Craftsmanship And Raw Power: Stronger Grip's Strength Over Metal

Strength and equipment come in many forms, but if you want to see something unique and bad ass, one place shares those common entities with extra flair for serious growth. What you may find, you may not see anywhere else—you'll see things that'll give you that raw, primal power that shakes the earth beneath your feet. You’re not satisfied with cookie-cutter gym gear or flimsy fitness fads. You want tools forged with purpose, built to transform you into a force of nature. That’s where StrongerGrip.com storms into the arena, swinging sledgehammers and shattering limits like a modern-day Thor. This isn’t just a website—it’s a battle cry for those who live to grip, lift, and conquer. strap in you crazy bastards, because we’re diving into the heart of what makes Stronger Grip the ultimate forge for superhuman strength, in the most unapologetic way possible.

The Forge of Legends: What Is Stronger Grip?

StrongerGrip.com, crafted by the metal-wielding maestro Ryan J. Pitts, isn’t your typical run of the mill fitness store. It’s a crucible where iron meets grit, and legends are made. This is the home of custom strength gear—tools designed not just to train but to awaken the beast within all of us. From monstrous sledgehammers to even fucking Jason Vorhees' machete, every piece is a work of functional art, built to push your limits and laugh in the face of “impossible.” Ryan’s creations aren’t just equipment; they’re a philosophy: Grip it. Move it. Own it.

Think of Stronger Grip as the Colosseum of strength training. It’s where warriors go to arm themselves with tools that don’t just survive the grind—they thrive in it. Whether you’re a strongman, a martial artist, or a garage gym gladiator, this is your arsenal. And let me tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than wrapping your hands around a Stronger Grip tool and feeling like you could rip a mountain in half. Having several pieces made by Ryan, I can attest to this.

The Power of the Grip: Why It Matters

The real deal here—strength starts with your grip. You can have biceps like boulders and quads that crush concrete, but if your hands can’t hold the weight, you’re just a statue waiting to crumble. Stronger Grip gets this on a primal level. Ryan J. Pitts has made it his mission to forge tools that turn your hands into iron vices, capable of bending steel and crushing doubt. 

Take the GripMo, a versatile beast that offers three ways to train your grip, opening the door to countless movements. Plug in a loop, anchor a band, or just choke down on its rugged surface—it’s like having a dojo for your hands. Or how about the BandGrips Handle and BandAnchor? These bad boys turn resistance bands into weapons of mass construction, letting you hammer your forearms, shoulders, and core with relentless intensity. The response from the strength community? “Super positive,” as Ryan himself put it, and that’s no surprise. These tools don’t just build muscle—they build might that even the old timers would be proud of.

And then there’s the Machete from Friday The 13th, used for training like the Indian Clubs, it's a thing of beauty that's so massive it makes Crocodile Dundee’s knife look like a butter spreader. This colossal of a club isn’t just nuts to use; it’s a challenge to your very soul, daring you to pick it up and prove you’re worthy. If you're a classic horror fan, you're in for a nightmarish good time.

 Stronger Grip embodies that spirit for the iron and those who go outside the norm. Every piece of gear is a lesson in resilience, a reminder that strength isn’t just physical—it’s mental, emotional, and downright spiritual. Ryan J. Pitts isn’t just a craftsman; he’s a strength alchemist. His blog posts on StrongerGrip.com are like war chants for the iron-hearted. The man writes with the passion of a Viking poet, and you can feel the fire in every word. It’s not about selling gear—it’s about inspiring you to become your own legend.

This is where Stronger Grip stands apart from the sterile, mass-produced fitness world. It’s in your face. It’s real. It’s for those who roar at challenges and fight against mediocrity. You don’t just buy from Stronger Grip—you join a movement that has been going on for nearly 2 decades.

Tools That Forge Of The Norse Gods

Want To Talk About Gear? Stronger Grip’s lineup is a hall of fame for strength nerds. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find:

Epic Sledgehammer: A Hammer so colossal it demands respect. Perfect for strongmen and women who want to test their mettle.  

Barrel Clubs: A set of grip-training masterpieces with endless versatility. Your forearms will thank you—or curse you. Either way, they’ll grow. Remember the Club challenges by wrestler the Iron Sheik? These bring back a classic with a new perspective on building power with fierce animalistic strength. 

Burger Grips With Hooks: Turn pulldown machines into a nasty upper body strength assault. Simple, brutal, effective. Or hook them to regular barbells and get a unique look at what grip strength is all about. 3.5 & 4 inch Grips available. 

Barbarian Army Strength Sword: Swing this, and you’re not just training—you’re channeling ancient warriors.  

Custom Creations: From unique trophies to functional metal art, Ryan’s custom work is as badass as it gets.  

Each piece is handcrafted, not churned out by some soulless factory. That’s the Stronger Grip difference—every tool has a story, a purpose, and a challenge embedded in its steel.

Join us Strength Seekers

Stronger Grip isn’t just a store; it’s a call to arms. It’s for those who see heavy ass hammers and the like and think, “Challenge accepted.” It’s for the misfits who train in the rain, who grip harder when the world says let go, who laugh when the bar bends. Ryan J. Pitts and StrongerGrip.com are your allies in this quest for functional strength that would make even the gods have their jaws drop.

Stronger Grip isn’t for everyone. It’s not for the faint of heart or the casual gym-goer who’s happy with a 20-pound dumbbell and a smoothie. It’s for those who crave more, who live for the moment when their hands grip iron and their spirit soars into the universe. It’s for the strength seekers, the power chasers, the might makers.

So, what are you waiting for? Head to Stronger Grip, grab a tool that screams “epic,” and start forging your own legend. Don't just be amazingly awesome, be epically awesome.

Stay strong, stay mighty, and keep gripping the impossible.

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Conquer The PUGS From Stronger Grip

 Also known as Push Up Grip Spikes.....

Mixing bodyweight royalty and building insane grip strength at the same time. Time for some truth bombs about the bad ass PUGS from Stronger Grip. These savage beasts are no joke and being custom made by one of the most awesome welders around, you know you're getting something that was made for the Gods of Strength. They're not just tools to build insane power and hands like Eagle Talons, they're a call from the jungle. Forging wrists of steel and building a dominant upper body that'll make silverbacks want to join up. This is taking the Push-Up to a whole other dimension that will shake the very foundation of your routine.

Like I said, Push-ups are bodyweight royalty, they've built athletes, warriors and help sculpt some of the all time greats of the Bronze Era of Physical Culture. Standard Push-ups are great in their own right, some will call them the king but at some point, doing a certain amount of reps aren't much of a challenge unless you change the variation or keep adding reps and sets until the cows come home. In some of my personal workouts, I've hit as many as 600 and normally settle around max 200 in circuit training. Now, when it comes to the PUGS, this changes the game. These aren't your grand pappi's typical push-ups. These fuckers are 3 1/2 inch globe shaped weapons made for battle. They can be torturous and will have you begging for mercy.

Crafted by the man of the hour, the man with the power, too sweet to be sour...Ryan Pitts at Strongergrip.com. The spikes are like a love letter to real grip strength and power that is functional. The inspiration to these, a customer of his named Louie (shout out to a maniac of iron), they take the ever lasting classic push-up and amplify the intensity that cranks up to 11. The main difference between these and the classic, think swinging a baseball bat and wielding Thor's killer hammer. In order to do these, you have to own and control every fucking inch of the movement.

The globe shape forces the hands to work with a vengeance. Nothing flat or comfortable, just powerful, pure and raw engagement man. Every muscle in your hands, wrists and forearms are firing on all cylinders. It's beyond pushing; clamping down on a 3 1/2 inch sphere, battling to stabilize as you lower yourself and explode back up. Think of Arm Wrestling but against the floor while doing push-ups. What would be the result? Forearms that are becoming like steel cords and a grip that can crush walnuts. These are great for MMA Fighters, Climbers, NFL Players or whoever wants hands that don't give up.

