Do You Have Bad Days?

            

             At times when you’re training, there are days when some things just aren't there, your mind isn't focused and you just have frustration outside the session. It’s tough to do something when you’re having a bad day but in the end, that’s actually one of the best times to train because when you take out your frustration on the weights or doing bodyweight, use that drive to push harder and when those endorphins kick in, everything just seems to be at ease.

            What made you have a bad day? Broke up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, lose your job, got so caught up with work you just feel like you can’t train or better yet, you probably lost a loved one and it’s eating you up that they’re gone and your mind isn’t in the right place. I know what it’s like to have some of these very same issues, it’s tough and you want to do it badly or maybe you just don’t want to but yet there shouldn't be an excuse to do some exercise even for a minute you’re still doing something. I've lost 3 family members in the last 8 years or so, got fired from my job, broke up with 4 different women that I loved and cared about and felt so depressed that I just didn't have it in me but something inside told me to do it anyway even maybe half-ass it, at least do something and I still felt better afterwards. Not saying this to brag or tell you that I’m better than you I’m not, what I’am saying is that no matter how much life throws at you or how bad things get, you’re still here and you have capabilities to do something that might save your life, trust me.

            Why do I believe it’s good to train on a bad day, it’s because you have something that can give you some light back into your life, putting all that anger, shame, frustration or whatever into use and making the best of it, adrenaline is a little higher, you might even break a record or 2, hell sometimes you might have to shout or yell and just make it happen. There’s no need to be violent, ever but you can use a bad day to a positive use and create something or just wing it either way, you’re being productive and you give it whatever you have in the tank. In the end, you made a difference, you didn't hurt anybody, you didn't go out and get drunk, and you didn't take drugs to take the pain away.

            Training can be a great form of therapy; whatever you have won’t judge you. There are no excuses. You may be human and you have the right to a bad day every now and then because it happens to the best of us but you have a choice to keep draining yourself mentally or getting out there and busting your ass till you’re so damn high everything you had that was bad before is gone. Everything is a choice, what are you going to do about it?

My Take On Isometrics

            While I was recovering from my accident and learning about Bodyweight exercises, I first learned about Isometrics in a specific manner from Matt Furey’s course Gama Fitness. Not understanding very well, I just went through the “non” motions and just tried them out. They were good and I learned how to hold certain positions especially for my legs because I was still in that stage of just getting in shape.

            While using those Isometrics and others from another book, I started noticing my strength in certain areas. My ankles were getting stronger, I was healing from arthritis from my lifting days and my days in Shot Put/Discus and my body began to repair itself to the point where there was very little pain and I was moving in ways I couldn't do as a teenager. Because of that, I strengthened certain weak points not just in my legs but my shoulders, my neck, my back and even my torso. Now granted I don’t have a 6 pack of washboard abs but because of my training, my core became pretty damn strong and when I did lift weights again every now and then, some of them got better than I ever did when I lifted full time.

            First learning Strength Feats from my boys Logan Christopher & Tyler Bramlett, they showed me about short bending and how to bend certain types of Steel. I ordered Ironmind nails to get me started and the best I got up to was the Green nail which to me was just incredible, I hadn't got to the spikes yet and was learning about phonebook tearing around that time. They gave me little hints and learning from my books on Isometrics I began incorporating that into my feats. How did it affect my strength? Let me sum that up by saying I was able to easily rip a brand new 1700 page phonebook the moment my sister gave it to me and my first 60D penny spike was at my friend Logan’s former gym. So safe to say it affected me in an awesome way.

            I have mentioned certain secret weapons I have that give me that edge in the Isometric realm but my biggest weapon has always been my will power to run through what I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to desperately bend a wrench even it was a little toughie and I did it, it doesn't look much like a wrench but damn son that S.O.B took me out after putting it out of its misery. You can have all the equipment and all the tools you want but your real weapon is what’s inside you that defies logic, reasoning and in the case of Dennis Rogers or Bud Jeffries, the laws of physics.

            Is Isometrics the end-all-be-all type training? For some that’s all they can do but to the majority, no it shouldn't because you want to be able to move and work your body from as many angles as you can both static and dynamic. There are guys out there that give this type of training a hard time and others look at it as if it was the highest honor and then there are guys that are so damn stubborn that only one type of training is all they will ever use and say it’s either that or nothing. For me, I love variety. Using different elements and styles gets my mind going and there are times where I can’t choose just one in particular so I just make it up.

