Core Conditioning With The Dopamineo Bands: An Epic Engine Of Power And Might

 

Crunches aren’t always going to save your ass. If there was an exceptional tool that not only targets the muscles but demands the trunk to fight, produces force and stabilizes; the Dopamineo Bands are one of those tools.

Traditional or even conventional weights have their place when strengthening the Core, but in most cases, there’s a way to cheat using the one plane of motion. The real exception would be doing halos with a plate or kettlebell. Otherwise, you’re facing more of the gravitational pull where throughout the range of motion, it’s the same weight. With the bands however; when anchored and pulling, tension increases throughout the range of motion. The abdominal muscles, transverse abdominis, the obliques and lower back can’t be isolated or have one try to compensate for the other. It’s constant micro-adjustments that prevent you from being out of position.

This is the aspect of realistic conditioning comes into play. If you develop a six pack with this, you’ll have the go and not just show. Utilize the idea of becoming fit with Core Strength that has the go and can slim down the chances of injuries.

Here are a few exercises of what I mean of targeting the Core. It’s not even isolating the surrounding muscles themselves, it acts as a full unity of the whole body.

5 Core Exercises With Dopamineo Band

As you can see from watching the video, each exercise works beyond the muscular structure and aids in the ability to generate speed, explosiveness, power and control with precision. This isn’t training like a bodybuilder, it’s an act of a fighter’s conditioning methodology. This still can jack the heart rate up so you’re getting the cardio benefits but also taxes the grip and creates a level of stamina when you’re tired.

Work into these exercises slowly, learn to control the movements but also keep a focus on the muscles being used. As you get stronger, start speeding up little by little but don’t hurt yourself. Start with a lighter band and work your way up, or use what I work with and that’s the Chosen Higher Green Band which works for everyone from Beginner to Seasoned Vets. If you want to work with a heavier band such as a Middleweight or the Heavy Band, that’s up to you and you’ll be feeling it one way or another.

Skip the boring ass crunches and train your Core like a beast. Get it so freakishly strong that it can take a hit but also is injury-preventing. Be amazingly awesome. Go to Dopamineo.com and choose your band. Use my Code POWERANDMIGHT to take 10% OFF your order. Anchor that son of a bitch, brace yourself as if you're about to take a hit and start chopping, twist, pull and rotate.

The Real Truth To What Being Fit Means

 On Social Media, I have seen many people say about getting fit and telling people they need to be this or that. They act like they know what they’re talking about and put in all their generic opinions or textbook ideas to tell people to be fit. The thing that really hits me at times is that, they never have a definition to what being fit it. When I ask to define it, most of the time it’s complete silence and no replies. Out of maybe a few dozen times if that, only 2-3 people have ever defined it the way that is realistic and actually accurate. Other than that, it’s either complete silence or I get “being able to walk 10k steps a day”, do “X mount of push-ups” and whatever copy and pasted standardized tests that may seem good on paper but still hit a foul ball when it comes to the true aspects of fitness.

Different people define fitness usually what they’ve been taught or read about. Very few experience exercise or working out as part of a journey and not to bounce off some influencer’s arbitrary idea of where someone is in order to be considered fit. It is true that as an individual, being fit can be subjective because not everyone lives up to the same ideals and lives by the same code of a trainer or an author of best selling books. Hell, I never say one method as the end-all-be-all that is the kind of being fit. I have tried so many things in my life from weight training to gymnastics, isometrics, kettlebells, sports specific training, prehab, rehab and other things but I always broke them down to what gives me the benefits for that period of time.

