Heavy Club Circles Progression: Inside, Outside, and How Long to Stay on Them

Circles are where club training starts. Two-handed, they run on time like all 2H club work: 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, from 5 sets up to 20 total minutes at one weight. Single-arm circles come later and run on reps, 5 sets of 5 per side climbing to 20 sets of 5, then density. Inside and outside always train together, same day, in both versions. Most people start with a club between 10 and 20 pounds.

The two versions do different jobs. The two-hand circle gets you used to the club and gives you your first taste of traction. The single-arm circle is where you build the rest position, elbow at 90 degrees, load going into your lats instead of your arms.

Why are two-hand circles timed instead of counted?

You can count reps on a two-hand circle. Nothing stops you. The reason the program doesn't is that the two-hand version isn't really the point.

A club is a one-handed implement. Two-handed work is the on-ramp: you're learning how to handle the thing, how it pulls, where it wants to go, before you ask one arm to manage all of that alone. Time is the honest unit for an on-ramp, because what you're building is tolerance for continuous work rather than a rep count you can chase. Twenty minutes of 30/30 says the weight no longer challenges you at volume. That's the whole test.

Then you take a hand off, and the reps start counting for real.

What the pendulum leaves out

Pendulums come before circles, and the relationship is exact: the pendulum is the part of the circle that isn't the rest position.

So you break the movement apart, learn the swinging half on its own, and then put it back together as a circle by adding the position the pendulum never touched. That's the same theme running through this entire subset of lifting. The pullover plus rotation is the shield cast. The circle plus the shield cast is the mill. Everything decomposes.

It decomposes because these aren't only weightlifting movements. They're skills, patterns your nervous system has to learn, and the way anyone learns a pattern is in pieces.

What traction actually feels like

Something pulling on your arm. That's it, and that's the whole novelty.

If you've ever swung a racket or a baseball bat, you've felt a bit of traction. It's a natural force, present all over real life and almost entirely absent from a bodybuilding gym, where the machines and the barbells are built to load you through contraction instead. The first time you run a circle with a club, the club is pulling away from you at the far end of a lever, and your joints and soft tissue have to answer that pull. The circle is most people's first honest introduction to it.

Inside or outside: which is harder?

Most people find inside circles easier, because the inside direction is the natural throwing pattern.

But that depends entirely on what you've done with your body before. If you've played sports, one direction will feel obviously more familiar. If you've sat at a computer your whole life, they'll both be equally hard.

Generally, outside circles are the harder of the two, and the reason is what modern life does to shoulders. Most people are internally rotated. The outside circle forces external rotation, which is exactly the range they've spent years not using. That's also the argument for never skipping it. The direction that feels worse is usually the one you need.

The grip mistake that costs people their elbows

Do not over-grip the club.

Grip matters, obviously. But if you hold the club too tightly, your wrist can't twist and change with the arc of the club, and that's how you end up with elbow tendinitis. The club is going to move through a path, and your wrist has to be free to follow it.

So grip it hard enough that the club doesn't slip out of your hand, and loose enough that it can react to how the club is pulling you. It's like holding a sword, or any weapon. You can't be death-gripping it.

This is the mistake that doesn't announce itself. A death grip feels safe and controlled in the moment, and the bill arrives weeks later on the outside of your elbow.

Doing the arithmetic

Minutes for the two-hand track, sets and reps across 2 directions once you go single-arm. One increment at a time, counted honestly, every session. The system in this article is free to run with a notebook and a timer. Perside just never forgets and never rounds in your favor.

Your first session

A club between 10 and 20 pounds. Ten or 15 is the normal starting place; 20 two-handed is genuinely heavy, though there are some strong people out there.

Two-hand inside circles, 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off, then outside circles the same way. 5 sets total, 5 minutes of work. Keep the grip honest, let the wrist follow the arc, and notice the pull.

If it feels easy, you sized it right. Minute 15 is the test, not minute 2. Next session, 6 sets. The ladder decides the rest, and the full club progression covers what comes after.

Perside programs volume, density, and timed cycles for clubs, maces, and kettlebells. See the full progression at The Path, or size your first club at getperside.com/learn/start.