Becoming Tarzan

Training to be the Ape Man isn't something that happens overnight, its a real commitment whether short term or long term. With the upcoming movie coming this summer, I'm brushing up on my animal training (mainly Primate Movements) and making my body move differently and develop flexibility in my hips and shoulders through deep squatting (which I like to call the Ape Squat) and pulling power through hanging from different grips and pull-ups from different grips. To truly dig deep into the heart of Tarzan Fitness you really need to go to the full source (with adaptations of course) by training the body in a series of animalized movements just like the man himself that has to crawl, jump, hang, swing (brachiate) and balance.

Animal Kingdom Conditioning

Animal Kingdom Conditioning 2: Call Of The Wild

For a 270 lb man, brachiating isn't an easy task, for the most part its damn near impossible but I believe i'll be able to do it again one day and be able to practice more on the monkey bars and a soccer goal if I can find one. I love moving like an ape and so since i'm more geared towards being a gorilla than Tarzan it fits me but I like to imagine myself as a much bigger version of the guy. Being 50-100 pounds bigger and doing really cool athletic things a man that size is known in theory to be incapable of doing. To get the look of Tarzan takes different training but its not impossible to build a physique using primate movements and strategically eating well and recovering well. One of the styles of training to have that full Tarzan look is to do Charles Atlas style exercises which you can find below.....

Pushing Yourself To Power

Isometric Power Revolution

& Ultimate Push-ups For The Awesome Physique

These are the same (or similar) exercises that actors Jock Mahoney, Mike Henry, Ron Ely and I believe even Johnny Weissmuller did for their Tarzan Roles (IMO Mike Henry was the best of them). I love these types of exercises too because when I don't have the space I need for the Animal Movements, I do these or Circuits from Darebee to do conditioning work. When it comes down to it, I prefer Animal Moves because I don't like to be in one spot the entire time, I want to move around and be surrounded by fresh air and being on the grass but also I don't always have that luxury in the winter time and i'm not fond of being in snow so I go with other options. That's the thing, don't resort to one single ideal or you'll miss out; give yourself options.

Another way to really tap into that Ape Man mentality is to do MovNat which is basically the highest level of Tarzan Fitness there is period. Teaches you real mechanics of crawling, jumping, balancing, coordinating, swimming, fighting and climbing. Whether you choose to train like the Ape Man or not there is always options to have to fulfill your natural and athletic potential and have a healthy body and have strong, supple tendons and ligaments. Keep your exercise to a level where you don't go to failure and utilize your natural strength/body ratio to stay in a long-term stance of training where injuries are slim to none and listen to your body as you train and recover. Personally I don't believe pushing your ass to the absolute limit to the point where there's so much pain you end up tearing or breaking something. I do believe in testing your abilities but only to a certain degree where recovery helps you build up and you can train at a high level without hurting yourself.

We can't be Tarzan everyday, its just not practical but we can adapt and have long-term health with the right training that suits our needs. Learn your options and use what's there for you at anytime no matter where you are. Train like an Animal outdoors (or indoors if you have the space), if you have very limited space use one of the first 3 courses listed above or do Darebee Workouts for circuit training. Make it an adventure to exercise no matter what and utilize your imagination and instincts to truly train anywhere, anytime. That's the true motto of Tarzan Fitness.

Grip Training On A Budget

There are those in the world that can't afford a gym or specific equipment that costs an arm and a leg but still want to become strong and fit. I love having a strong grip but I don't have that big of money for stones, a power rack, drag sled or Battling ropes; I believe in being simple and minimal of what is used for my best interest and benefit. Plus I don't have any room for all that stuff but I do have some things that you can get at a hardware store, towels and a pull-up bar for under 30 bucks. Just because something costs a big deal doesn't always mean its a big deal.

My secret to grip strength on a budget is to do things that the only weight it requires is your own. I did thick bar pull-ups by wrapping my bath towel around the bar, built up my fingers from doing gorilla exercises and fingertip push-ups to the point where I can do them explosively off the ground, hook my fat gripz to a bar and have at it yet still made progress with my grip strength. Not everyone has the ability to get expensive stuff to make themselves better and even if they could, don't take it for granted. I believe in the art of using your brain and using your money for things that matter most to you. Here's a list of what you can use for under a few bucks....

Left over tires for Hammer striking

Your towels to build pulling power

Removable Doorway Pull-up Bar

Step Stool for elevated Push-ups

Fat Gripz

DIY Sandbags

Buckets to fill water and carry

Many ways to build grip power without needing to spend a ton of money, one of the greatest arm wrestlers of the 20th century Mac Batchelor used bottle caps between his fingers and other things that made his grip so powerful, no one was able to beat him. Use your imagination, be willing to do what you can without needing a whole lot for very little. Use your brain, not always your wallet.

