Lifting Odd Objects For Optimal Strength & Power

When you add Odd Object  lifting into your routine you will find that it can accelerate your strength to levels that are just surreal man. I have played around with odd objects myself (like my very wide and long 100 lb. barrel) and from the looks of things they’re not easy to do in the same sense as barbells and dumbbells. I normally don’t do BB’s & DB’s anymore but if you gave a keg or log to try I’d be right on it brother.

The real secret for this particular type of training is that unlike straight handle equipment Odd Objects reflect on needing to move at different angles in one shot. There’s no way in hell you can lift a rock the same way you lift a barbell it’s just the way it is. Now would a thick bar be considered an odd object? That’s tough to say but in my opinion in a twisted way yes I feel it is and for good reason….Its thick and your grip is going to be different and it takes your tendon strength to a whole different dimension. With Odd Objects you won’t find a boring workout because it teaches you to lift differently and grip from odd angles.

In Bud Jeffries' Odd Object Lifting Series you will find a variety of ways to take your strength to a level that could make a strongman competitor proud. It offers different ways to handle the objects themselves such as….

Barbells

Rocks

Logs

& Barrels

All of these are in a series of DVDs that will show you first hand how you can learn to lift properly, be safe and also offers you the opportunity to handle things you thought you can never do. Bud is a true expert on Odd Objects and for good reason….He is just flat out STRONG!!!! The things he manhandles are just a piece of what you will find in the video on the site. Take a peak of what you can become if you incorporate Odd Objects. Learn the secrets of the Old-time Strongmen such as Louis Cyr, George Jowett, Thomas Inch, Arthur Saxon & many more. If you’re a fanatic on strength this series is for you. If you want to gain strength to advance your way through competition this series is for you. If you want to take your grip to a whole new level, well my friend you know what to do.

Get A On Move On For The Moving Sale

Guys and Gals,

 My friend Logan is moving away on a secret mission to tackle an art that is out of this world, I'm a good friend of his and even I can't know the full details thats how secretive this is. So for your benefit he's having a Moving Sale that is just off the charts low-priced material that he most likely will never do again. You will get low-priced products that are worth far more then what he's charging and just about any of this material is some of the best work i've ever seen and men like Dennis Rogers, Bud Jeffries, Ryan Pitts, Adam Glass and others will agree with me. You will find stuff thats on......

Bodyweight

Kettlebell Snatching

Bridging

Hand Balancing

Strongman

Radiant Health

Keys To Super Strength & Fitness

Tumbling

Trampoline Fitness

& Many More

You can either purchase them seperatly or buy the whole package for a low price (I recommend getting them all...You will never need to find a workout again when you can learn everything.)

Because of this Moving Sale it won't last very long so get right on it before they're all gone and trust me you won't see another sale like this again. You will find everything you need to know about strength and conditioning to the highest degree.

Building Strong Tendons

Unlike muscle building, if you want to increase the strength in your tendons you need specific type training. Wrist curls and things of that sort will not cut it unless you have a thick bar but not too many commercial gyms have them so what do you do? Well for a weightlifter you might want to consider Training With Partials. The reason why I say this is because with partial lifts you’re hitting the body from a certain angle and the tendons actually go into play more then muscles do plus with partials you can lift heavier and heavier weight then you can with full range.

Now we all heard that building a great body means you need to build/tone muscles but nobody really talks about the tendons and if they did, most of the time the exercises to build them aren’t really good for you (trust me I’ve been there). One thing I learned from York Barbell Hall Of Famer Slim The Hammerman Farman in his DVD was that exercising the tendons are a key to developing great strength. Muscle building is great in many ways but building muscles may not be quite enough. Slim’s mentor The Mighty Atom was an avid explorer in building tendon strength and for good reason. He was and still is the World’s Strongest Little Man.

If you want to build great tendon strength, there are many ways to do them and a favorite of mine is through isometrics. Even though I love doing that I still need specific type work on them and I want to feed the energy in my hands in order to accomplish my training. When you can do that and build a solid foundation your tendons will be supple, strong and healthy all at the same time. However you do not want to do exercises that can damage your hands. There are exercises out there that do more harm then good in your hands because of the way angles are made and how many repetitions and all that crap. You want to have vital strength and vibrant health in your tendons because the more you develop it the healthier your hands will be and it can even save your life.

