Taking A Page Out Of George Hackenshmidt

Back in the early 20^th century, GH was considered by many to be one of the greatest wrestlers of all-time. Still do to this day. He was a champion in both weightlifting and wrestling plus had a string of strongman performances. As an athlete he trained with the best of them and trained rather uniquely at the time and that was integrating both weights and bodyweight exercises. Now even back then plenty of athletes did this but he did in a way that became legendary. So much so he wrote a few books on the subject including his biggest seller The Way To Live which I highly recommend you check out it’s a wonderful book.

He became very popular in his time that today he was considered as a turning of the century equivalent to Hulk Hogan. In his later years he kept on training and writing up until his 90’s. In a time where you were considered an old man at 50 George broke the mold and went past what is considered old today. That’s quite an accomplishment.

If you want to become the athlete you want to be then you need to find your own unique style of training like Hackenshmidt did. Your workouts need to be different then anybody else and in some cases some people use weight, some use just bodyweight (like yours truly) and even some use both at the same time which ideally is a good thing because you get to balance out the best of both worlds. A good idea to use in this pursuit is to also use Odd Objects which means you move something heavy that can be used to lift in odd places unlike a straight barbell or dumbbell.

One such a guy has taken that mold and created what I would like to say is the ultimate physical culture courses on integrating both weights and bodyweight exercise and that’s Bud Jeffries. This man by many in the Iron Game to be one of the strongest super heavyweights in the world (Drug Free) and I’m in no position to argue with them. I’ve seen first hand in person how powerful he is and it’s just unbelievable. His strength is just surreal and anybody who says otherwise is a bullshitter. He has lifted some of the heaviest weight around but can also do high repetition squats and push-ups. In his courses Twisted Conditioning and Twisted Conditioning 2 they are considered to be in my opinion one of the best works in the iron game like the Godfather films are to movies. They are that good.

When you learn to integrate these conditioning elements you’ll find that learning a unique style of training is how you can start becoming your own trainer. Me personally have done so many exercises in my lifetime that I know what works and what doesn’t for me and Bud is one of many guys I have known to teach me those things. Let him do the same thing for you and give you the chance to become a much stronger person both inside and out and vise versa. Once you start finding what works for you, you will become your own ultimate athlete.