Finding The Flow Of Your Training

All of us have different perspectives about the flow or high we get when we train. It can be a real hardcore workout, smooth and methodical, powerful or having the feeling of just taken on the world and won it in a glorious fashion. When you find how you flow through your workouts, you’ll be getting a sense of what true strength and power lies, not in the muscles but in the mind.

 What is the perfect workout? Is it hitting a certain sets and reps? Is it perfecting the very best exercise performance? Or is it just finishing everything and going home to rest? The answer can be any of those three things but to me the perfect workout is neither one of them. The very perfect workout is when everything comes together and you flow through it like the waves of the ocean. It’s when you create something special that you rarely ever do and it’s powerful and strong but at the same time it’s peaceful and vibrant. Very few people experience that but again it’s never the same for everyone so your definition will most likely be different then mine but that’s the beauty of it.

 Nine times out of Ten your workouts will be great or boring or even good to call it a day afterwards but that one time, that workout will make everything else look like nothing but you accept it and it gives you a sense of accomplishment. All leading to that one moment where you feel the world is yours and you take it in your hands and you felt like you were Zeus himself on the top of Mount Olympus. It may for you often or very rarely it doesn’t matter, what does matter is how you portray that one conquering moment where everything falls into place and you enriched in glorious freedom of power and might that even for a brief second, it consumes you and you want to keep that moment.

 There will be times in your workouts where everything falls into place and you have secured your perfect training session. How can you make this happen? Well, honestly it takes more then a couple workouts. Takes practice and patience and never expect the perfect workout to come, let it come to you and when you least expect it, it’ll happen like a bolt lightning.

 Don’t just find your flow in your workouts, you can find your flow in other things. Did you know the ancient samurai weren’t just warriors of combat and lived/died by the sword? They were artists, poets and men of honor. Like them, the Shaolin monks, the Vikings, the Romans and other ancient warriors of combat they learned many aspects of life that had nothing to do with war or fighting. When you learn many other things, that’s where everything with you comes together to create your own moments of self-discovery and find how things work for you. Find your flow and you’ll find who you are as a person.

How To Deal With Minor Injuries

Anything can happen in a workout especially when it comes to injuries. You can break a bone, sprain an ankle or you can pull muscles. One little minor injury however happens often in the strongman world and at times its common in gymnastics and that’s tearing of the skin. You get a cut or a bruise and you automatically think your training is done. Well hate to burst your bubble but you can still train while you heal but might need to cut back (no pun intended) a bit.

 I went for a personal record this past St Patrick’s Day weekend and ended up having my skin being torn in two different places in my right hand. Now I’ve dealt with this before and have had big time bruises from bending and tearing stuff and I can assure you it’s no picnic but that doesn’t give me an excuse to stop training all together. Taking a little time off from certain training can do you some good but you should also focus on another realm of training.

 When you get a cut or a bruise from a workout its not a laughing matter if you just left it alone. If you want to heal faster you have to treat the wound and if it’s at a point if it’s too severe then you need to see a doctor. Other than that is sure to treat your injuries with ointments and stop training at a hardcore pace and let yourself heal. Healing is just as important as building muscle and from recovery. I stopped some training because my hand is not in the shape to be in but I don’t stop training. I can train my legs more, do qi gong, practice muscle control without gripping my hand as a fist, all sorts of varieties I can do till my hand is back in the shape I want it to be.

 Switching things around for healing purposes can be a great and rewarding experience. Practicing Internal Training is a healing method of training just as it can be used to train the mind and your whole body. As you begin to heal, you’ll notice that as you get stronger, your mind becomes stronger because you’re learning how to handle different things for different situations. We’re all different and do our best not to get injured but it does happen in the most unexpected ways and no matter what the injury is, we should treat it well so when we get back, we can learn certain lessons on how to prevent that ever happening again.