Let me ask you this: Have you ever tried balancing yourself on a round shaped surface while pressing your own bodyweight? It's quite a different beast bro. The PUGS are in full demand of insane wrist stability, engaging those other tiny muscles that the classic push-up doesn't comprehend. Want to have a solid punch? Build stronger wrists. This also goes for swinging a bat with incredible speed plus fewer injuries when you're throwing down in the cage or hauling heavy ass loads. These sweet little monsters, can be your secret weapon.

Don't be fooled now, these aren't just for those arms, the instability of the globe shape fires your core, shoulders and even the legs like a dragon in order to be steady. Every rep is a full body battle cry, forcing you to lock in and focus with immense intensity. It's a trifecta of a plank, push-up and grip workout all at the same damn time. You'll feel it from the fingers, all the way down to those toes and have new growth in the stabilizer muscles.

The beauty of this design, is that you can grip in a variety of ways for leverage and more. Grab the top like the claws of a bear or choke down lower for a challenge that's a little twisted. What's really cool here, is that they come with these rubber pads for smooth surfaces so you can take these rascals out practically anywhere. Nothing flashy or chasing likes on Twitter or Insta, these are about raw strength that help you in your journey. 

The Spikes remind me of the old-school strongmen. The guys that bent steel into shapes, tore thick phonebooks and ripped up decks of cards like their life depended on it. The love of experimenting with things that generated strength that was real, unadulterated and intense. 

Grab a set of these and keep being amazingly awesome.

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Unleash Your Creative Potential

           As long as I've been training since I learned to walk again in 2005, I always believed in finding a creative way to train. It’s been my mission to find certain exercises that are unique and out there because when you do the same old boring crappy workouts that these magazines or infomercials are telling you do, it’s diminishing your right to find what works best for you. I have no problem doing basic movements but I also wanted to add an element of fun to them.

            The best way to use your creativity is to use your imagination. The way you think into your exercises will define how you believe the workout to be. One of my favorite exercises as of late has been what I call being a Thorsmith; what that is just basically taking a heavy Thor Hammer and hitting a tire with one hand. Now to most that just seems pretty boring but not if you think differently. The way I look at it as, I’m not hitting a tire and my hands are bigger in my mind than they normally are, plus I'm imagining I’m in an awesome place where strength is instant, I’m building my body from within and I don't imagine a tire being there but something that I'm building from scratch and it’s not a sword or a wrench but my muscles and my tendons. This is one example of how to turn a simple exercise into a super charged workout with just your thinking.

            Although the word workout may have a different meaning to some people but to me whenever I hear the word work-out two things cross my mind; one being if you don't have a positive thinking process and are too serious you’re just working and not getting anywhere. On the other hand if you feel alive and just effortlessly train without thinking harshly you're really playing and having a blast and getting results out of it. That’s where your imagination comes in and the way you apply yourself to your training.

            There are a number of dumbasses out there that tell you that they're way is the best and whoever is different doesn't know any better and being different makes you weak. Screw them. You are one person, you train however you want and if it’s different than everybody else so be it. I'm encouraging you to be unique and different because you can’t do the same things everyone does. You will always be stronger in something that someone else isn't; it’s not yours or anybody’s fault and being different is a gift not a curse. Don't let anyone tell you that you can’t do something great. If you have a vivid imagination, use it it’s yours and you have the power to make yourself successful. Whoever tells you different and gives you crap about it, they're jealous of what you have and they don’t look at you when they say it, they look at themselves and hating that they can’t do what you’re capable of. Show who you truly are and share it. 

Thorsmithing? What The Hell Is That

               I know what you're thinking, you're thinking why I came up with a word that makes no sense and is not even in the dictionary, I made it up and it’s meaningless. That last part is wrong and I hate to break it to you there are far more dumbass words that are used more frequently that aren't in the dictionary. There is such a word and I’m going to prove it with my own theory and experience. So sit back and enjoy the ride my friends.

            The reason why I came up with the word Thorsmithing is because it’s in combination of a blacksmith and Thor. It is the power of hitting a Thor Hammer on a tire with one hand while imagining you're a blacksmith creating something. Now Blacksmiths were some of the strongest workers pound for pound, they’re grip were just unbelievable and had some of the strongest arms in that part of town. As a strongman, the hands are crucial to your success on the feats your perform whether it’s bending steel, tearing cards, levering sledgehammers, designing steel into shapes and even driving a nail through a board; all done by hands.

          

  Now imagine having a mighty grip, you pound that hammer into the tire and you’re imagining not creating some kind of metal in your imagination but imagining you're creating the type of body you want; strong arms, powerful shoulders, punch-proof abs, sturdy legs and keen eye coordination. It’s not as easy as it looks because after a while, one hand will get tired so you have to switch to the other and keep going until you feel you're done. Just like building a sword like a blacksmith as a Thorsmith, you're building your body one strike at a time and when you're done with a workout, you're one step closer to creating something from scratch and turning it into a staggering piece of beauty and strength.

            You will develop a crushing grip and be able to do things you normally wouldn't be able to. A blacksmith’s hammer weighs close to what no more than 3 pounds, now imagine striking with a hammer 4-5 times that size; your grip will be powerful and crazy strong. Possessing that kind of grip takes hard work but it also develops your character and harnesses your mind to create something from within to show on the outside.

            As you hit the tire, imagine you're in Asgard among the Norse Gods with a hammer that can shatter mountains, knock out frost giants in the blink of an eye and be lifted almost no man can. Bring yourself to the place where strength is infinite, the glowing passion of power within your grasp and be able to strengthen your body unlike anything you've ever done before, all within one strike at a time. Get a hold of your own Thor Hammer and become a Thorsmith, creating strength and super power in your very own hands. Oh My God; it’s so ludicrous it just might be possible.

Starting Out With Sledgehammer Training

            

          A friend of mine asked me the other day he was interested in working with Sledgehammers and wanted to know what exercises and weight to start with on the hammer? I gave him a little bit of it because that was what I could figure out to say at the time. To me, it’s a lot of fun and has many benefits in terms of muscle building, strengthening the tendons and building great lung power; but it’s also very demanding and when you start out too fast or too much weight it’ll hit you hard.

            To give you some ideas; I've worked with different types of hammers, the ones you get like at home depot, the Epic Sledge, Thor’s Hammer and others so each one has a different feel or a different set of ways to move with the hammer. Just the basic swing on a tire is crazy enough as it is but there are other exercises that don’t always require striking. When you work with a long implement, the leverage factor will be a bigger point to look at because the weight shifts and you have to move your body to where the weight is in order to move it.

            Some people like using the Mace and although it’s very useful in many ways, I like using a sledgehammer better because it has a better interest in what you can do in terms of lever work and working with weight at a more odd angle. The Mace has more of a rounded ball so it has a smoother way of moving, the Sledge has more of a 4 sided shape like a rectangle or square as the head of the hammer. When you start out, you want to feel how it works in your hands, how your body shifts with the weight and try different things and no matter what you try, your grip will be a factor. If you don’t have a good grip you won’t last too long.

            Start out with a good 7-10 hammer to get the feel for it. There’s a DVD you can get from Bud Jeffries that is part of his Monster Conditioning Program specific to Sledgehammer Training. If you don’t have a tire that’s fine you can still get great benefit from sledge training. The exercises you can do are nearly the same as if lifting a barbell or dumbbell but the weight is shifted to one side so you have to work the stabilizing muscles and your grip needs to be strong and tight. Here’s a website that shows certain exercises although done with a Mace you can do the same with a sledge. Play and experiment with various reps and sets.

