Isometrics & The Animals

Got back into Isometrics lately doing the Self Resistance style pitting muscle against another muscle so I can put on some definition. This is mostly due to changing things up and getting my mind out of boredom. No I'm not giving up on my animal exercise but I might tone it down to a few times a week instead of everyday because as much as I love it I get bored easily.

Making a certain method an integral part in your training can possibly enhance your strength and conditioning so that's where the Isometrics come in. It hits your muscles from a static position with max effort or at near max effort. Most don't realize that this particular method is one of the most difficult to concentrate on because unlike moving your body or a weight, your focus needs to be on point of the muscles you're pushing or pulling. Next to Sprints, Isometrics are the next best thing to burning off fat and building dense muscle plus being able to do it wherever you want.

Doing Animal movements can be taxing so its important to know when to back off and keep your joints healthy and your tendons strong. Some animals you can do everyday but a number of them require jumping or brachiating and that is something to watch out for if you're not used to it. Its fun as hell but you got to protect your body too. I took a day off of animal stuff due to some crazy weird thing with my right foot, just walking on it felt like a crowbar hit it so I stepped back but didn't stop training, just went a different route.

Animals do Isometrics too but not like us humans where we are so damn analytical; animals use a natural state of it to survive in some cases like the Sloth when he holds on to a tree branch; you know how much strength you need just to hold in that position for a period of time? Its crazy. The big cats when they stretch, they flex every muscle in their body, ants hold up to 50x their body weight as they carry food to their home; that's pure isometric strength there.

Do some Isometric Exercise and you can't go wrong.

New Influence By Superhero Beast Boy

Unless you're a hardcore DC Comics Reader and a fan of Teen Titans, not many know about the young superhero Beast Boy. I just learned about him a couple days ago while watching the new DC Animated Movie Justice League Vs. Teen Titans. Hell of a story and one of the best coming of age stories I've seen in a while. The one character that caught my eye that I believe stole the show was the young and green skinned kid named Beast Boy (real name Garfield). His power is the ability to transform into any animal that he has seen whether illustrated or up close; that to me is one hell of a superpower and has struck me in the heart because I love doing animal type movements.

How he got his powers is more tragic than awesome; growing up with parents that practically abused him and ended up contracting a disease that is deadly to any animal including humans except for a West African Green Monkey. The only way the kid can be saved was by being injected with a serum that turned him into a Green Monkey to wear off the deadly virus.  Unknowingly, this cured him but with a heavy price as it kept his green skin from ever turning back to its natural color and surprisingly gave him the ability to morph into any animal of his choosing through his mind. Some good came of it as he went on a path to make something of himself and join up with a group of kids that were a team of basically the younger version of The Justice League the Teen Titans.

For nearly a decade I've practiced different styles of Animal Movements that always has me running back to no matter what I tried otherwise. It has become a part of me to practice this form of exercise and conditioning; my love for it grows everyday and I do my best to get better and be in better shape for it, its the only form of exercise that is fun to me and it's helped shape my philosophy towards fitness in general. Learning about this Superhero just hit me like a strike of lightning, I find myself drawn to this character because like him when I set my mind to an animal I start moving like one, the only drawback is I can't morph into one like him which makes me a bit jealous but what can you do.

The ability to become an animal as you see fit is a very awesome thing to do; in the real world we can't have that luxury but we can adapt to move like one and picture ourselves in our minds to be that animal. Imagine having the strength of a gorilla, the speed of a cheetah, the endurance of a tiger & the agility of a gibbon; being able to hone your body's abilities to strengthen your muscles from the most awkward angles and moving with crisp precision of a wild animal. Just seeing this Superhero and having that ability has now convinced me that moving like an animal is my destiny and embrace it more than any other method. I don't mind lifting heavy weight from time to time, smashing a tire with my Thor Hammer or slamming a Sandbell to the ground but nothing compares to moving like a wild animal. It gives me greater purpose in my fitness journey and allows me to be free without stricting to a single method of rules and sets/reps that determines strength or endurance.

Move like an Animal & you can't go wrong......