One such guy I know has been building his tendons since he was a little boy and now is one of the best pianists the world has ever seen. His name is Garin Bader and seeing him up-close I can tell you first hand he is one of the strongest dudes I’ve ever met. At his size of 6’ over 200 lbs. he can do 2 finger superman push-ups and that’s just an appetizer of what he can do. Because of that he has developed a system that not only works but has kept him from getting injured because some of the stunts he does are extremely dangerous and he has no safety net if he fell doing certain things. That’s where Finger Gymnastics come into play. It’s a simple system that can help you turn your tendons from jello to solid steel with a touch of flexibility. We all have suffered carpal tunnel in our lives at sometime.

Its no fun wearing those casts on your wrists and not being able to move your hands without them hurting. I’ve been there a time or 2 and I’m younger then most people who have/had it. With this system you don’t have to go through complicated exercises or do this or that to get results, the results come from working what you can and making a little fun out of it. You learn to use energy and relaxed strength to build a solid program of building the strongest tendons possible. I may look big at 242 lbs. but I don’t rely on my muscle building training to get where I want to be, I rely on my tendons and when I have built them up to a degree, my muscles will come in automagically (sorry had to go biz Markey on ya). The same can happen for you and it costs far less then a doctor’s visit. Have Garin share his story and how you can develop strong and supple wrists and lower to the degree where if you’re a martial artist, your grip will go through the roof, if you’re a musician your playing will become much greater and if you’re a strongman (like yours truly) you will be doing things far better then you ever thought before. Get yourself some powerful tendons my friend.

Strongmen Vs. Bodybuilders

One of the deceiving myths about Bodybuilding today is that they are functionally strong. Back in the day when you had guys like John Grimek, Bill Pearl, Reg Park and Steve Stanko these guys weren’t just awesome in the physique department they were also incredibly strong in quite a few areas such as heavy weight lifting, can do strength stunts and were some of the greatest hybrids of the strongman bodybuilder. Unlike today where you have guys who isolate every single muscle in the body and spend a long period of time in the gym and very few make it to the top and even fewer are in good health.

The mental aspects of these different athletes are just that they are very different but yet they have a common goal and that is to be the best at what they do. For strongmen, they’re goal is to lift the heaviest weight possible, show different bends, tearing thick phonebooks, rip license plates, hell some even lever heavy sledgehammers but yet the mental training to get to those stunts relies on what they need to break through past the governor that resides within us to stop if there is going to pain. Bodybuilders’ mental game is picturing the perfect physique, hitting those last few torturing reps and blasting their bodies to the point where their veins look to pop out.

For the most part lets face it unless you’re superhuman there isn’t a way to put on 30-40 pounds of muscle in a month without the need of some “help.” Bodybuilders today do use steroids like a lot of other athletes but for entirely different reason. I’m not saying all of them do but there are a high number of them. Unlike sports athletes, bodybuilders relied on getting bigger and more muscular other then performing on stage better. Strongmen in certain areas of strength do use steroids and again not saying all but some do. Back in the day before the 50’s and 60’s most bodybuilders relied on strength and power and a few ended up developing great musculature. Take for example John Grimek the muscle god from New Jersey who won every single bodybuilding competition he entered in but yet to him it wasn’t as important as being strong. He was one of the very few bodybuilders at the time who competed in Olympic Weightlifting and was apart of one of the greatest clubs in weightlifting and that was the York Barbell Company. Now lets take a guy like Ronnie Colman who won Mr. Olympia titles as many as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lee Haney. He is without question one of the greats but for him it came with a price. His body was so overdeveloped you can clearly see as bright as day he can’t move his upper boy very well and his legs look like they’re set up to be injured.

This brings to my point about injuries. Injuries happen often in both areas of the strongman and the bodybuilder but who gets the most injuries? For obvious reasons, bodybuilders today rely on building as much muscle as possible but they’re neglecting the tendons which help hold the muscles together and if you build too much muscle tissue the tendons can rupture and tear. Strongmen do get injured as well but probably not as much as bodybuilders but it does happen. Unlike bodybuilders, some strongmen rely on tendon training to do some of the craziest stunts there are. Any other reason to debate these athletes is that no matter what people say about them, these guys go all out for the thing they drive on to become the best.

Bending Steel: A Documentary

Films come and go, some take your breath away, some make you cry, even some make you think. A documentary however is different. It shows real life as we know it or may not know it. Look at Pumping Iron. Yes it was considered a documentary but under certain scopes it really was a docudrama. Really a great film in of itself and showed the power and strain and drama of bodybuilding. Now how many documentaries are there for strongmen? Not too many but one film seems to want to take that obstacle and take it to another level.