            I highly recommend the Sledgehammers from Stronger Grip because if you want to add weight to the hammer; you can put in shot led or steel shot otherwise if you use a hammer like from home depot, it’s expensive to buy more hammers and prices vary depending on how heavy the hammer is. I also recommend you do get a tire because once you get the ground work for non-tire exercises you’ll eventually want to strike it. You can find tires at a junk yard that no one wants anymore or you can get Half Tires that take up less space and have better strikes to work on.

            When you work on getting good with the sledgehammer, your body will begin to change, your muscles will have more definition, your tendons will become stronger and your breathing will skyrocket because it takes strength to use the hammer the way these guys can show you and the heavier the hammer, the more your breathing becomes a factor. Your grip will become much stronger and have that crushing strength. Take your body and mind to Super Muscle level and watch your strength skyrocket in ways you haven’t had before.

An Epic Review

          

            This is a special treat because I rarely ever write reviews for a certain product so today you’ll get an un-cut and uncensored review of the Epic Sledgehammer from Stronger Grip. Granted in this review I will not hold back how I feel about this Hammer and why it is one of the most awesome tools in no nonsense grip strength and conditioning that it is not to be underestimated.

            When you have a Hammer of this size & power and you have it in your hands; it strikes into your very soul because its beauty is without equal and its strength is unmatched. There are many great tools in the world of strongman but like with Highlander, there can be only one that hits you with ferocity and the power to take you down if you don’t have the guts to withstand it.

            It is not to be underestimated. Sure it looks awesome and has a mystic to it that even the folk legend John Henry can smile about but at the same time, you will either be handle it or you won’t and if you can’t, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself. People believe that to get strong you need weights or machines to do the work and slug off anything else that seems to extreme or not enough for them and I say bullshit. This one tool has the power to give you crushing grip that be used in many sports like Football, Baseball, Hockey, Golf, Wrestling, MMA you name it because when you strike it at a high volume or work it in different positions it tackles the mind more than anything else.

            I've held it in my hands and did quite a few exercises that don’t require a tire and I can tell you first hand it is brutal and your lower arm will get sore. It’s not a tool for just sports but to build that functional and enduring strength with a powerful grip, hand-eye coordination, lung capacity increase, shaping the body of a man with mighty tendons and super muscle. When you begin to train with this bad boy, your body will never be the same again. It takes effort to swing it, it takes to endure it and it strengthens your mind in ways most tools can’t. This Hammer is a tool of the gods that only one man has the guts to create and does it with style and class (and a bit of nerdyness) and that’s Ryan Pitts. He has built some of the most powerful tools in the world of grip strength and if Thor, Zeus and many of mythology’s famous gods were around today, they’d look to him to build the strength for the people and the strength that we all have within us.

            It is up to you if you have the guts to take on a challenge that could very well be the most fun and powerful challenge in your quest for physical strength.

Grip Your Way To Power

            You are one powerful human being; we all are in one form or another. We have certain strengths, weaknesses and we find some way to use a talent we posses. A lot of what we do physically contains within our hands. Our hands are the very essence of what we create. Grip Strength is one of the most important foundations a man or woman should posses. Being able to handle groceries, carry your kid, defend your family or if you’re a sports athlete, your hands are the very foundation of your talent; can’t shoot a basketball, throw a football, swing a bat or coordinate a hockey stick without having good solid hands. You can have very powerful hands not just in crushing strength but many other ways.

            One of the best ways to develop superhuman grip strength is increasing the strength in your tendons and ligaments. How many injuries can you count where an athlete or the average person had to wear a brace on their wrist because of a tendon pull or break? A form of training called Partials where you only lift a short distance is one of the most fun and brutal ways to increase your tendon power. Think of lifting a weight you could never imagine hitting at full range; you can almost have twice as much strength to lift at short range. This not only builds dense muscle but take your tendons into the stratosphere.

            In combat/contact sports, you must find a way to take down an opponent whether you’re a football player or even a MMA athlete, your grip can change the very facet of the match and it either make your or break within less than a few seconds. You’re on the defensive line in football and a running back or a receiver has got his hands on the ball, if you have strong hands, you can take him down and squeeze the very life out of him and he’ll think twice of getting in your path. You’re in a fight against a great Mixed Martial Artist or Wrestler, he’s fast, he’s agile and knows how to slip out of holds, but you have some mighty mitts and you end up one way or another getting him in a lock or have a good hold on him for a takedown. You have him in your grasp, you put your heart into this fight and you even put in the time to train your grip to the core, you get a hold on him, he has no choice but to tap out, he can’t fathom how strong and supple your hands are on him. Want strong hands, you’re going to have to build them.

            You are one strong person my friend but it’s important to continue getting stronger. Like lifting weights, use fat gripz for your upper body movements like pulls, presses, curls, cleans, snatches anything that you can put your hands on, even pull-ups, these will make your hands super strong. One type of implement that will take your grip to a new level is sledgehammers, think of the old-time laborers and how powerful their hands were doing hours of taking out rock and stone with a heavy hammer, think of being Thor and tackling the frost giants with thunderous power and superhuman strength. Build your eagle claws by doing exercises on your fingertips like push-ups, pull-ups and even Animal Exercises; think about that, being able to walk in the steps of a big and powerful bear or the super strong gorilla on your fingertips, that will build tendon strength like an extreme few can ever be done.

            How would you feel if you had the grip power to knock home runs, bend steel, tear decks of cards in half and destroy your competition on the gridiron taking down fast runners and receivers and even taking out the quarterback? Your grip will be a major factor whether you realize it or not and the stronger you make your grip, chances are the stronger your entire body will be. Our hands are not just these little bitty muscles and tendons; they are one of the most powerful energy sources in the human body. Create energy in your hands and you’ll see how powerful you can be. Stay hungry my friends and be strong and smart.

The Stronger Your Grip Is, The Stronger You’ll Be

           Why is grip strength so important? It’s essential to our everyday lives and not just for training or getting in a good forearm workout but it has the ability to save a life or help someone in need. A surgeon needs his hands to construct, repair or save another person’s life, a massage therapist needs strong and supple hands, an athlete needs strong hands to throw a ball or tackle someone, even in soccer at one point you need to throw the ball out into the field to get the best advantage of scoring a goal. A parent has to have some strength in their hands to carry groceries, help keep their baby up, play with them and so on. Catch my drift here?

            Your grip is a major key and I’ll get into different types of grip strength in a second but let me point a few things out. In the world of the strongman, your grip cannot be neglected because if you’re going a specific feat of strength, the majority of the time you’re going to be using your hands. You can’t bend steel if your grip isn't up to par, you can have strong wrists but you need to keep a lock on a bar a spike, if you’re Ryan Pitts at Stronger Grip you can’t swing another human being on his human swing set without having a solid grip and if you’re like Dennis Rogers, there’s no way in hell you can lift a fridge with one finger without training your grip. Now the majority of us aren't strongmen or a specific athlete or really big with genetic gifts of strength; most of us don’t realize how important our grip is, to hold onto a child, to carry a gurney to put in the ambulance to take someone to the hospital, to rescue someone from a burning building, to fight in combat as a soldier. The stronger your grip is, the stronger you’ll be.

            There are different types of grip strength; there’s pinch gripping which is having that alligator type snap, crushing strength like from grippers and thick bar lifts or using fat gripz, working the fingers like fingertip push-ups, twisting strength, working the wrists, playing an instrument like playing the piano or guitar hell even the drums, for carpentry you need precision and accuracy in your hands to build and carve things and also lifting something like the blob; there are many ways to develop your grip but focus on the ones that geared toward a specific goal. The more you focus on a particular type of grip strength, certain things fall into place where your whole body becomes apart of the exercise. A lot of people think isolating the lower arm will make them stronger, which is true in certain cases but when you engage your whole body as you focus on the lower arm, bigger things arise like your conditioning, strength in other place, muscles being used that aren't normally used. Think of Arm Wrestling, its not just slamming another guys arm down, it’s a full body effort.

