Real Functional Strength

The word "Functional" has been one of the most overused terms in fitness today by shmucks who have no clue what the word truly means. Let me brief you in, when they talk about functional; it has no real world value. It is not functional to stand on a ball and squat with a barbell, it is not using a machine that supposedly works multiple muscles for the real world; for the most part, functional is certainly not when you do bodybuilding type exercises. You have been lied to and been sucked into this belief that fitness is all about the beautiful setting of a gym and its ok to do itty bitty exercises for the muscles you supposedly want to grow and look like a bigger shmuck. Functional is when you carry a large weight say a keg or a log, functional is when you use multiple muscles in awkward positions, functional is the ability to squat and stay there for a period of time, functional is sprinting as if your life depended on it and one more example, functional is when you lift weights that involve basic pressing, pulling, squatting, grip work and utilizing every muscle within the exercise.

 
When you see people lifting in Crossfit or those gyms that supposedly share what strength is, very rarely you see real lifting when it really counts. Lifts like overhead presses, picking up heavy objects off the ground, dragging heavy chains, swinging heavy sledgehammers, pull-ups without kipping, moving across the bar, walking with heavy objects like kettlebells or dumbbells, tossing a heavy ball overhead. These are real world exercises and although I love the idea of having fun and making cool workouts, I also believe in when the time comes to use that strength when it matters most. You're not going to help anyone by doing wrongful snatches, wearing out your joints faster and bruising your entire frame just to gain an inch of muscle and you're certainly not going to be saving lives with tricep kickbacks or balancing on your tippy toes as you squat on a bosu ball. Sorry to be an ass but you know what, I'm telling you for your own good. Plus 2 hours or more at the gym isn't helping your cause, if you happen to be in a fight, it's not going to last like a UFC match, you need to handle it as fast as possible when it comes down to it. Focus on what truly matters.

 
One of the greatest exercises you can ever do to get in shape in record time is not lateral raises or 15 pound rows on a machine, it's swinging a heavy sledgehammer on a tire. No you don't have to be like those back breaking dudes who smash rock 12 hours a day (although it definitely worked for one of the last old-time strongmen) but this type of training works the whole body and it doesn't just build muscle but tendon strength as well. Think about it, in order to keep a steady pace of hitting a tire (or pile of dirt/sand) you have to keep a solid grip on the handle; doing this in high repetition will make people think twice about shaking your hand. You can get a typical good sledgehammer at a local hardware store like Home Depot or Lowe's and they're inexpensive but the cream of the crop of sledgehammers belongs to my man Ryan Pitts at Stronger Grip. His hammers are legendary not just for their craftsmanship but the power and strength needed to hold on to even one of these bad boys take a special kind of person to handle it. His Epic Sledgehammer is my all-time favorite next to the Thor Hammers, this mighty tool looks like something that was made on Asgard or Mt Olympus very powerful and breathtaking. You can do all sorts of things with this but the basic swing on a tire turns boys into men in a heartbeat. My best with the Epic (that weighs 26 pounds empty) is 520 reps, that's moving a total of nearly 7 tons of raw power in my hands. So let me ask you this, would you rather have a 3 pound dumbbell that doesn't do anything but look embarrassing or would you like to hold something that looks like it was built by the Gods of Mythology and be able to build realistic and superhuman quality like strength?

 
Functional in reality is building solid muscle that is realistic, agile, flexible and powerful as oppose to bloated shit that only looking good is all that it does. Athletes of yesteryear didn't care that much how they looked but rather depended on the strength they have managed to achieve and not just have it for a short period of time but for a lifetime and use it whenever they could at any time they wanted. Quality is to be respected and made to put effort into, not always the quantity or the "look" that is supposedly the way to go about things. Don't believe me, take a bloated Mr. Olympia wanna-be up against and put him up against someone like John Grimek or Bill Pearl, hell how about George Hackenshmidt and I guarantee you not only would this guy get his ass beat but the other guy wouldn't even have broken a sweat. Real muscle is built on smart training, intense focus and quality food and rest. I do admire bodybuilding in some form but to say these guys are strong and durable (extreme few are) is just laughable. Learn and research the real ability to develop functional strength from the guys that have the real inside scoop on building world-class strength without the need of artificial steroids or any of that drug related crap. Earn it and live it.

