Creating Your Own Story

 Ever since we were children, we were always fascinated by stories of courage, fearlessness, worthy battles and the power love overcomes. Young girls wanted to be princesses and fair maidens, guys wanted to be a superhero or a prince that saves the day. Many of us grew up watching our fantasies, even when I was little I had books read to me, mostly Disney stuff and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We love these stories because they show us what a world would be like of exotic creatures, powerful men, beautiful women and sights that only imagination can with hold. Why not build your own story later on in life or even at a young age?

 A lot of parents go through a lot for their children; it’s a fact and no matter how hard your parents get to you, just remember what they sacrificed to get you going somewhere. Some parents just put too much on their kids and way too soon too, hate to burst your bubble but I've seen kids my age back in the day either being too spoiled or gotten nothing at all. Even certain children are destined to do something because it’s written out for them. To me if you want to learn anything on your own, it’d building your own destiny. Not saying you should defy your family but for the most part, not one person knows you better than yourself. What is your true destiny? It’s a matter of what you learned growing up and finding your true calling.

 Some kids get so spoiled that on one side of the coin, they take it for granted and just feel like life is given to them and don’t have to take on any real responsibilities, on the flip side, they hate being like that and want to learn what it’s like to not have everything on a silver platter and look to things that make them happy. Being happy is about being who you are and no matter what life throws at you; you’re at peace at what you do. It’s difficult to find true happiness but it’s not impossible. It takes practice but with the right resources and environment you can create your own happiness and look to people to share it with.

 I've fought all my life to be strong, be smarter, learn to use my own disabilities as strengths instead of weaknesses and learned to educate myself later on in life. For years I've had issues mentally, physically and very much emotionally that after so long it’s come down to how I create what I want for myself. I've been helped many times and still do on certain things but instead of taking them for granted, I’m thankful and take advantage of what I've learned to create what I always wanted to do. Being helped is never a bad thing, it’s the right time to be helped is when it gets complicated at times but in those moments, you know who the right people are who have helped you succeed.

 The real fight is not battling who’s the better man, it’s a pleasurable struggle to find what’s best for YOU!!!  We have belief systems, laws, rules and many other things in between but when you fight for the right reasons you are a stronger person for it. Certain people follow others either because they’re so into what they believe that they lost track of themselves or follow because they’re desperate and nothing has worked for them or they’re the rare ones who follow to learn to become a leader themselves. I don’t follow any one person that sparks my interests but I learn from how they do things and create ideals from their influence. Fighting is another look at rebelling but fighting with the right intentions builds a foundation to how you build your own destiny.

 Do Fairy Tales exist? In some ways I’d like to believe so. It doesn't matter if you believe in Dragons or true love’s first kiss or even marching into battle to save a kingdom from annihilation, the real fairy tales are the ones that fight to find happiness and get it when it was at its peak of ending and triumphed over darkness. No matter how you look at fictionalized stories, it’s your story that makes everything worthwhile and who knows, true love could be right around the corner or it’ll take you a few years one way or another you will find it and it will make your life the way you always dreamed of.

 Every one of us has a story. We are born, we live, we die simple as that or is it? Your life has many beginnings and part of many eras but it’s how you write it in your mind and your actions that build that dark or light void that we all come to grips with but it isn't your destiny to have your story written out by someone else, you write it yourself and take action with it than you’ll learn to true meaning of your own ending. How do you want your story to end? Think about it.

Building Eagle Claws

Building strength in the fingers, hands, wrists and the entire lower arm can make you or break you in a workout or anything you need your hands for. We need our hands to build things and create things so is it essential to build a level of strength, flexibility and dexterity that helps us in our everyday lives? I believe so. There are many ways to build a solid steel grip but there are other ways to keep the tendons strong and durable no matter what you do.

 The lower arm area all the way down to the fingertips is the most neglected parts of the human body in exercise. You won’t get by much with just wrist curls and a few isolated circular movements; you are learning to build that area by squeezing, flexing, extending, push, pull and working the individual fingers. It is important to master all these factors because if you don’t have strong hands, you won’t be able to pick up a weight no matter how big your arms it’s not going to happen. What if you need to fix something with a wrench or screwdriver and don’t have the hand strength to twist and turn, that would suck and if you work using those types of tools you won’t be at your job for long.

 When I talk about building eagle claws, I’m not just referring to training the entire lower arm to claw somebody in a fight or having great strength to do amazing things, I’m referring to creating great strength, flexibility and dexterity no matter what you want to do with your life. It doesn't matter if you’re a musician, athlete, entertainer, carpenter, construction worker or landscape artist, you will have great attributes if you gave yourself the chance to learn. How about curing Carpal Tunnel and never needing to wear a brace ever again, be less prone to injury and be able to heal quicker with exercises that work the entire region and not just that area but the shoulders, the arms and the trapezoids.