            My take on Isometrics is everyone should use them to a certain degree especially if you’re in a sport or rehab. It strengthens the tendons in ways you can’t get with anything else and wouldn't it be awesome to not get injured as often? Even just for that purpose it could make a hell of a positive impact on your life. Learn them as much as you can or use them as a backup it’s up to you but the main point is, they teach you how to use your body internally more than any other method. There are thousands of different Isometrics just ask Steve Justa. Expand your knowledge and apply them to whatever you want to do, it’s shocking sometimes what you’ll find using them. 

Embrace Being Criticized

 I use to think anyone who thought what you do was negative than you don’t seem to be doing anything right and the positive notes come and go. Realizing after knowing a few guys and what the represent, negativity is like a block for them. Being criticized should help you, not wear you down. There’s going to be people no matter even one’s you’d never expect will give you a harsh time about what you want to do or already doing.

 If you do something that’s going to get people riled up, you’re still getting noticed. There’s an old saying, “it’s better to be hated than ignored.” Sure you’ll get positive feedback and that’s awesome let them come in but the negative feedback is very unique. You’ll get people talking about your stuff and most of the time, not always you’ll get some dumb idiot who has no clue what he’s talking about and at times has nothing to do with what you say or do, they just run their mouth but you’re still getting noticed.

 The only person you should really be a critic on is yourself. Not saying you should think of yourself in a negative way but embracing what your strengths and weaknesses are and keep improving yourself. It’s kind of like shadow boxing, you’re fighting your most difficult opponent and that’s you brother/sister. Be better for yourself and learn to block that negative vibe but embrace what is happening with it. One of my favorite courses I have is from Mattfurey.com which is called Psychic Self Defense. It teaches you how to handle negative energy and using visualizations and feel on what you can do to block that energy from a variety of ways, most teach offensive strategies, this is one of extreme few to teach a defensive strategy and like they say a great defense brings a great offense.

 Being motivated isn't easy but look at from this angle like on a coin, one person is motivated to get things done no matter what it is, the other person just goes about his life not making progress and not making himself what he wants to be. I realize motivation is hard, I go through it all the time and plenty of other guys I know, some of them it’s pretty easy, for others it’s a pain in the ass but it still keeps them going. Find ways to be motivated, find a friend, listen to music for inspiration, watch a rugged action movie whatever it might be use it to motivate yourself just make sure it’s illegal because I don’t want you to put yourself or someone else in harms way for the sake of motivation. One other thing on that note, when you’re doing something that gets you going, someone else is going to envy you because they can’t do it themselves so they’ll be on you like white on rice at times.

 Never try to change who you are, you can adapt and learn different things to improve yourself but never change the type of person you are because you are a good person deep down and you want to be something beyond anything else, it’s up to you to make that choice and help improve yourself. The more you improve yourself the more others will bitch at you because they don’t know any better and they don’t want you to be happy, just be unhappy like them, never do that. Let the criticism in and learn to take a punch every now and then. In Rocky VI he says “It’s not how hard you hit, it’s how hard you get hit and keep getting back up to fight.” Keep on working your goals and make things happen; if someone gives you a hard time, so what, you’re doing something they don’t know how to achieve. Have fun and until next time, keep living the dream and achieve the things you want to happen.

Why Is Conditioning Important?

 Being in condition for anything you want to be good at is as important as anything else is but what makes it important? First off having the strength to do something awesome is great but how you keep up that strength in the long run is up to you. The importance is that to get good at something, you condition your body or in other words practice the type of condition you want to achieve whether it’s Juggling Kettlebells, doing Handstands, playing sports or whatever you want to teach your body to withstand that particular subject. Even conditioning your mind is important because the stronger your mind is, the easier it is to find how to condition the body henceforth connecting the Mind/Muscle together.

 It doesn't matter if you’re in a sport, a workout, a meeting or whatever, you want to be as strong and aware when you first started and still have that amount left in the end. It’s called being in the clutch, still having what’s left in the tank for that one final moment or that one moment towards the end where you’re just as strong as you walked in as much as you want to walk out. Being prepared for a situation that still gives you that awareness and realize that you’re not still sticking with the other guy but chances are he’s gotten weaker.

 The type of people who taught conditioning the most were the most successful take John Wooden of NCAA Basketball fame at UCLA, a man who has taken the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships and produced a couple future hall of famers along the way including Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul Jabaar. He wouldn't let his players play unless their conditioning was top notch. Another would be the great Dan Gable who coached more NCAA champions in the sport of wrestling than any other before or since at the University of Iowa, he even coached a mentor of mine for a couple years by the name of Matt Furey. Gable made it a habit that his wrestlers are able to be ready for anything on the mat and some of them won matches by a landslide and others won or lost when it was time to be in the clutch. Probably one of the most important teachers on conditioning was the late Karl Gotch (1924-2007) who made it the number rule of all because if you’re not in condition and you lose your touch within the first couple minutes you might as well die in the dirt. If you have the right tools you can get in the best condition of your life but it doesn't just start in the muscles, it starts in the mind.