In some cases, people will define fitness by the method they use and believe that’s the way to be fit because it will solve all of life’s problems; do burpees everyday, lift weights 3-4x a week, do cardio after weights, do 100 push-ups before breakfast, 500 Squats within this period of time. See how all are different or at times intertwine with each other? It’s selective through sometimes fixed or manipulated efforts to control the narrative of what it means to be fit. Some will say Yoga is better than weights or that the Bench Press is a better indicator of upper body strength than a Pull-up or whatever other compound movement. Says who? Certain tests change as time goes on kind of like the science that is constantly evolving or in some cases, loses common sense in order to trust it more than trusting yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in scientific aspects of fitness and some of the growth it has accumulated but I don’t put 100% of my trust in it because I’m also an individualist who practices what gives a person their best chance that isn’t always meant for the other person. Growth also comes from experience, the mistakes, the accomplishments, where you were and where you are now. Things change and fitness for better or for worse doesn’t always cater to individuality, it caters to in many ways what is popular and profitable in comparison to changing a person’s life that creates real success not always through the exterior but internally, psychologically and where their path leads.

What is the true definition of what it means to be fit? The truth isn’t always in black and white, you have to think of the gray areas as well and understand that it’s not about this, that or the other thing. My idea based on experience, perspective and my own journey…..

Being fit is the practice of being capable. To do things that carry over to aspects of life beyond the equipment, the rep/set schemes and the protocols of various methods. You don’t have to look like a Greek God in order to be fit, some of the fittest LOOKING people on the planet aren’t as fit as they appear and those who don’t always fit the standard of a beautiful physique are often overlooked. You can do all the squats, the lifts, the HIIT classes and Pilates you want but if you get injured quicker, don’t have the stamina or strength that lasts as long as needed outside the gym or a sport and putting what you believe to look good instead of strengthening the organs that keep you alive, your fitness acts more of a facade than the realistic outlook.

Looking good has its perks. There’s nothing wrong with it in and of itself but if it’s overprioritized and used in a manner that doesn’t balance out being able to maintain certain things, all that will do is bite you in the ass and create heartache. Fitness is more about being able to do things and continue to evolve or adapt once the peak physique can’t stay at a high level anymore. Now, if you have the ability to look like a million bucks but also have the condition that benefits real life situations, that’s awesome and can be a lethal combo. Very few people in the world achieve this and it’s not in the realm of impossibility but it is important to be realistic of what is achievable for you and not what someone else forces you to believe to make money off of you. That’s the nature of the beast sometimes and the best thing we can do is to so what’s possible in the moment, not push or force what could be a decade from now.

What does being fit mean to you? It’s not as easy to answer as you may think so set your mind to meditate on what is believable and real according to your own understanding and experience. I would love to know what you come up with.

Until then, be amazingly awesome. Be mindful and remember that even the smallest fraction of progress still leads to the big picture.

Will You Let The Cards Intimidate You???

There are many interesting ways to workout and enhance your creativity to get the results you desire. Although we have different needs and have different goals, the important thing to remember is to have your workouts keep you interested and utilize common grounds of the following: Realistic entities, injury-proofing the body as much as possible and take small steps to create your big picture.

I’ve done enough workouts in my lifetime that when it comes to the boring stuff, it decreases my enthusiasm and wanting to keep it going. Many are taught to just suck up the extreme stuff and the harder you make it, the better the results. Maybe there is some truth to that but it sure as hell isn’t the best option or even the only option.

One of my favorite methods of training in this thing we call life, is using the Deck Of Cards. It’s not a trendy little system that has come and gone. It has been a staple for many athletes for decades. One of the all-time greatest Catch Wrestlers Karl Gotch, used this to torture his students in practice before or even after they being on the mat and sparring. His style was to use mainly Hindu Push-Ups, Half Moon Push-Ups, Hindu Squats & Hindu Jumping Squats. It wasn’t an exclusive type of conditioning method but he put them through the ringer almost as much as he put himself through. Don’t remember the numbers he used at the top of my head but for him, he would often do 2 decks in a row to enhance his conditioning. There was a reason he always had gas in the tank and this was one of the reasons.