            Mighty hands build mighty things period. A key thing to remember is to focus on the tendons and ligaments when you’re training your grip, this is where it’s most neglected because people mostly focus on the muscles and only do half the work. The more you focus on the tendons the more you realize that’s where your strength falls into place and will prevent you from getting injured. Using different implements like Sledgehammers for example to strengthen the tendons will help you succeed in your life. The most common injuries in sports and the work place are torn tendons/ligaments and carpal tunnel, you can prevent these if you focus on your tendons. Isometrics work very well with this because it gives your body the maximal effort without moving a single muscle. Steve Justa makes this very clear and it keeps things in perspective. Make it a habit to include grip strength in your training and you’ll see how much stronger your body will become just adding a good amount of tendon work. 

A Powerful Grip Goes A Long Way

         The joy of having a strong grip is a lot to have. Many opportunities arise when your grip can handle many things like carrying groceries, helping someone move, twisting off a tough jar, climbing, carry someone and holding onto them so why not develop a mighty grip? It’s a lot of fun because our hands were meant to be strong for the things we need to have in our lives. The stronger our lower arm is, essentially the stronger our whole body is. It’s not just a pump you get in the gym or squeezing someone’s hand.

            Most people who start out with developing anything, get all excited and can’t wait to jump in but as they move along, most of the time get really bored and don’t want to progress any further or they just keep up the same old crappy routine and never make any headway. It’s all about the three P’s; Pacing, Progressing and Patience. We start out weak in some area or another so we begin with the simplest things plays around with them, we progress in order to advance ourselves. Don’t just push yourself all the time, pace yourself; do a little more each time. It’s the journey, not the destination that is the key; the smallest things can have the biggest impact. Be patient, if you get stuck somehow, find a solution, change things up and use your imagination to get better. We all have different ways of progressing, some are faster than others but we share a common goal and that’s getting better. It’s like math; you don’t start out with calculus right? We start with Arithmetic and work our way up, same thing developing your grip strength.

            One of the greatest modern Physical Culture authors Brooks Kubik said to Master your exercises. Doesn't matter what you’re shooting for but to progress with the best intentions, you must master what you want to develop. For grip strength, you don’t need to master a million things; you just need to focus on a few things. Do no more than 3-4 things to master because this helps you focus on what you can do to progress to a higher level whether it’s adding sets/reps or advance to a more difficult exercise. For me as an example with my Thor Hammer, I started out just lifting up, down and side to side. Next progression, slamming it with a tire 1000+ times often, next one was pressing it up using only the ball of the hammer, after that was juggling and flipping it. There’s more to progress to but you get my drift. It doesn't have to be a hammer, you can add in Fat Gripz onto your barbells and dumbbells to make your exercises harder, the effect is much different when you curl a 40 lb. dumbbell the regular way, slap on a Fat Grip, you’re in a whole new world of lifting my friend.

            Some of the strongest men in the world don’t always have the biggest hands. Yes big hands give a distinct advantage and that’s awesome if you have them but there are some of us who don’t have that luxury. Don’t fret though, there’s still hope and don’t ever let it stop you from chasing your dream from having strong hands. Want an example; Dennis Rogers is one of the strongest men pound for pound ever yet he’s no more than 5’8 and weighs no more than 170 yet he’s been able to do things most men twice his size can’t even fathom. He was also a champion arm wrestler at a point in his life and took down some of the best there was and some of them were far bigger than he was. So you see, there’s no excuse for you, you have the power to have some mighty mitts and you can have them if you want them bad enough. Train with intent, think big, think powerful, use your imagination and make it happen for you. Grip strength is very important, it can even save someone’s life, think about that. Don’t ever give up chasing your dream, don’t just chase it, thrust through and take a chance. It’s within reach, go get 

Forearm Development

          

             One of the most neglected part of the body is the lower arm. If you trained it well you have developed a powerful grip, strong tendons and your lifts can become much easier to handle. Developing the forearm can be done in many ways but not always what you think. In the magazines you see the wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and that’s just about it. Bodybuilders pump up the muscle to make it look bigger but in the end that’s all it is a pump. In the world of old school physical culture however you can develop the lower arm in ways that make bodybuilders look like little chumps.

            There are a lot of ways to get a strong and developed forearm and some of them have nothing to with isolating the muscle. Want to develop a powerful grip, work your hands in different ways like Fingertip Push-ups, Bending Steel, picking up Odd Objects and moving Partial Lifting. For Bodyweight type training, work your fingers in different exercises like pull-ups, chin-ups, Isometrics pulls and pressing into walls all of these work the lower arm like crazy. Some people like using grippers (and I’m not talking about those dumb little colored ones that has 5 pounds of pressure) which you can close for a number of reps but one of the things I've experimented with is just closing and holding it locked. If you can close the trainer/#1/#2 relatively easily it can get boring just repping it out all the time, instead, close it and see how long you can last, developing that crushing strength in a different way.

            An important look at how the forearm is developed is not always through Muscle Building. Just doing that alone is just a closed minded way to build your body and you can only build so much muscle till you get injured. However, if you work the tendons and ligaments of the hands, wrists and elbows, you’re building strength in a way that makes you more powerful and far stronger in the long run. Arm Wrestling Training really works well for forearm development because you’re building on tendon power as well as muscle. When you train in this manner, work on high repetitions somewhere up to 50 reps per arm per set. The stronger your tendons are, the stronger you will be.

            One last thing to look at for building a super strong lower arm is to use a thick bar, this puts more stress on the lower arm because you have to grip hard enough to hold on to it. Thick bars make you work far harder than a regular bar. Say you’re doing a bench press with a weight that you can do 10 good reps with a regular bar, put in a thick bar with the same weight; your reps will be cut down to about half the amount. Since thick bars are very expensive, there’s another way to make a bar thicker, grab yourself some Fat Gripz. These babies you can take to any gym and put on any normal bar or dumbbell, you can even put them on your in-home pull-up bar whatever you’d like to do to make it a little more challenging.

            With Fat Gripz and the way you train hard, you can build up more natural growth hormone and develop muscle and strength at a more rapid rate because the more of the muscle fibers break down, the more muscle gets developed and because you’re working the body at a different pace and difficulty, your strength grows later on as well. I love building strength in my grip and its fun doing something that’s out of the norm and you develop muscle an strength in a way most will never get. Take your time and remember, even Popeye wasn't born with those big forearms; he had to develop them someway. These are just ideas to give you a sense of how to create your own style of forearm development and help you achieve a level of strength that’s just insane.

Building Eagle Claws

Building strength in the fingers, hands, wrists and the entire lower arm can make you or break you in a workout or anything you need your hands for. We need our hands to build things and create things so is it essential to build a level of strength, flexibility and dexterity that helps us in our everyday lives? I believe so. There are many ways to build a solid steel grip but there are other ways to keep the tendons strong and durable no matter what you do.

 The lower arm area all the way down to the fingertips is the most neglected parts of the human body in exercise. You won’t get by much with just wrist curls and a few isolated circular movements; you are learning to build that area by squeezing, flexing, extending, push, pull and working the individual fingers. It is important to master all these factors because if you don’t have strong hands, you won’t be able to pick up a weight no matter how big your arms it’s not going to happen. What if you need to fix something with a wrench or screwdriver and don’t have the hand strength to twist and turn, that would suck and if you work using those types of tools you won’t be at your job for long.