 Being in serious condition makes you tough and makes you want to get better, one of my favorite Pro Wrestlers is Ricky The Dragon Steamboat who had some of the best technical and scientific type matches and quite a number of them would be one hour draws against the likes of Ric Flair, Harley Race and others and I don’t give a damn the matches are fixed and who wins or who loses, to be able to wrestle and entertain a crowd for an hour straight is a feat in an of itself and the closest I can think of that caliber would be Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, Ric Flair and Harley Race. Not that making this all about wrestling but the fact of the matter is if you want to master something, condition yourself to get to that level. It takes practice, it takes patience and it takes will, if you don’t have the will you won’t find the way.

 Some guys just don’t have the heart to condition them, are they tough enough, maybe not for that particular thing but in some way or another they’ll be in great condition at something. Being able to handle it is up to the person doing it. If you want to be able to handle such training or competition, your mind has to be more conditioned than your body, once you master that than your body will do the rest. One of my favorite stories of being tough to go through something is the Verne Gagne wrestling camps at his barn or office building in Minnesota, you have a number of guys going through the drills doing push-ups, squats, sit-ups, running and sprinting left and right and getting hammered in the ring, in the end there would be only a handful of guys left who made it when the majority quit. Being tough is not about how strong or fast you are, it’s about going that extra mile and even if you have a little left in the tank, you push through till the end. Being in condition is a bit of the same thing just the difference on developing your strengths to keep going and you’re just as strong if not stronger in the end.

 Learn to handle what you can and progress, that’s all you can do and have fun with it. If you’re too serious about conditioning you’re going to miss having a good time with it, enjoy it, challenge yourself and make it work for you.  

A Whole Gym In The Palm Of Your Hands

How cool would it be to workout anywhere you wanted, at the beach, the park, your backyard, garage, house, even at the top of a mountain? Having a gym is way overrated. I’m not saying going to one is a bad thing but if you wanted to train anywhere you wanted, what can you do? One way to do it is getting a device that could have endless ways of strengthening everything from your neck to your toes and that’s my dear friend, the Chest Expander.

 This little bitty rubber cable apparatus can work your body from more angles than weights never could and you need to strengthen those areas for overall functional strength and fitness. There are many types of cables to progress with ranging from the easiest to nearly impossible to expand. Weights can hit many muscle groups but the cables hit muscles that aren’t reached by any other method except this. Unlike weights that use gravity, you are fighting the cables because they don’t want you to expand them and you need that kind of power as if you’re fighting a person.

 The cool thing about this bad boy is that you can go from one exercise to the next in a snap, go from a curl to a press or from a row to a lateral raise; this is great for circuit training to help bring that conditioning element. Dumbbells are fun to use if you’re into them but it takes you a little bit to put down the thing, grab another and go through the cycle again, with the cables you can put as many as three on there and if its too much for you than take one off to ease the resistance, I find that more fun than taking the time to switch plates or dumbbells. When you see that you’re working from odd angles, you’re building odd strength and flexibility which can aid you in almost anything from lifting to bodyweight exercise to cardio or even to help rebuild injuries and heal old wounds to get that functional strength back for the things you want to accomplish whether it be sports, your job or helping out your family.

 One of my favorite things to do is use this thing for Arm Wrestling. This sport is one of the toughest forms of strength there is, period and you need well developed grip, wrist arm overall body strength to take even the toughest of opponents. Read about my article about Arm Wrestling Training to learn more details to get an idea of how strong you can get just using cables and never needing a machine or weights to get the job done. This is where it gets even prettier by the second where you can go from using it as a rehab tool to taking it to a superhuman level that even the strongest forces in strength athletics can appreciate.

 If you want to take it even further my man Bud Jeffries has a DVD course that specifies in Alternate Conditioning Methods which one of them is based on Cable Training and the things he has in stored on there will blow you away and just when you thought you only had a few basic ideas, he takes beyond another level. An extreme few courses out there on this type of training so that should tell you that there are secrets out there that can take your fitness to levels never imagined before. Being fit is awesome, being strong is great but being functionally fit and strong is the most gratifying thing you can achieve and becoming superhuman is that much sweeter.

Arm Wrestling Training For A Super Grip

 Testing one’s strength has been a quest for as long as mankind has been around; fighting for survival or just sport, strength has been the test of wills through physical, spiritual, emotional and mental endeavors. One of the biggest tests for man’s ego or even to prove himself is through Arm Wrestling.

