To Bridge Or Not To Bridge??? That Is The Question

            Is it not wise to build a mighty neck & back? For he that is weak in the electric embodiment of one’s core shall deteriorate with fierce consequence. A neck that holds the head up high with great confidence and soaring charisma must be strong that he must practice to save his body from a hunch and painful muscle.

            Fear is a piercing for those that not practice. It is this fear that thee doesn't take one step closer to his true potential with the ability to become not just strong but agile and fearlessness that brings forth his soul’s purpose to achieve inner strength. To practice is to be within the deepest reaches of one’s heart and purpose to leap with both feet and making thyself more wanted to be strong.

            The power of one’s spine is to a soul’s strength. The strength of man’s back is a source of great admiration, the might of his bones and muscle is a leap to perhaps a superhuman entity for which very few men can accomplish. It is within man’s birthright to be strong in many facets of life and only that crossing is from being weak to being powerful.

            Is it in the interest of thee that can fall with grace? Most fear because of their lonesome, they will be hurt and not tackle that darkness. Are there not angels that are there for guidance? There are angels but there’s also a blessing of a friend that can guide you and help you fall back with confidence and inner power. To fall back, one must reach down into his very soul to build the power to take another leap into becoming a being of no fear and not dwelling on putting his body at risk, with great practice, greater energy becomes.

            One must tell thyself to make way of crossing past the darkness and kicking over to the other side with will and the ability to fight. The more practice, the less you need to fight. An agile body doesn't happen overnight just like the cities of the Roman, Greek and Persian empires of the remote past. Your body is a temple of Great Power. Not everyone can enjoy this power but for most it is within your grasp to take whole of which is yours to keep. To Bridge takes patience, with great patience comes confidence, confidence becomes power.  

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.

Karl Gotch & Conditioning

             

             It’s important to understand that if you want to the very best in your sport or in your training, you want to be in the best condition as possible. Karl Gotch put this rule to a level not many want to achieve. It doesn't matter if you’re in Wrestling, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey or Soccer for that matter, you can have all the gnarly skills you want but if you can’t last the way you need to, you’re done. A lot of people seem to have this notion that if you just train a little and work on the skills you’ll be fine. Wrong. Conditioning and technique go together like a Horse & Carriage, one without the other is worthless.

            When it comes down to conditioning, there are many ways to do it and like everything else, it takes time and patience and building your mental strength as well. One of the things I admired about Gotch was how he can make cardio look like a firestorm with just a good old deck of cards. I’m sure he might not be the first to come up with this concept but he did make it worth it in gold. Take a deck of cards, shuffle them and get to work. This makes training a little different because it’s never the same workout twice. If you can get through the deck, you’re in pretty decent shape and if you do it twice in the same workout you’re a terror practically on the mat, floor or on the field.

            The cards have a way to test your mind power and see how far you’re willing to push yourself. Yes it takes progression to work up to a full deck but after that it’s more of a mental game than a physical. The more you generate power in your mind; the body will give in and do more. It’s the mind/muscle connection that brings together the most powerful type of training of all.

            Remember about basic exercises? This is no different and your best shot is to stick with the fundamentals as best as possible when it comes to bodyweight…Push-ups, Squats and Bridging. These three alone can be beneficial to your health and strength training because there are many variations of them, some are easy, some are harder than others but once you have them down and you can train hard on them, you have the idea of mastering your own body in a way most will never understand. Like the old man once said “Conditioning is your best hold.”