It’s one man’s invention, called the Shovelglove. Here’s how he came upon it:
It was a rainy Sunday. I hadn’t gone to the gym in over three months, and I was feeling painfully out of shape and antsy to do some kind of exercise. But I didn’t want to go out in the rain, and the prospect of subjecting myself to the boring torture of the gym seemed even drearier. I wanted an exercise I could do right there, in my bedroom, without any fancy equipment.
But I didn’t want to do sit-ups or pushups. I didn’t want to grovel on my stomach on the floor, like some degraded beast. “There must be some kind of movement I can do standing up, with the dignity of a human being,” I thought, “some kind of movement that is natural and interesting, that my body would like to do.”
If you like Seth Roberts and the spirit of self-experimentation, you just might like Reinhard Engels and his Shovelglove.
(H/T: politicalcalculations)
13 Comments
For safety purposes, start with an 8 lb. sledge before moving to a 12 or 16 pounder.
And put a cold can of beer on the sore muscles, then drink the beer.
— save_the_rustbeltThere’s actually nothing new about doing heavy labor-type activities for exercise purposes. The practice is known as General Physical Preparedness, or GPP.
— prosaOne thing I have done at home is to fill backpacks with books. The try to use the backpacks as dumbells. Backpacks have straps and handles. If you play around with them, you can use them for curls, shoulder presses, etc. if you have a bench, you can do some bench presses (although the weight might not be high enough just from books). If the straps or handles are tough on your hands, you can wear gloves. Maybe not as good as the shoveglove, since these are not natural movements. But if you already have books and backpacks, you can do some weight training at home.
— Cyril MorongI’m not sure what his issue is with push-ups and sit-ups; I’ve never found them “humiliating” or “bestial” in the least. After all, it’s my floor. Beyond that, I don’t relish the idea of swinging a sledge hammer around my living room, unless I’ve decided to redecorate. Also, I reallly wonder what the torque is doing to his back…
The back pack idea is good, but has severe limitations in that the average school-grade pack can’t handle enough weight. I have a vest with 50lbs of lead ingots (2.5lbs ea) that allows for any kind of excersise movement, including running. With a rattan stick thru the arm holes I can do curls, etc… All this with no danger of smashing the TV.
— RaymondA variation on the backpack idea: My wife walks more slowly than I do, so to ease frustration and get sufficient exercise when walking with her I use a weighted backpack. I put a 25 lb weight plate in the backpack, plus leave my work papers in there so it weighs around 35 pounds or so.
You can also put a water bottle in here (although I don’t recommend putting this in with your work papers) ;)
Any more than 35 pounds and I’d have to use a weight vest like Raymond’s.
Almost any exercise that you enjoy and actually DO is better than almost any exercise you just think about, so if shoveling works for this guy, more power to him. I think I’d be continually repairing windows and drywall if I did this.
— zbicyclistThis is a very strange coincidence. I am currently reading Freakonomics for my Book Club AND I am friends with Reinhard -creator of “Shovel Glove” and the “No S Diet” AND I was just referred to Shovel Glove’s feature on the Freakonomics website. I can tell the readers of this blog that Reinhard is actually looking much buffer and leaner since he started these routines a few years ago!
— ginac-nI think the most curious part of the site is the part about the time. He claims that 14 minutes is one minute less than the smallest unit of schedulistically significant time.
“You guessed it, 14 is a significant number. Why? Because it’s one minute less than the smallest unit of schedulistically significant time. No calendar has a finer granularity than 15 minutes. No one ever has a meeting that starts at 5 or 10 or 14 minutes before or after the hour. You have no excuse not to do this. Time-wise, it doesn’t even register.”
I guess it is supposed to be some psychological ploy to make people feel like they have the time to do the exercise but I am skeptical of both the ’schedulistically significant’ number of 15 and just the oddness of choosing fourteen.
— onlineodditiesThe really cool thing is, you have full access to Reinhard. For instance, he’s part of the Health Hacks Podcast. You can listen to the thoughts behind the plans by listening to him there. This is one of several interesting fitness systems Reinhard’s built.
There are lots of paths to the goal. Reinhard’s happen to be outside the box. Give them further investigation, and maybe check out the podcast. You’ll hear the “behind the scenes” on some of it.
— chrisbroganReinhard Engels suggest that the shovel glove is a more “natural” way of excercising, but what is he basing this assumption on? It is not likely that Homo erectus or early Homo sapiens were swinging sledgehammers. In fact they would probably be more likely to perform similiar motions to weight lifting, since stone tool making was becoming an important aspect of their lives. Thus a lot of lifting of heavy objects would occur (which is not too dissimiliar to weight lifting).
Furthermore push-ups and pull-ups are even more natural. For most of hominid history before Homo erectus our ancestors were predominantly arboreal, thus they would perform motions similiar to sit-ups and push-ups(because of an intensive use of arm and shoulder muscles, while climbing trees).
So working in the mines, which has taken up a very short time frame in human history, is not a more “natural” motion than many of the alternative excercise possibilities. So if anyone really wants a natural excercise, then I suggest living with a hunter and gatherer society (except that will not guarantee a natural excercise regime either since there’s no strong evidence that any given hunter and gatherer society is a reliable replica of pre-holocene human lifestyles).
As a result I’m going to stick with weights until some real information comes in concerning what’s a more “natural” and hence “better” excercise.
— chrisbryanin response to chrisbryan’s disparaging remarks: i don’t think the point of shovelglove is that it’s “better” than weightlifting. the point is you can do it at your apartment (remember: it’s raining), it’s more fun than pushups (you can pretend you’re a french coal miner), and it works really well.
— JoeI agree with Joe, and would add that the whole premise of Shovelglove seems to be based on some sort of idea of exercising with dignity. The creator doesn’t want to go to a depressing gym, and he doesn’t want to grovel on the floor doing pushups like an ape. His routine keeps him fit and is easy to maintain because it eliminates many undesirable aspects of exercising that would have otherwise kept him from doing it. I personally don’t think i would enjoy pretending to shovel and chop wood in my living room, but I think Reinhard is definitely onto something.
— carlpJust have to say…some of you are a pretty serious bunch! Especially chrisbryan! A lot of what Reinhard writes is meant tongue in cheek…he’s a witty guy.
FWIW, this works. I do it, becuase I loathe weights and if you swing a 12 pound hammer through these movements, do it hard for 14 (or heck, 15) minutes, you will feel the pain. 12 pounds on the end of a stick is different than 12 pounds in your hand.
As for Reinhard’s thing with pushups…well, I think he does them now anyway in addition to his shovelglove/hammer workouts. Again, I think he was being somewhat humorous when he wrote the degraded beast stuff or whatever it was…years ago.
— BillJust want to say >>
Thanx Engels, good and funny idea, great results.
Yes there are squats, pushups etc …one can add
5 tibetans or 8 canadianc or 8 brokade.
Or if one is very old - like I am - and did some East Erupian army training there are 8 minute simple bodyweight training ! Simple but far from easy.
Yes there are dambbells etc … good stuff, one has to very carefull to train.
AND there are clubs, maces, swords ( real heavy one ) excellent for training strength AND endurance AND flexibility. Here goes hammers as well.
1. shovelglove/sledgehammer RULES !
2. results are superb !
3. easy for home workouts
4. natural movements - most of them
5. all body exercises
6. compound exercises
and not easy at all !
Good work mister Engels !
— BogaPub