  Back in the day when internet didn’t exist and phone lines were the talk of the town plus the only entertainment you can really find was in a vaudeville theater or watching a silent movie on the big screen for a nickel a pop, people needed to do something to keep themselves interested. Men worked on the farms or in offices in the city or sometimes they became entertainers and put on acts to entertain the crowd. Kids played ball in the streets and some even took up what was called Wrist Wrestling where they gripped their hands as hard as they can and do their best to slam the other’s wrist to the table and jump for victory.

 Arm Wrestling isn’t just a full on test of grip and people will only say that if they haven’t actually done it. I’ve had my fair share of losses and very few wins to tell you it’s a hard and demanding sport where you have your whole body engaged in a tight spot and it takes just as much power to keep from getting slammed as the one doing the slamming. It makes up a powerful grip once you get the basics down and learn from a few masters here and there.

 There are many guys in the world of Physical Culture who have at one point done some Arm Wrestling and were fierce at it. One man whom I consider the Great Gama of Arm Wrestling is the heavyweight powerhouse Ian “Mac” Batchelor, no one can match the level of strength this man had in his time and his unorthodox style of training is just as hardcore as his unprecedented wins over countless opponents. Another legend in the sport is a man that just defies logic in the realm of strength and for a man his size it just seems so impossible until you actually learn what he does and that’s Dennis Rogers. He became a strongman first by becoming an Arm Wrestling champion and winning countless awards and recognition, because of that, he dove into finding things that he can destroy and tear up that no one in the world can do. The way he does things is just surreal and if you want to learn about his specialty feats check out Legendary Strength and find out his secrets to incredible grip strength.

 People have this distinct notion that if you want to be strong, you have to use a gym, hate to burst your bubble pal but most gyms can’t handle the levels of strength being presented. You can build grip without ever leaving your house or you can take it on the road with you. If there’s anyone out there today other myself, Dennis Rogers, Logan Christopher, Ryan Pitts or Bud Jeffries for that matter who can teach you the value of grip strength it’s up incoming strongman of unlimited potential is my boy Matti Marzel. He has the distinct power of having some of the toughest hands in the world, bending and snapping steel, tearing decks of cards from very odd angles and tearing up phonebooks in several pieces like tearing a piece of paper. His fingers are so strong he regularly holds himself up on his fingertips and is working on being an elite rock and rope climber and is ripped to shreds and is one of the closest to having that Bruce Lee type physique. You do not want him on his bad side and he’s no pushover in Arm Wrestling, he has on occasion taken down guys twice his size and puts them to shame with his iron cord like arms and wrists. 

 One of my secret weapons for building strength in Arm Wrestling is using my Chest Expander which you can get at LifelineUSA.com. I take this apparatus and I use fairly medium to heavy cables and use one of the handles on my door and start simulating an arm wrestling technique or match and work up to 50 repetitions as best as possible. I also work on the wrist and do curls and rows to get that edge for that specific grip and work in high repetitions so I can focus on tendon strength. This is a great device because unlike weights that uses gravity, the rubber cables is fighting back from having you extend the cables out almost similar as if you’re in a match and your opponent is keeping you from moving him.

 Another great an inspiring thing about sports or just wrestling in general is that many little guys (under 200 lbs) are extremely strong when they have the right tools to just make your jaw drop. You wouldn’t expect a small guy tearing up guys twice their size and making it look easy as pie. Never underestimate the little guy because he can hurt you and have a big smile on his face doing. Dennis Rogers has made that believable and so has guys like Maxick, Farmer Burns, Matti Marzel, Bruce Lee and others that can just give you hell.

 Working the tendons is one of the most crucial keys to your success in developing your grip and one of the best methods is doing Isometrics. Being able to hold a certain position and make it as hard as possible without ever moving teaches you how to build strength from many angles. Arm Wrestling Isometrics is one of the most fun ways to build that level of strength that just raw and powerful. Get strong and find cool ways to develop your grip to a superhuman level.

Training Ideas For A Sunburn

Recently I went to a lake here in hot Coeur D’Alene via Hayden, ID and had a blast, went swimming, bent some nails, chilled out on the dock and hung out with a friend but that very night I had a sunburn that looked so f’cking red, it looked like I was spray painted. It was pretty bad and whenever I get sunburned, I feel stiff and my muscles ache like crazy. The next morning, my body ached like crazy and couldn’t sleep most of the night anyway.

 Although I looked like I was torched, I didn’t give up on exercising. Yes the burn felt like crap but that wasn’t going to stop me from doing the things I love. Now it’s not always easy to train on a sunburn and you tend to dry up faster than usual, this is where water becomes your most dearest friend. Although I didn’t train with the same level of intensity, I decided to change things around and this is where your mental training is taken to the test. I have found that because my aching joints and muscles, I have to be extra consistent in training those areas especially being burnt on the whole back, shoulders and arms; you want to keep them from getting stiff even though it does hurt a little.

