My neighbours have grown accustomed to seeing me each morning in my garden, moving about in nothing but my underpants whilst wielding a large metal mace to the chants of Hildegard von Bingen. They probably found it alarming initially, but there I am every morning, almost naked, clubbing imaginary Saracen invaders. Seeing me there is as predictable as the sun rising.
Being a writer, editor, and researcher, it is very difficult to keep fit. I walk my dog a couple of times a day and I hunt through the season, but most of my life is sedentary. This inactive existence is especially problematic for I am racked with back problems, including scoliosis, the effects of which can only be kicked down the road by the strengthening of core muscles and constant movement. Not good, then, for a bookish sort. And I do not want to be crippled by my bad spine too early, as for many years to come I hope to lift my children into my arms and charge about with them, I want to be able to haul a freshly shot buck up a hill, and in the decades to come I want to dance at my children’s weddings.
When it came to regular exercise, I tried everything. I sprinted. I used dumbbells. I used kettlebells. I used resistance bands. I used an outdoor gym. But nothing quite seemed to build up the core strength that I needed. Then, one day, searching about online, I learned that some Westerners were turning to a fitness tool that had been used for three millennia by Persians and Indians both for cardiovascular endurance and core to upper body strength: the gada.
A gada is what in English we would call a mace. It is a stick with a heavy ball on the end. In India, this weapon is associated with Hanuman, a monkey-god especially venerated by Indian wrestlers who have been using gadas for as long as history to build up their throwing power. In the last couple of decades, the traditional Indian gada has been developed by Western fitness enthusiasts into a sleeker piece of equipment simply called a ‘steel mace.’
There are a set number of movements that one must first learn in order to wield a steel mace effectively and gain the most from one’s morning workout: 360s, 8-10s, front presses, grave diggers, uppercuts, barbarian squats, hand switches, joust lunges, jabs, rows, and a few more. Once you know these, and you’ve practiced them to the point that you’re confident in executing them without injuring yourself, it then gets really interesting. Things get interesting because you can then integrate these movements into a seamless single complex which looks like something between a martial arts kata and a dance. Throw the Sybil of the Rhine’s mystic chants into the mix and you have there a pretty enrapturing start to the day.
Continuous movement with a mace over a prolonged period of time is referred to as ‘mace flow,’ a phrase that seems fitting as its practice quickly places one into what psychologists call the ‘flow state.’ The flow state is a cognitive condition in which one is so immersed in the activity at hand, and so concentrated on the task—which is crucial during mace training, for the alternative to intense concentration is hitting oneself with a large ball of solid steel—that one ceases to see from without, so to speak. Such a shift in perception is no small achievement, for the modern mind is an observing mind and not a participatory mind. The observing mind is a mind a step removed from reality, rather than in union with it. And it is precisely our proclivity for observing everything, rather than becoming mentally absorbed in reality, that not only makes our observation so blind but ever escalates our modern sense of alienation, from each other and from the world.
Perhaps worse than our alienation from each other and from the world around us, however, is the alienation modern man feels from his very own body. Increasingly, psychologists are linking widespread depression to the deficit of embodied ‘flow’ in modern life. This problem is made worse by the proliferation of counterfeit flow experiences found in videogames, in which one experiences all the concentration without any of the embodiment essential for feeling alive. The result is dejection and frustration. At the end of a mace workout, on the other hand, one feels exhausted but fully alive. Moving to the rhythm of the music while an ancient weapon soars around your body mentally places you in an experience of the ages, in which the spirits of all the great warriors down the centuries are incarnated in your activity.
Generally speaking, there are two types of people who are interested in mace training: new agers and neo-vikings, between whom you can only fit a rizla paper in any case. This is perhaps understandable, as members of both groups would typically look a little out of place in a commercial gym. Both groups are veiled traditionalists, who instinctively look for manifestations of traditional cultures and ancient wisdom traditions to be sources of meaning. Both groups also privilege belonging over vanity, which is why they tend to build strong communities of people who look awful.
Since I was introduced to this marvellous figure of history, when mace training I like to recall the French knight Jean II Le Maingre “Boucicaut” (1366-1421)—widely deemed the personification of chivalry and a knight perhaps unequalled in his number of campaigns—whose biographer in a work written during Boucicaut’s lifetime had this to say about him:
He would train for hours with a battle-axe or a hammer to harden himself to armour and to exercise his arms and hands, so that he could easily raise his arms when fully armed. Doing such exercises gave him a physique so strong that there was no other gentleman in his time who was so proficient—for he could do a somersault fully armed but for his bascinet, and he could dance equipped in a coat of mail.
That is what is especially enjoyable about using a mace: one feels like a warrior in training. And on account of the countless hours I have spent wielding what is essentially an ancient weapon of war, I feel that I could confidently defend myself with a cudgel—and when one is under attack, most nearby objects look a lot like a cudgel.
A great thing about the mace is that all you need is this one exercise tool, which can be stored easily, and which prioritises not vanity but functional strength training that focuses on the core muscles. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell writes of going down a coal mine and watching the men strip off to work in the muggy conditions there, and he notes that he’d been hitherto unaware that human bodies could be so beautiful. Those men did not have bulging vanity muscles like those that exercise machines can give you, but they had the bodies of men who move.
When using a mace, you are contending with an off-set weight, which means that as it moves it constantly destabilises you, requiring you to engage your stabilising muscles to stay upright. This in turn builds the muscles you need to move quickly, it gives you a good posture, and it affords you a certain control over your body that otherwise is easy to lose. The mind’s union with the body is an aspect of human existence that ought to concern us, given that its disunion with the body is the very definition of death. And death doesn’t just come all at once, it creeps up on you. Men should be especially aware of this; as men age, their testosterone levels rapidly drop—and modern men have a bad start due to the oestrogen-mimicking isoflavones in processed foods and the contraceptive pill in the tap water—and then they get weaker, get sick more frequently, and their cognition slows down.
In the West, the mace is a symbol of civilisation. In particular, they symbolise jurisdiction and power. They are displayed in parliaments to indicate that they are in session and are fully constituted. In the UK, the parliamentary use of the ceremonial mace specifically symbolises the role of the Crown, and the fact that the government gathered there is so gathered as the monarch’s government. Maces are carried before liturgical processions, marching military troops, and the chancellors and academic staff of universities—the last of these to indicate the independence and authority of such treasuries of wisdom, as they once were. Hence, maces are, in our civilisation, always present at its sources, and should remain in our minds symbols of the marvellous but fragile culture we have established together, against all odds, down the centuries—and thus its need to be defended.
The kind of men who want to build civilisations, men like the ancient Athenians or the medieval nobility, must not only dedicate themselves to worship and study, but they must train. Civilisation-builders should both look and be strong, as if prepared for anything. It is worth remembering that no one knows what is around the corner. Had you told me in 2019 that we would all soon be thrown under house arrest and threatened with loss of employment if we did not take experimental gene-therapies, I would not have believed you. Had you told me in 2020 that Eastern Europe would soon be cast into an internal war, I would have at least had my doubts. History has no direction, and nothing can be reliably predicted. Take control, then, over those few things that you can control. Get fit and get strong. Move around your garden or your living room, half-naked, wielding a steel mace for 40 minutes each morning whilst listening to chant. There is no better way to begin your day, or to prepare for tomorrow.
