The Wild Never Stops

 Animal moves have an endless variety but only a few are needed to get in a really good workout. What you choose to master or utilize in your training is up to you but never forget to respect the movements as you practice them. You can go hard, you can go slow, you can even do them in Isometric fashion (maybe not the jumping ones for obvious reasons). It's about building a foundation and finding what gives you the best benefit.

The wild never stops. You keep finding ways to condition your body and put yourself in awkward positions to strengthen areas that conventional or "traditional" training methods can't reach. One of the reasons why I love doing my Animal Deck Of Cards Workout (The Four Animals Of The Apocalypse). It never goes the same way every time and when a Joker comes into play, you get to pick which animal to tackle for reps or distance. The total reps I've done most of the time is around 500 but have done a 1000 total on a few occasions and feels awesome afterwards. With the 500 I would finish around 15-16 min for a full deck which is still quite a workout in itself. These days the main four are....

Bear Crawls

Crab Walks

Bigfoot Walk

Duck Walks

Why did I choose these specific animals? At least 3 are the most basic you see in sports such as wrestling and football since they can be so intense that only a few seconds of them can get you out of breath. The bigfoot walk was what I learned from Vahva Fitness and it's based on movement utilized mainly by wrestlers being in that stance and shifting for balance like in Shadow Wrestling or a match. They get the body in rugged shape pretty fast and when you go hard on even one of them, you're building that explosive conditioning. 

One of my other favorite workouts is a 5 min Tabata Workout of just the Bear Crawl. You go as fast as you can for 10 seconds, rest for 20 and repeat until you've done 5 minutes. That may not sound hard but it's not as easy as it looks on paper. When you have to explode at a moments notice and you're practically sprinting on all fours, it becomes quite the exercise. The first couple rounds you might be breathing hard but the more rounds you go, the more it's going to feel like your heart will rip out of your chest. If you're in good health, this might actually be good for you to do (not every single day though).  It's quick, fast and can be done practically anywhere. I do it in my living space and it kicks my ass every time.

There are so many ways to do Animal Workouts it's not even funny. When you get the idea of moving like a beast in the wild, it doesn't seem like a workout, it becomes a game you can play and being like a kid again. An ancient style of this type of training can be traced back to the art of qi gong and the Shaolin Monks who mimic animals in their Martial Arts practice. In today's style which can has been seen like with Animal Flow and Ginastica Natural, it's been used to target MMA style training and conditioning for certain aspects of Health. It can be fun especially if you combine them but when it comes down to it, you can do all of that and then some with the Movement 20XX fitness course that shows you how to not just work individual exercises but combine the elements of all of them together to form your own style and goals. 

These forms of exercise create an exciting aspect of fitness you don't get with conventional training methods. Yes some exercises may be too advanced for some people but as long as you stick to the basics, you're golden. Just the deck of cards workout I've given you would be a great warm up or a conditioning workout on its own and you can pick your own animal moves to work on. I picked those because they're fun to do. It can be challenging but I find it more interesting to do than hundreds of squats or push-ups. Regular calisthenics are great and should be mastered and practiced whenever possible but at the same time, very few replaces killer exercises like Bear Crawls, Crab Walks & Duck Walks. If wrestlers use them for conditioning, that should tell you how important and brutal they can be. Whether for a few minutes or close to a half hour, animal exercises can be a great asset to your health, your overall strength and conditioning along with building balance, flexibility and durability. Did I forget to mention they're calorie burners as well? 

Get moving by training like a wild beast and have fun. The more fun you have, the better your results will be. Keep being amazingly awesome.  

Lost Empire Herb Of The Day: Seabuckthorn Berry

The "Risks" Of Training Out In The Open

 About 99% of the time, I train by myself everywhere I go and when it's nice out, I'm either at a park, the lake or at the house. It's my "therapy session" or my time to do what I love and make the most of it. Seriously from my experiences it's the best therapy and it's FREE!! Now when people come up to me, it can vary on the mood I'm in.

