After nearly 7 years of training with Macebells, and specifically Steel Mace Flow, here are 3 things I wish I had known when I started Steel Mace Flow training.

Like any new endeavour, hindsight is a blessing and a curse. To save you a bit of time in the curse phase, I have put together 3 things that can maximise your progress, along with a sample training plan. These are by no means the only adaptations you can make, though they are the ones that I feel had the most impact on my training. Starting with what came to mind first and finishing with the change I discovered most recently, actually this year, in 2026.

If you’re utterly new to mace training, you’ll likely have seen 2 standout styles and then people doing more conventional exercise with this unconventional tool. Likely, you’ll have seen some people swinging the mace in circles or semi-circles. That’s the 360 [three-sixty] exercise and the 10&2, respectively. The other form you’ll have come across is Steel Mace Flow, where users twirl and move a macebell through sequences of movements. The former style, known as ‘Traditional’, is objectively more popular than Steel Mace Flow, but that doesn’t mean Flow is lacking in benefits by any stretch.

I’m about 2 years into really taking traditional mace swinging seriously, so I’ll likely do an ‘X things I wish I knew…’ for that later on. For now, let’s get stuck in with number 1 on the 3 things I wish I knew before starting Steel Mace Flow.

1. Treat Steel Mace Flow Like Running

Coming from a conventional training background, whereby the goal of nearly anything with weight is to make it heavier over time, I pursued this route with Mace Flow. This was probably after my first year of mace training, where I had enough skill and options to begin experimenting. The plateau hit pretty quickly. I even felt my cardiovascular fitness decline. It’s not for lack of trying, as I stuck at it for 12–18 months, hoping the progressive overload would kick in like it does with all the other ‘normal’ training.

I only went from a 5 kg mace to a 7 kg mace and initially the flows were a lot harder to manage as expected. The sheer quantity of reps in a flow with a heavier weight didn’t work for me. I found I’d be gassing out a third of the way into a flow. That’s if the flow wasn’t too centered on muscles in which case, the muscles would burn and give out long before the lungs. Safe to say, my cardio declined as ultimately the aerobic stimulus declined. Even When I went back to the 5 kg, I noticed the cardio had declined and making my standard 5 minute flow round was harder than it needed to be if I made it at all without pause. To add insult to injury, the muscles didn’t

grow any stronger either and would even burn out on the 5 kg. Until I had a reality check about what I was actually training Steel Mace Flow for

For me, Mace Flow is about CV fitness and mobility. A light mace meets these needs perfectly. A heavier mace, however, slows you down, as usually the durations would be cut short as muscles hit fatigue failure. Or, at best, there were too many breaks to get the continuous demand for cardio.

It’s like cycling vs squats. Both involve leg muscle contractions, and both increase heart rate and breathing intensity, but you’re not going to squat continuously with your usual weight for half an hour. On the flip side, the amount of force production per pedal stroke of a bicycle is not enough to develop muscle growth and strength adaptations in the rep ranges used for squats. This is what I was effectively doing: trying to make cardio heavier instead of longer or more intense. When more traditional cardiovascular training methods were applied to Steel Mace Flow, the same as you would for running, I noticed my flows got more consistent and more manageable with time. This then allowed for more progress into longer flows, and when I capped my time progression, more intense and complex flows.

As anecdotal evidence, I hadn’t done any dedicated 5km running for over a year. Then an event I was hosting came up, and it would be a good idea to get in some runs considering it was predominantly a running event. Although my 5km time was slower than I have done in the past, my base level of cardio fitness was still there to do a run on a whim. That shows the crossover of Flow fitness into more conventional training and, by extension, into all forms of aerobically demanding activities.

Therefore, instead of continually adding weight to your Steel Mace Flow, stay with the same macebell weight and progress your training by adding time, reducing rest or increasing complexity.

2. Have a Steel Mace Flow Training Sequence

Yes, I was guilty of chasing the next shiny flow sequence or movement. In many ways, it’s not a regret, as chasing new skills did definitely develop my available movement options, but as with point number 1, it started to devolve away from the core purpose for taking up mace flow training. I have another article from a few years back on how this all started: Beginning to Train Like a Warrior. Can you spot my early mentality mistakes?

