Had Enough Yet?

 Sometimes we ask ourselves "Am I doing enough in my workouts?", "Am I getting enough reps in?" or "Will this be enough to make me stronger?" The truth is, we all don't always feel satisfied when we train. It can be a constant battle of being able to do enough. Some just push on and not realizing that not only have they done enough, they go too far beyond it and end up hurting themselves. There are those as well that just don't know any better and are so brain dead that they don't even understand why they're killing themselves in the name of exercise.

We are more capable than we believe to be and some of us are still learning this and figuring out what makes us stronger and doing amazingly awesome things. Now, we also come to a point in time where we just tell ourselves "Ok, this is enough for now" and we move on or do a little better the next time around. Feeling satisfied for some means they've done it, they've made it through and they're happy with it. For others, being unsatisfied means they're unhappy and feel like a failure or they may have done all they could but it just didn't feel right. It happens sometimes, more often than we care to admit.

When I started out with the Hindu Push-ups, Hindu Squats and the Bridge, I just wanted to see what I was capable of and just being able to rep out the best I could. I became frustrated when I was trying to satisfy the standards that the people demonstrating them saying you have to do this many push-ups, that many squats and hold this much time in the bridge. When I stopped trying to hold other people's standards on a pedestal, I felt free, in control to see what my standards were because my standards are what matters. Because of this, in various workouts, I've done more than 200 Hindu Push-ups, 500+ Squats and held a bridge for three minutes without thinking anything about it. Once I felt satisfied with my standards, I moved on.

When you hold your own standards, you're free to challenge yourself to your levels on your terms. When someone else sets standards for you, who're you really holding up to? Sure in some cases, when someone else sets a standard and you accomplish it (or even survive), it can feel great especially if the person who set them is a mentor or someone you highly admire and you believe in what they're trying to help you accomplish but the truest form of satisfactory is when you set your own standards and you make the choice of doing enough. 

This is more on developing your own fitness programs and such and setting goals or standards of training for yourself, this does not mean that if you're training for law enforcement, military, firefighter training or hell if you're in the damn CIA, you're training for specific purposes and there are standards and tests that need to be up to a certain qualification otherwise you need to up to the task or you won't make it. If you're training at a gym or at home or wherever, you can set your own goals and it's on you whether you fail or not or feel the satisfaction because you made that choice. 

These days when I train, I sometimes fail at attempting certain things or just had enough because my body or mind just isn't there that day or getting through it and had enough that day. Some days, I feel great just getting a thing in or two, I make the choice of what I want to do and if I fail, it happens, if I feel I've had enough, that's my choice. Because of this, I don't feel as sore, I recover naturally and I strive to be a little better each time. Holding onto someone else's standards that don't meet with yours is a recipe for disaster and you have an opportunity to make your own standards and learn what it takes to make things better for your body and mind. There are plenty of things I can't do that people have set a standard for but there are just as much that they can't do what I have done, that's the true nature of doing enough for you, you can do great things, make it enough for you to grow and feel that you made something satisfactory. 

Going Wild Makes The World Go Round

Some people have a love/hate relationship with their workouts. It's never easy going through a routine and getting the most out of. Sometimes, we just want to let loose and not be able to think. Letting our training become meditative in my eyes is the ultimate goal; sure we can go for time, how many reps or sets and go for quality as best as possible but yet when it becomes more of a meditation than anything, it leads to the big picture.

Animals are incredible to watch and the way they move, the skill sets, the ability to catch prey or escape a predator is just fascinating. From National Geographic to the Planet Earth Series, watching and mimicking wild animals is just so meditative. When I play around with my Animal Dice Game workout, I don't have to think much and can transform into a different animal at any given time. I have done this workout so many times, the order of the exercises is planted into my brain forever. Like the young superhero Beast Boy from the Teen Titans, being able to mimic just about any animal is literally like second nature to me. It's a language, a creative outlet to hone my instincts and my learning to expect the unexpected. 