 When I talk about building eagle claws, I’m not just referring to training the entire lower arm to claw somebody in a fight or having great strength to do amazing things, I’m referring to creating great strength, flexibility and dexterity no matter what you want to do with your life. It doesn't matter if you’re a musician, athlete, entertainer, carpenter, construction worker or landscape artist, you will have great attributes if you gave yourself the chance to learn. How about curing Carpal Tunnel and never needing to wear a brace ever again, be less prone to injury and be able to heal quicker with exercises that work the entire region and not just that area but the shoulders, the arms and the trapezoids.

 One of the best conditioning programs ever assembled is the use of Animal Exercises. You can learn how to move like an animal in the wild and teach your body to burn fat, build muscle, increase the strength in your organs, tendons, muscles and so much more for only a few minutes a day. Now how about amplifying those exercises once you have mastered them, begin to do some on your fingertips, this type of training alone can build crazy strength in your lower arm in ways you can never get from machines. Having a solid steel grip and power in your lower arm can help increase your strength in other areas, it’ll help you pick up weights better, and it’ll help your grappling game much more efficient and if you’re into Arm Wrestling, look out because you’ll be ripping those guys up in no time.

 Getting started is like everything else, begin where you’re at and progress from there, work certain exercises that keep the blood flowing and ready to go. Spread exercises throughout the day so you can keep that energy flowing and use certain tools to help the grip. One of the coolest tools I like for building grip strength is called Fat Gripz, these babies will take thick bar training to a whole new level and you can attach them to just about any dumbbell or barbell but if you’re a bodyweight guy, you can attach them to your pull-up bar to increase the difficulty. I use these for building strength and endurance in Arm Wrestling using my lifeline Chest Expander. Progress is a very important factor because once something becomes easy; you want to continue to challenge yourself so you increase the difficulty by a small percentage. Even Rock Climbers have to progress otherwise if they jump in too soon, they’ll fall off much quicker and that can mean certain death so it’s important to build progression.

 No matter how you slice, strong hands equals a strong body because when you have the strength to pick up really heavy weight or be able to twist off certain objects with a wrench or even pick up groceries for that matter, your hands are the tools that open doors to everything you pretty much do. Even doing certain Feats Of Strength requires strong hands, you can build as much strength as you want in every other area in your body but if you’re hands aren't up to par, you’re pretty much done. Complete the whole package by training as many areas as possible including your lower arm, you’ll be amazed how weak or strong your hands are certain situations so my suggestion is make those hands work for you and build a foundation to have the strongest and most functional hands as possible.     

Hammer Conditioning

 

 There are many ways to get in awesome shape, you can use your bodyweight, work with weights or better yet use cool tools that are not only awesome looking but you’re getting more bang for your buck than you can imagine. Ever heard of training with a Hammer? Of course you don’t, you’re either one of those people that goes to a gym, play around with a few machines, work very light weight and call yourself in shape or you’re one of those guys or gals that doesn’t get anywhere no matter what you do and you just quit at the drop of a hat. I’m here to tell you that getting fit is not only a cool thing to do but it also keeps you energized and have a zest for life you didn’t think existed. The best fitness advice anyone can ever give you is to have fun with what you do. Training with a hammer, better yet a Thor Hammer gives you that mystical feeling that you’re training like the warriors of generations past.

 

 

 Training with this particular tool can give you great possibilities to train with, most of them involve swinging but the main point is when you work different areas while consuming your exercise using your whole body as a unit, you will find yourself having off the charts strength and conditioning that only a few ever know about. Even training with a sledgehammer is a cardio workout that will have you gasping for air if you do the exercise right. One of my heroes named Slim worked in a Rock Quarry for many years, doing labor for as long as 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week cutting and destroying rock with a 16 pound sledgehammer. Now 16 pounds doesn’t seem like a lot of weight but when you’re smashing things for hours on end, you’re using your whole body and it makes cardio machines look like a cake walk. If you had a tire or half tire, along with a hammer, try hitting it like a guy working at the Quarry, do it for 5 minutes and tell me if you’re not breathing harder than you would doing 30 minutes on a cardio machine.

 I would bet if you had just a hammer and a tire, which would be the only equipment you need to get a cardio workout that will leave you with sweat, strength and overall fitness in ways that can only be explained by experience. A great course I have practiced off and on is to me one of the only if not the only course out there that gives you tips specifically using hammers is my man Bud Jeffries’ DVD Hammers and Maces from his Alternative Conditioning series that has a plethora of different ways to work your body into the ground. Hammer training is another look at what you can do to get in awesome shape, up until a few years ago, there weren’t many places to learn this kind of stuff, now guys in the NFL, MMA, WWE and even in Olympic training have found the Hammer swinging style are using it to get their athletes in incredible world-class shape.

 

 

 

 

 Ever seen the movie Thor? Ever wondered what it would be like to have that much power and strength using that cool ass looking Hammer? Well you can get your hands on your own Mjölnir and feel what it’s like to swing that little son of a bitch and learn the golden keys to Super Muscle and Superhuman Strength. Conditioning this way is a lot more fun than just pulling down a machine that really won’t do much movement wise and just going for a stroll on the cardio machine, this way teaches you how to use your stabilizing muscles in other words your Core and work your whole body as a whole. Look at it this way, because of it’s structure it helps you figure out how to stay balanced and helps you learn certain muscles needed for certain swinging movements. Hell one of the best exercises I’ve done for a few hundred reps is using it like the Kettlebell swing and I think it’s much harder than the regular KB swing because the hammer is longer and the handle is thicker. Also if you had a tire, you can have a glimpse of what a blacksmith feels like by whacking the hammer. If you don’t have the movie Thor, I suggest you get yourself a copy which you can find on the right hand side of this blog under Physical Culture links below the Incredible Hulk series and film.

 Another side of training with a Sledgehammer and Thor’s Hammer is using them in the old tradition of India’s training program which dates back hundreds of years using them in the style of Wrestling called Kushti. This traditional style of training consisted of the Mace (which you can use with the Sledgehammer) and the Gadas (you can use with two sets of Thor’s hammer) which they swung and worked different muscles to get in shape for Wrestling. Now you don’t have to be a wrestler I’m just giving you a history lesson along with a perspective of what you can do with these tools.

 

 

 Having fun with your exercise is a golden key to great fitness and strength training and nothing looks cooler than a hammer, it represents strength and even having one in your hands just has a mystical feel to it, like you’re apart of something special. It’s not just a workout, it’s an adventure, and you can even pick exercises out of your own imagination. Think of some of the workouts you can think and imagine in a time where you had the power to destroy anything you wanted, in one workout, you’re John Henry and pounding spikes into the train tracks, the next workout, you’re in India over 100 years ago, exercising outside in the wrestling pits before your match and destroying your opponent, another workout would be you’re working at a gold mine in the old west, smashing rock to find that treasure of gold and after so many powerful whacks, you have found that gold and you’re jumping for joy and even you can imagine being Thor smashing the Frost Giants and conquering a battle over monsters and demons.

 These are things to think about when you’re training and you should never walk into a workout thinking it’s going to suck, be creative and use your imagination; it’s one of the biggest keys of all time. Make it interesting and use it to your full advantage and give it everything you have, it could last a few minutes or last over an hour, hell you’d get so into the workout that you lost track of time because you had fun doing it, that’s the beauty of it. Give yourself a chance to shine and Hammer your way to glory on your terms.

Arm Wrestling Training For A Super Grip

 Testing one’s strength has been a quest for as long as mankind has been around; fighting for survival or just sport, strength has been the test of wills through physical, spiritual, emotional and mental endeavors. One of the biggest tests for man’s ego or even to prove himself is through Arm Wrestling.

