The Journey Of Being In Your 40's

Before we get into this, I just want to say that I hope everyone will get a chance to see the new and updated design of the blog. New logo, bio, comment policy and a few other tweaks. A friend of mine got in contact with me and wanted to help me out with rebranding or even giving the blog a makeover. The things he has shown and helped me with, I'm very grateful to him. He takes the credit for the designs and background. He knows who he is and just want to say thank you for all you've put into giving this platform a bad ass look. A great friend indeed.

Now that we've got that out of the way (I'm still getting chills with the new logo), let's have a little fun with aging shall we? For real though, 41 isn't old, it's only old if you make it out to be. I haven't felt like I peaked yet and still have far more left in me. Now you may have more experience and know you're not in you're not in your 20's or 30's anymore but that doesn't mean things go down hill after 40. 

It is a journey that teaches us new things, finding what's possibly beyond the horizon. You learn to adapt, improvise and find out what some of your true strengths are. We learn how to work around our weaknesses the best we can and even turn those into strengths we didn't think were possible before. From a training point of view, some have been around the game for decades while others are just starting out or getting back into it after being away from it for so long. It doesn't matter how much experience you have or if you're a complete Probe (If you've ever watched NCIS, you know what this means), the journey is where you're at right now and what you can do moving forward.

Not all of us are the strongest or the fastest but that doesn't mean we can't improve who we can become and get stronger and faster for ourselves. You don't need to look like anybody else, they're already taken. We can admire them, learn from them and even try to emulate them but in the end, all we can do is be a little better than yesterday even down to the smallest fraction that nobody else will notice. 

There are those who are 40+ and had more injuries in their life than the average person can count on one hand. Sometimes, there are things we can never come back from because of the severity but in most cases, we can do our damndest to make ourselves better so our lives can have a better quality. I've seen guys in wheelchairs do things that are fucking incredible, seen guys who look more like spiderman than the hulk catch/flip heavy ass kettlebells and even rack pulled 1000+ lbs. Seen guys over 40 carry a yoke while its on fire and then shoot arrows. There are many things we can do that people tell us couldn't happen after we reach 40. 

We all have our own routes to take, sometimes we hit forks in the road, sometimes we need to change course to get to where we're going because some routes aren't always the same. The road maps, GPS, personality and other things are part of where we go in life. Some just want to maintain and even find new ways to train so they can be able to keep going, some will train harder than they ever did in their life because they didn't want to be the youngest in a nursing home while others are just trying to get out of bed in the morning and battle their mental demons so they can function. 

In a fitness aspect, 40 and beyond is a new or even continuous path to where you can become the best version of yourself. You may stumble, you may even have a setback or two but you keep fighting so what you're able to do becomes effortless. Being better than everybody else isn't the flex some think it is, there's always going to be someone better, stronger, faster and durable than you so why fight to be better than 8+ billion people. Seriously, what kind of life is that? Be the best version of you, be the first that changes what was and what will be so you can thrive in your own life. Train for a competition, do things that maintain your strength, work on your attitude towards certain methods and learn what it means to discover your own powers, your own obstacles to overcome and kick ass beyond what you've done before or haven't been able to do yet. 

I'm in my early 40's and still have things to learn, methods that may become a part of my vocabulary and training routines that can turn me more into a machine than I could ever be in my 20's and 30's. I'm not going down without a fight. I'm still young but also experienced many things that people don't know about and on a journey that hasn't faded. I have stumbled but always got back up, I do have certain regrets but those also taught me how to be a better man through hard lessons and soul searching. I want to be a little better, even if its microscopic, there is still something I can do to keep myself going. That's my fight, my way of overcoming things in life and how I continue to fucking roll through the bullshit. 

What's your fight? What have you overcome to get to where you are now? How has your journey gone that gives you purpose to keep going? You have more in you than you realize and I believe you can do great things when you make those demons your bitch. Keep fighting and don't let those who tear you down get to you because if you let it, you'll be in a black hole that's infinite. Get out and do what's possible for you. You got this.

Be amazingly awesome and don't think of your 40's as the end, but as a beginning to what you can do as time goes on. 

Hindu Pushups: Forgotten Old-School Bodyweight Exercise For Upper Body Conditioning

If you’ve spent any time digging through the pages of Power and Might or other old-school training archives, you know the greats didn’t mess around with fluff. They wanted exercises that built real-world strength, endurance, and joint integrity in one shot. Enter the Hindu Pushup — also called the Dand — the backbone of Indian pehlwani wrestling for over a thousand years. This isn’t just another pushup variation. It’s a full-body conditioner that turned generations of Kushti wrestlers into broad-backed, barrel-chested powerhouses long before the barbell was popular.  

A Quick History Lesson  

The Dand traces back to ancient India, where it was part of the daily vyayam, or physical training, of pehlwani wrestlers. The most famous practitioner? The Great Gama, undefeated wrestling champion who reportedly performed 2,000-3,000 Dands and 3000-5000 Hindu Squats daily. By the later part of the 20th Century, Physical Culturists like Karl Gotch and Matt Furey brought the Dand stateside, preaching it as the antidote to stiff, barbell-bound physiques. The old-time strongmen understood: you don’t need fancy equipment to build a body that can perform.  

The Influence on Modern Training  

You’ll see the Hindu Pushup’s DNA all over modern fitness if you look close. Yoga’s Sun Salutation? The downward-dog to upward-dog transition mirrors the Dand’s flow. Even some military calisthenics drills borrowed from it in certain variations. Why? Because it works. Unlike a bench press that locks you into one plane, the Dand forces your shoulders, spine, hips, and ankles to move through a loaded, dynamic arc. Old-school coaches called it “active flexibility under tension” — strength that doesn’t make you stiff.  

