Steel Mace, Club and Gripper

I just got my steel mace (8KG), club (6KG) and captain of crush gripper (1.5) a few days ago from Deimos Athletics

I was surprised to see that the owners of Deimos are teenagers. The customer service was great. I did not see the combo promotion that I wanted on their site but I was able to confirm my order thru simple email and text messages.

The steel mace is longer than what I normally see in online videos. It is hard to grab at the end and swing all the way from the back to front to perform Bulgarian squats. I had to grab it almost at the middle which stretches my lats and elbow a bit. I feel a bit of pressure on the elbow due to the stretch, but it must be just my case. Also, the 8KG weight makes it triple hard which I already expected based from online reviews and feedbacks. I would think that a 3-4kg is advisable for beginners.

The one workout I love with steel mace is the grave digger. It works your biceps, lats and back. You can push yourself to 100 reps if you want to because the risk of injury is almost none. Just don’t slouch when you perform this workout, always tight abdominal muscles.

So far I’m only using the club for Bulgarian squats since it is lighter and shorter.

The captain crush gripper is as good as advertised. I used to search for this brand 4 years ago but was unable to; it is great to see that local shops are carrying this now. 1.5 is already tough to squeeze. I’m hoping to fully close it in 2 months.

Please don’t go crazy on this weights especially if you have back and/or wrist injury like me.

For my case, since I had minor protrusion of my L4/L5 with sciatica I lift weights heavy but I don’t go crazy that I have to finish it with time limit. I still believe in getting stronger by the numbers (of weight) not by the number of reps you can do. If you want to do cardio then sprint like a madman.

Time limits are one of the reasons that I’m not a huge fan of Cross fit. The idea of lifting weights regardless it is light or heavy and combining it with time limit forces a person to abandon form. Plus doing this with Olympic lift is a disaster.

Anyway, the message from Deimos using the word 'gains' kinda made me day :D