Clubz The Fitness Indian Club Training Program

Love it

With a stack of DVD workouts that is approaching waist high, I'm easily at an intermediate to advanced level when it comes to workouts. For quite some time, I've cycled through Power 90, P90X, P90X3, Master's Hammer & Chisel, Body Beast, RIPT90, Bob Harper DVDs, MMA and Kettlebell workouts, and stepping away from the screen, no small amount of Crossfit and weight lifting. That said, I was looking for something kind of different. I had narrowed it down to the Teeter Thunderbell or Clubz. I wanted something that kind of flowed. What kind of swayed me to Clubz and away from the Thunderbell is that the Clubz come with a whole program of workouts, which included cardio, power and recovery. The Thunderbell only came with a couple of DVDs with short segments that you have to combine to make a longer workout.First off, the Clubz aren't just like weights. I'm using 30 and 40 pound dumbbells in Body Beast, so I thought I could easily do 6 pound Clubz. However, the genius of Clubz is that you aren't doing bicep curls or other traditional weight lifting. The weights are lighter and you use them in entirely different ways than dumbbells (for the most part). After swinging them around for thirty minutes, they get pretty heavy. While I could see a really big guy needing 4 - 6 pounds, I settled on the 3 pound Clubz and I think they are perfect. Unless you have been working out for a while, starting out with 2 pounds is probably the smart thing to do. And to be clear, if you try and go too heavy, it's going to slow you down and you are going to lose form. You will start to use them more like dumbbells and incorporating your bigger muscles into the workout. Let me repeat, this is not a biceps workout. There are way better videos if that is what you are wanting to do.The workouts themselves are very professionally produced and everything will make you sweat. I don't mind cheap workouts, but thankfully that's not the case here at all. These DVDs approach Beachbody in quality and production. That said, I am going to give everything overall a four-star rating. My only real complaint is that everything will make you sweat (Jillian Michaels said she burned about 100 calories in ten minutes of the workout she did, making the core workouts easily hit 300 calories-plus for most people). And by everything will make you sweat, I mean the cardio and "power" segments are pretty similar. If someone didn't tell me what I was doing, I would think they were all cardio. In fact, when ordering, I kind of had it in my head that the Active Recovery disks might be something like Yoga with Clubz or Tai Chi with Clubs. Ha. Maybe just a tiny bit. What they are in reality is a slightly toned down version of the cardio workouts.Also, I prefer a workout to be a room with people that they video for the full length of the workout. What these DVDs are actually, is workouts that are made up of rotated segments. There is not much difference between Phase 3 and Phase 4 workouts. At one point, some portions were so similar between Phase 3 and 4 that I had to play them side by side just to make sure they weren't the same segments. And Active Recovery, not that much different than any of the other workouts, just a little shorter and somewhat less intense.While I won't be doing this program from start to finish using the schedule, I am sold on the program as a whole and will continue to rotate through these workouts from here on out. They are great shoulder mobility WODs. What I plan on doing will be subbing in some Clubz workouts on cardio days of more challenging programs. I injured my shoulder a while back and I can really feel the difference in just a couple of weeks of using the program.If I were going to wish up some improvements to this program, I would like to see "power" workouts that incorporated something that set them apart more from the cardio segments. Perhaps some adjustable-weight Clubz and varying amounts of weight in the "power" videos. I would also like to see an Active Recovery that was slower and more like Clubz yoga or Clubz Tai Chi.But all in all, this is a well done program. I am happy with my purchase.Hacks:While I went ahead an purchased some 3-pound Clubz, I was able to make a pretty decent homemade version using 16-oz Copco To Go Cups (http://a.co/cDCGGLu). I filled them to approximately 3/4ths of an inch to the top with concrete and inserted a dowel rod as a handle (put some nails -- left partially sticking out -- in the concrete side of the dowel rod so they don't slide out while swinging them around!). Also, you can wrap the handle with tennis racket handle wrap or just tape it. You can remove the center of the Copco cap and then put the cap back on the cup, sliding it down over the dowel-rod handle. The weight came out to 2.45 pounds per cup. The cost of the cups and the concrete came out to be around fifteen dollars or so, and turned out fairly nice looking.Adjustable weight Clubz! I found that adding a couple of 1.5 pound wrist weights (http://a.co/hhmxZM2) to the Clubz handle worked very well. It makes it very easy to vary the weight of the Clubz on the fly. It also makes it much cheaper to get a lighter weight version of the Clubz and move up in weight without having to buy another pair. While it also works to put the weights on your wrists, it gives you a better workout to move the weight out past your hands. I thought they would slide up and down the handles while working out and bother me, but it actually works very well and isn't annoying at all.For all you people that think 2 - 3 pound Clubz will be too light, I advise making some five and six pound versions at home and see how it changes the workout...for the worse. I made a pair that came out in the six-pound range. They have not been used. Again, maybe if you are six-foot tall and played football, you might be in the right weight range. For most everyone else, stay in a reasonable range. You will get more out of it than you think.