 
    

A Different Perspective In The Way You Move Weight

    Some trainers and "experts" tend to make people feel inferior with the small minded concept that if you did this amount of reps in an exercise or you lifted this much weight you're in a certain class of strength. I'm going to teach you another way of thinking and showing you that you're actually stronger than you think you are. Let me give you an example of my own experience. Thursday night I decided to take my 26 pound sledgehammer and just hit the tire as many times as I felt like doing. I did a total of 350 reps which using a hammer that heavy is pretty insane in itself but I decided to calculate differently and look at it from another perspective. I took the amount of weight moved and multiplied it by the reps I did, want to know what it came out to? 9100 pounds total, that's over 4 ½ tons lifted, talk about moving serious weight. So this got me thinking, why not use that to get a bigger picture of what you can do in your exercise whether it's weights or bodyweight. After reading this and thinking differently, trainers will feel like crap and you'll be the stronger feeling one.

 
    Let's picture this in a bigger concept or idea; when you move weight a certain amount of times you're actually gaining more strength than you perceive to think about. How about we look at it from a weightlifting experiment:
Say you are an avid Bench Presser and you can bench a good amount of weight say for example, 350 lbs. Your average Powerlifter can easily do this within his weight class of 180 lbs. He can probably bench much more in competition but let's say for the sake in Practice he moves 350 in certain amounts of sets and reps schemes. So let's take that weight and put let's say the 5x5 scheme. That's 25 total reps, now let's have a little fun calculating shall we; you take 350 and multiply that by 25, what does it come out to? You got it 8750. You just lifted that amount of weight total and in terms of tons that's just under 4 ½. That's an insane amount of weight moved, so do you think you're not strong enough? Let's look at a bodyweight exercise: Handstand Push-ups…

 
Say a man is like our Bench Presser, same weight at 180 lbs. He likes to do Handstand Push-ups as an addition to his training. Moving your bodyweight in this format takes a great amount of strength and the heavier you are, the more you have to deal with. So let's say he did the same amount of reps with the bench press totaling 25 reps (this alone constitutes an already insane amount of strength). Let's get our calculators out, isn't this fun, it's like being in school but in a more exciting way. 180x25=4500; using his own bodyweight he just moved 4500 lbs. that's over 2 tons lifted, that alone puts someone in an elite level of strength.

 
    Whether you're a lifter or a bodyweight fanatic, you can generate much more power than you believe to do. When generating a certain amount of force in a period of time in the rep scheme, you're getting far more strength than you would believe. This goes well for women as well who believe about the bulkiness or that they're not strong enough, true women don't have the same ratio of strength as a man but that doesn't mean a woman can't be insanely strong and not only that but can still have an athletic feminine body. These assholes who tell you that if you do this amount of reps you're either a beginner, intermediate or advanced level of training when in fact you're actually stronger than you can imagine. When it comes to bodyweight they make it sound like you can barely do anything, I would love to see a guy who's the same size as me pull off 5-7 pull-ups, that's not a beginner folks, that's insane strength. Let's take at a look at that, at the moment I'm around 260 lbs. My best at pull-ups right now is around 5 reps before it becomes too difficult, the average "expert" would tell me I'm in the beginning stages of pull-up reps (elite is 20). Ok say I 'am in the beginning stages of that so let's calculate: 260x5=1300, that's well over ½ a ton I just lifted total, that's a hell of a lot of strength for a "beginner" don't you think? Yeah some expert huh?

 
    You are far stronger than you think. Don't let others make you feel inferior because you're in a specific level just because you didn't pass some perquisite. People have different shape of body mass so you can't really determine someone's strength by the reps they do, so the next time you lift a weight or moving your own bodyweight, think about how much power you're really generating as oppose to lifting this amount of weight for that amount of reps that equal strength or endurance. Think differently, look at it from another perspective and see the bigger picture. Don't let some moron with his name attached to a piece of paper tell you how strong they think you are. Determine your strength in a different way and when you start to notice it, you're getting far more out of it than you thought before. Hope you learned something and I truly hope this makes sense to you because I'm not looking out for the traditional way of training, I look for things from another perspective and help others see that so they can find out for themselves how to do things that aren't mainstream and in search of the truth instead of a white lie we see every day.