 Loosening up your joints is essential and you want to stretch the muscles as best as possible without overdoing it and water is a key because you have to keep yourself cool, poor it over your body and also drink it to keep hydrated. Sweating is also a good idea as well. Sometimes you might need to keep yourself indoors because a sunburn can be bad enough to where if you go outside without proper lotion or sunblock you’re going to feel worse. I realize you might have jobs working outside so the best advice I can give is drink plenty of water, keep your joints and muscles mobile and where clothing that helps keep you cool.

 You want to keep tabs on the areas of the sunburn because if you don’t you’re going to regret it later, trust me I’ve done enough times to understand it’s better being safe than being stupid. Your body heat can also be a cooling system and one of my favorite forms of dealing with a sunburn is to take cold showers, use very little hot water to clean yourself off with soap and shampoo but after that, start turning the water down to almost as cold as possible. You can stay in cold water longer in a sense because the heat of that sunburn is already overwhelming. Turn the cold down every few seconds to a minute so your body can get use to it being cold and do plenty of deep breathing, this can be a very relaxing meditative method. I love cold showers and I do them often because of its health benefits.

 Training indoors while you’re home can help aid in your sunburn as you can use a few fans to keep yourself cool and train so you can sweat to help clear out your pours. My type of training for a certain time being until the burn becomes a little less painful is to  do plenty of flexibility work and believe it or not Muscle Control. I have found Muscle Control to be a very good form of training for this type of thing because when you flex and relax the muscles, blood flows throughout the body and helps the skin radiate that glow and eventually, helps your system repair itself thus possibly healing the sunburn quicker and generate stronger cells to keep the skin healthy. Peeling is just apart of the process kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes, your skin dies and new skin is ready to come out of the woodworks.

 Keep your body and skin healthy plus keep your muscles and joints mobile so if this should ever happen to you, you will have a few tools at your disposal and also do some research on natural lotions and sunblock to find what can work to help heal faster and more efficient, most sunblock and lotions these days don’t do much. Keep having a kick ass summer and stay strong and healthy.

Think You Don’t Have Time, Tell That To Slim

A lot of people say they want to get fit and strong but they tend to have this “I don’t have time” mindset. I understand that some of you have children, work at certain stressful jobs and need to take care of your family, I was raised in a day care when I was young and saw the woman that became my second mother get up every morning at five and kids would roll in around six and some would go to school but the majority stayed, there were between 7-11 kids at a time not including the 4 she has of her own and by the time kids were gone it be almost 7 o’clock at night. That’s a hell of a schedule and doing that for over 20 years takes a toll on you.

 I’ve learned to make time everyday even on days that I don’t feel well because I’m determined to get something done. That’s a cake walk compared to a living legend like Slim The Hammer Man. This man alone starting as a teenager worked in the Rock Corry and smashed rock and stone with a sledgehammer for 12-14 hours a day up to 7 days a week. Why am I telling you this, yes he busted his ass and you’d think he didn’t have time to do a workout? His job alone was a workout in itself but the point I’m making here is after this long and grueling hours at the Corry, he’d still come home have a little dinner and go down to his basement which became legendary as The Dungeon and bent nails, bars, broke chains and worked tirelessly on his trademark and that was Hammer Levering which you can learn about going to legendary strength and look into the feats of strength section on the site.

 No matter how tough your life is or how grueling a schedule you have, if you want it bad enough you’ll find the time to at least some kind of workout. One strongman I highly admire is named Steve Justa and during his early days he worked on hay bailing and worked construction. After long hours he’d still come home and train like a madman because he wanted it bad enough and made an effort. Some of that training even helped him bail hay faster in a shorter amount of time than he did lifting weights and you can learn what type of training he did from my man Bud Jeffries’ DVD set on Isometrics.

 Find something you want to make a goal, start small, and do a little exercise here and there. Taking a walk on your lunch break is a start, when you have had a rough day and need some time alone, before you go to bed, take a few deep breaths to calm down, do a few stretches that should take no more than a few minutes and there you go. Morning workouts are the best in my opinion because you can get up before everyone else does, do some deep breathing and stretching, if you’re into Yoga that’s awesome. Every little effort can make a huge difference in your results. More importantly, have a good attitude and learn to tell yourself that when you do exercise, make it fun and enjoyable. Who knows, your kids if you have any might want to join you, encourage them, it helps bring in more positive energy and gives your mind and body a healthy dose of great motivation.