My favorite times to do an animal workout is either in the morning or at night, when I do it at night, I would do as many rounds as I can until I feel like I've had enough. It gets me out of that jittery state and into a much calmer state of mind. Once the endorphins kick in and my breathing gets down to normal, it makes it easier to fall asleep and letting everything sink in. If I were to do it in the morning, it wakes up my brain and have greater focus and feeling alert. It's a moving meditation. 

Many people in sports or fitness see animal type movements as warm ups before they get into the big workouts. It's great to even warm up with them but to do them as themselves, it becomes a different workout. It channels your natural state to be with nature and using the body in a greater sense of being. In the last few years, people have gotten into things like Animal Flow, Ginastica Natural and Primal type training to learn a sense of blending systems together and mixing ideals like Gymnastics, Capoeira, Yoga and Martial Arts which is awesome and I would at times do those but there's nothing like mimicking wild animals as closely as possible without the flair and "spectacle" of movement training. It's a whole different feel and getting a true sense into the art of animal movements and closely resembling the imitations. 

Without question, wild animals are the kings and queens of bodyweight training and I hope more people take on this kind of training as part of their training regimen because it blends the imagination and develops skills that could be used later in life especially as we age. Not saying at 80 years old you should run 100 yards doing a bear crawl but you can learn how to move and strengthen the brain and strengthen your motor skills along with developing a stronger sense of coordination and focus. It's also fun as hell and it doesn't take up a ton of time. A goal in my lifetime is to be able to play with grandkids in this fashion and stay strong into the golden years. I never want to stop being wild in my training, it just makes life a little better.   

Training Through Grief

We all deal with grief in our own way; sometimes we dive into our work, we distract ourselves by being around others or go somewhere that makes us feel a little brighter, some of us even train to push through the emotional pain. It's still hard to accept that it has been 10 days since the passing of Bud Jeffries and the amount of love and influence he had on people during his life that are now dealing with this tragic loss. I still get little jolts of emotions whenever I write or think of him. 

Since he died, I have written on facebook, some stories about him when he was up here in Idaho from stories just days before my wedding to my most recent one about our trip to a Wolf Sanctuary sometime after we performed a show together. It's also a bit eerie to me that I'm now the same exact age as Bud was when I met him in 2011. His influence on me and others are mostly indescribable even though we try to tell what kind of influence or impact he had on us. 

Through this process, it has been a battle a time or two to get training in or just little workouts. The thing is, no matter how much I was feeling, I know deep down he would've wanted me to keep doing what I love to do and make the most of what's possible and be victorious in the midst of tragedy. That's what he wanted for all of us who train or perform feats or whatever in our lives to do because he would've done the same thing. The power he had and the energy he put on us can never truly be matched in the sense that when you trained either with him or through his videos and books, that energy made you feel stronger, almost invincible and you had abilities you didn't think were possible. That's the kind of person he was.

Most of my workouts recently had been short or micro throughout the day, doing little things here and there but one workout really stood out in this time where I wanted to do something that I know I can do but also have it be challenging enough to push through. In one workout, I did 500 Step Ups in under 22 minutes (21:51) which I had never done before or did that many in that amount of time. I used a countdown method and didn't rest the entire time. I wanted to quit a couple times but it felt like Bud's spirit was right beside me and telling me to keep going and that I got this. It wasn't really like a cheering me on type of thing but I sensed that he was just pushing me to be the best I can be and to not quit on what I can finish. 

Other workouts were some carrying & step ups, chest expander training, working with the TNT Cables and now just getting back into my animal workouts. I did some demo videos I posted on Social Media, swinging a sledgehammer like a mace, fingertip push-ups, hindu squats, lifting my 70 lb Kettlebell with three fingers in each arm and even doing push-ups on three fingers of both arms. I guess you can call those micro exercises or workouts and than doing a few other things. Some of these just came to me to do and others were to honor my friend and mentor because it's something I love and that's the biggest moral of this piece is that to do what you love and share it with the world like he did. 

This world is a little darker now that he's gone but in the words of Art Lafleur as the Ghost Of Babe Ruth in the movie The Sandlot, "Heroes can be remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart kid and you'll never go wrong." Bud was our hero and his legend will live on till the end of time. 