Karl didn’t invent the workout but it did blossom into the minds of other athletes after he made it famous in wrestling circles. NFL Legend Ray Lewis used this for doing his Push-ups, Nature Boy Ric Flair did it often while on the road when he couldn’t get to a gym and Iron Mike Tyson would do Squats with a deck by laying a card out on floor, bend down to flip a card and do Squats, move forward to the next card and so on until he completed a deck. My old mentor Matt Furey had to do a push-up deck in the sauna once during wrestling season at the University Of Iowa I believe. 

My first experiences with a deck was after healing up from my leg injuries back in 2005-2006ish and basically just doing push-ups and squats. Felt like Bill Mazeroski when he hit the walk-off homerun in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series the first time I completed that deck. It was a humbling moment for sure. That’s the thing when you accomplish something that means something to you. It may not matter to anyone else but to you, it’s a moment you cherish.

Since that time, I’ve done the deck multiple times doing different things and even went on to doing it twice in a row using my Dopamineo Band. Each time I complete it though, it always brings a smile to my face. Now, I have laid off those kinds of workouts for periods of time and when I always felt about jumping into them, morely in the bodyweight department, sometimes the cards did beat me and couldn’t finish them, so I would have to build myself up again which didn’t take long and eventually killed it again. With the band, it’s just another day at the office but with the bodyweight stuff, it is tough but that’s just part of the journey.

Lately, I have been working a deck I’ve had for many years based on Matt Furey’s Course Combat Conditioning. He had a deck made of his likeness in cartoon form called The Matt Furey Exercise Bible which consisted of Hindu Push-Ups, Hindu Squats, V-Ups & Tablemakers. I would say those are the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse of CC. Just 4 basic moves but yet have quite an effect on the body and if you’re not used to them, they will humble you. I’ve done several workouts with that deck recently and the first couple times, I would walk it off to catch my breath after a few cards here and there. Today, didn’t walk it off once. Did my reps, flip a card and kept going. Focused on the techniques, my breathing and not force the speed to the point of getting sloppy. Felt incredible to be able to do that again. Total for this particular deck for me is 500 Reps.

100 Hindu Pushups 

200 Hindu Squats 

100 V-Ups 

100 Tablemakers 

There are many ways to decks of cards workouts but each one has a lesson about aspects of life. We never know what to expect and just when you thought things got a little easier, BAM!!! You get hit with a heavy card that has you doing lots of reps and gives you that curveball. That’s life, we can only react to what comes at us and do what’s possible to get through it. Learn to adapt when things become unpredictable.

The cards can be intimidating but in the end, they’re just little pieces of plastic with numbers on them. They can’t hurt you and they don’t fight back. The only thing stopping you is you alone. Will you let the cards intimidate you, or will you break down the fucking walls and rise victorious? You have the choice, you have an obstacle and only you can make the decision to keep going or quit. Each decision will have you learning what you’re made of or let it break you. 

Have a blast with this and see what you’re capable of. Be amazingly awesome and get going. Do this workout anywhere and make it worth your time and put effort into doing it with fierce determination.

Is Circuit Training The Best For Strength & Conditioning???

 It’s one thing to focus on one exercise for a number of sets and reps, it’s another to do one exercise and move onto another and another until you’ve done your station to station of exercises. Circuit Training has been around a while and it has its pros and cons like anything else, but it holds something different compared to other methods or exercise schemes.

In weight training, you can go from barbells to dumbbells and machines in a span of a few minutes per round, with bodyweight you can switch from push-ups to squats, pull-ups, dips and lunges almost in the blink of an eye. You can even do it with animal movements or band work. It’s a matter of what your goals are and what you want to work with.

The first time I can remember attempting to do a circuit, I was 19 years old in a Gold’s Gym in Santa Cruz, CA and I was doing Bench, Deads, Leg Press, Pull Downs and something else, I think a crunch machine or something. I had no clue what the hell I was doing and I was doing weights consistently since I was a sophmore in high school back then but I never did anything like that until that point. In a nutshell, it was a very bad idea and I blame myself for it. I ended up so overwhelmed and my condition was shit to the point where I became so hyperventilated that I went into a stall in the restroom and nearly blacked out. I wasn’t completely aware of what was happening to me but I knew something was wrong and just let my body calm itself down. Once it did, I got the hell out of there and went back home which was only a 10-12 minute walk.