This film is about the journey of one such strongman. Small in body structure but big in will power and the will to succeed. His name is Chris Shoeck and he's learning the craft of the old-time strongmen from the vaudeville era of the early 20th century at the historic American boardwalk Coney Island, NY. Along this journey you will see what this man at 5'7 155 pounds does when he bends incredibly tough steel bars and such other great feats of strength, you will find very rare Photos of one of Coney Island's Strongest men Joseph Greenstein AKA The Mighty Atom who wasn't that much smaller or bigger then Shoeck is today. You will also see very rare footage of the strongman's protege' Slim The Hammerman Farman who was recently inducted into the York Barbell Hall Of Fame.

While you will see a heartfelt and surprising journey unfold it wouldn't be possible without the help of Chris' mentor. Professional Performing Strongman Chris Rider is also in the film as well. He's a protege' of World's Strongest Man Dennis Rogers. Rider has become famous in his own right being one of the top guys in his field at a relatively short span of only a few years. He's one of the fastest rising strongmen in the world and for good reason. The man is a monster at 6'4 290 pounds of pure solid rock. He's known to bend tough horseshoes, rip decks of cards in halves, rip license plates in quarters and bend wrenches unbraced (not using the lower body as leverage).

As you will see in the film which is set to be out as of summer 2012, Rider helps Shoeck learn the ropes of the audience, bend certain things within periods of time and also see Rider at his best as he bend and tears whats infront of him. This film is one that needs exposure because the Old-time Strongman are starting to fade if it hasn't already and this film is helping bring back what was the glory days of the Strongmen of that era. With Shoeck on his way to performing, does he have a bit of the Atom in him? Will he perform unlike other times he has before? We shall see and if you take a look at the trailer http://www.bendingsteelmovie.com/ you will get a peice of the journey but will you find the destination once you see it?

I'm proud to get to help get this film going. While the crew is finishing up, me and Chris Rider will be helping spread the word of this film and I hope YOU will as well. Nothing in the Iron Game is more sacred then being apart of some of the strongest people on the planet and nothing is more sacred in this business then to help restore what is now a memory in the eyes of those came before us. Join me and Chris to bring this film to life nationwide and around the world.

Pre WWE vs. WWE Now

Before you had pyrotechnics and the big spectacle of drama and soap opera that is WWE today, there was a time when wrestling was meaningful. At the time once wrestlers like Frank Gotch, George Hackenshmidt were long gone (once the 30’s rolled around) you still had some great wrestlers who drew in crowds but then it started rooting in the ground of what was to become a heavy national spotlight and the start of sports-entertainment.

Back in the days of wrestling where they were guys like Bruno Sammartino, “Superstar” Billy Graham, Buddy Rogers, Crusher & The Bruiser and even wrestling greats Lou Thesz and Verne Gagne there wasn’t a big boss of the biggest corporation to go to until Vince McMahon sr. came into the spotlight in the late 60’s and 70’s. You had territories where promoters held their ground in certain states across the country, in Canada & abroad. There were champions in every territory but the biggest Company at the time next to what used to be the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) was the NWA ( National Wrestling Alliance.

Wrestling camps back then were scarce and since there was no internet, cell phones hell a wrestling camp wasn’t even in the god damn phonebooks. They were through word of mouth. Back then up-coming wrestlers got the shit kicked out of them and some of those camps made Tough Enough look like a cake-walk. Ask guys like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Paul Orndorff, and Randy Savage even the greatest good guy of them all, Ricky Steamboat. If you got into a camp it wasn’t easy and being in a camp wasn’t the hard part, it was being on the road and practically having wrestlers as your family. A wrestling camp in those days meant that if you didn’t come back for more and make just a tad more then 100% effort you didn’t belong there. Wrestling Legend Vern Gagne had a camp in Minnesota where he took up to 12-16 guys to see how tough they were and put through training that just didn’t seem to be human. I mean you have guys do 500 squats, 100’s of push-ups, ran stairs up and down then carrying a guy on your back and then you’d get in the ring to learn a few moves and that was just a daily routine for these guys. I don’t know the real details about this camp but I can assure you I have put myself through some workouts but I would not want to mess with guys who made it through that camp.

Other trainers like Eddy Sharkey, Killer Kowalski, Hiro Matsuda and even the late Karl Gotch would train some of the biggest names that went to NWA, Japan, WWF/E and Vern’s near 30yr stint Organization the AWA in Minnesota. The big time names that came out of these camps went on to have some of the most famous matches in the history of wrestling. Once the 80’s rolled around you had Mega Stars making huge bank and some of the matches these guys did lasted close to or even over a whole hour. Win/Lose/Draw those matches pitted wrestlers at the peak of sport to entertainment before those 2 words were put together by WWE owner Vince McMahon jr.