  Back in the day when internet didn’t exist and phone lines were the talk of the town plus the only entertainment you can really find was in a vaudeville theater or watching a silent movie on the big screen for a nickel a pop, people needed to do something to keep themselves interested. Men worked on the farms or in offices in the city or sometimes they became entertainers and put on acts to entertain the crowd. Kids played ball in the streets and some even took up what was called Wrist Wrestling where they gripped their hands as hard as they can and do their best to slam the other’s wrist to the table and jump for victory.

 Arm Wrestling isn’t just a full on test of grip and people will only say that if they haven’t actually done it. I’ve had my fair share of losses and very few wins to tell you it’s a hard and demanding sport where you have your whole body engaged in a tight spot and it takes just as much power to keep from getting slammed as the one doing the slamming. It makes up a powerful grip once you get the basics down and learn from a few masters here and there.

 There are many guys in the world of Physical Culture who have at one point done some Arm Wrestling and were fierce at it. One man whom I consider the Great Gama of Arm Wrestling is the heavyweight powerhouse Ian “Mac” Batchelor, no one can match the level of strength this man had in his time and his unorthodox style of training is just as hardcore as his unprecedented wins over countless opponents. Another legend in the sport is a man that just defies logic in the realm of strength and for a man his size it just seems so impossible until you actually learn what he does and that’s Dennis Rogers. He became a strongman first by becoming an Arm Wrestling champion and winning countless awards and recognition, because of that, he dove into finding things that he can destroy and tear up that no one in the world can do. The way he does things is just surreal and if you want to learn about his specialty feats check out Legendary Strength and find out his secrets to incredible grip strength.

 People have this distinct notion that if you want to be strong, you have to use a gym, hate to burst your bubble pal but most gyms can’t handle the levels of strength being presented. You can build grip without ever leaving your house or you can take it on the road with you. If there’s anyone out there today other myself, Dennis Rogers, Logan Christopher, Ryan Pitts or Bud Jeffries for that matter who can teach you the value of grip strength it’s up incoming strongman of unlimited potential is my boy Matti Marzel. He has the distinct power of having some of the toughest hands in the world, bending and snapping steel, tearing decks of cards from very odd angles and tearing up phonebooks in several pieces like tearing a piece of paper. His fingers are so strong he regularly holds himself up on his fingertips and is working on being an elite rock and rope climber and is ripped to shreds and is one of the closest to having that Bruce Lee type physique. You do not want him on his bad side and he’s no pushover in Arm Wrestling, he has on occasion taken down guys twice his size and puts them to shame with his iron cord like arms and wrists. 

 One of my secret weapons for building strength in Arm Wrestling is using my Chest Expander which you can get at LifelineUSA.com. I take this apparatus and I use fairly medium to heavy cables and use one of the handles on my door and start simulating an arm wrestling technique or match and work up to 50 repetitions as best as possible. I also work on the wrist and do curls and rows to get that edge for that specific grip and work in high repetitions so I can focus on tendon strength. This is a great device because unlike weights that uses gravity, the rubber cables is fighting back from having you extend the cables out almost similar as if you’re in a match and your opponent is keeping you from moving him.

 Another great an inspiring thing about sports or just wrestling in general is that many little guys (under 200 lbs) are extremely strong when they have the right tools to just make your jaw drop. You wouldn’t expect a small guy tearing up guys twice their size and making it look easy as pie. Never underestimate the little guy because he can hurt you and have a big smile on his face doing. Dennis Rogers has made that believable and so has guys like Maxick, Farmer Burns, Matti Marzel, Bruce Lee and others that can just give you hell.

 Working the tendons is one of the most crucial keys to your success in developing your grip and one of the best methods is doing Isometrics. Being able to hold a certain position and make it as hard as possible without ever moving teaches you how to build strength from many angles. Arm Wrestling Isometrics is one of the most fun ways to build that level of strength that just raw and powerful. Get strong and find cool ways to develop your grip to a superhuman level.

Make Just About Any Angle Your Strength

The legendary Catch Wrestler Karl Gotch once said that to become strong and agile you always work your muscle from every possible angle. Muscles grow and look larger than life but like everything else there’s a consequence, if you work too much muscle and not enough of your tendons, you will be more vulnerable to injury. Isometrics is the key method not to just hit a muscle from a certain angle but every angle imaginable. Holding a certain position and hammering in only that particular spot will give you a sense of great strength from that position. One of the beauties of Isos is if you hit a spot where you can’t go anywhere else, that’s where you press, pull, squat or whatever to get beyond that position and no matter how you slice it, your strength will skyrocket with enough practice.

 If Isometrics had its own star pupil it would most likely be Steve Justa. This man has got to be one of the most odd ball characters in the entire realm of Physical Culture but yet the way he works his strength and power takes on a whole new dimension both literally and figuratively trust me watch what he does sometime. Out of everything he’s accomplished in the world of Strength, I believe his most treasured wisdom is when he brings up Isometrics. A lot of strongmen credit Isometrics but no one has put them in the same realm as Justa has. His story about his hay bailing and the way he told Bud Jeffries about his dilemma about Diabetes and how Isometrics both saved his life and job is nothing short of remarkable.

 I feel that if you want to accelerate your strength and speed in any sport you do, add in Isometrics and tell me if they didn’t improve your throw or shot or even your ability to kick a ball. Isometrics build positional strength and in sports you need to have a strong position from every possible angle whether its tackling, throwing a football or baseball, shooting a basketball from a long distance or kicking a soccer ball down the field you want to have the ability to be faster than the other guy. Think about this, you’re a pitcher for the New York Yankees; you have a good arm and can throw a hefty 93 mph fastball or a ok 86 mph slider, would you want to increase your speed of the ball by 3 mph on any of your pitches? Be pretty damn sweet if I say so myself and the ball will feel lighter in your hands as if it was the size of an egg, light and strong until it cracks the mitt like speedy Gonzales running into and past a brick wall. Each position you bring the ball as if simulating a pitch from little spots here and there will get stronger to the point where when you throw the actual pitch, it’ll take off like a rocket and the batter won’t realize what the hell hit him.

 Grip strength is the basis not just in sports and the strongman business but in your specific business like carpentry, plumbing, construction, landscaping even a bagger at a grocery store, you need to able to handle things and your hands need a certain amount of strength otherwise you won’t be able to do your job very well. Would you believe that most of your grip strength is mainly isometric? It’s true if you really tested it and if you practice holding an object with your grip for a short or extended amount of time, you’re going to feel it whether you like it or not. For us strongmen, we need grip strength to perform the feats we do, sometimes the things we do don’t always involve the grip but it is practically mandatory otherwise you won’t perform the feats you want to tackle. Bending steel and tearing phonebooks are two of the purist forms of grip strength and like I said before, Isometrics are usually the most credited method for pushing beyond the limits.

 Another form of Isometrics is Muscle Control which is mostly used in Yoga, Martial Arts and Bodybuilding. Contrary to popular belief, muscle heads are pretty smart when it comes to certain things and the way they pose is just unbelievable despite how big they are. Back in the day however, a few guys named Maxick and Otto Arco took this to a level that can never be duplicated again. Their posing was unprecedented and even bringing the little muscles were just off the chain. Check them out sometime on Youtube if you can find them and just watch how they can change from one muscle to the next in heart beat its awesome.

 Now that you’ve read a little more on Isometrics, I think you’re getting a sense that there really are no excuses and you can do this method just about anywhere, if you go to church and pray you can do it, think about it you put your hands in prayer and when you ask for guidance press the hands together hard and tell me you don’t feel a little more energized? You can be in class and press or pull on the desk and you can have no one ever notice it. You can be watching a movie and flex during certain scenes so don’t ever say you don’t have time to exercise because you usually can make the time but it’s up to you to make the effort.

