The Astounding Strength & Grace Of Acrobats & Gymnasts

 

  Ever seen Cirque De Solei or something similar and even Gymnastics, than you know how cool it is to see these world class athletes fly through the air with grace, power and beauty. Just having the speed and the strength to pull off certain moves is just incredible and you never know what comes next. To me Aerialists are one of the most powerful people pound for pound in the realm of Acrobatics.

 There have been debates who have the strongest this or the strongest that, you got big arms than you have some serious upper body power, powerful legs you can either squat a lot or run like the wind but yet the Core is what separates the men from the boys. Your torso carries the most power and strength in your body next to your legs being the strongest. When it comes to athletics, gymnasts have pretty much the strongest core in the world. Think about it, how do they fly through the air, hold hand balances so perfectly and move around on their upper bodies as if they were legs?  If they didn’t have strong torsos, everything else would be gone in a snap. Now some people think Bodybuilders have strong abs but in reality, it’s just the opposite, not all of them but most have very weak torsos to do anything basic let alone incredibly superhuman. The stronger your Core is, the rest of your body is strong, this doesn’t mean do nothing but crunches and sit-ups and leave everything else out, it takes the whole body to work together.

 

 

 One of the most kick ass shows I’ve ever witnessed was in Las Vegas where there was a vampire show called Bite. This show featured smoking hot and beautiful women, jaw dropping dancing & acrobatics and heavy metal that was just as powerful as the performers themselves. During one segment, a man who was pulled from the audience gets bit by a vampire, turns into this incredible monster with a shredded body that you need to see to believe, becomes consumed by the powerful bite and begins to take hold of a chain hanging down, wraps around his arm and begins to fly and twirl in the air like a madman and reaches down and with one arm picks up a woman and bites her as well. I can’t tell you the rest of the show but I can assure you that same actor has powers in real life that even he can teach you how to grab a hold of.

 

 

 An important aspect to keeping the body fit and ready for anything is to keep the blood flowing throughout the day. Doing small little exercises can have a huge impact on your level of strength and power beyond belief. Even the most experienced gymnasts and acrobats do some form of exercise throughout the day because during practice or even rehearsals, they have to be in top shape otherwise they can lose their spot on a team or worse be out of a job. Learn to use your time for these little things and big changes will come. “You don’t have to do much, for doing a lot” Karl Gotch.

 

 

 Practicing Hand balancing is the most basic component in both acrobatics and gymnastics because what some teach Bridging in wrestling, Hand Balancing is one of the first things taught in those areas of sport and entertainment. Hand Balancing isn’t for everyone I understand but there are those who want to learn it and get good or even great at it. At the same time, how cool would it be to have the strength to hold yourself up in Handstand and move around just like a gymnast or an acrobat? You don’t have to be a either one to get great benefits from this type of training. If you want to practice it, than look no further from my friends Logan Christopher and Ed Baran.

 

 

 In both acrobatics and gymnastics, the number one rule is to keep the body strong in every movement and by that I mean the whole body from your head to your toes. You will learn how to keep the body tight and strong because being loose anywhere can spell disaster or you’ll just not be able to do even a basic exercise. Learning to use your body in complete unison builds awareness and strength in ways nothing else can match. Anybody can lift a weight one way or another but you can’t hold yourself up in certain positions without the whole body working together.

 You may never aspire to be a Gymnast or an Acrobat which is perfectly fine, yet you can still have the great benefits and a strong & powerful body once you learn the basic elements of using your body as a whole package and become stronger than the average person. You don’t have to be a world class athlete to find world-class or even superhuman results. All that matters is you make your exercise fun and enjoyable and if you have children, let them exercise with you or teach them to exercise; this builds power and confidence within and helps build character. Have fun and make it worthwhile, even if you have only 5 minutes in the day.