 One of the best conditioning programs ever assembled is the use of Animal Exercises. You can learn how to move like an animal in the wild and teach your body to burn fat, build muscle, increase the strength in your organs, tendons, muscles and so much more for only a few minutes a day. Now how about amplifying those exercises once you have mastered them, begin to do some on your fingertips, this type of training alone can build crazy strength in your lower arm in ways you can never get from machines. Having a solid steel grip and power in your lower arm can help increase your strength in other areas, it’ll help you pick up weights better, and it’ll help your grappling game much more efficient and if you’re into Arm Wrestling, look out because you’ll be ripping those guys up in no time.

 Getting started is like everything else, begin where you’re at and progress from there, work certain exercises that keep the blood flowing and ready to go. Spread exercises throughout the day so you can keep that energy flowing and use certain tools to help the grip. One of the coolest tools I like for building grip strength is called Fat Gripz, these babies will take thick bar training to a whole new level and you can attach them to just about any dumbbell or barbell but if you’re a bodyweight guy, you can attach them to your pull-up bar to increase the difficulty. I use these for building strength and endurance in Arm Wrestling using my lifeline Chest Expander. Progress is a very important factor because once something becomes easy; you want to continue to challenge yourself so you increase the difficulty by a small percentage. Even Rock Climbers have to progress otherwise if they jump in too soon, they’ll fall off much quicker and that can mean certain death so it’s important to build progression.

 No matter how you slice, strong hands equals a strong body because when you have the strength to pick up really heavy weight or be able to twist off certain objects with a wrench or even pick up groceries for that matter, your hands are the tools that open doors to everything you pretty much do. Even doing certain Feats Of Strength requires strong hands, you can build as much strength as you want in every other area in your body but if you’re hands aren't up to par, you’re pretty much done. Complete the whole package by training as many areas as possible including your lower arm, you’ll be amazed how weak or strong your hands are certain situations so my suggestion is make those hands work for you and build a foundation to have the strongest and most functional hands as possible.     

The Difference Between Believing & Not Believing

 There are a lot of skeptics out there who don’t believe in certain ideals or they do believe in certain things but it’s by tradition and rules when in reality they don’t have the slightest notion of how to be open minded. For those wondering, when I speak of this article, I’m talking about fitness and health not religion or politics, that’s way out of my league and have my own views of what they are. Back to the task at hand, many skeptics are the ones with their guard up and never want to take it down and that’s not a good thing because they miss out on many things that they can work on.

 One of the best quotes I've learned since I was 13 was “For those who do believe you don’t need an explanation, for those who don’t believe no explanation will do.” Want to know where I learned that from? Believe it or not a pro wrestler named Jeff Jarret on the Unreal Story Of Professional Wrestling, talk about weird. A lot of people sometimes including myself feel like we need to explain our beliefs and what they’re all about but in the end, people need to figure it out for themselves. Its one thing to throw something at a skeptic but it’s a different ball game on how they figure it out themselves.

 One of my biggest peeves is people who do believe in something but only because they listened to someone’s word and not use common sense or research. The traditional belief in fitness is do a half hour of cardio and an hour of weights to get strong, eat less to lose weight, do push-ups for warm up and do bench presses to get a big chest and my all-time favorite, bodyweight exercises are only good for endurance once you reach a certain number of reps and than you don’t build strength. I’m sorry but tradition has never really been my style and going on someone’s word is just (excuse my language) bullshit. If I want to believe in something I’m going to try certain things out, do a little research and experiment a little to see what works and what doesn't.

 For you skeptics out there, drop your guard a little, not all the way but a little and try certain things, you never what you’ll get out of it. I know what it’s like to be a skeptic, I've been there many times before and still a skeptic to certain things but with a purpose and not just because someone says something and that’s it. Opening your mind is like opening a new door to a world you never seen before. To give you an example, I was skeptical about being athletic and agile as a big man, these guys told me try gymnastics and try hand balancing and all these different things but I was just so guarded about who I was that I can’t do all this stuff but the moment I dropped my guard just a little, I opened up a whole new door and kept an open mind and gave a shot at few things I felt I could do but get better at and low and behold, I got stronger, more flexible, more agile and more durable than ever before and never looked back since. Dropping your guard a little can be a big impact on how you do things. It’s up to you to do it, no one can really do it for you.

 To me the true meaning of believing is not by someone’s word and just believe because they said so but believe in your heart that it works for you and you've done some things to find that belief. A true believer is someone who wants to find what he’s looking for and believes in oneself and not from this or that, he/she believes this does work and it does give me something to do. Fitness wise, you can be a sheep and follow everyone’s word or you actually do something about it and find your own belief and create something out of the norm and make it your own tradition. Like before you don’t need an explanation as a believer, it’s there it works, you understand it from all angles and you learned how it works for you. Believe in yourself and trust it. It took me many years to figure that out but and I’m still learning a thing or two but it’s a journey and that I believe will go a long way to make me better at what I do and so can you. 

A New Age Of Vampires

 In the old books of the Creature Of The Night, we have romanticized it’s characteristics, it’s strengths, weaknesses, it’s funny side and even it’s very much larger darker side but let’s not forget how we as a culture come to love and hate vampires. We all know the tales of blood, immortality, fear and the biggest name of them all Dracula. What if we took these old tales and turned them into something that is what we crave for centuries; a longer life, having super human strength & speed and the ability to have a high dose of great emotional power.