Apeing Up My Conditioning

Yes the first word in the title isn't in the dictionary or a full on word but you know what, it sums up what I've been doing lately. Becoming an ape is no easy feat, it takes focus, commitment, a little imagination and being oblivious to looking like a goof. People can say what they want and depict how to train like a gorilla but to truly get down to the nitty gritty, you have to move like one in order to become one. Animals in the wild don't lift weights or use machines to gain their strength; they rely on nothing but their body and instincts in order to survive. Granted if they had to move anything it be boulders, knocking down trees and carrying large specs of nature.

Nothing in the world can give you the functional strength, agility, flexibility and power more than the true animalized movements of bodyweight conditioning. Sure weights, medicine balls, jump rope, stones and dumbbells can give you great conditioning and can take you far if you use it properly and with real intentions but in all my years of training nothing compares to animal exercises; maybe its because of the way i'm drawn to them or because they give me real sense of purpose to train for life against myself and nothing else. Training this way teaches me how to handle my body from really awkward positions and strengthen my tendons from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. Its so powerful, very few understand its true source of untapped energy and fundamental strength that is useful, realistic and functional.

The gorilla is my inner animal, its been within me ever since I was a little boy and only up until about 10 years ago or so I started to truly embrace it and train in it. Other animals have their perks and all are very valuable but the ape is the king of them all. You may think differently because your inner animal is different and you can go on and on about the scientific stuff and that its truly impossible to be as strong as a gorilla or to even move like one yet, I have in my mind the belief and the personal experience and participation that when you set your mind to something and adapt it to make it work for you, possibilities are endless. Gorillas are in fact stronger than humans period but we can learn from what they have done their entire lives. Not in complete entirety because there just a great deal of things that we can't do because it wasn't meant for us to do however, when we break down the movements and put in things that are more realistic and practical it can take us to levels of strength we didn't think existed in the human body.

For the past week, I've basically done nothing but hanging, walking, jumping, running and playing like a Gorilla or Primate in my workouts. Due to lack of space and the structure of my body I can't do brachiating movements on my pull-up bar so I have to just do hanging from different grips and isometric pull-ups for now until I can find a much longer bar to work on at a park or somewhere. The ground work however will be more suited to what I'm doing but to keep the equality of pulling and pushing as best as possible. To learn more about true Ape movements get the Animal Kingdom Courses 1 & 2 to have you training like a true ape. If that's not in your budget, get either Animal Flow 2.0 or The Animal Workout DVD to get an idea of what to do to unleash your inner ape. That's all for today. Have fun and go be wild.

Why Is It Important To Be Creative?

Why is it important to be creative? Is it to become someone more than the rest, is it about being better and more reliable on your imagination than to do someone else's style? In my mind, being creative in fitness is the toughest thing you can ever be. Doing someone else's style makes you lower than your true potential is. That is not to say you can't learn or be taught a specific way so you can learn your own style later; it just means what you want to do can be learned through your interest, will to commit and the idea to find yourself in what you believe works.

Throughout my life, I never liked being told what works and what doesn't, I made the choice to be creative because my brain operates differently than the majority of people. I learn from a lot of people all the time but that doesn't change the fact that when it comes down to fitness, i'm very self reliant. I feel alive and focused as I create my workouts or my own style of training. My soul is free and I'm able to generate greater inner strength through my creativity. In nearly 20 years I've learned how to lift, hold a handstand, put up heavy weight, bend bars, bend backwards into a bridge, struck a tire with a Thor Hammer and a near 60 pound sledgehammer, I've hung onto pull-up bars with one arm and taken on some amazing lessons from very gifted and stupid strong individuals that believed in what I'm capable of.

Going from one program to another time to time is fun because you're constantly picking your own brain and seeing something new that you may have not seen or felt before. The truth is, I always go back to one particular style of training that keeps me in shape like a lightweight at around 270 and that's the Animal Movements more specifically Ape Training by hanging, moving like a wild gorilla or chimp. I found out that basically I was destined to be an ape like person. My mother jokingly told me that my father got a card for either my birthday or he got it for father's day who knows but she said that in it, it had talked about a chimp and apparently my father seemed to believe that was what I was going to be because I somehow to him acted like one; now I move and train like one and didn't even realize until I got so into it it became natural to me. My creativity is natural for me because if I ever tried exactly what others do, I become disoriented, uninterested and I shut down. I can't do someone else's system to the T very well because my brain isn't programmed for that.