The Olympics

 I watched a little of the Olympics a few weeks ago and from most of what I watched was the majority of Swimming & Gymnastics. The female gymnasts just destroyed opponents left and right and in my humble opinion none of them shined as much as Gabby Douglas. She embodied what a gymnast should have, grace, power, strength and above all fierce balance. Gymnastics is by far one of the toughest sports there is, both Male & Female competition, the training is fierce and it gives you a whole new perspective on Animalistic Bodyweight Training. The closest to Gymnastics would be the Animals although you won’t see a Tiger on the balance beam or a Gorilla on the Pummel Horse but the resemblance is uncanny and like an animal in the wild, you have to be quick, fast, coordinated and extremely strong.

 Swimming was the other sport I couldn’t take my eyes off cause our American squad just took over with a  vengeance in just about every event both men and women. Michael Phelps was the dominant king but the dominant queen in my opinion was Missy Franklin who was no more than 17 and won many gold medals. Just to swim at an incredible pace takes conditioning to a level you can’t even imagine. Like Gymnastics, Swimming takes up your entire body from head to toe and each event looks more grueling than the other the toughest being the Butterfly I think. That sport became a favorite to watch and wasn’t much of a swim fan in previous Olympics but after learning many forms of exercise and conditioning I had a new found respect for certain sports.

 We all know that some athletes have used steroids in the Olympics to increase their performance and chances of winning but it comes with a price. Steroids for personal gain is just plain stupid and there were at times when some of them didn’t realize they were on it because Roids don’t always come with a needle, comes in creams, pills and all sorts of stuff and it’s just plain dumb to even put athletes on it. I realize there is pressure among coaches, families, teammates and the organization to an athlete that they are expected to do great things and many of them are duped into being as perfect as possible even taking serious health risks for seeking that perfection. It’s really tough to avoid that kind of thing when you’re a world-class athlete whether an Olympian or a Professional so to really avoid it, do your research, learn alternatives that bring you more health instead of decreasing it and find that power within you that gives you the strength, speed and endurance naturally and show it that you don’t need Steroids or P.E.Ds (for those playing the home game that’s Performance Enhancing Drugs). This is a suggestion not a general way to do things.

 Training at the highest level of Competition takes practice in ways you can’t imagine unless you’re in your specific sport. One of the greatest amateur wrestlers of all-time Kurt Angle was an Olympic champion, World Champion, NCAA Champion and a profound man on his intense level of conditioning. While he trained for the Olympics, he ran hills as far as 200 yards, lifted weight in very high numbers, once he went to the University Of Iowa where Dan Gable was still coaching and once had a match with one of his wrestlers, this wasn’t your typical hardcore 4-3-3 minute rounds, this was a 40-30-30 minute rounds that made you realize how far you’re willing to go to keep going. That’s not hardcore training, that’s pure insanity and the will to fight to keep up with yourself. I have been in a wrestling room and for a 3 day period, it was till this day, the longest 3 days of my life as an athlete. It’s not just wrestling, it’s every sport you’re in, if you want it bad enough, if you want to be the very best, than you got to train harder than anyone else, you won’t always be the strongest, biggest or meanest cat in the gym or in your field but the will to bust your ass in practice makes you an athlete with the highest of honors and that’s fighting for what you love and smiling while you’re doing it. The hardest part isn’t the training, training actually is the easy part, and the competition is your toughest part because the training you already bled sweated and gotten through, now you got to put that to the test.

 Out of everything you do for a sport, no matter how many opponents you won or lost to, there’s that one opponent that will always come after you and that’s the same one you see in the mirror every morning. The other guy is just another athlete that you’ll face time and time again or face him/her only one time but fighting yourself is the one thing you face every single day. If you can learn to grapple yourself and overcome the challenges you face every day, the rest is a cake walk. After watching some of the Olympics and reading about the other athletes, it’s safe to say with every up and down, won or lost, defeated and conquered every single athlete down to the very last place did everything they could to make it to the highest level of competition but many of them still need to find that one thing that brought them there and make it consistent otherwise, they will become just another athlete with the word Olympian attached to their name.