Animal Kingdom Conditioning: Survival Of The Fittest
Animal Kingdom Conditioning 2: Call Of The Wild
(Get The Kids Involved) Wild Animal Fitness For Kids
Animal Workouts DVD
Animal Flow 2.0

Not Just Primate Muscle

Many love to see muscles whether big or small on a man. For the most part, being muscular in a realistic sense (not bodybuilding muscles of today) can make you look intimidating but never underestimate the power of what's within your muscles. To me muscles are cool to look at from time to time on some people but in the end, I always wonder if there's real strength behind those muscles? Believe it or not a small portion of the muscle building world has very strong people. The reason why is not just the muscles but the strength of the tendons and ligaments that truly hold the muscles together.

Since I've talked about animal moves lately I should warn you that when you train this way, you'll build muscle but not grotesque looking muscle and you'll be strengthening your joints and the tendons throughout your movements. This builds functional muscle or what I call Primal Muscle. This goes beyond the world of muscle muscle muscle and digs deep into the cortex of your body's natural order of things. Building Primal Muscle takes work, a lot of work but it doesn't have to be boring and dull, it can be fun, exhilarating and very unconventional.

When you strengthen your tendons, you're strengthening the entire core of your physical structure and over time your body begins to change; abs begin to show, denser muscle begins to appear in your shoulders, arms, back, feet & legs, solid power in your fingers, elbows, ankles and knees plus new found flexibility and stamina. You won't see the type of muscle that's in a magazine where it's painted, brushed & photo-shopped, there will be real useful muscle that can be used in any situation and can amplify your way in sports, military, law enforcement & competition. Some of the very best athletes & personnel have used animal moves to build speed, power & intense strength and you can do the same.

Work & play towards developing primal muscle that is useful, practical and realistic. Doesn't matter how old you are whether just a little kid burning off energy or someone older wanting to relive their youth in a different format it is possible when you do the moves that suit you and your goals. Kids love imitating animals and don't care how goofy they look and people who want to do something fun will test out different things. Build Primate Muscle folks, its an adventure.

Daily Animals

Regardless of your training whether for competition, conditioning, strengthening or developing a highly good looking physique there always should be an animal you aught to do between workouts or on your days off. Animal training builds the muscles in different positions that other exercises can't touch. That's because most exercises have an up and down, side lift position as oppose to an animal exercise that hits you from so many angles its not even funny. When I do other workouts like circuits, bridging, VRT or whatever I do my best to move around like an animal the rest of the day because I love to move and keep my body energized.

People like to cram their workouts within a short period of time (an hour or less) and that's fine more power to you but I feel regardless of time, do little things throughout the day so you stay freshed until you're ready to pass out at bed time. When I travel and am around people I don't always have time for a major workout until its night time; I make it a point to exercise no matter what I'm doing, do some work while waiting at the airport, do some jumping movements before my family photoshoot back in march, do isometrics at a restaurant while waiting or in between eating my food. Unless you're at a job 24/7 you can make time to exercise regardless of how busy you are.

Do something for me this week or during your current regimen, on your days off or in between sets of your exercise, do one animal that you like for 5 minutes; it can be 1 minute here or there, 5 minutes straight, 2 min. in the morning, 1 min. in the afternoon and 2 min. at night or however you do within a total of 5 minutes. If that animal is too difficult for you, do bear crawls or hop like a frog in place I don't care, you only have to do one animal for 7 days straight. Build a habit of doing something different that you don't normally do or haven't done before. Don't just rush into an advanced movement, start slow, get the mechanics down, learn the awareness of your body's positioning.

Animal movement is far better for you than those machines at the gym, sure they're good from time to time but unless you're in rehab or plan on doing a bodybuilding comp, stay away from the machines as much as possible and use your natural body to move. Its scary and it may look silly but you know what, you might burn off more fat and build denser and defined muscles just by moving your body around for a few minutes in different directions. This gives you a complete outlook of being an overall trainee. To learn more about animal style training check out my Wild Kingdom section at ben-bergman.branded.me. Get your daily animal in, no matter what. Have fun and be safe.

The Strength Of Primates

Its becoming a habit of transforming into a Primate (Ape, Monkey) these days as i'm testing out more ways to move like a wild jungle animal or hanging from the pull-up bar in various positions. Currently at my size I can do 5 pull-ups from various grips and that number will get a little higher each progression. That doesn't sound like much but at 268 lbs. its pulling a ton of weight (literally). That's the fascinating thing about primates is their crazy strength and power.

