Creativity Within Simplicity

Mastering the basics is what we must do in order to advance to greater stages whether it's in sports, business, writing and fitness. If you don't master the basics and just jump into an advanced stage without any understanding or the concept of the steps, 99.9% of the time, you'll fail. Very rarely you see someone squeeze by and thrive. Although we process things differently, it's amazing what you can accomplish if you had an understanding of the small steps to reach the biggest heights.

Basics however, in my opinion, shouldn't be boring or lacking in interest. If you find yourself bored or in need to find a way to work those steps, make it worthwhile to you. Everyone is a genius but in order to succeed, we need to find our strengths that utilize what we can do as an individual. The basics are the foundation to what success brings. The better you can climb, the better you'll be successful.

One exercise that is so simple yet tough for most people is the Ab Wheel Rollout. It toughens up the Core and conditions the body that many don't understand the concept of. Crunches and Sit-Ups are good to an extent, they can however cause an injury and too many reps won't make those any stronger. The Ab Wheel isn't foolproof for injuries either but if you have a weak Core, you'll find out soon enough but with practice and learning how to engage the muscles, it can build strength and conditioning that Crunches & Sit-Ups won't even touch. 

Athletes from all over have done some form of Ab Wheel Training and one of the most successful was Bob Backlund who used the Wheel to develop a level of conditioning the General Population can't even possibly fathom. His strength was unusual for a man his size (6' around 225-235 in his prime) and he can go into 60 minute matches without getting tired. His rep count on the wheel consistently was in the hundreds and unlike many of his fellow wrestlers, he was in constant physical condition. 

Now you don't need to do hundreds of reps to get the full benefit of the wheel, just doing them in sets of 25-50 is more than enough and if you're doing 100 or more in a row, you're in elite class. The most I've ever done in a workout was 200 and not in a row. I would use a deck of cards along with doing step-ups to mix it up, calling it the Backlund Deck Of Madness. It's a total of 500 Step-Ups & 200 Rollouts. The most I've ever done in a row was 50 before I got bored.

How can you up the intensity of the exercise? You can do rollouts from Standing (One of the toughest exercises ever and puts a ton of stress on the back), you can do rollouts with two implements for each hand, a really creative way to get some big time intensity is to slap on Fat Gripz and just do the basic rollout from the knees. This really engages more muscles and targets more of the arms along with kicking your Core's ass. If your Wheel has foam on the handles, cut them off and slap on those Gripz. Squeeze the handles and start rolling out. Don't just plant the hands and rollout, work those forearms and that will automatically engage the upper body. You won't do a ton of these for reps but you'll still be building crazy strength and conditioning.

This is just an idea of how to use your creativity with simple exercises. Make it interesting and fun. You're already busting your ass training, why not have a little imagination to go with it, you might be surprised with the results.

Here's a video of doing the basic Rollout for high reps, about 35 to be exact (I wasn't counting until I saw the video and ended up repping out my age lol, pretty funny huh?). 

Here's a pic of what the Fat Gripz look like on the Wheel. Grab a pair here and try it out on your wheel.