How the internet is making the steel mace a fast growing sport.

We can easily go on the internet and search “steel mace” , “steelmace”, “macebell”, “gada”,”steel mace flow”, or any variation of the sort and we will find YouTube videos, Instagram posts, famous celebrities like Jocko Willink on Twitter and more. It really seems like the growth of steel mace exercise training is growing expotentially and surely it is the internet that is helping add rocket fuel to the blaze.

Back in the early 2000’s guys like Jake Shannon and Rik Brown began pioneering the steel mace and it was Rik Brown who became very adept at traditional mace and gada training. They made DVD’s but didn’t have a big advertising budget so they sold by word of mouth and basically spread around on an underground level.  Even the kettlebell was a new and up n coming sport and wasn’t mainstream like it is now. In fact Rik Brown was a certified kettlebell coach at the time when he discovered the mace. I can go into the whole history another time but you can check out the podcast interviews I did with Rik as he shares his story and the history. You can learn about this part of history by catching up with these podcasts, Ep. 8 with Jake Shannon & Episode 2 and Episode 23 with Rik Brown.

It all started with gada’s 1500 to 2000 years ago and went unchanged and then in early 2000’s Jake Shannon started making his own steel mace. The important point here is that Jake chose to use steel because wood gada’s would have cost too much. But what was created was a new revolution in fitness! The steel mace is not a gada and the gada is NOT a steel mace. How they feel in the hands and what you can do with each is different enough to say they are different tools all together and that’s what makes this story so damn cool.

So the revolution began but the internet was still in its infancy. Most likely if you knew what a mace was back then you had to have someone show you. But then as the internet began to light up ,there was now a place to show your mace off. In fact the internet is a perfect place for this modality. Fast forward to the present and everyone in the steel mace community follows each other on social media. In the summer of 2019 I had a light bulb go off to start a podcast and interview as many steel mace, gada, flow, traditional, heavy swingers, steel club, wooden club users as possible. I can safely say after one year that the podcast has been running I am never in short supply of a guest.

The steel mace may look weird at first but you can clearly see that as people open themselves up to it they begin to move better, feel better and think better. The internet is a place where practitioners around the globe can get to know each other. If you ask anyone using a mace they will tell you that they have a friend somewhere in the world who also swings a mace and that they have an open invite to come visit them. This community is unique in that way and its all fostered through our screens on our phones. But I bet you 10,000 swings with my 20lb mace that it will lead to a bigger and more amazing physical community. You already have competitions in Europe and in the United States like The Vintage Strength Games where people will get on a plane and meet up to swing for their lives so to speak.

When Covid 19 hit the physical community regressed a bit but it fell back on the internet. The Vintage Strength Games went virtual. Mace websites sprang forth and coaches went online with Zoom to coach clients around the world! The internet is definitely a driving force for the mace and will continue to be for a long time to come.

Read The Fear of Losing , a perspective shift for the life long success.