Farmer Burns & Deep Breathing

108 years ago, one of the greatest wrestlers of his time published a course based on Physical Culture Exercise and Catch Wrestling. His name was Martin "Farmer" Burns. By the time it was published, he had already been in his mid-50's and this was also 3 years after his student Frank Gotch beat the Russian Lion George Hackenshmidt for the second time at Comisky Park (Brand New Chicago White Sox's Baseball Park). The book itself had some interesting notions about wrestling that even in that time would've been considered legendary. It's called Lessons In Wrestling & Physical Culture.

These days, the book can be found in reprints and also on Matt Furey's website where there's a DVD version of the course. For the most part, it is a pretty damn good book, if you can get past the blurry pictures of the holds and takedowns. One of the interesting aspects of the book are from pages 7 & 20 where it shows various Deep Breathing Exercises and the Farmer's Isometric Ab Exercise. Now I'm sure in that time, the Abdominal Exercise he presents may have some outdated and possibly dangerous notes on the elements of breathing. The other exercises are great and have awesome benefits but the Ab exercise does have some problems. You also need to realize back then, life expectancy was low (dead by 45 or younger) and certain aspects of scientific studies weren't as rational and safe as many are today (although still questionable in some cases).

When I first learned the Ab exercise, the breathing pattern was completely different. I learned the breathing pattern from Furey's Combat Abs book. The original version in Burns' book was focused more on the inhale and holding while contracting as opposed to a greater focus on the exhale and the sound that was made as you contracted the abs. I've done both and found the latter to be much more suitable and safe. It's the same breathing pattern when I do the 7-12 second Isometric Contractions. I also would go as long as 5 minutes doing this exercise which for more experienced people who have practiced it can be good but just doing it for a minute was more beneficial in my opinion. It just worked that way.

The breathing exercises on Page 7 however; are extremely powerful yet simple to do. I would practice them from time to time but also found a "routine" I do where I take various breathing exercises including the Isometric Ab Exercise and blend them together for a greater sense of a workout that works for me. Some are from the book, others are from a course I learned based on Breathing Exercises from the Shaolin Monks. The exercises themselves from the book, have been called American Chi Kung by some people which sounds cool but the same was said about John Peterson's DVR Exercises which were loosely based and "refurbished" from John McSweeny's version of them, they were also referred to as American Yoga which just sounds weird. 

Was the Farmer onto something when that book came out? Who really knows, I want to believe he did and those same exercises are still being used today in some circles which should tell you something. Deep Breathing is probably the single greatest element we can learn to keep our body healthy because let's face it, if we don't breathe, we die in minutes. Shallow Breathing can be more fatal than we realize and yes many people have overcome asthma and other things that affect the lungs but that should also give us a sign that breathing is just as important as anything else. Just mere tweaks of our attention to breathing can be a huge wake up call and develop levels of strength, endurance and conditioning that are freaking astounding. 

Breathe deeply and see what happens with your body from the inside (or should I say feel) and what happens with the exterior as well. Grab the book for yourself because it's also a hell of a great thing to add to your Physical Culture library. 

"Deep Breathing exercises alone, when done RIGHT, has made many a weak man strong and many a sick man well."- Martin "Farmer" Burns 1861-1937

Rest Periods: How Long Do You Need Before The Next Set?

In my time of learning different forms of exercise, Playouts, programs & styles I have found that when it comes to rest periods, there's something bigger than you haven't completely seen yet. Most trainers would tell you that shorter rest periods are the key to developing muscles. In reality, its not good to generalize how often to rest between sets and not take into consideration what effects it has on the Central Nervous System.

You've heard of the tabata style HIT that is one of the biggest rages in fitness today or resting for no more than 30 seconds between sets. I'm going to tell you a hard to hear truth that will piss off a lot of people and hard to convince public on actual rest between sets or exercises......

Your body can only push so hard during an exercise and if you're told to go hard and then rest for an equal or shorter amount of time, that can create greater harm on your body than you can realize. That no pain, no gain line is bullshit plain and simple. If you're in pain during your training, you are doing something very wrong or you are forced to keep going even though your body can tear a joint or even worse break a bone in the process. If you're highly conditioned and your body can handle the stress, sure shorter rest periods can be ok but you at some point need to let the body recuperate. This isn't the military or training for competition and that's where many trainers are so damn stupid that they have convinced people to use this mentality.

Let me ask you something...Have you ever thrown up in a workout, passed out, bled, felt dizzy or felt that your energy is flat out gone somewhere between when you started and ended a session? I have done at least 4 of these things in my lifetime and its not worth your life to be in those situations. Its really about how an individual can truly recover and be efficient in their next set of exercise because here's a fact, if you're sloppy at any time during your session and you keep going, your body will give you a hard lesson in what its like to feel pain in places you didn't think pain existed in. If you rest too early, your energy can be depleted and you can lose the ability to recover at an optimal rate, however if you're too late to recover you're not giving the body the fuel it needs to feel the muscles. There has to be a balance there.

