Rotational Movement Training with the RMT Club: The TNT

Nov 12, 2014

Author: David Weck

The Tap & Turn (TNT): Get Your Club Now

A great skill-based Rotational Movement Training exercise using the RMT® Club that unifies the upper body and challenges coordination. The Tap & Turn (TNT) expands the thoracic cavity and works the shoulders, improving posture and mobility.

Read Video Text Below:

I want to teach you a move that we call the TNT. That stands for Tap and Turn because that's how we learn the move. Here's what it looks like then we'll break it down [demonstrates exercise]. Just like that, great for posture. Opening up the shoulders, creating total body rotational unity.

So, to break it down. You can use a split grip but that's going to make it more challenging to bring it over. So you're really going to get a stretch through the shoulders. If that's too intense for you in the beginning, put the hands close together. Now, we set up in an athletic stance. You rotate 90 degrees so you're facing that way. You can let the feet rotate as your body rotates. Club is vertical, chamber of the shake inside. So boom, you feel it, it's vertical. Bring it to vertical so you have a gentle tap. Don't hit your spine hard. Rotate 180 degrees. See the way my feet turn. Bring it back to vertical with that chambering. That steel shot will give you that audible cue and you'll feel it. We want to understand vertical because that defines the club has the lightest position, the most balance and control. Now, Cast the club out, swing. So one, two, three, four, swing it back to five. Right, just like that.

Now, to put this move together, we're going to make it fluid. What you're going to do is instead of tapping and then turning, what you're going to do is as you're raising over, you're going to turn and then bring it. So the turn happens before the "tap" and the tap essentially goes away when you get it going at speed. And, we want the club to be silent when you're doing it at speed. So here's what it looks like. We'll do one, paint by numbers, here and then we're gonna put it together. It's that coordinating of the tap and turn. You can have the head follow it or you can keep the head trained straight ahead and feel that rotation right like that. Now, we obviously want to do the other side because this will feel different and we want to develop that true body balance and symmetry, right and left being as equal as possible (Non-Dominant Side Training). So, to do that, boom, just paint by numbers. It will probably feel quite different. Boom, boom, boom, boom, and now put it together just like that.

Now let me show you from the side real quick, so you can see we want it on the frontal plane the whole time, and then I'll show it from the back. So from here, I bring it over, I turn and that you can see when I do this, the club stays frontal plane here but it's not as much frontal plane here. So that's why I turn before the tap when I get it moving. It looks like this. Right there. So it's a big circle, little circle, big circle, little circle, right like that.

Here's what it is from the back. Here. See that rotation, watch my heels, they rotate. Now we'll put a little speed. That's a skill based move that we will sequence in between full body exercises and high intensity (Hiit Training) exercises. That way, we get the metabolic training, all that cardiovascular conditioning, the body composition and this one is going to help with posture, shoulder health and mobility and it's just a fantastic move that you learn on both sides.

That's the TNT.