There's no true way of telling how strong a primate is; take for example the chimpanzee....

The strength of a chimp is so surreal its not even worth laughing at. Moving on all four limbs the majority of its life using their arms just as long puts them in the category of superhuman strength. Tested at a zoo they had a female chimp deadlift a heavyweight. The amount was roughly 600 lbs. or more using only one arm. That's freaking insane once you wrap your brain around it. Now think about the Lowland Gorilla.....

It has been said that the gorilla's strength in theory is the equivalent to 10-20 of the strongest lifters on the planet. Personally I believe its slightly exaggerated but not by much, overall that kind of strength is something you don't want to mess with. When it comes down to it, the gorillas are the strongest wrestlers of the animal kingdom, try to take down an ape of this magnitude and your life will be over in an instant. The crushing hand power is unbelievable and the tendons are basically like solid steel. 

We can never be as strong as a primate because of various reasons and the majority of exercises to even practice would be way too dangerous. Their structure may have the closest resemblance to us humans but in fact they have different variety of joints and tendons in areas we can't comprehend and that's why during their lifetime the healthiest primates swing through the trees with ease, walk on their hands and feet like its a cake walk and climb so damn fast it makes rock climbers look like wimps. The most athletic of all primates is the Gibbon hands down.....

As you can see because of the long arms, its built to swing and swing far greater than an acrobat ever could. Because of their genetic code, gibbons can be as tall as three feet from head to toe but their arms stretch as high as 5 feet, talk about a hell of a reach. They have the most agile grip in the primate world because of the way they swing they can change grips within an instant going from tree to tree. To even get close to a fraction of that strength and flexibility the safest way to train is to practice hanging and moving about on a bar, soccer goal or any long stretch of bar; the monkey bars are perfect for this. Do you know which primate has the strongest hands pound for pound? Its the Gelada Baboon....

Although it walks and sits like a dog, the gelada's hands are so powerful it'll rip the bone off your fingers. They live in the highlands of Ethiopia where they climb upside the mountains everyday and have their gatherings. Climbing up and down slopes as steep as these talks a serious amount of focus, strength and agility. Their fingers aren't that big compared to other apes and monkeys but they're so full of tendon strength it makes them a category of power all by themselves. They're the only monkeys to be able to handle that kind of stress. They weigh no more than 45 lbs. (females about 23) but pack so much power they can destroy a 200 lb. man in seconds. The closest you'll ever get to having that kind of strength is if you're an advanced level rock climber.

They say bodyweight exercises are not good for strength and only good for endurance...Depends on how you look at it. I personally believe through specific styles of training, body-weight fitness can be carried over to other areas of strength. If you're going to deadlift 1000 pounds yes i'll agree body-weight alone won't get you there but you can build tremendous strength within other areas. I rarely touch weights (barbells & dumbbells) these days but after many years of thickening my hands and building great back strength and leg strength I can still walk into a gym and still pick up 100 lb. dumbbells and pick up a hand and thigh deadlift of over 300 lbs. I've even done multiple reps with full weight of the lat pulldown machine and machine chest fly over 200 lbs. 

Don't underestimate the power of your own body. With the right training, bodyweight exercises can thicken muscle tissue and power up on your tendons to a degree of strength that makes you hard to put down. Imagine being an arm wrestler and training in the ways of an ape along with your specific training of the sport, most would find it difficult to even make you budge. 

Want to build real strength using Primate/Animal Methods? Get these courses below.....

Animal Kingdom Conditioning

Animal Kingdom Conditioning 2: Call Of The Wild

Wild Animal Fitness For Kids (Highly Recommended)

Animal Flow 2.0

Animal Workouts DVD

Want to see more of a visual of cool Primate Movements? Here's a video I found of a guy doing 5 variations of Primate movements you can do in your home (with enough space) or outdoors to play on...

Did some of these earlier just to mess around and were a lot of fun. I'll be filming my style of Primate movement in the near future. Be on the lookout for that one. Get wild and have a blast guys. Be awesome.