'Splitting Like a Girl'
It has been a dismal day in the eastern half of the country. So in the spirit of bracing activities to make the most of cold weather, here is a report on the right way to split firewood, especially if you're female. Background:
As previously mentioned, the Atlantic article I most enjoyed reporting and writing was "Throwing Like a Girl." In part that was because the "reporting" included a week at Vic Braden's tennis camp in California and an interview with the actor John Goodman. But the story also helped me understand a lifelong familiar phenomenon in a completely different way.
The phenomenon was the dynamics of throwing a ball, or the related motions of serving with a tennis racket or swinging a golf club. The concept that cleared things up for me was the "kinetic chain." I explain the "chain" in the article -- it's the transfer of momentum, and continual increase in speed, as motion shifts from large-mass parts of your body, like your legs and torso, to your arm and hand and ultimately the ball. From this great site, here's Randy Johnson transferring a whole lot of momentum along the chain. [These are GIF animations that might not come through properly in RSS feeds; if there's a problem, follow this link to our site.]
Reader JS, in Vermont, reports how understanding the kinetic chain has equipped her for new happiness as a log-splitter. In a note titled "Splitting Like a Girl," she reports:
>>Although I've never played baseball, something kept seeming very familiar about the physical act as you described it [in "Throwing"], and it suddenly occurred to me that there are a number of similarities to wielding a maul to split firewood, something I do almost daily since I switched to heating my house with a woodstove.
As a strong and healthy but non-athletic female rapidly approaching the age of Medicare eligibility, I don't have the upper body strength to power through the wood, so I've struggled a bit to learn how to do this chore, and spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out the difference between a whack that neatly splits apart a chunk of wood and one that nicks it and bounces off.
I'd begun to figure out that standing up straight when I swing not only is more effective but takes much less effort, and it was your very clear description of the "kinetic chain" that gave me real "A-ha!" moment next time I went out to split. Working with an upright back means the maul is upright and balanced for a split second at the top of the swing, meaning I can slide my left hand all the way down to the end of the handle. And that means I need very little muscular effort, just a sort of twitch of the lower back and a slight tightening of the biceps, to touch off one heck of a downswing, which then hits the wood with acceleration doing all the work of producing force, rather than my (puny) power.
Or something. This kind of physics is not my strong suit, Lord knows. But that concept of the "kinetic chain" is really a wonderful one. When I get it right, which I'm doing much more often now thanks to your article, I can literally feel it transferring from my lower back to my shoulders and upper arms, into the maul handle, ending with a very satisfying crack when it reaches the end at the wood.
Even if, as you say in that article, there's no actual structural difference between male and female upper bodies, the difference in pelvic structure and center of balance, plus the really striking difference in muscle power means that using tools almost universally designed by and made for men is often very frustrating. I'm looking forward to figuring out how to apply the kinetic chain concept to make all sorts of outdoor chores a bit easier next summer.<<
Glad to be of service -- and stay warm up in Vermont.