 Certain vampires you’ve seen in the movies and comics are different and either funny as hell or as dark as you can get. From Boris Koloff to Edward Pattinson, we have loved and loathed the idea of what it is to be a Vampire. Personally I prefer the Warriors of vampirism such as Blade and Kate Beckinsale’s character in the Underworld saga but this generation prefers the Twilight and True Blood types. We all have our likes and dislikes to Vampires but the truth of the matter is, we can use those capacities to become a stronger and healthier human being. We can become a much stronger human with the right tools and resources and not resort to taking shortcuts and making ourselves weaker as we age. Sure we won’t have the unlimited power of age compared to a Vampire but we can use methods to live longer, be stronger and have vitality beyond the average human.

 When I talk about Vampires I’m not talking about dressing up in gothic crazy costumes or having night clubs devoted to a cult, that’s for children and demented overzealous freak shows; what I’am talking about however is the ability to look outside the box and look to ways in the fitness world where knowledge for strength, speed, energy, flexibility and building a body that you can be proud helps bring life to what you want out of it. Does that make a freak in some way? Hell yes it does and I’m proud of it and I love being to learn how to keep my life the way I want it to be and move forward with it.

 Vampires have strength and energy beyond our own imaginations so how do we apply that notion for ourselves. We certainly do not need to suck someone’s blood for a life continuing capacity but we can keep our bodies fresh and ready to go by using small effective exercises and build our hormones naturally so we can look younger and have the strength of a wild animal. It’s something we can look at from a different perspective as a nation that has become accustomed to the growing disease of obesity. Being unhealthy isn’t a good thing no matter how you slice it, it eats your life away and you are just sucking energy just to even get off the couch and that’s sad.

 Do you want to have a life where you can energy that can go on for hours on end, have the strength to help others and what about being able to move pain-free and not have aching backs and busted knees? You can create the life you want, all you got to do is take one step in the beginning to start and build yourself up whether physically, mentally or emotionally, if you don’t move, you’re stuck in the same place. Remember that.

 The ability to move with grace, power and super human speed takes practice but at the same time, practicing with mindful intentions creates an even bigger place of building great strength and power in ways you can’t imagine unless you've experienced it. Certain things don’t just happen overnight, most people can’t get the concept of that because they want more than what’s already been given to them and than they want more than that. It takes time and patience. Think of a Vampire who has lived for a couple hundred years, don’t you think he’s learned patience and in that period of time? I’d like to think so in some cases, if he/she can live that long I believe you don’t have an excuse for something you wish to have at this very moment. It’s like saving money, you put a little in your account every now and then and before you know it, you have quite a bit of money built up, same thing with building a body and creating strength and agility, takes time and before you know it you’re far stronger and more energetic than when you started.

 Unlike a Vampire, you don’t need a thirst for blood, you should however learn to have a thirst for exercise, not to the point like a crack addict but using it to keep your energy levels up for things you need to do throughout the day like your job, taking care of kids, being energetic at a gathering, in the office writing up reports or delivering mail. It’s all about consistent action and reminding yourself that you don’t need a gym or a trainer to get you awesome shape, you can learn to do it yourself and save your money for the things you need in life. The only person that makes your life complicated is you and you can either keep running with the flow, or you can make something of yourself and be happier, live longer, have great strength and be able to handle things even your friends couldn’t do. Make it happen and learn from the Vampires. They’re not as messed up or dark as you might think.

TV Will Never Be The Same To You Again

Television is a window to the world and it has its blessings and its bad habits. There are movies, shows, infomercials, sports, news ect. With all this information, why can’t people realize that watching TV can be one of the best reasons to get in awesome shape? Most never see it as an opportunity to develop strength and health, not saying you should spend all day at the TV, in reality you should avoid as much of it as possible. To be honest, I haven’t watched a single show that had commercials or changed the channel in over a month and a half, I watch Movies.

 If you’re a fan of TV and want to watch something either by yourself or with family & friends, you should make an effort to do some exercises. Most shows have commercials and we all know how annoying they can be with ads that don’t really have any real morals for other people, so why not put that into an exercise program. When your show has taken a break and gone to the commercials, use it as a reminder to exercise. Do Push-ups, Squats, Sit-ups and Isometrics whatever you can do until your show came back on.

 Most commercials are pretty stupid and those god awful meds ads. I guess stupidity runs in advertisement, the only thing that commercials are good for are movies and those funny Super Bowl ads other than that you’re better off doing something to pass the time. One of the most famous athletes in the world Herschel Walker performed hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups while he watched TV and exercised during the commercials. There’s a lesson there that we all should learn.

 Would it be nice to enjoy your favorite show and get a workout in at the same time? I believe it be pretty freaking sweet if you ask me. Exercise done right gives you energy and that extra spring in your step. Sitting on your ass the entire time isn't always the wisest choice as you can burn calories faster and amp up your energy when you have time to do a few exercises for like what 30 seconds, that seems good don’t you think? Give yourself something to do while you watch TV instead of just sitting around looking like you just came back from a marathon. When a commercial comes on, do a few push-ups, the next do squats or hold a certain position. Make it work for you.