Living With Incredible Health

Throughout the world and more famously in Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, health is a journey of learning to find the best qualities in the body, mind and spirit. Finding health doesn’t always mean finding the right exercise, the best meditative practices, the right kind of food to eat or even believing in a higher power, all these things have great advantages but the real key to building superior health is finding your true self and how you apply it to make yourself vital, vigorous and living a long and happy life. Today however, health has become a near last-on-the-list mockery of what we’ve become in this country, too many bad foods, too many TV commercials and way too much exposure to the wrong kind of what health is believed to look like.

 Looking at certain models, pro athletes, global entertainers and hate to say this but gurus as well that really take looking at health down a spiral of bad influences and a lot of egotistical people. I’m not saying all these people are like that but seriously, you’d rather trash your body for a few bucks than to actually get a grip on it? The mind/body connection is a symbol of our yin and yang of life; one cannot exist without the other. Think of a great and beautiful looking Ferrari, what does it need, gas, oil, water and parts to keep it not only together but to drive in a smooth and ferocious fashion, if our bodies are weak, so are our minds and vise versa. Superior health starts combining the mind and body as if they’re one whole unit other wise our conditions won’t be the way we really want them to be.

 In exercise, certain methods are way overrated and have nothing to do with building health. Some people who train others don’t really have a keen sense of what real health is, certain exercises should not be done by some people but yet those who teach them don’t know what they’re getting themselves into and that’s a scary thought to think about. Real training is finding methods that bring that natural high of endorphins that help bring blood into our systems (I’m not talking pumping iron here) that help keep us young, vital and strong for real life things. There are many ways to help build superior health such as versions of qi gong, Isometrics, Muscle Control, Yoga and Animal Training that bring your body into alignment not just in the body but in the mind as well. Certain forms are tougher than others so we must progress and find what suits our bodies to bring the best of what keeps us in shape.

 When people talk about the real sources of power, they sometimes think of certain body parts or their brain being the ultimate source or the types of exercises that give the most benefit but the true power is in your imagination and your organs. The organs harvest your body’s system for blood flow and great energy. Each organ cannot really exist without the other, if even one organ is missing you are at greater risk of dying and taking 2 or more you might as well be dead. Certain exercises teach how to strengthen the organs little by little and with practice, your life force or Chi has a greater chance of keeping you alive for a long time.

 Your vitality is a key ingredient to your success to superior health because it doesn’t just mean meditating or finding various exercises, it also means how you use your attitude and your balance of negative and positive stress. A healthy attitude helps lead down a road of healthy living and using connections from various sources bring that vital success to new levels of enlightenment, sexual energy, and great blood flow to the body that brings levels of growth hormone that keeps you young and living life with gusto. Get healthy the best way possible that helps make your life and those around you at ease and balance stress that’s both positive and negative.

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

All of us have different traits, physical structure and certain intellectual abilities, however, being different scares people period. Many people want others to see the world the same way they see and force you to not challenge their opinions and philosophies. Fitness is a lot like that too, if you challenge the system, they’ll ridicule you and make you feel guilty that whatever you’re doing is wrong and their system is the end all be all.

 People have different opinions about the would whether in sports, life, fitness, politics or whatever but if you go out f the norm and do something that isn’t according to their standards, you’re considered a freak or a person who doesn’t belong with them. In strength training too many trainers put their own egos in with what doesn’t work for them and have people believe the same thing when in fact it’s a bad way to help people. Being different and unique has a lot of qualities that certain people just can’t understand. Take for example doing feats of strength, you do things the average person doesn’t want to exert himself to and yet they give you a hard time for what you, they say everyone loves a strongman but a good number are jealous because they want that kind of strength but don’t do anything about it.

 Ever heard the song “Rainbow Connection” by the Muppets, god that’s a cheesy tune but at the same time it’s inspirational because it teaches you how to find your own path. Connecting your dreams and finding that end to your own rainbow gives you the chance to find out that you really are and that being different is powerful and a unique view as an individual. However you choose to be, make it happen for you, finding who you are is the greatest and most challenging journey, you will have road blocks but you can’t give up on what you want to become. Forcing your beliefs on someone isn’t a healthy way to approach people, take them for who they are and give them the chance to be themselves, besides who the hell really wants to be the same person anyway or follow the same program of somebody else, it’s just unethical. Nothing wrong with being inspired by somebody but you don’t have to be exactly like them. I have learned from many people over the years and mold what I find best about their qualities and make my own interpretation on them to find my own unique style.

 Many groups have this notion that if you don’t follow what they say and don’t play by their rules you can’t be apart of them. Us strongmen are really a band of brothers who give everything we have to be the best we can be and help others what we have learned from not only each other but others outside our little group. The only rules we really have is that you work hard, play hard and find who you are by becoming the strongest you can be in many aspects and not just strength. We learn from one another and help push each other, we may not agree with everyone’s opinions about various things but we have a found respect for one another and teach those who want to earn that respect. Sometimes getting respect means you go out of your element and challenge those that don’t believe in what you do. If you believe in yourself first, the rest is easy.