When you train out in the open, there's a chance some shmuck or kid or whoever might come up to you. In roughly 18 years of doing this (god damn, I'm getting old), I've had maybe less than 10 people ever come up to me. I do my best to be polite to that person but I'm not going to stop what I'm doing and if they find it rude, that's their problem. We are a curious bunch, I get it and I'm guilty of doing it myself. I even went up to an elderly lady at a park one time in Pleasanton, CA who was doing some form of Tai Chi Walking or Crawling and barely spoke any english (or at least pretended to not know at all) I asked her if she could show me what the method was. She politely shrugged me off and I was ok with that, it's her thing and didn't want to keep bugging her.

In the last few years, I've only had less than what you can count on one hand come up to me about anything. I did get a little peeved when one guy looking for "buried treasure" got in my way of filming a pull-up video and had to restart the video again. That was pretty rude and should've said something but it is what it is. One guy came up to me after a set of Hammer Strikes on my tire and told me he thought the half tire was part of the park and it was a good little laugh and said something like "nope just mine having fun with the hammer." My favorite is when these two mormon kids going on their "route" to preach and saw me hitting the tire with the 25 lb beast of a hammer I have. They were being kind of rude so instead of telling them to fuck off, I messed with them and had them try out the hammers, neither one of them would touch Big Bertha (my 73 lb hammer) and the look on their faces when I swung that sum bitch was priceless. They did their bit and I shrugged them off. 

Another time was this past summer, I was playing Basketball, just shooting around and this 15 year old kid and his girlfriend came up to me and wanted to play me. Now you need to remember, I'm old enough to be this kid's dad, so he thought I was just another guy in his mid 20's just shooting around. The kid tried to play me and got a bit of an awakening. I was outshooting both him and his girlfriend (whom was already a bit reluctant to even try playing) and this kid was like "what the hell, how are you shooting like that?" It was fun and introduced one another and went our separate ways. This really is a nice neighborhood and many people are friendly. Do I wish it was more diverse and not so Vanilla, hell yeah. If it had as many races and cultures from where I've been and was as friendly as this place is, the world would be very different. 

I understand that when it comes to training, it's your time and you do what you need to do. The problem is, you don't own the park or the lake or wherever it is you train at unless it's at home so you have to be aware of people coming around and being curious. Some might try to tell you what you're doing wrong, others may want to join you, be rude and possibly mormon or just curious as to what you're doing. You can tell them to fuck off or be a complete ass to them because they're in your space but you never know what you're going to get with people. You can't completely control the space you're training in so you learn to adapt and be aware of what is possible in that moment and do what you need to do and let others know without needing to say much. If you're going to get that pissed off and have some kind of meltdown, you're not in the right mind because for one, you chose to go to a place where other people will be and two, it's really unlikely tons of people will come up to you anyway unless you go to some major place like central park or a big park in Asia or India where hundreds may be around but you also got to roll with the punches. 

Training is about adapting, it's about learning the environment around you, where you choose to go and what the workout will entail. You can't control what people do, most of the time if people see me train, they're either minding their own business or might mimic me from a far and never actually come up to me. Believe me, not everyone is going to come up to you if you're training with a sledgehammer or moving like a wild animal, that's not in their interests and frequently, they find me odd and just move along. That's my intent to have people distance themselves from me because unless you plan on getting your ass kicked training with me, you might want to step back and go about your business because I'm not going to stop and show you the ropes, keep up or walk away, those are your only options. 

Be resourceful but also be firm and remember people are curious. Many can be unpredictable so expect the unexpected and do your training the way you need to do it. It's not about catering to people, it's about letting them know you're there for a reason without needing to say much. For the most part, if you're doing things that they most likely cannot even fathom, they'll figure it out pretty quickly and move along. Train with intent, be firm with people and keep being amazingly awesome.

Lost Empire Herb Of The Day: Maca Powder 

SCT: Superset Conditioning Training

 When it comes to a top level favorite of workouts, working with Supersets ranks right up there. For those who've been living under a rock, Supersets are taking two exercises and doing them back to back for a certain number of reps or sets. You mostly see this in gyms where someone would do a set of let's say Bench Press & Curls back to back for one set without stopping, resting and repeating. In that instance, some will do lighter weight or mix it up doing heavy with one exercise and lighter with the next or do heavy with both. It's a style where it gives off more of the pump along with certain cardiovascular effects.