 Some people take it too far and get injured more often then they should be healing. Now a scratch or a bruise is one thing but certain severe problems can arise and it can haunt you and bite you in the ass. Believe me from personal experience, you don’t want that and never push hard when you’re making a recovery. When you’re healing, take some time out of your training and think into your body, learn to electrify your body and practice building strength from inside the body like the organs and tendons. When I got hurt from bending steel and cut my hands, it was not pretty and it looked like it will be a long time before I get back to doing what I love, but in a two day span of using some ointment and very bandaging along with internal training, I’ve seen major improvements in my hands and now it just feels bruised more then a cut but less painful and the healing process is incredible. Now that may not sound true but let’s face it, I’m a terrible liar. Some people don’t heal as quickly as others which is understandable and it takes longer to get back from certain things but if you learned to harness the power of your mind and practice building your body from the inside, that’s where real strength and healing come from and you’ll be surprised how quickly you can heal from doing these kind of practices.

 Some say that the little things can make a huge difference. I believe that with just about anything. Doing big things all the time can lead to a downfall and you won’t know how to develop little goals of challenges. When I learned about the injury Paul Levesque (WWE Legend Triple H) had with his quad tear back in ’01, he said during an interview that if you want to get back into something, you set little goals for yourself. Small goals can create a monster positive outcome not just as a recovery and getting back to something but it’s the journey that makes all the difference to make one big explosion and you’re back stronger, hungrier and more determined then ever.

 Never believe the training is ever over. It’s just taking a break while you learn and experience the type of training you can take on and conquer so when you get back to regular training, you’ll have a new found respect and appreciation of what you can accomplish. It’s not always about pride or ego; it’s about becoming a stronger individual no matter what the obstacle is. I never want to see any one of you guys out there getting hurt but if it does happen to you, do what you can to get back and learn the best and safest ways to do it.

Muscle Control Resurrected

There is such a thing as building beautiful muscles without ever training with weights. It’s not always calisthenics that does it but with the proper techniques, you can build awesome looking muscle by doing the lost art of Muscle Control. This method of exercise is one of the most unique in the world and it’s very powerful.

Muscle Control has been around for centuries since it became famous by a teacher who traveled to China and taught the out of shape monks how to fight with peace but also build their bodies both internally and externally. This is a form of internal training, using your mind to create the tension. It became more famous later on in the Golden Age of Physical Culture in the early 20^th Century by strength stars like Eugene Sandow, Maxick, Otto Arco, Sig Klein and many more. This was the true way to building strength and build muscle in ways unheard of at the time.

The real days of Bodybuilding were in the era of the stars I mentioned above. Their physiques were unmatched then as they are today and even back then before steroids and the overwhelming franchise of supplements and infomercials, these men taught the public through their mail-order courses how to live the life of a healthy, strong and vibrant individual. Most of these men outlived the majority of the average life capacity of the time which was between 47 and 60. Even after they had reach their peak in the world of fitness and healthy living, their bodies still looked vibrant and powerful as their strength was just as incredible as well.

Did I forget to mention that these stars have phenomenal strength as well? Matter of fact sometimes they did Muscle Control exclusively and still had incredible power left over. Take Otto Arco for example…One of the best overall athletes on the planet at the time was also one of the first 3 men in his weight class to lift double bodyweight in the overhead press which was unheard of for a man at less 155 pounds. Controlling the muscles individually can help increase some of your lifts if you do that as well because it teaches the muscles when to contract for a specific lift or stunt.

Powerful muscles can make you healthy in the long run as well. Practicing this method helps build internal power as it can increase your breathing capacity and strengthen the organs and not put rough stress on the tendons. When you learn the art, you will find some very rare techniques that not only give great definition and power but keep you healthy and vibrant. These exercises worked then and they’ll work now and if you’re practicing professional bodybuilding, your competition will ask about how you’re building these sculpted and chiseled muscles.

Take your time to learn these, you don’t need to rush and just jump into the exercises. Learn them, do them and practice, practice, practice. Before you know it, you’re going to look like a person that was carved from granite and have the body of a rugged athlete. Have fun and trust the power within you.

Beginners Luck

Every journey starts at taking one step at a time. Just like in Fitness, if you haven’t exercised at all or wanting to get back into after many, many years, all it takes is one step and keep moving. It’s not always easy getting into an exercise program and you might get discouraged because you can’t get the exercises right off the bat. Starting out can be confusing and not know what to do. Many systems don’t teach you real basic training instead they tell you to this for muscles and that for strength it becomes a vicious cycle that you never should go through.

 You’re in luck and you know why? Because you can begin anexercise program at any age and it doesn’t matter if you’re thin and want to build muscle or you’re overweight and want to trim down or even just getting the basics back on track to help you stay in shape. It’s a matter of how much you want to improve yourself and become healthy, strong and vibrant.