 I feel that if you keep making excuses to not exercise, you’re setting yourself up for jail from a mental standpoint and not just a cell, you’re solitary confinement where you’re locked up, chained to the wall and you can’t do a damn thing to break yourself free, do you want that to happen, being stuck with the same things over and over and looking at the same boring and unhappy life? One little change and you can make a whole turn around. I never said give up what you have in your life just to exercise, that would make me sound like a prick but what I’m doing my best to help YOU with is that if you want to get in shape, do what you can to make the time to do even if it’s for one minute. Yes you read that right; you can start doing exercises that will take only a minute to do. You can even do certain throughout the day, make it happen for you.

 Having the need to go to the gym is way overrated and it sucks getting there, being stuck in traffic, parking, dressing into gym clothes then you try to find a place to workout and someone else has taken it, you’ve just wasted precious time and I would bet my bottom dollar that at times it takes you as long to get to the gym, park and dress as it is getting the same amount of time as the workout itself. Home workouts are the most valuable places to train because you can listen to whatever you want, use what you have and if you don’t have equipment than check out my buds Matt & Ed’s stuff where you can do exercises anywhere at any time and take as much time as you want and no one would be hassling you and never feeling pressured about using a machine and having some dumb ass give you a hard time cause he needs it too.

 If you can get to the gym, great, do what you can and make it an effort. Small steps can reach big heights and only you can choose to climb the mountain or stay at the bottom, believe me it’s not easy but it’s like what Tom Hanks said to Genna Davis about Baseball “It’s suppose to be hard, if it wasn’t everyone would do it…The hard is what makes it great.” Don’t push it but create a challenge and start easing into it and build from there. You can do it, I believe in you and so does everyone that I’ve worked for, with and trained with do to.  

Combination Training

Doesn’t that almost sound like Cross-Fit? Combining different elements into one method of training? Well, in certain cases you don’t need to lift a barbell than go do pull-ups.

 Creativity starts with your imagination and builds on what you have. I’m telling you from experience and practice, going to the gym isn’t your only option anymore. If you really looked around, you can workout in just about any type of place. If you lived in the woods, you can use nature to make your biggest benefit, tossing rocks, pushing boulders, swimming in the lake or climbing trees. If you lived around an industrial park, you can find little pipes to pick up, lever 2x4s, push-ups on the rails, finding a few rebar and see if you can bend them. Combining different things with what you have can create your own workout without ever touching a barbell or a machine.

 I have been training mostly bodyweight for years now but every now and then I like to use a few things like for instance a workout I did the other day consisted of a towel, Phonebook, my Thor hammer, a 10 pound sledgehammer and my lifeline chest expander. These things alone gave me a hell of a workout, one exercise I did for a combination is holding the chest expander in a one-arm press and with the other hand did swings with my Thor Hammer. In my opinion, books with exercises just teach you a certain type but yet don’t always give you something to combine them with, some do but most don’t so you’re left with “The hell else can I do”, simple, use your imagination and before you know it, you can come up with exercises that can never be found in a book or on a DVD.

 One of the best combos I’m learning right now is combining isometrics with a moving exercise but how does that work? Well remember I told you the about the Chest Expander and the Hammer? You can learn all sorts of combos especially the kick ass stuff here by my man Bud Jeffries. You want to hit as many muscles at once as possible and learning these combos with Isometrics isn’t just building physical strength but teaches how to use your brain from different angles of the left and right side.

 Doesn’t matter if you’re into bodyweight, weights, kettlebells, feats of strength or a combo of all four, hitting your muscles and tendons from as many angles is a key for foundational development as it helps hit sticking points and plateaus and the more muscles being used the better because isolated movements are more prone to cause injury as oppose to multiple muscle groups working to keep your body in unison. Some people see isometrics as isolation but in reality they haven’t done they’re homework very well. Steve Justa once told a story of Bruce Lee holding a 3-5 lb. ball, he’d hold it in his hand and hold his arm straight out, doesn’t seem that hard it’s just a shoulder exercise that works the hand just a tiny bit since the ball is extremely light but here’s where it really gets fun, do it for 8 hours straight, what seems like an easy shoulder exercise will turn into a hard fought battle for the entire body and who’s going to be the bitch at the end of that exercise, you or the ball. Never assume certain things will be easy.

 Remember the phonebook I used in my workout the other day? Well I didn’t rip it in half, sorry to disappoint you because the damn book was wrapped in duct tape from cover to cover and everywhere in between, it was giving to me a few years back from my friend Logan Christopher and ever since I had it I used it to do isometrics to rip up phonebooks for real and to say it’s helped me rip over 1600 pages in one shot would be just the tip of the iceberg. Combining this exercise and moving on to pulling down a tree is just another day at the office for me but it gives me super strength and makes my body feel like a steel rod of one unit of power.