Wrestling Camps today are very open to business and the training of wrestlers. Some camps are rip offs, very few give an up-coming wrestler what he needs to have Charisma, Ring Work, Conditioning, Mic Work, Working The Crowd and Ring Psychology. For the most part camps today are expensive as hell and usually from what I read far more wrestlers quit after a couple months then wrestlers who train their asses off and actually make it to the WWE. In my opinion, if most of these gyms had a synch of a Vern Gagne or a Hiro Matsuda Attitude I wouldn’t doubt some of the wrestlers would be far tougher then some guys today. Wrestlers in WWE are tough in their own right, they did a lot to get where they’re at but the training today is nothing like yesteryear.

For my opinion on WWE’s future, I would say it’ll make more money in 10 years then it did 30 years ago its really that huge and most likely already made that much bank as a company. A lot of people have their opinions about pro wrestlers and how much its more drama then physicality but the truth of the matter is these guys are some of the greatest athletes around and ya outside the ring some do drugs, drink and take certain things but in that ring when they wrestle they really are some of the best storytellers and some of the physicality they bring is just incredible. So the next time you give a wrestler shit try training like one and you’ll see how brutal some of these guys can really be. Even though it’s a spectacle and has characters that are just not that normal you have to give them props from where they came from and how they got there.

Taking A Page Out Of George Hackenshmidt

Back in the early 20^th century, GH was considered by many to be one of the greatest wrestlers of all-time. Still do to this day. He was a champion in both weightlifting and wrestling plus had a string of strongman performances. As an athlete he trained with the best of them and trained rather uniquely at the time and that was integrating both weights and bodyweight exercises. Now even back then plenty of athletes did this but he did in a way that became legendary. So much so he wrote a few books on the subject including his biggest seller The Way To Live which I highly recommend you check out it’s a wonderful book.

He became very popular in his time that today he was considered as a turning of the century equivalent to Hulk Hogan. In his later years he kept on training and writing up until his 90’s. In a time where you were considered an old man at 50 George broke the mold and went past what is considered old today. That’s quite an accomplishment.

If you want to become the athlete you want to be then you need to find your own unique style of training like Hackenshmidt did. Your workouts need to be different then anybody else and in some cases some people use weight, some use just bodyweight (like yours truly) and even some use both at the same time which ideally is a good thing because you get to balance out the best of both worlds. A good idea to use in this pursuit is to also use Odd Objects which means you move something heavy that can be used to lift in odd places unlike a straight barbell or dumbbell.

One such a guy has taken that mold and created what I would like to say is the ultimate physical culture courses on integrating both weights and bodyweight exercise and that’s Bud Jeffries. This man by many in the Iron Game to be one of the strongest super heavyweights in the world (Drug Free) and I’m in no position to argue with them. I’ve seen first hand in person how powerful he is and it’s just unbelievable. His strength is just surreal and anybody who says otherwise is a bullshitter. He has lifted some of the heaviest weight around but can also do high repetition squats and push-ups. In his courses Twisted Conditioning and Twisted Conditioning 2 they are considered to be in my opinion one of the best works in the iron game like the Godfather films are to movies. They are that good.

When you learn to integrate these conditioning elements you’ll find that learning a unique style of training is how you can start becoming your own trainer. Me personally have done so many exercises in my lifetime that I know what works and what doesn’t for me and Bud is one of many guys I have known to teach me those things. Let him do the same thing for you and give you the chance to become a much stronger person both inside and out and vise versa. Once you start finding what works for you, you will become your own ultimate athlete.

The Most Feared Position In Football & How You Can Condition Like One

Lambert, Taylor, Butkus, Lewis….What do these names have in common? These are the last names of some of the feared Linebackers in the History of the NFL and for good reason. They were tough, vicious and some of the most conditioned athletes on the planet. Believe it or not a Linebacker in my opinion is second to the quarterback because he has to keep a sharp eye on where the ball and the players are going and once someone has the ball near them bam he pounces like a wild tiger going for the prey. A linebacker needs the speed of a running back, the strength of a lineman and a keen eye of a quarterback.

If you’re going to train like one you need to hit your workouts fast and hard. There’s no need to do hour long marathon workouts because those are for more moderate workouts in most cases. Hitting your workouts with a vengeance for a few minutes a day can take you far beyond what you normally consider training.

Now you may not start out fast and hard but with a will and the ability to get better you will get stronger, faster and more agile. Vince Palko has such a way to get you to the top as a conditioned athlete and for good reason. He’s been there himself personally.

