Steel Mace 360 Progression: How Many Reps, and When to Go Heavier

You start with 5 sets of 5 reps per side. One set is added every week of training until you reach 20 sets of 5 or 100 total reps per side. This is how the basic volume cycle works (increases volume). The 360 is rep based instead of timed. Most men start with a 10lb mace and most women with a 7lb. Train both directions and both hands on the same day to ensure no imbalances. When you reach the end of the volume cycle, you have three choices. You can run a density cycle, go up in weight, or go up in movement complexity.

Why train heavy clubs before the mace?

Heavy club training provides a base for what is called the rest position, where the elbow is locked at 90 degrees and the weight of the club is supported by your biceps and lats. If you try to cheat on this position with a heavy club, you will know and your elbow will pay the price. Over time, you learn to use this position when loading weights with clubs and maces. Starting with a mace does not train this position as well because the handle is so long and the weights are generally lighter. Momentum can be used when the mace is brought in front of the body to skip over training the rest position. The club builds the structure in your body that your mace will use. If you own a club, start with training the club and add the mace in.

Is the 360 rep based or timed?

The mace 360 is generally best trained with reps. Mace and club split with 2H techniques as two handed club work is time under tension. This is because clubs are generally a 1 handed tool that can be used with 2 hands as a prerequisite. The opposite is true of maces. Maces are a 2 handed tool that can be used with 1 hand if you so desire. The longer lever of a mace allows for an easier time using both hands to pull.

How do you know when to go heavier?

You do not, automatically. That is the point.

Finishing 100 reps per side is a milestone, not a graduation to a heavier mace. It opens three doors. You can go up in weight and restart the climb. You can go up in complexity and move to the 10-to-2, and beyond that the one-hand 360. Or you can stay at the same weight and run a density cycle, holding the total near 100 per side while compressing it into fewer, longer sets, 20x5 down to 17x6, 14x7, 13x8, 11x9, 10x10.

Most people reach for the heavier mace first because buying something feels like progress. Complexity and density are usually the better call.

Why the mace jumps hurt more than the numbers suggest

Maces come in fixed rungs: 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. Five pound steps, except the first one.

Five pounds sounds like nothing until you look at what it is as a percentage.

The jumps get easier as you go up, which is the opposite of what beginners expect. The hardest weight increase in your entire mace career is the second one you ever make. 10 to 15 is a 50 percent load increase on a lever, and it is where most people stall, quietly decide the mace is not for them, and put it in a closet.

That is also the argument for the whole volume climb. You are not adding sets to feel productive. You are building the capacity to survive a 50 percent jump, because the mace does not sell you anything in between.

What about the 20 minutes?

There is a standard that circulates in this corner of training: 100 reps per side inside 20 minutes.

It is a fair benchmark and it is worth knowing, but it only applies at the top of the cycle, and it matters less than it sounds. It is a pacing check, not a gate. Nothing bad happens if your 100 reps take 26 minutes. You still finished the cycle, and the cycle is what the progression actually tracks.

What comes after the 360

The 10-to-2, and it is closer than the names make it sound.

A 10-to-2 is a 360 that never stops. Same path around the head, same body, but instead of returning to the rack and resetting, the mace keeps going and comes back the other way. Take the stop out of a movement and it gets harder immediately, because the stop is where you were resting without noticing.

Train the 360 first. All of it, to 100 reps per side. Then take the pause out.

Doing the arithmetic

None of this is difficult math. Five sets became six, six became seven, one set at a time, counted honestly across two directions and however many implements you own. It is also the part that quietly stops happening around the second month, usually on the days you would rather skip ahead. The system in this article is free to run in a notebook. Perside just never forgets and never rounds in your favor.

Your first session

A 10lb mace if you are a man, 7lb if you are a woman. Inside 360s, 5 sets of 5 per side, then outside 360s, 5 sets of 5 per side, same day. Rest as long as you want between sets.

If it feels far too easy, you sized it right. The mace is not asking you to work hard yet. It is asking whether you can do this same thing eighteen more times, with four more sets on top, without your shoulder complaining. Next session, six sets.

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