I didn’t attempt that kind of thing again for another year or year and a half until I was experimenting with bodyweight exercises after an accident I had. Sometimes, it’s hard to take those walls down and see what the possibilities are. Over the years, I tried many things and didn’t have a consistent routine which in most cases was never my thing anyway. I found a website that does bodyweight circuits and shows what can be good for beginners or vets in the game and I gave it a shot. I was in shape to do circuits again by 2012 or so and I loved the themes from this website. It’s called Darebee. Completely free with workouts, nutrition plans, programs and all sorts of stuff.

The superhero themes were the most fun to do and modified some of the exercises to what I knew from doing Combat Conditioning and other forms of bodyweight training to help me stay interested. One of my favorite workouts to play around with was a Batman Themed Workout which you can see below….

Modified exercises to suit me and at one point was able to do 10 Rounds in 45 minutes. One of the most brutal workouts I had done. That’s the beauty of Circuit Training, it gives you opportunities to keep momentum going doing one exercise after another instead of focusing on just one for an extended period of time. It’s a great test for your Conditioning & Strength-Endurance. In my opinion, Bodyweight is the very best for this.

So, for a few years now since I became a fanatic with the Dopamineo Bands, I took the type of circuit training I did from Darebee and molded it to Circuits with the Band and began doing hundreds to over 1000 total reps in various workouts focusing on exercises that work well and can switch from one to another without stopping. This amplified my cardio to such a degree that when it became consistent, I wasn’t getting tired doing them, they just made me feel stronger and helped lean me out more.

Below you can get an idea of what I mean….

Are circuits truly the best method for conditioning and strength building? The truth is a little more complex than that LOL. In reality, it all depends on the goals you have and there’s no one way to go about it. Now, if you’re into weight training and want to do circuits, I would keep the equipment to a minimum and it’s not always advisable to do this kind of training at the gym because of the unpredictability of people coming in and wanting to those machines and/or free weights. If you had a home gym set up, that’s the perfect way to do this and you can go from station to station without interruptions or having people wait on you.

If you want to see what a circuit where it combines heavy lifting and cardio style exercises in the same sequence, my friend, the late Bud Jeffries works a heavy partial squat, dumbbell swings and rolling. Although it’s more like a tr-set but you can make it a circuit style and the idea is to keep moving and testing your strength under fatigue. One of the things that made him one of the most conditioned big men of this generation. This is one idea, another would be doing a kettlebell style where you can combine Presses, Pulls, Squats, Cleans and even Push-ups if you’d like.

You can do circuits everyday if you’d like if that’s your goal but I recommend you do some hard circuits one day, lighter ones another and pace yourself. If you’re new to it, a couple times a week for a few weeks and bump it up to 3x a week is more than enough for most people. For a period this year with the Bands, I was doing a minimum of 500 total reps almost daily doing circuits, deck of card workouts and HIIT style from January to April and accumulated more than 60,000 total reps with the Bands. It’s not for everybody and I don’t recommend you do that, sort out what you would like to accomplish in your own journey.

One of the recent circuits I did was with bodyweight exercises doing Hindu Push-Ups, Hindu Squats, a Jumping Jack variation, V-Ups, Tables & Mountain Climbers. Would practice deep breathing in between sets or circuits. Did 10 Rounds which came out to 800 Total Reps. Sweated like a waterfall and felt great afterwards. Fitness can be so much fun when you set your mind to it.

If you’re not a fan of circuits, that’s ok, there’s plenty of other options and if you would rather focus on one exercise at a time for a set and rep scheme, go for it. Learn from my mistake the first time I tried a circuit. Get in condition first or have a better pace of what you use and the type of reps and rounds you do. I don’t want anyone going through what I did or worse, it’s not fun and it can come back to haunt you if you’re not careful. That’s one of the downsides to doing this is not learning what could go wrong when you’re not ready yet.