Here's an example of what i'm talking about; Hill Sprints: A powerful exercise where you run up a hill as hard as you can and then walk down the hill and repeat until you have done the allotted amount of sprints. The recovery process aught to be enough to where your breath is at a solid level and breathe deeply and calmly; if you haven't recovered enough, your run will deplete your energy levels and your speed will become way too slow and nowhere near the level you want it to be. Your recovery is what brings in highly oxygenated blood to your cellular tissue and builds up your hormone levels. Think of it this way, when you swim and come up for air, if you're not breathing effectively coming up and back into the water, you will be depleted and you can drown; same thing with exercise, if you can't recover you won't be efficient and you can get hurt or worse end up in the hospital with heart problems, kidney failure, floppy limbs and your chest will feel like a crowbar is hitting it every time you take a breath.

Rest is needed to get the most out of your session, the more conditioned you are, the greater your capacity is and resting at times mean just taking a few breaths and you're good to go, its all in determining what your level of fitness is at. When I do sprints, I use to do the 30/90 protocol which is better than the 30/30 or less concept in my opinion. There were times where I needed about 5 minutes or more to get into another set and be effective, others it could mean just a few breaths but I never truly bought into what someone else said because I'm very intuitive and have an understanding of my body and what I need to do to be great in the exercises I perform. Somebody can give you ideas and give you tips but in the end, it should come down to how much YOU need to be at your best. When it shoved down your throat, you can rest (no pun intended) assured that they're not looking out for your best interest. Most trainers today don't really know what the hell they're talking about and when you teach something you read out of a textbook more than teaching them to be intuitive they're not a real trainer. Through trial & error, mistakes & learning from others in the last 2 decades of being around fitness I can tell you first hand is that the more intuitive you are, the better.

A trainer ought to help students learn to rely on themselves and pass on knowledge that will give them a greater outlook that teaches about how to avoid injuries, utilize the ins and outs of being at your best from start to finish and teaching the value of recovery. I have exercised everyday for nearly 12 years, fought a few minor injuries and pushed myself in ways many can never understand but because of those experiences I have learned how to use my rest periods and be at my best whether it was for 5 minutes or more than an hour. Your rest is the key to how you perform at an optimum level. However long you rest is up to YOU not someone else.

Herb Of The Day: He Shou Wu

He Shou Wu is taken in order to slow down ageing, nourish Jing, strengthen knees, lower back, bones, muscles, tendons and fortify the blood.

Conserving Your Breathing

            The breath is the most important factor in the human body. We can for days without water, weeks without food but yet we can only live a few minutes holding our breath. The way we breathe in the fitness world is a bit strange at times. You can breathe in and out your nose or mouth; breathe in through the nose, out the mouth or in the nose and out the nose. There are many ways to breathe but during exercise apparently we have to breathe in and out one time with one rep. That’s how we’re normally taught, even in bodyweight type exercises like the squat and push-up, inhale up, exhale down or vise versa.

            What if we switched gears a bit so you can get a few extra reps without breathing in and out every single time? Learn to breathe differently, conserve your energy and your breathing. If you’re breathing too much, too early, you may get wined. It’s like a wrestling match, you need to keep your body strong and supple and part of that is your breathing, if you get winded too quickly (or as they say in pro wrestling you Blow Up), you won’t be as efficient and you won’t be able to handle the stress and possibly end up losing. What does the breath feel like, sound like and where does the driving force of it come from. Do an exercise like push-ups, inhale for 2 reps and exhale for 2 reps, you just did 4 reps in one breath. Now do it a little consistently. It’s not easy and it takes getting use to but you can get more out of your reps with the control of your breathing power.

            Doing the same old thing can lead to boredom and as the definition of insanity is; doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Here at Power & Might, I look to help you find and give information that can help you from another perspective. Thinking differently, helping you get more out of what most people teach. Deep Breathing is one of the most powerful aspects of Physical Culture because it doesn’t just help you become physically strong but mentally strong as well.

            Fluidity is another important aspect of your training. Like Bruce Lee has stated being like water, it’s fluid, powerful and can give life as well as destroy it. Moving with grace and power is far more important than grunting, making little mad faces and being narrow dimensional. Expand your power; one course that is the center of this is CoreForce Energy, teaching how to expand your power, your breathing and your imagination to instantly get stronger and faster. Open up to building a stronger body from within and take your strength to levels that you thought were impossible.

Be awesome my friends.  

