The Internal Force Fitness Guide to: Broomstick Exercises

The exercise routine that will be detailed below comes from a booklet entitled: Overweight and Underweight: How to Treat Them, printed in the 1920's.

It's all too easy to dismiss such routines as 'vintage' or 'out of date', but with a little re-imagining, as I have done with this text, you can have an up-to-date FULL workout that will only take 5 minutes or so and only cost you the price of a broom handle! Oh, and sorry, there's nothing I can do to make you fly – but you can cackle when you're doing the exercises if you like...

When I decided to have a go at this workout I went to a £1 discount store and got a plastic mop that had a screw-in head. Sometimes I screw the head on and use it as a mop – other times I unscrew the head and use it for a workout!

Here is a little bit on why working out with a broom handle (or a mop handle!) might be a good idea:

Isolation Exercises

Most exercises are what are called 'isolation' exercises – that is they are designed to work one part of the body only. A bicep curl for example is designed to work the bicep on the arm, and nothing more.

Machines

Machines in the gym are very good at this type of exercise, because they almost 'lock' the rest of the body in place while you either push or pull the handles for the required number of repetitions. While a beginner may think this is a good thing, a lot of exercise professionals disagree with such machines because they can hamper the development of supporting muscles – it is essentially a 'cheat'.

Free-Weights

On the other side of the coin are 'free' weights – dumb-bells and bar-bells. Using weights such as these means balance and coordination is required, and therefore the muscles required for these things will be developed. Many beginners find they can not lift (or press) nearly as much weight using free weights as on a machine – at least to start with.

In certain cases however, there are times when it is useful to cheat a little and this is where Broomstick Exercises can come in.

Your Cheating Body!

Given the choice, your body will cheat. Take for example the upper body rotation exercise (twisting to look behind you!). If I was to ask you to put your hands on your hips then twist your upper body to look behind you, then you would probably do this using a combination of waist, shoulder and neck rotation (and possibly even twisting your knees – a definite no-no!). There is nothing wrong with this I should add – but it does little to help waist mobility which is the point of the exercise.

This is basically your body saying: “I can't rotate the waist enough, so I will use the shoulders to help...then get reinforcements from the neck!”

Over time, and the correct use of focus (including realising which muscles you are trying to develop), you WILL improve, but there is a way to get into the correct habit quickly – using a broomstick.

The exercises which follow help keep things even and straight (like a machine), but also require balance and coordination (like free-weights).