Has Our True Strength Potential Revealed Itself?

 We all have great strength in us and we all have incredible gifts that we don't always know we posses. The true potential in ourselves can be fearful to understand but it also goes without saying that we overcompensate and let ego take over and not give a second thought to what is the real deal and what we want others to see. Strength is more than physical and it never hurts to have a great amount of physical strength but our true potential is where we channel our emotions, mental intentions and physicality into one super power as oppose to separate entities.  

It has been said we can only access very little of our true strength at it's peak. What if we learned to channel our strength that it goes higher than we have always perceived to be. Some people learn visualization techniques, breathing patterns, controlled emotions and what the real intentions are; what if we can learn all those things at the same time, not just little pieces here and there? If anything, we are our own worst critic and when we fear ourselves or overwhelm the ego, it can be dangerous and keep us from reaching our true potential that is just waiting to explode.

This is where the incredible system CoreForce Energy comes into play. The ability to access the body and mind's abilities to strike with such ferocious strength, speed, endurance and flow that it couldn't be comprehended by other means. What if we had abilities to lift a little heavier with more reps, run even 1/10th faster than our top speed, hit harder and with greater precision  in a fight, have greater endurance and gas out an opponent with ease or even go up a flight of stairs like it was almost walking on air? CFE can show you all those things with simple terms just about anyone can understand and have lesser chances of getting injured. 

We all want to know how powerful we really are but there's always something holding us back and it could be anything, more often than not it's ourselves because we don't understand the true nature of who we are inside and out. In the wise words of Yoda "you must unlearn what you have learned", we need to channel our true strengths into understanding the harnessing and the applications to open the door to ourselves. It's about taking what we know and apply it from a different perspective to reveal what is the real deal in how we create the real strength within us.

I know this all sounds like Hocus Pocus bullshit, I thought so too but I felt like I needed to learn this anyway because most of my life has been finding out the truest form of myself. It's still going on but have learned so much from CFE that it's gotten smaller and smaller about finding my true strengths. Because of the techniques I learned and applying them to certain aspects in my day to day life, my mind has not just absorbed what it has learned but also expanded to areas I never thought could go. I may have changed how I train over the years but I never truly stopped expanding my discoveries into CFE and it has helped me in the long run than anything else.

I still feel my physical strength hasn't peaked and things are just getting started. That's where the true power of CFE lies; when you apply the techniques, it reveals your strength in ways you didn't think was possible and potentially expands that strength over and and over as time goes on. The power we have in ourselves is far stronger than we think it is. We have to expand ourselves in order to open those doors to what has been there all along. It's almost as if you can create such strength and power in the blink of an eye it'll blow someone's mind. Does it take practice? Of course it does like anything else but it creates such an atmosphere that it becomes addicting to learn. 

Find out for yourself and see if CoreForce Energy can WORK for you. You have the potential to see results in less than a day as opposed to what someone can see in weeks, months or even years of training. It is THAT awesome. 

Coming To Grips With A Fallen Brother

 

Some say in life you should never meet your heroes because they just might disappoint you. This case is not only the opposite but on a scale many couldn't possibly imagine. Not only did me and quite a number of people meet our hero, he never disappoint, he made life that much more gratifying and beautiful to live in. To say my heart and my soul is now torn is not only an understatement, it also can't be hidden. 

Bud Jeffries has left this earth and not only is it something I never thought I'd say or find out so soon in this lifetime, it just doesn't sound real or believable. This past Friday, I get a message on Instagram from Mike "The Machine" Bruce showing what Bud's Wife wrote to Dennis Rogers that Bud had died and like those times you hear in movies I just screamed "no, no, no" and just lost it. I literally felt my whole being come crashing and being in such shock that my emotions just poured out of me just like when I found out my stepfather died the same exact day 19 years apart. 

