Jungle Fever & Bodyweight Training

I'm hearing the call of the Jungle daily. The experience of moving like a wild animal puts you into a state of mind that not many other systems can touch. Your mentality becomes different and you're channeling that animal spirit within. Repetitions are great and everyone should strive to reach a goal of certain amount of reps in their regimen; however, I'm more for the quality within the quantity instead of just making useless reps at a pace where the form is sloppy and the potential for injury is greater. Nobody's perfect but always strive for quality in your practice.

That's the thing with animal moves and bodyweight training in general where the better quality of your movement the greater your strength, flexibility & endurance comes into play. Everything counts; train your body to become instinctive. How your body reacts to a situation in more extreme cases will either save your life or get you killed and the same goes for saving a life as well. Your movement development interacts with your instinctive nature. Train your body to instinctively act on the ability to crawl, jump, balance and be able to withstand unpredictable durations in situations that you never know how long can go whether in a split second or an hour or more.

The thing with bodyweight exercise overall is not just the luxury of training anywhere, anytime we have all heard it but it's also an opportunity to learn the true secrets and capabilities of our physiology & anatomy. Animal moves whether its from Global Bodyweight Training or from somewhere else, teach us how to control our bodies to become instinctive and be able to react to things you wouldn't expect. It's one of the reasons I have mixed feelings on systems like Crossfit; although it has amazing benefits in certain areas for some people and I like the randomness with the circuits and style of lifting and using your bodyweight it becomes a problem when quality deteriorates and only quantity matters. I believe if you're going to do something random or looking to shape up in a circuit style of training, make quality just as equal or more so than the quantity of the workout.

Practice mastering your bodyweight and find that animal spirit in your training on animal movements. Don't just learn how many push-ups or pull-ups you do in a set or see how fast you can do 100 Squats; learn the value of the quality in the movements more than the quantity because whether sooner or later in your workout if you become sloppy and keep pushing through, you will get injured and its going to be a bitch paying for medical bills because you decided to be a smart ass. Take it from me, I have performed some crazy stuff over the last 10 years and rarely ever got injured.

Be Awesome Everyone,

Ben


Animal Flow Workout: http://tinyurl.com/powerandmight-AnimalFlow

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Flowing In The Animal World & Exploring

Animal movement is so joyous and fun to do, period. I love the crawling, the jumping, balancing and just living it up. Yesterday I went into my Animal Flow workout and just felt amazeballs without needing to move all that hard for 10-15 min. like I usually do. Just flowing around and being creative integrating transitions, travels & switches that was more slow paced but still challenging.

The ability to explore your body as it moves in different patterns isn't easy by any stretch (pun intended) and it gives you feedback on what to work on and help yourself find your weak spots to generate into strength. My animal spirit is the Ape, I'm not questioning that and I feel whole heartedly that to be true. However you move will develop what you lean towards that spirit within you. We all have one and that's the beauty of exploration, its both a physically and mindful practice that everyone should do. It doesn't matter how old you are or where you come from; unleash your instincts little by little and see what brings out the best in you. 

The urban jungle can be scary and its up to you to find out what truly makes you animalistic. I know that sounds a little philosophical but so what? Animal Movement is not just moving in various motions; it's about channeling your inner self and bringing out what makes us who we can truly be. People are being held back because of various reasons; it isn't proper, it makes us look savage, it's uncivilized whatever the case may be. I'm still learning how to be more open with who I'am because growing up, it was very difficult to show my true self to practically anyone because let's face it, I grew up around a lot of guilt and ridicule and no matter how hard I tried; something always made someone defensive, poke fun at what I was trying to do and tell me it's impolite to be open about things or in other words "hold it in or suffer the consequences" that's how I felt. 

Over the years as I step by step was coming more out of my shell things started happening for me; showed people what I can do, be upfront about things and be accepted. My training has opened up a whole other universe for me where I can be myself, have fun, live without regret. Because I grew up around a lot of guilt not because of things I've done but the people who walk on it and hearing the soles squeak, it's instinctive for me to feel that way so around certain people I shut down and parts of me become emotionally painful. That's one of the reasons why I train, it helps me be open and be happy with who I'am and little by little i'm transitioning that mindset without needing to train but always keep my focus on the very thing that has helped me survive many hardships and helps me be a better man to the woman I love in all of this world.

Whatever you're going through, find something that helps you be a better version of who you want to become, channel your pain into something glorious and creative that gives you purpose and happiness. It's not materials that help you flow through life, its what keeps you flowing within yourself and making bad ass things happen. For me it's exercise and exploring, for others it may be something else but I'm telling you, nothing gives you more of a soul search than learning about your animal spirit and unleashing it without being fearful of it. Explore your true nature and make it awesome for you.  

Animal Conditioning Using Playing Cards

A couple years ago, I was testing out my conditioning as always and I went for a deck of cards workout that was made famous by the late Karl Gotch. Normally it be push-ups and squats so often I would do the whole deck which took me no more than 45 min. to an hour. As of late I've been wanting to do the deck again but with an added twist; I decided to not do only push-ups an squats but Animal Movements.

As you may have read on my facebook page I've been killing it with the Animal Dice Game where you roll a 20 sided dye once for an animal and a second for the amount of reps/steps you take. A couple times I added in a deck of cards to make things a little interesting. Instead of rolling twice, you only do it once to get the animal and you flip a card for your reps/steps. This is pure conditioning as it's going to be in my opinion; you can say there are better exercises but this is the ultimate in randomness and having to do unexpected movements and it's never the same workout which is a good thing if you're in sports or want to amplify your stamina for manual labor, continued strength, lung capacity for running or whatever.

Shuffle the cards as you normally would; have your dye in hand and roll it for an animal then flip the card to take your steps. This workout should roughly take you around 30 min. to complete and rest as little as possible; if you need a break, do deep breathing and drink that water, never sit down. Most decks are at around 52 cards, mine has 55 including 3 Jokers. Here's the repetition scheme for your cards.....

2-10=Face Value
K/Q/J=15 Reps
Ace=20 Reps
Joker=50 Reps

So pick 20 Animals you'd like play with or get them out of a Animal Kingdom Manual or from the DVD and go from there. Have fun with it, make noises if you want; it's not meant to brutalize your training but to help you have a good time while going through something very tough. This is great for kids, athletes in sports such as wrestling, MMA, Soccer, Football, Boxing, Spartan Race ect. My personal deck I use is Here and here's a set to get some 20-Sided Dye. This is an amazing workout with no special equipment and can be done practically anywhere at anytime. I do this in my den or outside when it's warm but if I'm in a hotel room or a very small room I do what's called a Caged Style workout where you're only allowed to move in a short amount of space. I have figured out how to do animal movements anywhere so don't let anyone tell you you need a very wide range of space.