Heavyhands-an 80s fad that deserves another look

I'm getting sick of kids in neon clothes and big Ray-Ban sunglasses like it's 1989. Some fads deserve to stay buried. That being said, I think there are some 80's exercise fads that didn't deserve to die. No, I'm not talking about Jane Fonda, Jazzercise, or Nautilus circuits.

I'm talking about Heavyhands.


Dr. Len Schwartz, Creator of Heavyhands, in his 80s.

Heavyhands is a fusion of weightlifting and aerobics that improves both strength and endurance. It's easier on the joints than running, yet works the entire body, can be done in a small space in front of the TV or in the great outdoors and uses inexpensive equipment (light hex or padded dumbbells ranging from 1-10lbs with a few exercises calling for slightly heavier, 20-40 lb. dumbbells). It spreads the cardiovascular load across your body and allows you to burn more calories at any given level of perceived effort (meaning, it SEEMS easier to burn MORE calories, as your whole body is participating in the effort). For bigger guys like myself (I'm 220 lbs right now, down from a high of 270+) it allows me to get a pretty tough aerobic workout in without the pounding on the joints that running entails.

In its simplest form, heavyhands is just walking while holding weights and using an exaggerated "biceps pump" maneuver. Just this simple move can really boost the calorie burn of your walks. To vary the difficulty, you can vary your pump height, pace, or walking speed. There are, of course, many other maneuvers to try, from overhead presses, shadow-boxing, and double ski-poling (think of the maneuver you use with ski poles to propel yourself forward). All you really need to get started is a couple of 1-5 lb weights and a route to walk or room to march in place.

So what happened? If this system was so darn good, cheap, easy to do anywhere, and effective, why isn't it still with the masses? I can think of a few reasons.

Dr. Schwartz, the creator of the system says (at Clarence Bass' webpage) "Even huge weights don't evoke much aerobic work when hanging inertly... You have to act boldly." That means you actually have to pump the damn weights, high, fast, or both. This had two effects: one, to get a good workout, some people really pumped the weights, and then realized, "hey, this is still hard," and stopped. Runners found that the weights "threw them off their stride," meaning, of course, that even though they were getting a better work out, their egos couldn't get over the fact that they had to go slower. The second effect was that some people just carried the weights around, then found, "Hey, this doesn't work." And these people went back to just walking. You've got to pump the weights high to get the effect you're looking for.

Two: it looks funny. Though I imagine jogging looked funny at first to people as well. I just try to ignore the funny looks I get, pumping weights, but some people aren't as able to ignore it. To those people, I suggest working out in front of the TV.

Three: ironically, I think Heavyhands kind of killed itself because there was so little equipment to buy. Besides a couple of books (Heavyhands: The Ultimate Exercise System and Heavyhands Walking: Walk Your Way to a Lifetime of Fitness With This Revolutionary, Commonsense Exercise System) there were only the weights to buy. The weights have a little handle, but honestly, regular hex dumbbells have worked just as well for me, so it seems likely that there wasn't as much money to be made in the Heavyhands specific dumbbells as they thought initially.

My recommendation? Give 'em a try. In the meantime, you can do a bit more reading about heavyhands at Clarence Bass' website here and here or at the heavyhands blog (which looks defunct but has a good archive). If you need more info, grab the books. They're packed with good information.

I've got more on heavyhands coming up, plus another post on home gyms in apartments, plus the rest of the pulse series, and a mnemonics series, plus some other surprises. Stay tuned.

My Current Workout

Hey, I just wanted to give you guys a taste of what I'm doing with all my home gym equipment right now. This is the basic format that I build my workouts around. I'll give you some of the twists that I've come up with to burn more fat later in the Pulse series.

Here's the basic progression, which comes from Pavel Tsatsouline in his book Enter The Kettlebell! Strength Secret of The Soviet Supermen.

This is my version of the "Rite of Passage" program. The Rite of Passage is to be able to press 50% of your bodyweight and snatch a 24kg (53 lb) kettlebell 200 times in 10 minutes.

M: Light workout
T: "Variety" or off
W: Medium workout
R: "Variety" or off
F: Off
S: Hard workout
U: Off

On variety days, feel free to perform other workouts: do other kettlebell drills, calesthenics, just keep it light and easy. Or take the day off.

On the light, medium and hard days, what I do is alternate sets of chins and presses in a ladder format. You could easily substitute dips and chins if you don't have kettlebells or dumbbells, or just do the presses. You could also alternate bench presses and rows.

I do these as "ladders", meaning you take a short (5-90 second) break in between the sets. You can take a longer break after all the sets in a series are completed. Clarence Bass explains the technique here, and the reasoning here.

These are in the sets x reps format.
Week 1: Light 3 x 1; Medium 3 x {1,2}; Hard 3 x {1,2,3}
Week 2: Light 4 x 1; Medium 4 x {1,2}; Hard 4 x {1,2,3}
Week 3: Light 5 x 1; Medium 5 x {1,2}; Hard 5 x {1,2,3}
Week 4: Light 5 x {1,2}; Medium 5 x {1,2,3}; Hard 5 x {1,2,3,4}
Week 5: Light 5 x {1,2,3}; Medium 5 x {1,2,3,4}; Hard 5 x {1,2,3,4,5}

On the light days, do one clean and many presses, the medium and hard days, perform a clean before each press.


A kettlebell clean and press in good form

Take two days off and test your new maxes with a heavier kettlebell or dumbbell, or test the number of pullups or dips you can now do.

I vary the pullup type on each workout as follows:
I roll two six sided dice and the result indicates the pullup type that I do:

2: Towel Chin
3: Mixed-Grip Chin
4: Wide-Grip Chin
5: Narrow-Grip (hands touching) Chin
6: Standard chin
7: Standard Pullup
8: Narrow (thumbs touching) pullup
9: Wide Pullup
10: Neutral (palms facing) grip pullup
11: Side-to-side pull (pull to left hand, then pull to right hand)
12: Side grip pullup

If you know about probability, then you know that I will be spending most of my time doing numbers 5-9 and less time doing the outliers, so I designed the workout to focus on the basics in the center and only occasionally get into the weirder pullup variations. This is the idea of "different, but the same". You want enough variety to force your body to keep adapting, but not so much that the stimulus is random. Not enough variety leads to staleness (the guy who is still doing the workout that he learned as a beginner) and too much leads to a failure to adapt (just doing Crossfit WODs). The key words then are, "different, but the same".

Each workout is "finished" with swings or snatches. I roll two six sided dice again to determine the length of the finisher, from 2-12 minutes, and I perform 50-60% of my max snatches on the light day, 70-80% of my max swings on medium day, and 100% all out on the hard day. Again, this uses the "same but different" principle, by changing the difficulty and length of the rounds every workout.

I've just completed another cycle with the 32kg (70 lb) kettlebell. Since I weigh 100kg (220lbs) this is 32% of my bodyweight. My next "official" bell is the 40kg (88lb-40% of bodyweight) but I also have another 70lb kettlebell with 10lbs of plates duct taped to the bottom. This throws the weight distribution all off and makes it harder to clean the weight properly, so I'm hoping to bypass the 80lb "ghetto 'bell" altogether and move straight into the 88lb 'bell.

Coming up on Wednesday, a post about an 80s fad that I think should come back. Stay tuned.