Be The King Or Queen Of Your Jungle

    We often fear what we don't understand, it's human nature and it's part of what signals us with the fight or flight complex. When you're in the gym or at a playground or anywhere you train, there might be some person that is just surreal with incredibly hard moves, possibly lifting far more than you can imagine, he/she may even just have far better usefulness for those exercises performed; however you can be dominant if you want to be, in order to make that happen, you need to let go of the fear and focus on what you want to get better at or do things that just flat out make you crazy strong. Don't expect to be better or not be better than the next person, become better than you were yesterday, play around, do some cool moves you are good at or just run through your own drills and make a game out of it. We focus so much on what we fear, we forget to look at what we're capable of and challenging ourselves to get better even by the smallest fraction.

 
    When you train, the key to overall results is to learn the facets of utilizing every muscle in your body within the realm of a single exercise; it could be sprinting, swimming, lifting heavy weight, doing acrobatic moves, gymnastic type exercises or a personal favorite of mine; moving like a wild animal. The more muscles being used, the more you'll experience the results of developing a strong and functional body. You see, isolating movements is just so boring to me these days, focusing on a single muscle in multiple exercises just has a complicated and odd element that isn't natural or useful. Unless you're rehabbing or in a specific sport where certain muscles are developed those are the only true exceptions otherwise you're wasting your time.

 
    Moving like a wild animal is just an incredible feeling of taking your muscles and joints to another realm of fitness that is slightly getting a rise out today but not as much as it should be. I'm not saying Animal Movements are the end all be all but they are the top of a short list of ideas that helps you burn fat like a furnace, build muscle in a unique and fun way plus it can be done by anyone at any age. A key ingredient to get your results is to think like that animal, not just move but having that mindset, creating scenarios in your mind to move as fast as possible from an imaginary predator or catching your possibly only meal of the day, you can even move a little slower for endurance purposes like traveling to a nearby habitat or moving along to find your next meal; use your imagination. If you have read enough of my articles by now you know my favorite animal is the mighty Gorilla. I like to picture myself as the mighty King Kong with arms that can crush tree branches with a single squeeze of my biceps, have insanely strong hands that can rip off the head of a dinosaur and powerful abs so strong they're like indestructible armor. Walking or running like a gorilla is fun to me and get to live out my fantasy of being in the jungle climbing, taking down my enemies with a single punch, have super strong tendons that are like adamentium claws like Wolverine and move insane heavy weight like it was a pebble. You may not be a gorilla person but maybe a tiger, a beautiful bird, a demon speeding wild cat, maybe more like a crab with claws so powerful they take down sharks or hell maybe a type of monkey like a baboon it's up to you who you want to be for that animal. The real way to know this is to experiment with as many animal movements as possible and intuitively find out which one you seem to mimic the most.

 
    To be the true king or queen of your jungle is how you let your energy flow, make yourself stand out, learn to internalize your body's power and take on that sensation of electrical surge throughout your body. Don't force it otherwise you're just fighting yourself, let it flow and create what you want out of it instinctively. This is done by practice and learning how you flow through your movements, when you sit and how you breathe. Deep Breathing is a major factor in creating this incredible power throughout every single part of your body from your neck to your toes. Create your energy with intention, passion and imagination. Utilizing this along with your training you'll be dominant in your endeavors with a few added bonuses that I'll let you figure out on your own. You can let go of worry, fear, frustration, anxiety and depression by learning how to use your energy and to practice the realm of breathing using your imagination. You are very powerful, do the very best you can do.

Spinal Power

    Back pain can be a real bitch for most people. You have spasms, stiffness and can hardly move to function right without feeling tension in certain areas. It is difficult to fathom someone can have a healthy spine especially in this day and age with overweight people, inflexible folks that take pill after pill to take away the pain. For the most part, pills only temporarily block out the pain until it comes back and bites you harder than ever. It isn't uncommon to not be flexible in the back, most people who want have a powerful back lift heavy weights but yet there is a draw back. Typical stretches may not always cut it and you can't keep paying a chiropractor every week just so you move around here and there. Our spines are the most crucial parts of our entire anatomy because without them we wouldn't be able to walk, move our limbs and most of all function internally. In order to build a healthy spine, you can't just lift a few weights, you need to stretch it to the point where it not only becomes flexible but strengthens you at the same time.

