioner and an ultra runner, I can attest that Steel Mace Flow makes a similar state to a runner's high. Research has also shown that repetitive and rhythmic exercises such as Steel Mace Flow can release endorphins, thus enhancing mood and reducing stress!
final takeaways
Overall, Steel Mace Flow is an incredibly effective form of exercise that has the potential to both challenge the body and calm the mind. It can help to improve balance, coordination, and flexibility, as well as provide stress relief.
Steel Mace Flow may be the perfect form of exercise for you if you are looking for a comprehensive workout that offers a bit of everything while tapping into a meditative state which allows time to fly by.
If you are interested in learning Steel Mace Flow, Fourth Dimension Fitness offers one-on-one training and a weekly class on. somble Thursdays at 8:30pm EST.
Looking to purchase a Steel Mace to do Steel Mace Flow? Our favorites are Onnit's 10lb Steel Mace, White Lion Athletics 5ln 36" long mace, and the Yes4All 7lb mace.