Follow Blindly With Pride

When you first really learn something, you don’t know what to expect, if you did, learning wouldn’t be that fun or adventurous. When you first learn to walk as a baby, do you research and follow the mechanics, no because you don’t know any better and you learn to do it yourself by putting one foot in front of the other than before you know it you’re off and running. People have this belief that following a certain people blindly without looking into who they are or what they really represent feel that it’s stupid and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

 In the strength training world or in fitness for that matter, we follow all kinds of people, programs, diets, exercises and all sorts of things. Even the “experts” who have big egos try to take down those who don’t believe in their system and that they are blind to what they should really strive for. Hate to break it to you buddy but as cool as your name is on a piece of paper doesn’t make you god among men. Not all people in this industry are like that but it’s very annoying when they give you this B.S about facts and scientific methods that are proven and they expect you to believe them. This is where instead of listening to what they say; find out for yourself what works and what’s proven in your own experiment. Testing the waters is one of the best to learn from.

 When you train, don’t just go through the motions, followyour instincts and find what works for you and when that right program just hits you and you find a passion for it, support it and use it your advantage to what makes that program work for you. I’m not saying go out door to door like a Jehovah’s witness and preach that it’s the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel, talk about it as if to encourage it. Not every program works for everyone, hell I have followed more methods than I care to count and yet I don’t do all of them. I take the very best things I’ve learned and mold them into something that gives me and only me great benefit. I give my insights and encourage those to try it out at their own pace.

 When it comes to following a blind method of training, nothing broke that barrier more than how Slim The Hammer Man became the world’s strongest man for the specialty feats he performed such as chain-breaking, scrolling steel and his trademark, Hammer Levering. An old man taught him the best ways to tap into the mind and go after a feat that just seemed impossible yet made it happen. This was decades before the internet and cell phones, so the only way to do something is just that do it and see where it leads you. In a sense, Slim followed this old man’s methods blindly by just focusing on what worked and didn’t work. He eventually found that itch and developed his own style of training just by experimenting with his own research and look what happens, he became a beast of a legend, sure he hit a few rough patches along the road to success but it didn’t matter.

 There are millions of blind individuals in this world and it’s a shame that they can’t see the world and look into the eyes of the people they treasure the most but not all is lost, sometimes if you watch really closely (no pun intended) those same individuals develop other senses that are more powerful than the gift of sight. The main proven method today is Eco Location where the senses are sought by vibration kind of like a bat in a cave where the method came from. Why am I telling you this? Have I gone off course and just went off topic? The answer is no I haven’t. I’m telling you this because like blindness, when you follow a certain program or experiment with it, you might find some new senses and find that although you can’t tell if it’s going to work, your body will tell you to either adapt or fail. Your mind is very strong, your muscles adapt and your awareness gives you a keen sense of how certain things will play out. When you find that right moment and all that experimentation pays off, you’ll increase these senses and you’ll be able to adapt to that program however you want.

 One of the greatest masters of wrestling Billy Robinson pointed out that in the beginning, you learn, yet in the end you’re still learning. There’ really no such thing as ultimate mastery. If you stop learning and act like a total expert with an ego than you really haven’t learned a damn thing. Mastery is learning how to learn. You never stop finding that key program or exercise or method that keeps you going for life, you develop new things, new ways to come up with what you learned. Also kinds of like Yoda’s quote “You must unlearn what you have learned.”  If you stop learning and not using your mind, how will you be able to know who you really are and what you can help teach others? Teaching is great tool but yet teaching while also learning about yourself gives great insight to how you follow something while others do the same. Following someone blindly isn’t always a bad thing, just make sure you don’t get hurt or end up killing yourself, give it time and if it doesn’t work for you, move onto something else, keep learning and keep building your own senses to what brings you that ultimate high.

Can You Become Your Own Avenger? Pt. 5 The Final Chapter

It has come down to this, some of us have waited four years to see this movie come out, some have waited ever since they were a child reading the comic books.  Will it be a great movie? Who knows, it will however impact someone one way or another, I guarantee it. There are even some people who had dreams of becoming an Avenger and have a plethora of powers that will make them stronger, agile, burst with speed and even be more creative in their own endeavors. I’m here to tell you that if you want to become your own Avenger, you got to feel it and find the best resources to find your true powers and grasp them with might, vigor and vitality.

 For most in the Avengers world, we’ve all heard the stories of Thor and his mighty Hammer but what if we really wanted to know the secrets of Thor’s gift of strength and power? We all know Thor is a god among the four heroes yet how does a god get to that level? It really all starts from within. Becoming a god is no easy task and in reality there is nothing more powerful then god himself but yet we can become more powerful then ourselves. You have more power physically and spiritually than you can ever imagine. Just think for a second of having that power, how would you use it? Building yourself from the inside takes practice but at the same time with that practice a rewarding experience that will change the very essence of whom you are and where you want to go.

 The secret to creativity starts with a thought in mind. Being creative shows the uniqueness of who we are as a society not just as individuals. Look at the creativity Tony Stark aka Iron Man shows when he first made that Iron suit in a deep and dark fortress in the middle-eastern desert, as accomplished as he was for rebuilding an empire you can’t substitute success when your life is at stake and this is where he becomes dangerous when he sets his mind to create something that will reward his efforts in the end. In some cases we can relate to that, not building a suit but building our own lives for when we need to be creative the most. If you want to be at your best in any situation, you must have an open mind to find the best resources to create solutions or at least attempt to. It’s being creative that can become your very secret weapon of not only success but to endure the very worst and most of all, the very best of what you can accomplish that will put you ahead of the pack without ever knowing it.

 Captain America without question is the leader of the Avengers and although individually each hero has his/her own agenda, in the end it’s the leader that gets the big reward and the big letdown if he fails. That’s a huge responsibility and that goes for all leaders not just in war but in our society. When you decide to change the very brink of your own individuality whether its becoming fitter, stronger or creating a life that you want, it’s your responsibility to make those things happen and when you take a hold of it, that shows the mark of a true leader because when you lead yourself, you are ready for that next challenge and that’s leading others. Make it your mission to learn to be your own leader.

 I firmly believe that if you practice laser-like focus on anything you wish to accomplish, you want to find that precise accuracy that defines the realm between successes and failure. Look at agent Hawkeye, the most accurate shot of the Avengers. His ability to focus is staggering to say the least. The way he pin points his targets can easily be used in how someone in real life can go after a goal that will hit the nail right on the head. Reaching a goal is not easy and like Archery, you need to practice with the intent of hitting that center, goals are pretty much the same thing, will you accomplish every single goal you attempt? Not always but with practice and the right intent, you will find the right goals to shoot for and one way or another it’s going to hit the center like a bolt of lighting.

 Let’s face it, the Avengers kick major ass and however you slice it, no Avenger is greater than the other, each one has their own great qualities that can be served just as an individual as well as a team. Kicking ass has been a moniker of American culture since the Revolutionary War, wanting to tear down enemies with a vengeance is not only inspirational but at times it can be over the top annoying and out of context. When you really want to be an ass kicker you want a strategy in order to accomplish it but kicking ass doesn’t mean beating someone up or always becoming a solider and go off to war, being a real bad ass is taking charge of who you are and what you represent yourself with vigor, power and might. The real people who are the bad asses take charge of what makes them great and what they’re all about and that can make them dangerous. If you want to be an ass kicker, then learn from some of the best who are bad to the bone powerful and strong not just physically but mentally as well.