 Using what you have can create endless possibilities for you if you open your mind and expand beyond just a regular exercise. You can turn just about any basic exercise into the most advanced exercise on the planet in a heartbeat, it all begins with your ability to imagine and put it into action. Also put some emotion into it and your results will surprise you by 10 Fold, I’m not joking about that. I have learned the best exercises don’t come from a gym, a book, a DVD or a class, the best exercises come from your own take on them and believe me when was the last time you did a isometric hold while swinging a Thor Hammer, highly unlikely ever. Learn from your own experiences and combine the best you have learned and mold them into something only you can come up with. When you do that, you’ll learn the secrets of true and creative Combination Training.

Getting Mad? Get Out & Train

We all have certain emotions that get to us through stress, certain people in your life and many other things but getting mad and taking it out on the wrong things can lead you to a path of destruction that you will have a lot of trouble getting back from. I have had a bit of temper and it makes me sometimes the biggest ass in the world. Whenever I got mad at something, it drove me to a point where I have put holes in door with one blow of my fist and have thrown certain things at a wall or even have punched my own window and shattered every square inch of glass from one hit. I’m not ashamed to admit this and have paid a price with scars both physically and emotionally. So after a few years of self discovery I wanted to learn to control my temper.

 Anger isn’t always the healthiest thing to have because it could affect your body in ways we can never understand and if you’re prone to high blood pressure it’s as fatal as you can get. Instead of just being angry and going off on someone or hit/smash anything, it’s better to just really walk away and whoever said “Oh if you’re mad just go hit a pillow till you cool off” must’ve been out of their god damn mind because that kind of thing will make things worse for you. One of my favorite de-stressers is just training, getting out and moving around, if you have a tire and a hammer, take it and pound that tire, one teacher showed me what you can do with a heavy medicine ball and just throw it down on the ground until you can’t take it anymore. Stress can make you crazy but doing something productive to channel your rage is healthier than just running around being angry at something.

 I have learned that when you’re mad or angry and you feel like you want to hit something or somebody, might as well be hitting yourself because you’re going to hurt yourself more than taking something out on someone or whatever. You want to find a way to relax and have those endorphins kick in that give you that sense of bliss. If you really want to get a natural high, go sprint on the track or up a hill and see how long it takes you to stop being angry. Sometimes training doesn’t always help, its understandable but that’s one way to help balance your emotions. Another way to balance things out if you get angry is to just walk away, go for a walk and breathe deeply, instead of breathing in anger, breathe in blissfulness and breathe inner strength, if you live near a lake or the ocean, go for a swim or go to your local pool and do a few laps, anything to get your mind off things and be happy with yourself.

 Lashing out in a positive manner can actually help you find what is wrong with your emotions and how you can prevent going into a big rage and turn into the incredible hulk and hurting someone. Sometimes certain people can’t control their emotions so they take meds to calm them down and even that can be harmful on the body itself. There are even people out there who beat the person they love so it’s complicated sometimes. Doing something productive that won’t harm you or others or objects is a great thing to balance out certain problems you may have just use it a safe manner that way it’s a win-win for everyone. I personally have never physically hurt anyone in my life and intend to keep it that way because if I did that I’m no better than a possible murderer so being smart about your emotions is a good practice to learn and use in a safe and healthy manner. Don’t hurt others or yourself.

Living With Incredible Health

Throughout the world and more famously in Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, health is a journey of learning to find the best qualities in the body, mind and spirit. Finding health doesn’t always mean finding the right exercise, the best meditative practices, the right kind of food to eat or even believing in a higher power, all these things have great advantages but the real key to building superior health is finding your true self and how you apply it to make yourself vital, vigorous and living a long and happy life. Today however, health has become a near last-on-the-list mockery of what we’ve become in this country, too many bad foods, too many TV commercials and way too much exposure to the wrong kind of what health is believed to look like.

 Looking at certain models, pro athletes, global entertainers and hate to say this but gurus as well that really take looking at health down a spiral of bad influences and a lot of egotistical people. I’m not saying all these people are like that but seriously, you’d rather trash your body for a few bucks than to actually get a grip on it? The mind/body connection is a symbol of our yin and yang of life; one cannot exist without the other. Think of a great and beautiful looking Ferrari, what does it need, gas, oil, water and parts to keep it not only together but to drive in a smooth and ferocious fashion, if our bodies are weak, so are our minds and vise versa. Superior health starts combining the mind and body as if they’re one whole unit other wise our conditions won’t be the way we really want them to be.