The style I like to do is take two exercises and do them back to back without stopping for a certain period of time. I set my watch to some arbitrary number like 10 min, 15, 20 or an hour. Keep at a good pace where I'm not moving like Speedy Gonzales on a Coke binge but I'm not moving so damn slow the Mars Rover is outpacing me. I use this purely for strength and conditioning purposes mainly in the realm of carrying an object and doing Step Ups. I've done supersets of Push-ups & Squats in the past or do Bear Crawls one way and do Duck Walks going back as part of a sequence. The carrying and step ups provides the idea of using real world application. 

With these workouts, the idea is to rest extremally little or none whatsoever. This teaches your body and mind to keep going even when it gets tougher. Carrying something like a 50 lb Sandbell a couple times and then straight to step ups may not sound tough but over a period of time without stopping, it becomes something more than you would expect. One of the crazy workouts of this magnitude would be to Carry a Sandbell for ten yards on one shoulder, drop and carry 10 yards with the other shoulder, 20-30 step ups (10-15 per leg) and repeat that for an hour straight. That sounds more like a Tri-Set but to me, carrying something one shoulder at a time is one set. I did this workout for 46 supersets without a break (920 Step Ups and Carrying 4600 lb for a total of 920 Yards). 

You can do whatever exercises you want to do, the objective is to keep going. If you're a bodyweight maniac, set a timer for 15 minutes and do 25 Squats and 10 Push-ups without stopping. Micro Workouts are great for this kind of thing. You can also do Isometric type training where let's say you do a 30 second Horse Stance and then go into a 30 second Fist Plank and keep repeating that for as long as you can. If you absolutely need a break, take it between supersets until you're ready for the next set but for the most part, if you need a break than you're exhausting yourself too soon. Utilize a pace where it's not so easy but it's not going slow you down either and you can go without having to stop. 

Supersets are awesome for building high levels of conditioning and fat burning effects. If you really want to take it to the next level and shed fat faster than butter in a pan, do Sprints and Circuits as a hybrid superset where you sprint for let's say 10 seconds, walk back and do a series of Push-Ups, Squats, Jumps, Burpees or whatever a circuit may be and than rest for as long as needed. Repeat for a few rounds and that's it. This is more of a HIIT type of workout where even 3x a week might be pushing it so don't do workouts anymore than that, 1-2x a week is ideal. I did something similar to this for 6 weeks and dropped a considerable amount of bodyfat, lowered my blood pressure by a huge margin and was leaner despite only losing a few pounds. That's going hardcore and not a beginner type level of training. 

Another great workout would be doing Farmer's Carries and Step Ups or Squats. Example would be to carry a kettlebell in one hand for x amount of yards, switch hands and carry the same amount of yards and then do step ups or squats. Repeat this for as long as you wish or can handle. Some would take two exercises and do them with deck of cards to really up the ante like Hindu Push-Ups & Hindu Squats, work your legs hard with just Step Ups & Hindu Squats or whatever you choose to do. 

This type of training is very effective and goes beyond just working muscles, you're working your cardiovascular system, you're testing the mental aspects and training muscle groups that are often ignored. Make it work for you and be sure to recover efficiently. If you're into weight training, do supersets that work opposing muscles like a Chest & Back Exercise or Tris and Bi's, Thighs & Hamstrings or Mix and Match. It's not complicated, it's very simple and as long as you stick to the basics, you're golden.

Train hard, recover just as hard and keep up your conditioning so you can last when it counts. Keep being amazingly awesome.

Lost Empire Herb Of The Day: Cistanche 

Yielding Isometrics With A Weighted Vest

 Even with the most basic exercises, it's fun to challenge yourself every now and then to test your physical and mental conditioning for everyday life. During the spring and summer I would go for walks or hikes with my 40 lb Vest on and just get some killer cardio in. On the hikes, I would sometimes lose up to 2 pounds by the time I get back home, they can be brutal. 

As of late, I've dabbled in Isometric Training with the Vest on and that is a whole other sport of conditioning training. Mainly in the Horse Stance & Fist Plank for Tabata style workouts. Do 20 sec on, 10sec off going back and forth for a number of minutes and just see what I can do. Last night I took it a step further and added more time than usual by going for a total of 15 minutes for a workout with those two exercises. Just doing it without the vest is tough, add in a 40 lb Vest and you're going through hell.