Now, this one took a bit of wrestling to let go of, especially as other commitments reduced my available training time. In the early days, I trained Flow twice a week: one learning session and one fitness session. Which was fine, although the fitness session could have used more progressive structure and why in the long run it’s worked out better, as we will look at next.

One (of many) ways of structuring the flows is to put an order to the choice each training session. I used to pick a flow on vibes. It’s not inherently bad to use feeling to choose a flow on the day; it’s still better than not training at all. Better still is progressing the complexity. For example, you could set a repeating cycle such as:

Week 1 = Flow A, Week 2 = Flow B, Week 3 = Flow C and so on…

Each flow should be progressively more complex and/or intense as the mesocycle carries on. Over the macrocycle, you could even do a format like this:

Personally, I do 6-week blocks of training. It suits my fatigue levels and focus, then gives me a reset just long enough into a training phase to progress, but also just short enough of the training period whereby injuries start popping up.

This system allows you to chase new flows whilst still spending enough time, practice and repetition on any one flow to enhance cognitive development, skill mastery and progressive fitness. Each flow repeated is a flow ingrained. Every flow I repeat, I find another level of mastery in a few elements of a movement. New automation that frees up the mental bandwidth to concentrate on other aspects.

The most evident case study is probably in my Eliminator Flow. A flow that has been a regular in the repertoire now for years. A lot of the improvements are minor but each improvement stacks up. Take the Steel Mace Dragon Punch. In isolation I could do the movement but in a flow with the quickness of response I’d either do a normal coin flip or smash my knuckles on the handle. With repetition each week I got more comfortable with the preceding exercises leaving me enough bandwidth to focus on the Dragon Punch. This made the movement:

1. Less painful

2. More skill accurate

   
   

With the Dragon Punch improving, the attention could move to another movement. I can’t remember exactly which came next though I do remember focusing on my hand position during the final lateral lunge. Over time my hand crept down the mace handle (Up and Down is always in reference to the mace head) making the requirement from the lunge less deep. As fitness and practice improved, this slip reigned in, returning the lunge depth to its potential and by extension maintaining the mobility benefits. Now the mace flow is largely all automatic but there's still many finer points to tweak with finesse.

Here are some mac flows that you may want to save to your watchlist and whilst you're at it, subscribe to the Armoured Muscle Youtube channel *hint hint*. At the time of writing, my own mace sequence is:

• Week 1 = Water Healer Flow (Tutorial Here) A nice rotational flow to start the block, especially as DOMS kicks in more in the first week. Practised so much for so long that it requires little thought and has progressed with point 3 coming up.
  

• Week 2 = Seven Devils Flow by Kristin O’Brien Building on the lateral mobility of the Water Healer Flow, we are adding more intensity, though arguably a little less complexity.
  

• Week 3 = Rock Grind Flow by Anthony Rock Again, building up the intensity with an expansion in the range of movements and adding a non-negotiable speed point with some flippy spirals.
  

• Week 4 = Skirmish Flow (Tutorial Here) Now this one is just long. A lot of different movements in quick succession. The Flow time limit is the same, but with a long flow, the mental resets come around less frequently.
  

• Week 5 = Eliminator Flow (Tutorial Here) The elements of the previous weeks begin to blend. We start getting complex, more non-negotiable speed elements and a longer sequence of movements.
  

• Week 6 = Cimmerian Flow (Tutorial Here) So far, my most intense flow is equally complex and adding plyometrics to really amp up the demand on the cardiovascular system.
  

• Week 7 = New Flow This is a rest week or deload week. Time to imitate or create a new flow for fun. No time pressure or intensity pressure, just learning and enjoying. Maybe switch out an older flow for this new one, maybe.

Bonus: Mace Flow Should Be Complementary

Something I already knew before I started, coming from a long time in fitness and qualifying to be a fitness professional just as my interest in Steel Mace started, is that Mace work should not be your whole thing. For new fitness enthusiasts, you may not yet know this.

As good as mace training is and the heap of cognitive and physical benefits it provides, it is

A: not a system for everyone and B: has blind spots.