 
    I wasn't always a flexible guy, I use to be so damn stiff I'd wake up mornings hearing cracks from my neck to my toes and it would be exhausting just to get out of bed; that's only supposed to happen to people in their 40's and 50's right? Reality check, I wasn't even 20 yet. After my leg injuries, I dedicated myself to strengthening my body in ways I've never attempted before, I even went out of my way to train my body that would have doctor's cringing and everyone in my family thought I was nuts, I was obsessed at that time. I learned how to do bridging and not just holding a position but be able to lift myself up and move in those positions from the wrestler's bridge and front bridge to holding the Gymnastic Bridge (Wheel Pose in Yoga). Strengthening the spine has been part of my quest for nearly a decade and the results from it are indescribable, my body began to take shape like a big athlete, I can touch my toes from standing barely bending my knees and it opened up growth hormones naturally so that I was losing fat, building muscle and making my tendons incredibly strong. Most fear bridging because it looks unnatural and looks like only something a gymnast or a wrestler should be doing but in fact whether you're big or small it is one of the best damn exercises you can ever do.

 
    What many don't realize about bridging is that it not only stretches the neck and back but its every single muscle in your body from neck to toes. Think about it in order to even hold the positions you need your feet to planted into the floor, your hips raised as high as possible and your Core muscles need to be strong enough to stabilize you, it's impossible to hold any bridge without needing that kind of strength and they say bodyweight exercise is only good for endurance. When you can control your entire body in a position of that caliber you begin to open up the body in ways you have never imagined; super strong legs, incredibly powerful abs, a spine surging with electrical power, a crazy strong upper body, neck muscles to help prevent injuries and with the stretching you're opening up the hips and get incredible sexual energy that is just fuming with power. For men, you're building incredible growth hormone which releases energy that helps burn off fat, build muscle and have a libido that a teenager would envy; it is that powerful, for women; the hips are a powerful presence on the body, think of the incredible pizazz you can create with strong sexy legs, powerful mobile hips and losing that belly fat you absolutely wanted to get rid of to have a sleek and toned abdominal muscle that would make gay guys quiver over. Your whole body becomes one big unit and it can help you in ways that don't always involve exercise. Be able to touch your toes without grunting or being in pain, be able to move with grace and strength at the same time, have an athletic build that turns heads; it's all possible through adding bridging into your routine.

 
    Remember when I talked about hormones; I wasn't joking, I once trained a guy who was in his mid-30's, he wanted so badly to be flexible and he tried many things and he wasn't a big guy either he was no more than 165 lbs. soaking wet, he was so stiff at first going down the wall backwards was difficult for him. I showed some specific techniques that involved breathing and contracting the muscles and within less than a half hour I had him touching his nose in the wrestler's bridge for the first time in his life. After he experimented more on it, his body started feeling like he was back in high school, full of vigor and surging energy from the inside out and this is after nearly 2 decades of him having those types of back issues. When you can jump start your hormones, everything in your body comes alive and puts you in a state where you feel incredible for no apparent reason and you bring a new presence that can be felt from the other side of a room. At 255 lbs. and less than 6' tall I shouldn't be able to do this stuff let alone falling backwards onto my head and kicking over so it's not only a blessing but I have proven that if you practice and progress little by little, it doesn't matter how big or small you are there are possibilities. I have not done one single form of exercise that brings more power and strength to the spine that bridging has and have nearly 20 years of experience in the fitness field under my belt. Gain your livelihood and own your life in a powerful way. It may not be for everyone due to certain issues but the majority can learn to bridge with the right techniques and understanding of their own physiology. Become strong and flexible. Be awesome.

Do What Works

    Let's face it boys and girls when it comes to training, if you hate what you're doing it's not the fault of the exercises, it's you. When you do something so often and you feel miserable by the end of it where are you really leading yourself towards? Hating your training is not meant for you. Sure we have our good days and bad days, I know I have and I train 7 days a week and have been for 9 ½ years. There have been times where I just wanted to push myself even I couldn't stand the exercises I was doing and I desperately wanted to feel like I can have a very muscular body like an old school bodybuilder or impress the ladies with the gun show (my arms smartass, get your head out of the gutter) and all it got me was feeling like shit and I wanted to give up because it wasn't going anywhere. After doing some heavy meditation every now and then, I made a decision to stop doing what everyone else was doing or listening to those marketing pricks who tell you "you can get ripped in less than 6 weeks" and just focus on the exercises or movements that made me happy and let the universe work itself out. Everything happens for a reason and the way things go end up going the way they're supposed to whether we understand it or not.

