Clubs, maces, and milk

In the courtyards of Persia, for a thousand years, men have trained in a sunken octagonal pit called a zurkhaneh, the house of strength, to the beat of a drum and the chanting of poetry. They swing heavy wooden clubs behind their heads, lift a bow strung with iron chain, push up on wooden boards, and spin. Across the border in India, the wrestlers of the pehlwani tradition train in earthen pits with the same tools, the gada mace and the Indian clubs, and eat the same way: milk, almonds, ghee, and chickpeas, in staggering quantities, as a sacred discipline.

The clubs are the key. For most of the history of strength training, before the barbell, the club and the mace were the tools, and they train something the barbell doesn't. A club swung behind the head takes the shoulder through its full rotation under load, in a circle, with the weight pulling away from the body. The grip has to hold. The core has to resist the spin. The shoulder, which spends modern life hunched over a keyboard, gets opened, strengthened and made resilient in a way almost nothing else does. Physical therapists have rediscovered this; you'll find Indian clubs in good clinics now.

And the training hall itself is a key. The zurkhaneh is communal, rhythmic, and ritual. The drum sets the pace, the poetry is epic, and the training is bound up with an ethic of humility and service. Nobody there is training for a mirror.

For the month of the Body, this is the key about the shoulders and about rhythm. Vault Human points to a coach who teaches clubs or maces, and they exist in most cities now. A light club, even a plastic one, is enough to start.