 Too many people back off from making something happen because they’re afraid it’ll backfire. Certain things will backfire but giving up just before it reaches its peak is a deadly game of cat and mouse, which one are you going to be. One example would be Bud Jeffries who’s had plenty of setbacks in his life and yet he pushes beyond the brink of making something happen because he knows he can, on the opposite end, take a guy like Barry Sanders, quite possibly one of the greatest running backs of all-time, was at the peak of his career and abruptly just walks away, a lot of people criticized him for that but at the same time, he gave up a true potential to become better than the biggest legends in the NFL and not just in their class of legend but a legend of his own class. Certain people just crack when it really gets awesome.

 Our greatest journey is to find out where we belong and find the best that won’t judge you or ridicule you, who will support you and give you a chance to shine in your own way not theirs, push you when its time to push you and give you the chance to bring your potential beyond the very core of your own abilities. Where you belong is up to you and if it means being different so be it, you are your own person, make it happen for you.

Steel Cords From Isometrics

Picture for a moment and see your tendons and ligaments as if they were cords of steel and it would take a ton of pressure to break if they can break. Those cords are not only stupid strong but just as supple with a dose of great flexibility and power at the same time. Would you want that kind of strength? I bet you do.

 A great notion about isometrics is the way it burns off fat in ways you duplicate with regular cardio exercise and/or weights. The amount of exertion to not move a single muscle but to contract so hard, fat is literally running out of your body is a miracle in itself. Imagine your entire body as if it’s one big steel rod that’s so powerful its scary. Think of having those Popeye forearms having held an isometric whether for 10 seconds or 1 minute, what would it feel like? One of the greatest strongmen of all-time Slim The Hammerman pointed out that just building muscles may not be quite enough to develop the strength you need but to develop your tendons, that’s real power. Arthur Saxon knew this, Bruce Lee knew this, Alexander Zass knew it too and many other physical culturists knew the secret to super strength was tendon strength.

 Isometrics can be done anywhere at anytime. Making them a habit is a key to your vital success in strength, health, mind power, even cardio and flexibility. If you learned Isometrics the way Bud Jeffries and the other old-time strongmen did them, you can create so many attributes into one session and it won’t take you that long either. You want cardio training from isometrics, hold certain positions for about 3 minutes, that’s nothing or is it? Want muscle building; try doing Muscle Control for 10 minutes and find out if you hadn’t gotten a pump yet. This type of training can break through your weak points in every exercise you do, again hold certain points and keep going until you have hit your range of motion. This is one of the best for rehab, pressing a weight, doing pull-ups, going a little further in a stretch; it’s all there for you to take.

 Arguably the greatest wrestler of all-time Gama took isometrics to a level no one before or since has mastered. As a little boy until his competition years, he would get up every morning and tie a belt around a tree and with all his might; he never took down the tree but yet when he wrestled, he threw his opponents like they toys and most of the men he wrestled were monsters not little guys. He once threw a champion wrestler 13 times in 13 minutes, you how much the man weighed, almost 300 lbs. of pure muscle. That is power and strength. When you practice Isometrics, you can learn to exert so much force that it can be the equivalent to doing an insane amount of reps. Want to know another story, how about letting Bud Jeffries tell it and believe me, knowing this story is one of the biggest inspirations to learning this type of training.

 When you exert so much force and with the proper breathing, your muscles will begin to take on a form of great vascularity and muscle pump that you can’t possibly achieve with anything else. One guy who takes vascularity to the max at a level that only a handful have achieved including the greats Bruce Lee and Alexander Zass is my boy Matti Marzel at www.ferociousstrength.com. If you watch some of his videos bending steel, you will notice that during the bends his muscularity changes and for brief moments shows the shrededness of his physique that is just in awe and needs to be seen to believe. The closest I’ve ever seen a man his size have that much muscularity is Bruce Lee and I stand by that statement.

 A key secret in superhuman strength through isometrics is not how much exertion you put into it but how your mind brings to the exertion whether it’s 40% of your power or 100%, the mind makes the body strong so when applying isometrics, dive into the mental side as well and the physical will come right after. This type of training can take you to levels of strength that can only be explained by experience and by those who are best to teach it.

Opening Your Mind To A Whole New World

When it comes to mental strength, people look at certain methods that help open the mind but not enough to walk through the door itself, very few methods do this such as some meditation, chi kung, postures in yoga or even muscle control can be a form of mental training. I have practiced this type of method and it’s given me a new look of the world both reality and imaginative and that’s coloring Mandalas. Mandalas are the different shapes and sizes of patterns that can have many angles and never knowing which one’s come next. To me it’s the adult version of a coloring book.

 Coloring in a Mandala takes practice but it’s a fun and healthy practice as you look inside your mind and see which colors go with certain patterns and shapes. Sometimes depending on your mood, you will find colors to draw in based on that particular mood and you won’t even realize how you did it. The best way in my opinion from personal experience to color mandalas is to use big bright colors that sparkle throughout the patterns and each color represents what you have brought to life. The beauty of this is, there’s no right or wrong and you don’t need to think too much about it. After good practice and finding what colors suit you, you can make your own masterpiece and turn it into your own Picasso or Degas painting that just captures the human eye and opens up a world only you possess and feel as your own.