The Cold Shower Effect

            Recently I just got back into testing out cold showers because of the pop up articles about them lately. Right now it’s to mostly help my recovery from intense workouts and build up my immune system for the winter months here in Idaho. It gets down to as low as 8 degrees at night and the highest this week has been no more than 25-30 so safe to say it gets fucking cold.

            As I experiment with this and so far I love it, it’s one of the best methods to increase your health and vitality. The shock of the water hitting your body can be a bit dramatic for some people but what that’s doing is amping up the heat in your body and move it towards the organs and keep them strong and healthy. When you have strong powerful organs especially the heart and kidneys, you are charging up your body like never before. Think about it, this intense form of therapy can actually make you stronger and more mentally tough.

            One of the very best benefits of cold water therapy (especially for us guys) is the increase of our metabolism and testosterone increase. When you are in a cold shower and it’s hitting you all over the place you have no choice but to breathe hard. Breathing deeply and hard like you are training increases the chance of burning off fat and as you as your body tries to stay warm it’s burning off more calories which can lead to weight loss, bodyfat decrease and at best bring your testosterone up a notch which helps increase lean muscle and take away the fat we don’t want. Screw steroids and PEDs take a cold shower damn it and be a man.

            That old saying from Farmer Burns “Deep breathing alone can make many a weak man strong and many a sick man well.” He made that comment more than 100 years ago and it’s as true today as it was back in his time. When you breathe deeply, you open the lungs and you increase your capacity to sustain great energy and stamina. When you hop in that cold shower and you’re forced to breathe deeply, it becomes apparent that your body is not only getting stronger it’s getting stronger from within which is more important than always focusing on the outside. Deep Breathing allows you to keep going in your activity or whatever you’re doing throughout the day. It builds that inner power within you to live life with peacefulness and bliss.

            Cold showers isn't a new thing, it’s been around since the dawn of man, jumping into cold lakes, rivers and bathing in the treacherous winters has been the stuff of legends. In Japan, masters and students would stand under a waterfall that is ice cold to help cleanse their spirit, in Finland they would sit in the sauna for a time then immediately go out and roll in the snow and jump in the freezing lake. Athletes have used ice baths to help their recovery from workouts and decrease the chance of soreness.

            It’s important to keep natural remedies as possible in this pharmaceutical and technological world of ours because when it comes to the human body, it’s one of the most fascinating elements in our universe and however it was created, we must protect it from harmful affects which are practically everywhere so do the best to your abilities. Be open to becoming a little more natural, you’d be surprised what can happen when you put it into a positive realm.  

Breathe While You Train

             I've said it before and I’ll repeat till you get it through your thick skull, learn to breathe while you train. It is the single most important aspect of physical and mental conditioning. It is the one thing that keeps us alive more than anything else. You can go days without water, weeks without food but a few minutes without breathing is killing you. The power of the breath is essential as it can help you stay in the game far longer than if you just started hyperventilating in the first couple minutes.

            Breathing helps you conserve energy and the more you practice it, the more energy is reserved. Its power can be used any way you want if you know how to use it. It can be used to help you in a strength exercise or it can help your endurance over a period of time. Different athletes use different breathing patterns for how they stay in their sport but the principles stay the same, if you can’t conserve your energy, you won’t last very long. Learn to breathe and learn when to use it to your advantage.

            Deep breathing is an awesome way to keep your energy intact and granted sometimes if you’re in a fight or in a match against another opponent or team your breathing tends to be tested which is a good thing because you learn how to handle it when it’s time to make it count. Even in a training session in the gym or your home workouts, you want to learn how to breathe while you exercise and while you’re in between sets because after a while it takes a toll on you so you learn to keep your breathing as best as possible to keep going.  It’s the reason it keeps you focused no matter what you’re doing.

            There are tricks to help your breathing while you train. When I do my deck of cards training, sometimes once I get to a certain part of the deck I have to keep my breathing intact because it becomes so intense you have to take in as much air as you can. After you do a set of push-ups or squats for example, although you want to keep going without much rest as possible there’s that other part you can use where you take in as many breaths as the number of reps for the next set, that way you’re not taking up too much rest and you’re conserving your energy. You can use this method for different exercises and different areas of fitness. Another great trick I learned to keep your breathing at bay is what I learned called the Hoffman Walk which was termed in Brooks Kubik’s books on the adventures of the old-time strongmen Legacy Of Iron series, after you do a set of an exercise, you walk and breathe deeply till you’re ready to tackle the next set, you’re not sitting down and you keep moving without stopping so this helps with your endurance.

            Get the concept of breathing and how it can help you in any endeavor and it doesn't always have to be training, it can be how you prepare for meetings or conferences in business, or how you handle shopping without tiring out before you get to your car (this happens with a lot of people believe it or not) and it can help you stay in the game in your sport so you can keep up that reserved power to stay driven and help your team keep going. Breathing is life and life is breathing.