Some people find it difficult to be creative and so they become followers and be more like sheep or soldiers, follow a leader and let him lead you the way, go down their path because that's what they feel is right. Truth is, anyone that is remotely creative in any shape or form are the scariest people on the planet because not only do they think for themselves, they can free themselves without thinking twice about it. Creativity also brings ridicule, attacks on your self-esteem and its a pain in the ass to make people understand what you want to create. People want to suppress those that have critical thinking and shut down what may bring them hell but all in all, they're jealous of what you have the potential to be successful in. Marketing gimmicks, commercials, the news, endless stupid reality shows and magazines that print bullshit that really has no relevance to your true self.

When you train, learn what the mechanics are and make it into your own style that fits your goals and what you decide to accomplish not what others feel is better for you. Do I believe in certain people when it comes to programs and various systems yes wholeheartedly but I do not follow they're rules or believe in everything they do. They're different in their own ways and not all have the same philosophy. I learn what I want to learn and I pay attention to things that interest me, I have never been able to learn by what someone tells me to do so one of two things go down; I either have someone show me up close and personal the mechanics and I go from there or I observe in a book or DVD and learn if it works for me, if its not exactly what they do then I make it my own until I have mastered it. That's how my brain works, I'm not some little puppy who rolls over when I'm told to, I do my own damn rolling. It is important to be creative because in reality good or bad, its the only way to survive at times; not everything goes according to plan and you're never the same person everyday. Be creative because its who you are, learn what's important and make it your own otherwise you're just another dog mastering commands.

Building A Grip Without Needing Weights

Weights in most aspects of Physical Culture is ideal to developing strength and unbelievable power and physique but it's not always the case. In other words, you don't weights for everything unless you're looking for a particular way to build strength. For grip work there's a lot of ways to develop mighty mitts but i'm here to tell you that weights aren't always needed in this manner. I have build a powerful grip without having to do barbell and dumbbell work, I mainly use only a couple maybe three implements that would be considered "weights" but in truth they're just a measuring stick compared to how I really found my grip power.

To truly understand Grip Strength we need to look back to what makes us very strong or very weak in our hands. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to bend steel, rip a phonebook and/or lever a heavy sledgehammer so to really make that strength possible is to not do something else but get down to the dirty soil and reach down and use those actual tools to build your grip strength. Another way of building great grip power without the iron is doing hangs from a bar or rings; these alone can build an insane grip because in order to even hang you need to have a bit of tightness to grip the handle and just stay there. Some can't hold for more than a couple seconds, some can hold far longer its a matter of practice and focus on the intention.

Finger Tip Push-ups is also a favorite since its very basic and simple exercise yet many can't do it due to issues in the wrists or fingers. The objectivity is to utilize what works best for your goals and achieving progress little by little. I love to move around like an Ape and since my mind is getting more geared towards that Tarzan like state and doing Ape style movements I'm doing exercises like Hanging from the pull-up bar in different grips to hit the tendons and muscles from other angles, walking or jumping like a gorilla by being on my knuckles and putting my weight onto them the majority of the movement and building that pull-up power by isometrically flexing in various stages of the actual pull-up. Training the fingers and hands is essential to building a complete body that is full of strength from a variety of angles.

Training to use as minimal equipment as possible without relying the barbell and dumbbells is very effective and its more natural. The Sandbell is one implement that is great for your grip and no I don't consider it weights, this is more functonal and can be used for practically any movement. I believe without question the best of the best when it comes to pure natural grip strength and powerful tendons are mountain climbers, these guys/girls have pound for pound some of the strongest hands on this planet period. They are the closest to our Ape ancestors by having fingers that could literally tear you apart if you fought them. You don't need to be a mountain climber to build this kind of strength but you will need to find a rock climbing wall or build one around your house or for the cheap route get eagle claw straps to wrap around your pull-up bar and go from there, I've tried these and they're tough as hell and I only managed maybe a couple reps the last time I tested them.

Don't believe for a second grip strength is purely getting from wrist curls and weird machines, if you truly want a mighty set of hands, you need to get dirty and do exercises that really target the hands and fingers while engaging the entire body, isolation isn't going to cut it. Its not a knock to anyone but from personal experience and seeing some of the strongest men on the planet within mere feet up close I know for a fact real grip work comes from those who target the hands in a specific manner that digs into the tendons and builds insane eagle like claws for fingers. Train your grip with a vengeance and you'll learn how tough you can really be with the power of a gorilla.