Think You Don’t Have Time, Tell That To Slim

A lot of people say they want to get fit and strong but they tend to have this “I don’t have time” mindset. I understand that some of you have children, work at certain stressful jobs and need to take care of your family, I was raised in a day care when I was young and saw the woman that became my second mother get up every morning at five and kids would roll in around six and some would go to school but the majority stayed, there were between 7-11 kids at a time not including the 4 she has of her own and by the time kids were gone it be almost 7 o’clock at night. That’s a hell of a schedule and doing that for over 20 years takes a toll on you.

 I’ve learned to make time everyday even on days that I don’t feel well because I’m determined to get something done. That’s a cake walk compared to a living legend like Slim The Hammer Man. This man alone starting as a teenager worked in the Rock Corry and smashed rock and stone with a sledgehammer for 12-14 hours a day up to 7 days a week. Why am I telling you this, yes he busted his ass and you’d think he didn’t have time to do a workout? His job alone was a workout in itself but the point I’m making here is after this long and grueling hours at the Corry, he’d still come home have a little dinner and go down to his basement which became legendary as The Dungeon and bent nails, bars, broke chains and worked tirelessly on his trademark and that was Hammer Levering which you can learn about going to legendary strength and look into the feats of strength section on the site.

 No matter how tough your life is or how grueling a schedule you have, if you want it bad enough you’ll find the time to at least some kind of workout. One strongman I highly admire is named Steve Justa and during his early days he worked on hay bailing and worked construction. After long hours he’d still come home and train like a madman because he wanted it bad enough and made an effort. Some of that training even helped him bail hay faster in a shorter amount of time than he did lifting weights and you can learn what type of training he did from my man Bud Jeffries’ DVD set on Isometrics.

 Find something you want to make a goal, start small, and do a little exercise here and there. Taking a walk on your lunch break is a start, when you have had a rough day and need some time alone, before you go to bed, take a few deep breaths to calm down, do a few stretches that should take no more than a few minutes and there you go. Morning workouts are the best in my opinion because you can get up before everyone else does, do some deep breathing and stretching, if you’re into Yoga that’s awesome. Every little effort can make a huge difference in your results. More importantly, have a good attitude and learn to tell yourself that when you do exercise, make it fun and enjoyable. Who knows, your kids if you have any might want to join you, encourage them, it helps bring in more positive energy and gives your mind and body a healthy dose of great motivation.

 I feel that if you keep making excuses to not exercise, you’re setting yourself up for jail from a mental standpoint and not just a cell, you’re solitary confinement where you’re locked up, chained to the wall and you can’t do a damn thing to break yourself free, do you want that to happen, being stuck with the same things over and over and looking at the same boring and unhappy life? One little change and you can make a whole turn around. I never said give up what you have in your life just to exercise, that would make me sound like a prick but what I’m doing my best to help YOU with is that if you want to get in shape, do what you can to make the time to do even if it’s for one minute. Yes you read that right; you can start doing exercises that will take only a minute to do. You can even do certain throughout the day, make it happen for you.

 Having the need to go to the gym is way overrated and it sucks getting there, being stuck in traffic, parking, dressing into gym clothes then you try to find a place to workout and someone else has taken it, you’ve just wasted precious time and I would bet my bottom dollar that at times it takes you as long to get to the gym, park and dress as it is getting the same amount of time as the workout itself. Home workouts are the most valuable places to train because you can listen to whatever you want, use what you have and if you don’t have equipment than check out my buds Matt & Ed’s stuff where you can do exercises anywhere at any time and take as much time as you want and no one would be hassling you and never feeling pressured about using a machine and having some dumb ass give you a hard time cause he needs it too.

 If you can get to the gym, great, do what you can and make it an effort. Small steps can reach big heights and only you can choose to climb the mountain or stay at the bottom, believe me it’s not easy but it’s like what Tom Hanks said to Genna Davis about Baseball “It’s suppose to be hard, if it wasn’t everyone would do it…The hard is what makes it great.” Don’t push it but create a challenge and start easing into it and build from there. You can do it, I believe in you and so does everyone that I’ve worked for, with and trained with do to.