As a college and pro football player, he was taught by some of the best coaches this world has ever known and he was never apart of a losing season and has won many titles in his career. He’s also one of the most knowledgeable guys on the subject. You want to get hammered to the ground, let him get you to those heights and make you want more. He has a plethora of courses on how to get in condition unlike you have ever seen before. Whether you’re in football, sports or just want to get in better shape here is one of the best places to go.

Vince Palko Strength/Conditioning Website

Helping Bring Back Catch Wrestling

My wrestling studying started when I saw Wrestlemania XII in March of 1996. I was 11 years old a few months shy of being 12 and I was captivated by the main event and that was the WWE Championship Match between HBK Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart. This was an Iron Man match which lasted an hour long and in this particular type match whoever scored the most pins/submissions wins the match. These 2 guys went at it and I didn’t know it at the time until I learned later on that at the beginning of the match they started doing what’s called in the business Chain Wrestling which was a sequence a moves that was fast-paced and timed correctly. After that match I was hooked into wrestling and went to events at the time was The San Jose Arena (Now HP Pavilion) and the San Francisco Cow Palace which also was a big time wrestling venue for many years since the 60’s I think. I even met and had my picture taken with WWE Superstar the dead man himself The Undertaker.

Once I got into the circus-like atmosphere of the business I wanted to learn more about it so I recorded a show on A&E one night that had the topic of wrestling called The Unreal Story Of Professional Wrestling. In this film it gave insights into the roots of professional wrestling beginning with the cavemen, Egyptians, Japanese and the best of them all Catch Wrestling that was apart of the Civil War and how guys in the ACT shows (Athletic Shows) and carnivals would take on all-comers.  It talked about guys like Frank Gotch, George Hackenshmidt, Otto Arco & Farmer Burns. Those were the guys that seemed the most cool looking to me and they weren’t bodybuilding type dudes they were far smaller but a lot more into wrestling the way it was as oppose to today.

As far as I was concerned Wrestling was the most brutal sport and the most scientific sport there is and that was at the time my introduction to physical culture and that’s when I became a fan of history and culture. This is where I tell you that if you haven’t figured it out was that if you’re a true fan of something and make a positive way for you to be enthralled by it that’s when you’re the ultimate fan. You learn it you practice, you study and you want to make a positive impact on it. Now I know what you’re thinking “Well what about those obsessed fans that have pictures and have a shrine to pro wrestlers?” Those types of fans are just plain psychotic and in desperate need of help.

When you really get into the sport of wrestling its not just how you study it, its how you talk to people who were wrestlers, what’s their training like, where did they train, who trained and who do they know to be experts. I have talked to guys who have a vast knowledge in catch wrestling and have studied and learned from the very best in the world. If you’re a true fan you would learn what techniques are used, how you condition and what you can find to help it be more applicable to other martial arts systems.

I have studied wrestling for little over 15 years and have gotten on the mat a time or 2 and have made it a quest to be in the best condition I can possibly be. A true fan goes old school, he doesn’t find the latest gadgetry or learns from guys who don’t know a god damn thing about wrestling. I have learned so much yet I still have a long way to go. You don’t stop after hitting a plateau you keep driving and finding the best sources. Wrestling is my fav. Sport period. Its fascinating to me I want to spread the word about it. Take it from me if you want to be a true fan to the sport of wrestling you’ll find the best sources about it and you can have that opportunity here…….Scientific Wrestling

Animalize Your Body

Most training programs have set and rep schemes where you’re set up on a fixed type workout and a lot of people get discouraged sometimes because they don’t make it through them which would really suck. Forget the set and rep schemes for a while and have fun when you exercise because that’s what it’s supposed to be right? You have fun, you enjoy yourself and in the end you feel good.

When it comes to human training it can be boring at times, doing certain exercises in one position and needing to do rep after rep after rep and for some people they will get bored after a while. Why not learn how to be a kid again and go the park and have fun moving around and not worry about what to do next. That’s the beauty of Animal Exercises.

As you learn to move like an animal visualize yourself as that animal. Feel the fury of being in the jungle and have the burning desire to be one powerful looking beast. You’re working out and if you learn to imagine yourself as that animal believe it or not your results will become much quicker and faster.

So for the most part its safe to say that animal exercises can be the most fun training systems around and learning to be a wild beast can have a big impact on your life outside of fitness. You’ll be more confident, vibrant, alive and have an animalized body that have people turning their heads. Go check out my man Ed Baran’s Animal Courses and you’ll learn first hand how to become the king/queen of your jungle.

Animal Kingdom Conditioning

Animal Kingdom Conditioning II: Call Of The Wild

Wild Animal Fitness For Kids