THE VOLUME METHOD — The Way You Should Swing The Mace

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:02][music] [music] [music] [music] >> So there's a thing that I think many people miss with the mace training. You know, apart from of course when when you first start training with this and perhaps you feel very quickly some results happening because you're just not used to it at all and your forearm start to feel immediately, maybe even your core muscles and your shoulders.

[00:00:56]But after that sort of initial beginning, you might be wondering like, well, how do I keep progressing? And for most people, there's only one answer like regarding the method of how they measure their progress. And this is of course how much do they keep increasing the weight. This idea of progressive overload of always adding more and more pounds or more and more kilograms to the tool that you're using.

[00:01:20]Whereas in my approach, I never have really chased the numbers. I've never chased this higher weights with the mace training.

[00:01:29]It is nice, you know, to use a little more more weight sometimes. For example, I have a 10 kilo here. This is 6 kilo.

[00:01:36]This also 10 kilo, but I rarely, if ever really go beyond 10 kilo.

[00:01:41]And still, most of the time I'm using the 6 kilo mace. It's still like my main weight that I'm utilizing. And the reason for this is because the progress that you can get with this is not tied on increasing the weight, actually. The most amount of progress that I have gotten and people within the Iron King method have gotten comes from actually increasing the duration, the time under tension, and also working on these complexes where you're switching from one moment to another.

[00:02:09]But in both cases, there's a higher time under tension. So essentially, there's a volume. But this volume is not just something where you're doing like a tens of sets. You may be doing only one, two, or three sets, or maybe maximum four sets. But you keep the volume within one set very high.

[00:02:28]And this is what builds up a very gritty endurance and strength. I often emphasize it with with mace training is that what you're building here is not just strength. It's not just sort of maximal form of strength, but it's strength endurance. And this is very crucial because the grip is something that gets tired. If you've done even calisthenics, if you've done wrestling, grappling, if you've even done weightlifting, even if you've done some basic, you know, the deadlifts and rows or from the pulley machines, what do people often notice is that their grip and their wrists get tired and they're using these these what is the wrist straps or wraps or whatever in order to, you know, negate this and just then focus on their back. But this is really a thing that gets tired. So, you might want to try to do some training that actually builds up the endurance. So you're not So it doesn't become your limiting, let's say, what is the limiting factor or it doesn't become your weak chain. So, that's why [snorts] there's a limit in people's head of what is like um what what what what amount of repetitions is for strength or what amount is for the building the muscles.

[00:03:39]And people usually fall around between like, okay, the 8 to 12 repetitions is like maximum where you still like building some strength and some muscle.

[00:03:48]But you need to destroy this idea. So there's this methodology which I call even ultra-high repetitions. And these are repetitions that go above 30. They might go 30 to 50. They might go from 30 to 100 and even beyond that. And believe it or not, you will develop strength with that and you will build also muscle even with that high repetitions. It doesn't mean that necessarily you need to go, you know, to 100 or something, but just get rid of this idea that there's this magical number where suddenly your strength strength gains stop. That that's not actually the reality, especially with the mace training. You need this sort of volume at some point. And if you don't have or if you can't endlessly increase the amount of weight, you shouldn't be worrying about that. You can really simply increase the time under tension.

[00:04:37]And the most important here is that when I'm doing this swings, whether it's in the front here or more complex swings or whatever, is that I don't let go of the handle here. There's no rest.

[00:04:52]My grip is working, you know, here is a little bit less, but as I'm holding here, it's more and more, but it's still constantly active. So I can do these these boom boom or the other other direction boom boom boom boom or just side to side side to side and it's never letting go. I don't know how many I've done now, but I'm already feeling it. It's probably not even 30 or something.

[00:05:24]So the great thing about this, it's it's really simple in a way. Like I mentioned before is that there's nothing special in in essence that you need to do. You just need to hold on to this.

[00:05:36]What whatever swings you do from there, it's not really an issue. Everything that you do by holding on to this will train your grip.

[00:05:48]Will train your wrist. Will train your forearm.

[00:05:51]>> [snorts] >> So even just basic cleans from here. Boom.

[00:05:57]Boom. One of one of also really great and very simple movement.

[00:06:01]The main point is don't limit yourself in terms of the repetition numbers. Don't think that you need to just keep increasing and increase the weight. I'm not saying you can't do that. It's actually fun, like I said, sometimes try higher up, higher weights and and and to do that, but don't um let your progress be dependent on that.

[00:06:21]You can really make amazing gains by focusing on the time under duration.

[00:06:24]That is one of the keys really here.

[00:06:26]It's like the ultimate key to getting amazing results and and really like gritty dense muscle mass is to work on the higher duration. So you build up the endurance because this is really extremely functional also in whatever things that you're doing, physical activities or sports or martial arts. And to make this as clear as possible, I want to show you like a three exercise complex here so you can really understand fully what I'm what I'm meaning by this. So we can start with a clean here. I'm going to do 10 repetitions of these and then I'll quickly switch. You know, I will move the the handle here, my arm lower, but it doesn't really give proper break there. Then I can just do the side to side swings. Maybe go here so we get more uh continuous. You don't need to go all the way up here.

[00:07:15]Like this way. And then after that, the last one will be this hammer. Boom.

[00:07:22]Boom. So that's certainly going to already make my forearm feel.

[00:07:28]So we start with the clean.

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[00:07:55]>> [snorts] >> 10.

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[00:08:15]Swap.

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[00:08:40]Yeah. So that's 30 in total and or 1 minute.

[00:08:45]Yeah, or 1 minute and my grip is like is very tight. It's like very stiff from holding it. So I could even feel now like closing towards the point where I probably couldn't even do it so much more. So even here, you know, you can see that these 30 repetitions of course, if you're in the beginning, you will reach a fatigue point, you know, way before even doing like 50 repetitions something like this. But just understand that even beyond this is effective that you can you can do it. But this is like that's it.

[00:09:18]The workout is done. You can do maybe one, two sets after that, but it's already the stimulus is there. It doesn't require any much more fancier.

[00:09:26]You know, of course you can take this training then a lot further. You can do much more complex movements and flows and and all of these. And this is the idea why I made the Iron King method.

[00:09:35]You know, you get everything, all of these, the basics, the more difficult movements, even the strength pure strength weight movement that you can do. But in the in the end of all of that, getting results with this is simple. And you can start by yourself by doing these sort of basic swings as well and enjoy some some really great great gains into your forearms. It's it's very tangible. So, that's it. Stay strong.

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