This tests not just your strength but also your ability to hold the posture/position as best as possible being still. A lot is going on beyond just concentrating, you're also having to control your breathing because the longer you go, the harder it is to keep your breathing at a solid pace. It gets you breathing pretty damn heavy to the point where it feels like you going for miles even though you're not moving. These exercises also dig into the smaller muscles and works the tendons and ligaments like a motherfucker.

You may not think two basic and plain exercises can get you breathing hard, test your core strength, leg conditioning and grip strength but they do and it makes isometric training all the more reason to do them. They can be just as effective or even more so than doing hundreds of squats or push-ups. Doing hundreds of reps are great but yet it's a very different form of strength when you have to hold a position for as many sets as this and rest only half the time. This workout alone with or without toughens up the muscles and give you that hard and rugged feeling, not to mention incredible speed and power to boot. This is great for martial artists, football players, injury rehabilitation, conditioning enthusiasts and those who are a little twisted in the head. 

As we get older, doing hundreds of reps is not always going to be priority since it becomes more of a thing to do every now and then (you're not going to see many people over the age of 50 doing 500-1000 squats or 500+ push-ups), Isometrics on the other hand can be done by nearly everyone at any age and have unbelievable benefits of strengthening the body from the inside out. You can get a great cardio workout without ever moving a muscle (or in this case being still as much as possible). You think you can't get cardio, try holding a Horse Stance for 5 straight minutes or do the Horse Stance/Fist Plank Tabata Workout for 10 minutes and tell me you're not breathing heavily. 

It's important to do forms of training that make us uncomfortable to do in order to withstand whatever comes our way in the real world. Carrying furniture, going up and down hills, going up flights of stairs, lifting odd objects such as logs and wood chopping all have a hand in how we handle ourselves and Isometrics provide opportunities to make ourselves stronger to do those things whether young or old. 

Be resilient but as safe as possible, build strength without getting injured, condition your bones regardless of your age and develop levels of stamina beyond conventional means. Having muscle on the outside may look great but if you can't back it up, what good is it? Isometrics can show you weaknesses you didn't realize you had, make them strong as hell. This workout also burn a stupid amount of calories and have fat burning effects. Be strong everyone and keep being amazingly awesome. 

Lost Empire Herb Of The Day: Phoenix Formula

My Thoughts On Texas High School Football Coach And The Boys Hospitalized

 There was an article I read a few days ago that was a little different to read but it's partially not that surprising. A High School football coach from Texas (the Mecca of Football) was suspended and investigated for putting his players through a Push-Up challenge as a punishment and the challenge was to do 300-400 Push-Ups within an hour. 8 boys were hospitalized because of it.

Now whether this is just another story that could be fabricated who really knows and I do see both sides to the issue but let's stick to the big thing here. Many kids today aren't in the shape this challenge calls for and yes it can be a tough challenge but it's not impossible to do WITH THE RIGHT WAY TO TRAIN FOR IT!!! Do I think these boys are pussies for being put in the hospital? Hell no, I do sympathize with them and hope they get back on their feet soon. The trouble I have is, yes these boys should train to be able to do that however, since the coach is very old school from what I read, he pushed them to the extent where their bodies didn't have the capacity to withstand that amount of stress. I believe in a kid training for any sport to prepare themselves for whatever challenge comes to them and they weren't prepared. 

Those boys should not be in football if they can't put themselves through that hard training and it's not entirely their fault, the parents should've helped them prepare for that. I'll give you an example: When I was in high school, I was in nowhere even close to the shape I'm in now and I went out for Shot Put & Discus and Wrestling. The Shot Put was purely using Weight Training but even with that, I wasn't that good and didn't need a ton of conditioning but I also had no preparation to handle injuries and I got elbow and shoulder issues because of that. The wrestling was the hardest and if I hadn't gotten hurt from a bad knee and nearly breaking my wrists, I would've kept up with it as best as I could. We did push-ups, squats, wall sits, drills, sprints up stairs, suicide runs before, during and after sparring. It's brutal but I sure as hell never went to the hospital. 

One of these boys was reported to have a disease that was prone to kidney failure and that was what got me because for one, the coach had to have known this otherwise he wouldn't have let that kid on the team and two, the parent(s) pushed that kid most likely or the boy wanted to be on the team so bad that the parents couldn't let go of his ambition and let him do it. That kid needed help. I understand also the need to want to prove yourself even at the risk of one's own health. It's human nature.