Do things that give you the tools to continue your journey with vitality and excitement. Some days may be lousier than others but see it as an opportunity to create something that will blossom later. Be amazingly awesome and keep killing it.

Go to dopamineo.com if you're still interested in the Bands. Use my code POWERANDMIGHT to get a cool discount on your  order.

Training The Neck Safely While Building Strength

 If there was an area of the body that shows the most neglect, it’s the neck. Unless you’re a football player, wrestler or martial artist, there isn’t a ton of people training their neck. First off, mainly those who do teach it, even with good intentions may not showcase the bigger picture and focus on this or that. The real truth: It can be scary with the way it is shown at times.

Most who attempt to teach people how to train their neck show mainly machines or using some form of weight along with Bridges that don’t have progression systems in place. The Bridges are often the most “Screw this” reaction than to even using weights because you’re having the top of your head on the floor and the only things supporting are the hands and feet. Does that mean Bridges are bad overall? That depends. I’ve done Bridging exercises for many, many years and never had neck issues that were a cause for alarm but it’s because I learned how to properly progress and control in how I perform them. 

This doesn’t mean Bridges or even weights for that matter are for everyone. If you have spinal injuries or have spurs, it isn’t wise or even worth your health doing those things. Now, if you are healthy and need guidance in training the neck using those things, I would highly recommend Advanced Bridging by Logan Christopher where he teaches you even the most basic exercises to train not only your neck but the spinal cord and overall body development. For the weights, I would look into the Neck Flex and learning ideally from Mike Bruce who knows a thing or two about training those muscles efficiently. 

What would be the alternative to these where you can still work your neck without having to do those things. You can do Neck Mobility Drills like I show on Youtube, you can do Self Resistance Exercises working the neck in several directions where you are in complete control of the tension you use, or you can use a resistance band with the Neck Flex.

For the record, I never really used weights to train my neck, the closest thing would be bending steel in a wrestler’s bridge on my head but other than that, I didn’t necessarily need to do weights. So what makes training with a resistance band any different than training with weights? Resistance is resistance right? In a nutshell, weights have the same level of resistance throughout the range of motion but with a Band, the more you stretch it, the more it fights against you instead of staying the same.

From a personal stand point, I believe using a band is a very powerful alternative because you can train in different directions when you hook it up to the D-Rings on the Harness and train safely while also building size and strength. Because of my own training with it, I have maintained a 18 1/2 inch neck and don’t have any problems in those areas or in my spine. I can still do Bridges if I wanted to but in terms of maintaining size, mobility and keeping it strong for things that matter, it truly is the cream of the crop for those attributes. The resistance isn’t stupid heavy and it can be for beginners or seasoned vets in the game.

As we get older, safety becomes more of a priority than ego lifting or doing better than everyone else. We want to build that strength and mobility that keeps us lasting longer and as injury proof as possible. That doesn’t mean you have to be paranoid or overly cautious, it means you learn to be aware of things from a focused perspective. I’ve had enough injuries in my lifetime to understand that it’s not worth your health if you can’t enjoy the greater things in life. Too many people become crippled or worse because they don’t train their bodies in a safe manner to keep things going smoothly as they can. We can’t 100% avoid injuries but we can learn to be aware and do our best to control what can be prevented and be able to have that durability without testing our egos on theories of how far we’re willing to push. It’s one thing to challenge yourself, it’s another to punish yourself in the attempt of being healthier and stronger.

Train your neck wisely and be in control in how you perform movements or even holds for that matter. Having a strong and healthy neck can mean saving your life.

Be amazingly awesome and share your experiences with me on Neck Training or have questions about the Neck Flex by shooting me a comment. Be sure to use my code POWERANDMIGHT when you have an opportunity to order the Neck Flex. They may even be having a sale going on and my code will shave off even more of that. Subscribe to have articles sent to your email and may you continue to kill it in your journey.