How to Perform the Dand  

Start with the hands and feet on the floor, hips high, head between your arms like a downward dog. 

From here:  

Swoop: Bend your arms and dive your head forward, skimming your chest just above the floor.  

Scoop: As your hips drop, press your chest up and arch your back, ending in an upward-dog position.  

Return: Reverse the motion by pushing your hips back up to the start.  

Here's a visual demo....

That’s one rep. The movement should be smooth, almost wave-like. No pausing, no jerking. Breathe in as you go down and into the arch, breathe out as you push back.

Here's a demo of doing the exercise with added resistance using the Dopamineo Band.

Benefits That Build a Battle-Ready Body  

Shoulder Health & Mobility: The sweeping arc takes your shoulders through full flexion to extension under load. This is prehab and strength in one. Old-time lifters swore it kept their rotator cuffs bulletproof.  

Spinal Durability: You get thoracic extension, lumbar control, and hip hinging every rep. It’s decompression and strength for your spine — something crunches and planks can’t touch.  

Work Capacity: High-Rep Dands build serious muscular endurance. Lungs, triceps, chest, lats, and quads all fire together. Gama’s 3,000-rep sessions weren’t for show; they built gas tanks that didn’t quit.  

Posterior Chain Wake-Up: Unlike flat pushups, the Dand loads your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back as you drive the hips up. It ties the front and back of your body together. 

Let’s be clear: this is a traditional wrestling exercise taught to youth worldwide for a very long time. Anyone who twists that into something inappropriate is telling on themselves. Matt Furey even illustrated it in cartoon form for Combat Conditioning so kids could build healthy habits. Don’t let bullshit "gurus" steal proven training from the next generation.

Why It Still Matters for Health & Strength  

Most modern trainees are desk-bound, chest-tight, and hip-locked. We bench, we curl, we sit. The Hindu Pushup is the reset button. It opens the chest, pumps blood through the shoulders, and restores that athletic “flow” the old-timers had. You can do it anywhere — no gym, no worries. Add 50-100 Dands at the start of your day or do them in sets, as many as you can in a row, in a HIIT type format or on your off days from weight training. Either way, these are awesome for keeping things intact and staying in shape for the long haul. 

The iron game has come full circle. Fads come and go, but the Dand remains. It built champions 100 years ago, and it’ll still be building them 100 years from now. Put away the gimmicks. Get on the floor. Do the work. Be amazingly awesome and wish you success in your endeavors. 

We're Men...We're Men In Tights

We roam around the forest looking for fights. 

IYKYK. God I love that movie. Watched it yesterday just to get a good laugh in cause why the hell not? It's still a favorite ever since I was 9 years old. Mel Brooks is a fucking legend and to still be here at 99 is awesome.

That's the thing about life man, we need to laugh, feel good and have a blast because it gives us hope. Doing what we can to laugh cause in the words of Roger Rabbit "Sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have". 

I had a great time at the park sometime after watching the movie and getting in those 500 Reps with the Dopa Band. Even tried out a new exercise for myself that hit the Core. I'll be filming it soon so you can get an idea on it. For a Post Workout session, thought I'd get some filming in and although it took a bit of work to find decent angles with the Tripod, think it turned out ok. Tested out some waves, the propeller and a couple sprints. One included starting on the ground and popping up into a sprint, then a quick Bear Crawl. 

Having an imagination is a beautiful thing, you find creative ways to do things and think outside the box. It makes the time go by fast and you discover some aspects of training that may be interesting to others. Hell, even got a great comment on the video that made my day. I love giving people that joy and something to look forward to. That's the true reality of fitness, not beating people down and verbally abusing them to get them into shape, it's encouragement and showing that you don't need to be a drill sergeant or some lame poor excuse of a fitness "expert" telling you you're a loser if you don't follow his method. I'll let you in on a little secret, guys like that aren't very original, they're small, broken, chooses to make their pain everyone else's problem, they easily get pissed off and overcompensate for their insecurities. They're not that strong either and talk like the Peanuts Teacher, just blabbering.

Getting in shape is never a bad thing, but you don't have to be extreme about it. You don't need to go so hard and think that's the only way to get results. Always leave gas in the tank. Building strength takes time, work and things may not always go the way you planned. Train for what you can do long term, not push to the brink of looking like the walking dead and think you can keep doing that for next 20-30 years. I have pushed myself quite a bit especially lately but I always walk away knowing that I did what I could in those moments and know I could do a little more but save that energy for another time. 

Conditioning is your greatest asset because it gives you a sense of purpose of being able to go when times are tough. Think of it from a wrestler's perspective: If you get tired within less than a few minutes or even seconds, you're a goner by being pinned easily, practically dead giving up an arm or an ankle for a submission or even knocked out from a slam. It's part of life too; getting tired quick can lead to injuries on the job, not be able to defend yourself when it counts or defend somebody else, being able to play with your kids or grandkids or even be able to chop and haul firewood to a campsite if that's a thing you do.

Do what you can, progress with technique, control and breathe with great focus. Training to last takes patience and practice but it's worth having those reserves when they're needed in whatever you do. Want more ideas on what you can do to last.....Do some awesome bodyweight training and may I recommend circuits that you can learn from Darebee.com. A full fledged FREE website with all sorts of programs, workouts, guides and more. You can't beat that. If you want to amp it up and want to broaden your horizons, get some Dopa Bands at Dopamineo.com. Use my code POWERANDMIGHT and use the same bands that have made Olympic Athletes, MMA Fighters & World Champions the stuff of legends in their chosen field. Men, Women, Children, all are welcome to use these bad boys to get in the kind of shape that turns heads, have jaws drop and have the type of condition and durability that seems surreal.

Be amazingly awesome and keep at it. You got this and I believe in you.