He was more than a man among men, the strongman's strongman and an athletic barbarian, he was a rare soul that deserved to be here longer than he should've. A man with such compassion, lust for life and a presence that would make anyone in a room or even a whole building take notice. There was something very few in this crazy world had and that was the will to showcase what it means to be a human being with such genuine love for others that can't be matched by any other means. He was that man and there won't be anyone like him again.

I had known about Bud since about 2005-2006 and maybe spoke to him once or twice for a few years after that but I officially met him at a seminar in San Jose, CA that he hosted with Logan Christopher in April of 2011. The first time I looked over and saw him, it was like seeing a master of different arts walk in and just flood the place with energy that just made you feel powerful inside. I had never known anything like that before or since. I got to know him a little while we took a lunch break one day and sat with him and Noah at a 5 Guys Burger Joint across the way. It was the casual asking of questions and what he's like and all that, wanted him to give me some pointers on some things and during the seminar, I couldn't help but wanting to learn from him and I felt at times I annoyed him but he never showed it and he was humble. 

Over a period of 2 and a half years since that time, I occasionally messaged him and seeing how he was doing and then I found out he was doing a show in Spokane, WA which is less than an hour from here in Idaho and I jumped at the chance to have dinner with him and hang out. He came by and we did some training together and went to a Texas Roadhouse. This is where the ball started rolling and spending real one on one time and learning from one another. This was just before Thanksgiving in 2013 and after he did his time, he came back again and spent two nights at my house. This was February of 2014 and we did three shows together in Coeur D' Alene, Athol & Sandpoint. He did his anti-bullying speeches, feats and other things, I got to perform some Phonebook Tearing and Bent a 60 penny nail in a nose to mat bridge at least once or twice. It was a bonding experience that will never leave me. He took me under his wing and became brothers by that point. 

I learned so much from him and he became more than just a role model, he became a part of my family. He put knowledge and wisdom on me that nobody can ever take away and when I wasn't being true to myself when I would talk to him, he didn't let up on me and told me how much value I had and that I'm an amazing person with such strength inside and out and never ever judged me. Very few in my life ever gave me that and showed such compassion and understanding. He was the hero I was looking for after my stepdad died, it took me 8 years to find him and not only did it happen, it made me feel I truly belonged to something and keep that fire inside me to do what I love and share it. 

Years later, I was engaged and Bud was the first man I wanted to call and ask to officiate my wedding. He not only agreed but also because the theme we were going for, he dressed up literally like Obi-Wan Kenobi. It turned more of a laugh into a thing where I couldn't believe he would do that for us. When he came up here to do the wedding, I was such a wreck and emotions were all over the place, he was calm and collected to keep me on track and helped me with training, giving me ideas to enhance what I wanted to do and kept me distracted in a way that regardless of what was going on with me during those 4 days, I was ready to be married and give everything I had. I couldn't have done it without him and I will be convinced of that for the rest of my life. 

He ended up leaving a day early because his wife Heather had some physical issues back home and Bud couldn't wait any longer to be there for her. That's a real man folks, that's love beyond reasoning. The last time I ever saw him was when I hugged him, thanked him for everything and he drove off. 

Little did I know that would be the very last time I got to spend time with him up close. It's just so damn eerie and unbelievable he's not here in this physical form anymore. I wish he was still here to know that after me and my wife adopt a son, Bud would be in his middle name. I want my son to know who he was and that not only was Bud Superman to me and others around the world, that I would pass on what I learned from him and do everything in my being to be as compassionate, understanding and love even remotely as much as he showed to me and the people in his life.  

The last conversation we ever had was on messenger and we had talked about how he was doing and what he wanted to change to be better not only for himself but for anything else. He would like and put a little note on my videos every now and then which I always appreciated and will miss. The last set of words he ever wrote to me was wishing me and my family Merry Xmas after I wished him the same. I love you my brother, I will miss you everyday and know that you were and still are my guardian angel, the man I needed in my life and that your legacy will live on forever in the hearts of everyone you touched. I'm grateful and honored for everything you taught me and that I have Heather's back always whenever. 

RIP Bud, say hi to Noah for us and we all will share your stories and antics for all.