If you want to know who mace training is for, take a look at the article “Who Is Steel Mace For”. Whereas mace training can build muscle and strength, the skill cap will always be your limiting factor. There are easier, more time-efficient ways to develop general strength for a better quality of life. Mace used heavy enough will, on paper, do the job. But, in reality, it takes a longer time to get there. Therefore, use mace alongside other training systems. Either as a bolt-on to existing training or an addition to your weekly plan. Personally, I do Flow as its own workout but bolt on the traditional elements to my strength and power training days.

3. Lean Into the Mobility of Steel Mace Flow

So far, I’ve said I went into Steel Mace Flow for mobility and aerobic fitness and only spoken about the aerobic side. Unless you’re naturally flexible and mobile, each time you learn a new flow, there’s a bit too much going on and literally flipping about to carve out that much concentration on mobility depth. Therefore, whilst mental bandwidth is being spent on the new synchronisation, probably not enough bandwidth is being given to truly deep mobility.

This is where point number 2, having a flow training sequence, led to enhancing mobility as well.

As flows get repeated, they become more automatic, leaving more concentration available for the mace flow. Here is where I used that capacity to lean into the mobility side of things. There’s a subtle difference between flexibility and mobility. Flexibility is how far your joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons and nervous system will allow you to move with assistance. For example, with your hand flat on a table, how high your free hand can pull a finger off the table. Mobility, on the other hand (pun intended), is how high you can lift a finger on its own without any external assistance. Flexibility is your ultimate range of motion, but mobility is how much of the flexibility you can utilise under your own power.

The way to get better mobility is to train strength closer to the end ranges of motion. With the mace, that means sinking into those ranges and returning. We could think of a lateral lunge. You’ll naturally find the point where you want to stop the depth; however, this is where you go just a little bit further. Or an uppercut where you can feel the torso twist happen, then you concentrate and squeeze round just that bit more.

The obvious mobility improvement I found so far would be from the 360 swing though this hasn’t wholly, in my case, come from mace flow. Though if flow is your only exposure to the legendary 360 swing then eventually you’ll get the same range of motion in your shoulder, being able to lift your elbow higher and ultimately withstand a greater motion before the movement becomes increasingly demanding. Specifically with steel mace flow I’d say the next biggest would be T-spine rotation from the uppercuts. 

The uppercut requires a twist in the torso where the hips are limited in their rotational assistance and if the shoulder blades are adequately activated the chest angle mimics the mace handle angle. I love the feeling with the uppercut whereby you twist round and can feel the natural point where the body wants to stop, and then squeeze round just a little more. You can feel the obliques stretching on one side and oddly some relief in the spine especially the ‘T’ series of segments. The improvement was so slow that I never noticed it but could feel the good stuff at work in each movement. The enhanced range I have only becomes apparent in my classes when my students struggle to rotate anywhere near as much as my demonstrations.

Doing the mobility concentration for every. Single. Movement. Is exhausting and detracts from the aerobic levels. So finding that balance, that Goldilocks zone, is important. This is where I let the flow state* happen for most of the Steel Mace Flow but then pick up to two movements to take that bit further. Over time, as the mace flows come around again, it might be two different movements. Each time they come around again, the flow as a whole progresses in skill, fitness and mobility.

Mace Flow Is a Journey

My 3 little tips I wish I had known before I started are all part of the process and hopefully will aid you in giving your flows some direction. For me, with cardiovascular health and mobility in mind, treating flow programming more like that of a runner than a weightlifter has seen rewards in my chosen fitness goals. Similar to a weightlifter and many other training styles, having a sequence or a cycle of workouts to do has allowed each individual mace flow to progress to higher levels than doing them sporadically. Such that, repeating the flows opened up a new focuses on mobility.

That being said, the above isn’t the only path you can walk with mace. Some go down the more creative and meditative route. Some really double down on free flow for that ‘flow state’ style of training, and I dare say that many hunt the perfection of a sequence more akin to a martial arts kata. Whatever your destination is, I hope you're enjoying the journey.

*Flow State is where there is the perfect combination of autonomy and effort. Enough autonomy to give cognitive freedom for exertion into deeper efforts. Think where you get stuck into a project where the next time you look up, time has flown by. Just enough of a challenge to keep you interested but not so much that you break away. Also, a task that you have mastered enough to complete the basics without much thought but not so much mastery that you get bored. Apparently, this Goldilocks zone between boredom and attention is at about 4% past your current ability.

STRENGTH - RESILIENCE - CONSISTENCY