Club Swinging Essentials

Few tools are more elemental, natural and enduring than the Club. Certainly primitive or developing humans picked up heavy sticks to crack open food or swung them for defense. Children pick up spoons and other objects and bang on whatever is available. As adults, the games we play can involve "clubs" in a variety of shapes and designs, including the golf club, baseball bat, and cricket bat.

A look at ancient Hindu texts reveals pictures of Hindu deities carrying clubs. These images indicate that the club has roughly a 5000-year history.

So-called "Indian Clubs" made the trip to the West as a result of British Colonialism. They eventually gained popularity in the United States in the late-1800s and were widely used in the German Gymnastics system called the Turnvereine. One of these, which became known as Turner Halls in the US, was still active when Dr. Ed Thomas was growing up in Davenport, Iowa.

Club swinging was highly developed and popular in Davenport for several generations when Dr. Thomas began training with them around the age of eight. He eventually began teaching the art to a few of his university students in the early 1980s, and continued searching for instructors. In 1988, he went to Burma as a Fulbright Scholar and studied under a classical club swinging instructor for nine months. Along the way, he has also found club swinging instruction in Korea, Germany and other places.

Despite its illustrious history as an Olympic sport in 1904 and 1932 and its presence in Army physical training doctrine from around 1885-1980, we currently find ourselves in the perplexing situation of it being reintroduced as a training implement. Add to this the fact that there are at best only a handful of people alive today who are truly familiar with the art of classical club swinging, it is truly a skill worth learning.

Club Swinging Essentials seeks to ground Club swinging as a restorative art and to bring Mindful Movement to the "extreme" fitness culture. The manual and DVD reveal, and detail, an essential group of classical Club swinging movements and provide a bit of history and perspective.

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the Club Swinging Essentials Manual. Gray Cook and Brett Jones have been extremely fortunate to work with Dr. Ed Thomas in taking his club swinging system to the public. A disappearing art, club swinging provides a high neural demand on movement and coordination.

Why Swing Clubs?

Not to answer a question with a question but allow me to ask you: "Do you have a restorative art as part of your fitness regime?" What is a restorative art?

The fact that you may have felt the need to follow my question answering the first question with a question means you probably don't have a restorative art in your fitness regime.

A restorative art seeks to bring the body back to an optimal state of balance. It is the balance to the heavy, "extreme" training common in today's gym. In the past there were three systems in physical education: Martial, Restorative and Pedagogical. Today we are heavily slanted toward the Pedagogical (games and sport) where the push is to achieve what we call "fitness". This push to run faster or farther or lift more weight pushes us out of balance. A restorative art like club swinging seeks to release the tension and stress of "extreme" fitness training.