 Building your own team of Avengers is not easy but simple nonetheless. You want to build a team of people that have a keen sense of your interests and how each person can be just as important as the other. Each Avenger has his own strength to what he is and what he’s capable of but at the same time each one is very different but each share a common goal and that’s to bring peace to those who want to destroy it. Creating your team is like building a family that will stick with you through thick, thin and thinner and if you truly want to find a role in that team of individuals nothing can stop you. When it comes to a team in my field there are many and I hope I have a role within that team. That team represents the very best in strength and health and when you have a band of brothers and sisters all searching for the same thing, you have a force that will be the focal point of who we are not just as a team but as individuals who help each other.

 To be the very best at something, you got to want it more than anything in your whole life. The desire and drive to reach what you want to be is fierce and has no signs of slowing down and with time, you get better and better and you want to wake up each day feeling strong, confident and have a sense of vitality. One man’s desire to be the very best was none other than Slim The Hammerman. By day he was a rock cutter who destroyed tons and tons of rock, by night he turned into a powerful being of immense proportion as he attempted and later on accomplished being the strongest man at specific feats of strength with his trademark specialty being Hammer Levering. He not only made this happen but it came with a price but yet at the same time, it didn’t stop him from being the very best at what he wanted to do. I’ve known many guys over the years and only a handful ever had that dedication as Big Slim did. If you want to be the strongest person, you go and grab it and never let up on it, that doesn’t mean drop everything in your life but to be the very best you will make the time to do it and be serious about your goal but also build some fun around it because when you love something so much it doesn’t become a goal, it becomes an adventure.

 There are a lot of polls around the internet to see which Avenger you are. If you truly do those polls than you’re really second guessing yourself because there’s a big difference between general testing and observing yourself. If you want to find the true Avenger within you than you must find the qualities that resemble that particular Avenger but seriously though, don’t ever compare yourself to another person or fictional character because there’s more to life than comparing yourself to others. Want to know why I know this? Take one of those dumb ass polls and answer all the questions and I would bet you it won’t come out the way you want it, you’ll be disappointed and you’ll want to redo it over. If you want to become your own Avenger don’t look at something else, look at yourself and see what you can do to become more powerful and more resilient to things that can harm you. Learn to develop your powers from the qualities that you have and find a real positive way to amplify them to make them your own personal quest. That’s one of the true marks of becoming your own Avenger.

 Every Avenger has their a secret power or skill that makes them a valuable asset so why not learn your own secret to what can bring out the power that you truly possess. Learning to harness a powerful force inside you takes practice and there are no shortcuts to what you really want to learn but it can easily be a piece of what you really have and how you develop it. We all have a form of power within us one way or another and it’s different in each of us. The way to explain it is by experiencing it for you. There is an old saying “For those who believe, you don’t need to explain, for those that don’t believe no explanation will do.” If you truly want to harness the power that resides within you, then you got to believe in it, trust it and let it guide in anything that happens in your life.

 In every system of strength training there are tools that will help you achieve what you want but it’s not the tools that get you there, it’s how you use them to get you there. Take for instance, Thor’s Hammer, if you held that hammer in your hands what would it feel like? If you are an open-minded person, you would know that hammer is not just an object or an exercise token of strength, it’s the very presence that will captivate your attention and you will want to wield that hammer with fire, passion and strength and that’s why for most people, its cool looking but also intimidating. A true man or woman of character will take hold of that hammer and find a way to make it his/her strength and bring it to the forefront of making them the strongest they can be. Take a chance and you will see how you can go from being intimidated to the one who’s become intimidating.

 If you ever watched the movie or read the Comics then you know the Shield of Captain America. To me that’s the coolest looking shield ever in my opinion; it’s light, resilient to bullets, protects you and can be used as a weapon all in one form. Having a shield can help you on the road to success. In fitness becoming healthy and strong is a sure fire to shield you from disease and other things but most people either do one or the other and if that’s their choice good for them but I would like it to be more than that. To be both healthy and strong takes different forms and molding them together to create a powerful, creative piece. To really develop a shield physically would be one to train your tendons and ligaments through loosening the joints to doing isometrics. Building this kind of shield helps the body be less prone to injury and helps in recovery of the body’s stress through physical action. Another form of shielding is through strengthening the internal organs from training the body from the inside out. This could done through Muscle Control, a form of Qi Gong, again training the joints in various places and it could done through training the body to where you’re training really intensely for a few seconds and begin to breathe really hard. There are many ways to help shield the body so learn what you can.

 After Captain America realizes what this serum can do for him, he learns that his metabolism runs 4x faster than the average person and that helps him regenerate faster. What if you can have that power to regenerate and have a high metabolism? I would like to think you’ll have greater ability to recover, heal, get stronger, leaner and be able build great natural muscle. When you train hard, I mean really hard, your body’s nervous system kicks into overdrive and your hormones shoot through the roof. You have the ability to stimulate natural Growth Hormone at any age and it all can be done without lethal injections of steroids or taking pills and creams that can probably kill you. Your body is the fiercest machine of anything else on the planet. One way to build a high level of natural HGH is to do Hill Sprints or wind sprints at a track or long stretch of land. Look at how powerful looking sprinters and NFL running backs, they’re some of the most built athletes on the planet and not one was ever more of an exception then Herschel Walker. Doing this for a few seconds and resting for several minutes for very little sets can get your natural growth hormone kick it in gear faster than anything else. When you have a high metabolism and can generate natural muscle growth, you can have a lean body, eat what you want and have better recovery.

 Remember when I talked about Hawkeye? Learning about his Archery skills can actually help you in whatever it is you want in life. Pin point the target you wish to hit and aim for it with the best accuracy you can do, that’s the same as going after a goal and heading straight towards succeeding in it. Learn where to aim and let the universe take its course and put some action into it. Like in Archery, don’t aim too high or too low otherwise you won’t know where that arrow is going to go, aim straight forward and pierce through that point of space.

 Iron Man’s suits are a protective armor with a few weapons at his disposal. How about building your own armor mentally and building a defense strategy to help you get rid of those negative people who don’t want you to succeed or want to dump all their crap on you and making you feel worse. Most people teach in the ways of offensive strategies where you shoot for the goal in mind and run with it, that’s all well in good but what about protection? You need a strategy where you have a defensive line where you can prevent things from happening. One way to look at it is, picture in your mind having a source of great energy that no one you want to get through, it can be a brick wall or a circular form of electricity, either way you want something that works and helps you move forward and get those energy dwellers out of your hair so you can move down the road to success. Think of it as building imaginary armor and like Iron Man, have a few of your best weapons at your disposal. Building on this metaphor can increase your chances of succeeding at what you want if you really learn to harness it.

 Having great power, you have a responsibility to hold onto that power and use for a purpose and not for real personal gain to manipulate others. Each Avenger has their own power they're responsible for, one however is unable to control that power once it’s harnessed but with great concentration and using his intelligence with the best of his abilities, that power can be a great asset to his own curse. You make the choice to do what’s right for you and if you want to learn how you can use that true power within you, you must be responsible for how you use it.

 In my field the real guys don’t teach you how to fly or beat people up or even make you better then the next guy, we want to help you harness the power that can be used to help not only your life but for others. One example would be that I helped a friend move stuff into his Uhaul so he can get to his new place, he told me that’s one of the reasons I trained is to help others when they need it and get heavy things out of the way. There are many other examples but the fact of the matter is, when you train the way we teach you, you will get a better understanding of how fun and responsible it is to have strength and power not just for personal use but use it when it’s needed outside of the workouts, the exercises and the places we train in.

 So for this final chapter, learn the very best of what it takes to become your own Avenger and be there for those that need you in time of need. Harness the power from within and give yourself a chance to shine with the great strength you have developed. Nothing can stop you from achieving your dreams and if no one else believes you, there are those out there who do and I’m one of them. I believe in YOU and I believe in what you can accomplish.