These days, many boys have no conditioning or structure or discipline because it's easier to just chill, play video games and not play outside so much since many parents today are either way uninvolved or too involved that it can screw up a kid's future. I've been around kids my whole life and have observed many parents in my lifetime and can't wait to be a father one of these days but if I were a parent, I would challenge my kids to help prepare them so they can handle certain things that will be thrown at them and physical fitness is definitely one of them. Trust me, I didn't really get fit until I was 21 years old and was never a fit kid that could do countless push-ups and sprint till my legs were ready to fall off. Yeah I played outside and all that but I didn't have a coach or a person to teach me how to condition my body or better yet gave me an interesting concept to help me. P.E helped to a small degree but I was never in decent shape until after I was in high school. 

Now that we got all that out of the way, let's play a math game here. 300-400 Push-Ups in an hour is tough but not impossible if you look at the math from a certain point of view. These boys were probably pushed to doing consecutive reps their bodies couldn't handle and they ended up having piss that was darkened and had injured their shoulders and arms. Now if either they, or the coach for that matter, taught or learned the math that shows how it is reasonable and applicable to handle that many reps in that span of time, none of this would've ever happened. I get the punishment and disciplining the kid, I'm not faulting that, kids need a kick in the ass every now and then but not to the point where Life and Death is creeping up at a faster rate than Usain Bolt's 100 meter sprints. 

If a person can do 20 Reps in a span of a minute (which is roughly 3 seconds per rep), it is very possible to do 300 within less time and have a small increment of rest before the next minute. Apparently there wasn't much time to rest according to the coach and no water breaks until they finished (that's a bit of an issue in itself since this took place in fucking Texas where high heatwaves are normal). At that pace, the boys most likely couldn't do that and even tried to do more than that and paid the price for it. If they did 5-7 reps per minute, get the reps in and rested until the time changed and repeated that for the hour, they could've easily done 300-420 reps in that time. 

5 Reps (at a pace of 2-3 seconds per rep) is still 10-15 seconds with a max of 45 seconds of rest time....5 Reps = 1 minute, 1 hour is 60 minutes, 5x60 is 300. Now if they attempted to do the 400 in that time frame which they can do 6-7 push-ups per minute (pace of 2-3 seconds per rep) is still 12-18 seconds for 6 reps and 14-21 seconds for 7, still gives them the rest period of let's say 35-40 seconds till the time changed. 6 Reps = 1 minute, in the span of an hour that's 6x60 is 360 reps. For 7 Reps = 1 minute, in that hour 7x60 is 420 reps. These numbers would've been very easy to shoot for to complete 300-400 in that span of time. Isn't math fun? The parents never saw this (neither did the coach apparently) and all the parents saw was how horrible to put the boys through that many because it's such a huge number (in reality it isn't).

Like I said, I see both sides to the issue and the coach did his best at punishing and disciplining, it just could've gone a different way and both the coach and those players would've been satisfied (even though those kids would've been pissed off at the guy anyway since hello teenage boys). On one hand, if a kid can't handle the stress of the training, he shouldn't be in a sport because sports are hard and if you want to be good at them, you need to train accordingly and sometimes that means taking it to the limit (without suffering injuries of course) in the training process, injuries happen, there's no getting around that but there are ways to limit it. You can't expect a kid to be just thrown on a team and expect it to be just sunshine and rainbows and not feel the wrath of exhaustion or playing a little hurt. There's going to be an injury somewhere on the field but it shouldn't be as frequent in practice. 

All in all, I never want to see a kid hurt in a sport or pushed to the point where he/she ends up in the ER over something that could've been prevented with progressive training instead of pushing so damn hard the body couldn't handle it in the first place. There needs to be balance which many times is thrown off but can be done in most cases because each kid is different and handles physical and mental stress differently. It is a small complex issue but again kids today don't have the same drive as others did even 20 years ago. Much has changed, not always for the better but we can do great things and get fit if we applied it to the individual's needs and not try to make people do the same thing the same way for everyone involved, it's not going to work that way the majority of the time. 

Be safe, get strong/conditioned and if you have a kid going out for a sport of any kind, prepare him/her beforehand in small increments so they can be ready to tackle the challenges ahead and learn how to make the most of what's possible. Keep being amazingly awesome.