 The benefits of learning an exercise program is to find what works best for you and how you want to progress. Imagine training at your own pace and not have some trainer scream at you and telling you you’re doing it wrong when in fact you might just be doing it right. There’s always room for improvement and that’s the beauty of beginning your training where you can do it anytime, anywhere and not spend one red cent in a gym where it’s a good chance it’ll be gross with sweaty benches, germs on machines, waiting for the next person to get off an area where you need to train.

 Basic training is the foundation of all exercise systems, once you mastered them that don’t mean you need to do them anymore; no it means you can go back to them if you need help with progressions and never needing to do the same routine twice. You can change the tempo of your exercise, increase/decrease speed, hold certain postures and work the same exercises but in a different order. Never let yourself get bored because learning is the fun part and you’re finding who you are as a trainee. Progression is the key to the game and in order to play, you need to build yourself from a very easy exercise to a very difficult one.

 Changing the body in a healthy way makes you a better person and helps you build confidence in yourself and it doesn’t matter if you’re large, big and tall or small you have an opportunity to become the very person you dream about and it all starts with a dream. It’s up to you to make it a reality. Jack Lalanne once said “Make haste, slowly.” Take your progressions one step at a time, no need to rush anything, build yourself up, have patience and before you know it, there will be another person in the mirror. You’re still you but with power, vibrancy and a person full of life and energy.

 Getting started isn’t easy but you can make it one hell of a trip. Don’t waste any more time thinking, start doing and getting you into the shape you desire and dare to conquer. Let skepticism aside and believe in yourself that you will be strong, you will get in shape and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

Bringing Out Your Animality

I think the only real time you’ve ever heard that word if you knew, was in Mortal Kombat 3 the video game or in the very terrible scripted film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Although the movie sucked and made the first film look like it should’ve been up for an Oscar lets not forget an important message. In each and every one of us there is a wild animal waiting to be unleashed. Now not saying you’re going to literally turn in a ferocious creature but you can however make your conditioning look like a cake-walk to other methods.

 Becoming an animal takes practice, observation, mindfulness and the will to move like one. We humans have lost our sense of what’s to be in shape and if you want to look like a bloated pumped up meat-head that’s your business. Some of us even sit on our asses almost an entire day without moving or never get the time to get out and move around. That’s not acceptable and I feel nothing gets you moving more than being a beast in the urban jungle.

 The practice of moving like an animal gives you strength, flexibility and endurance in ways almost all cardio machines can’t top. Conditioning in this manner means you’re generating more natural growth hormone, your brain becomes stronger, you lungs becoming more powerful and the ability to move your body in awkward positions builds strength in places you cannot even remotely get from weight lifting. Not saying weights are bad but let’s face it, you can’t carry weights around all the time when you travel and have no gym now can you? Animal Training gives you what most methods can’t and that’s freedom to do it wherever you want, whenever you want.

 A firm secret to be successful in your animal routine is to not just look at an animal and go through the motions, no, you become that animal, imagine being so powerful you can run down a gazelle or out run a vicious predator just waiting to chop you for dinner. When you put your mind to this secret, your results will come quicker; you’ll be leaner, more agile, developing an animalized physique and have a lot more fun. One of the fastest ways to know what animal you truly are is to practice as many animal movements as you can and find out which one you most frequently use. This alone will determine your true Animality.

 Unlike other methods, this type of training is superior for a lot of reasons, one…Using multiple muscle groups, two…Building growth hormone which helps you stay leaner, younger and more energetic, three…Moving in awkward positions instead of neutral positions and four…It’s fun as hell. Some programs are good but many of them are boring, take too long, more prone to injury and can take a toll on your body more then you’ll know.

 Finding your Animality is like searching for the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth. You will be amazed how much your body can change in a short amount of time that’s safe, productive, time efficient and can be done by just about any age. Your health will be as strong as ever and you will have a new found confidence among your friends and family as they’ll want to know what you’re doing and how you managed to have such a powerful and conditioned body. You are an animal, it’s about time you started acting like one. Animal training and other kick ass programs like you see here will bring out the very best in whom you are and make you one of the strongest persons on this planet both in and out. Unleash your inner Animality.