 
    One of the real keys to getting results is not always what you eat or what program does what for the body; it's the passion and the fire that burns when you do exercises that you can't help but love to do. When it comes down to it, I always end up going back to the Gorilla Exercises I learned from a program that is now buried in the graves of fitness and conditioning but can still find a few of them in Eddie Baran's Animal Kingdom Conditioning Programs 1 & 2. When you get that feeling of just letting yourself go and train the way you want to, it's no longer a work out, it's more like game you play or something exciting to do. I have a sister who lost over 100 pounds in 2014, that's insane and as her little brother I couldn't be more proud of her, I may not condone what she ate or drank to lose the weight but she busted her ass and she trained hard and if it works for her great more power to her. However, I don't see too much passion in her training from what I've seen and at least in my opinion, she did exercises just to see how far she's willing to go but that's not the same thing as passion. In the end, she has done something very few women has ever achieved and that is one of the most kick ass things I can think of that pits her in a high level of fitness. Back to the task at hand, you can bust your ass all you want but if your heart isn't fueled by fire where you can't wait to train and just have a blast than your results aren't going to come the way you wanted because it's not just physically getting into it, your mind needs to be there too.

 
    You can go to a trainer, you can go to a seminar, you can get consultation from a top ranked fitness pro for all I care but only one real person knows your body better than anyone and that's you. I realize I may not be the best guy to get advice from, I'm not 200 pounds of rippling muscle or look like a smaller version of Arnold Schwarzenegger hell I'm no damn supermodel; I'm 5'10 over 255 lbs. with thick musculature and have some fat on me but yet unlike a bodybuilder or most models I can swim pretty damn hard, sprint 100 meters like my life depended on it, have done over 500 push-ups in a workout, struck a tire over 1200 times with a 15 pound thor hammer in under 35 minutes, can pull myself up 5-6 times from a dead hang all the way up to my chin, fall back into a bridge on my head from standing and mere inches from doing the splits so I think I'm doing pretty damn good. You learn how your body feels when you figure out how your muscles react to certain things, how your joints feel from certain stretches and how fast you get the muscle fibers going. It's awesome to learn from others and see their perspective but to truly master your training is to find what works best for you, not just physically but mentally as well. Most only care about the physical and what the outside becomes and don't realize what they're doing to themselves mentally or emotionally. My passion runs far deeper than most because as much as I want to feel the physical side of it, my mind is just as important and I want to mentally feel good from start to finish otherwise I'm just bouncing through all the over the place like those balls that bounce and you never know where it's going to go.

 
    The only to know what works is to experiment and get a feeling physically and mindfully of what you are getting into, one of the key secrets and philosophical way of knowing this goes as follows….

 
The exercise feels like your best friend and you can always count on it
When you want to exercise for no apparent reason
It suits your personality
It gives your body signals to help you push harder in those intense workouts
It lets you know what parts to recover when needed
Teaches you how to go after harder exercises
You have fun and it stops feeling like work
    If one of these hits you, it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship (Humphrey Bogart voice), 2 of them hit you, the big picture is starting to zoom in, 3 of them hit you something unbelievable is happening, 4 or more hit you not only are they keepers you are figuring out the very best ones that give you results, the love of fitness and you are on the road to self-mastery. You can have the best workout of your life nearly every single time you exercise if you find just the right ones that suit you and what you want out of them. When you begin to hate exercising and they're becoming something you despise, your results are going to drop, you'll feel like crap mentally and you'll resist the urge to challenge yourself. Relax, find the right flow and make it work for you, not because a trainer told you to or because you watched them on a DVD or read them in a book but because you chose them and they make you feel powerful, vigorous and good about yourself. So get your awesome ass out there and research and find the very best that just rocks your world and gives you something to look forward to whether it's tough, easy or just plain brutal you'll be in charge of your challenges.