 As far back as ancient Asian and Egyptian cultures, developing patterns and drawing was a form of meditation to teach the mind and body how to see the world through their own eyes. The Samurai are famous for this type of meditation because they weren’t just trained for battle and the life of the sword but were trained in many arts to view the mind from many angles and from different backgrounds of the mental side of the martial arts.

 One of the very keys to practice while coloring mandalas is to not concentrate so much on what colors go with what pattern, it’s to just learn to be calm and instinctive and opening up your imagination. Just choosing a color to go with a certain pattern isn’t going to help you be calm and instinctive, you choose the colors but the colors will do the work for you as you instinctively color in that pattern that gives you inner comfort and gives you the power to create what you want. This is one of the best ways to be creative because when you look at various patterns no matter how big or how small, you will find one way or another to use your imagination and see the colors in your mind. Even better is to come up with your own patterns and coloring them in. There are pre-made patterns you can find on the net and print them out so you can do what you want with them.

 The great end to coloring mandalas is what comes to life after whether 10 min or 1 hour of drawing it. Bringing a mandala to life is one of those moments that just give you a rush of pure unbelievable happiness that only happens when you make it happen. One way to look at it is, breathing is essential in all forms of training whether physical, mental and spiritual and when you breathe into your mandala, it almost seems like as if reading about God breathing life into Adam and becoming this awesome being with feeling, a body and a soul that is born innocent and pure. Not that I’m religious or anything but for those that are, drawing mandalas is one way to look at different aspects such as that notion from the bible. Find your own mandala, create it the way you want, not how it should be but what you make it to be.

 As kids, coloring was fun to do and saw different drawings of animals and designs of cartoonish delights, as a painter, you see the color and picture beforehand and you grasp it as if you can reach out and touch it with your very own hands, sculptors have that exact same passion and mandalas are no different. At the bottom you’ll see a mandala I colored in over a year ago and it’s still as beautiful today as it was being colored in at the time I did it. It’s fun to see something you can appreciate not just as a person but a creative individual.

There Is A Magic Pill

Now that I have your attention, got you didn’t I? In reality nothing gives you results like a serum given to Steve Rogers turning into a Captain America. However, you can get magical results from putting in the effort and finding a whole new you in the mirror after doing great workouts and giving yourself the rest you need. Tablets can kill you, putting in the effort is actually safer and more efficient. If you want magic, find a wishing lamp, good luck with that.

 With a realistic approach and finding the right resources and programs for your goals, you can achieve great weight loss; build great strength, staggering flexibility and surreal stamina that triathletes would envy. It’s the time and effort that you put in that gives you the best results you can achieve. You don’t have to spend hours in the gym and working out so hard you pass out; you can bring that magic with only less than 30 minutes a day and doing less than you need to. Let’s face it, for most people, you don’t have a lot of time but you want to make the effort to get in shape but don’t know how, it’s really much simpler than you’d think.

 Morning workouts are best if you’re in a hurry to get to work or dropping kids off at school. Stretching is a key ingredient to start off your day, get up a little earlier than usual and do less than 20 minutes of stretching that loosens the joints and ligaments while also building good solid functional strength and flexibility. Magical results happen only in the Disney movies so what would be the point of just wishful thinking when you can make the results happen. If you want to be in the best shape, you got to learn from the best. Building a foundation from the very people who want to help you instead of just taking your money and making you feel like crap is one of the keys to achieving the results you want. Real magic comes from effort and making it happen.

 Do you think a magician just happens to make his tricks seem as easy as apple pie, no? He makes the effort to make magic look believable and awe-dropping. Magic doesn’t happen overnight like Cinderella or Aladdin, it’s a journey of learning who you are and what you can teach your own body and mind to create the things you want. Magic is creativity and magic knows what to create without anyone else knowing the secret.

 I’d like you to meet a real, world-class magician that has taken audiences to new levels of awe-inspiring tricks and spectacular ways of controlling magic as if it was so real you would never know if it was. His name is Garin Bader and this man alone has revolutionized strength training and entertainment in a way that can’t be duplicated and is one of the best entertainers of his time. Do you think he just happens to know magic and music along with strength training on a whim or at the snap of his fingers? At the moment he does but it’s more than a 20 year journey that goes into that effortless result of tricks and power. Let’s put it this way, a man who paints a five minute masterpiece was asked “wow, you did that so fast, how did you do that?” the painter says “that’s more than 20 years that went into that 5 minutes.” Now I’m not saying you need to do 20 years of training to make the best results but the real magic is making the journey to get the best results you want and whether it takes you a few weeks, a few months or whatever, it’s all about Mastery, making it second nature, real magic isn’t about tricks, it’s about mastering your own being and making the impossible possible.