 In exercise, certain methods are way overrated and have nothing to do with building health. Some people who train others don’t really have a keen sense of what real health is, certain exercises should not be done by some people but yet those who teach them don’t know what they’re getting themselves into and that’s a scary thought to think about. Real training is finding methods that bring that natural high of endorphins that help bring blood into our systems (I’m not talking pumping iron here) that help keep us young, vital and strong for real life things. There are many ways to help build superior health such as versions of qi gong, Isometrics, Muscle Control, Yoga and Animal Training that bring your body into alignment not just in the body but in the mind as well. Certain forms are tougher than others so we must progress and find what suits our bodies to bring the best of what keeps us in shape.

 When people talk about the real sources of power, they sometimes think of certain body parts or their brain being the ultimate source or the types of exercises that give the most benefit but the true power is in your imagination and your organs. The organs harvest your body’s system for blood flow and great energy. Each organ cannot really exist without the other, if even one organ is missing you are at greater risk of dying and taking 2 or more you might as well be dead. Certain exercises teach how to strengthen the organs little by little and with practice, your life force or Chi has a greater chance of keeping you alive for a long time.

 Your vitality is a key ingredient to your success to superior health because it doesn’t just mean meditating or finding various exercises, it also means how you use your attitude and your balance of negative and positive stress. A healthy attitude helps lead down a road of healthy living and using connections from various sources bring that vital success to new levels of enlightenment, sexual energy, and great blood flow to the body that brings levels of growth hormone that keeps you young and living life with gusto. Get healthy the best way possible that helps make your life and those around you at ease and balance stress that’s both positive and negative.

Training Like A Superhero

Ever since we were children, we were fantasized by the extraordinary powers of Super Heroes, if you were a DC Comics fan, you were in awe of Superman, loved the gadgets of Batman, wanted to wear the ring of the Green Lantern and if you were a woman, you wanted to battle like Wonder Woman. As a Marvel fan, you wanted to see Spiderman swing through the streets of New York, watched and read about the X-Men and wanted to triumph like Captain America and so on and so forth. Super Heroes are our every fantasy of being strong, fight for injustice and have powers beyond belief than you come back to reality and for some your life sucks to you. It doesn’t always take a Super Hero to do extraordinary things, some people are just like you and me but when that light turns on and you have to run from a mugging or rescuing someone, you can find the strength that goes beyond the levels of your own abilities and I’m here to tell you, you can make those things a reality.

 In reality, we can’t even fathom of having powers or the great minds of our favorite Super Heroes but we can however with the right amount of training, we can turn on that imaginative switch and have the power to pull off many things we couldn’t do before. Think of the Flash, to me he’s the fastest hero next to Superman with blazing speed and explosive strength. Increasing your speed isn’t that far of a stretch. If you learned to tap into your mind on how you can bring your speed up even a small percentage would you do it? If you want blazing speed, you do sprints or move in an exercise very fast. Doing this will not only build your explosiveness but will jump start your metabolism like a bat out of hell. Another look at increasing your speed is through Isometrics. Isometrics teaches you to hold a certain position and stay there, in other words a non moving exercise. If you don’t believe me try it out for yourself.

 When it comes to reflexes, I immediately see Captain America or Spiderman. Their senses are so keen and accurate that whatever jumps at them turns to dust. One of the best ways to learn your reflexes is playing handball, take a tennis ball and bounce it off a wall and see how quick you catch it. One guy who emphasized this greatly was the late Karl Gotch. Reflexes help your awareness and your accuracy to react quickly. Reacting to something will help poise your confidence to get a sense of things around from every possible angle.

 No hero used a hammer better than the Mighty Thor. Hammers are the axes of explosive power, strength, and lever strength. We are fascinated on how a hammer can be used in ways that can’t be duplicated with weights, machines or even bodyweight exercise. It’s also a great stress reliever and you want to pound the living hell out of a tire. To learn Hammer Strength is to take up just that and practice many elements from levering to swinging to holding and everything in between.

 If you took the strongest men on the planet and molded then together, you still won’t have the strength like the Incredible Hulk. Back in the late 70’s, Lou Ferrigno brought the tall, green and powerful to the Silver Screen and nobody did it better than he did. To have that much strength to the point where it would make Hercules scared out of his wits is to build a level of mind and body together to create a level of strength that’s beyond belief. In the movies you see Hulk throw tanks, choppers, and toss cranes like they were softballs. How would that would a realistic approach to training for Hulk-Like strength and power? Progressing lifting heavy objects is one way to do it but if you don’t have access to a gym or weights, you can always find a way to do tire flips, toss kegs, lifting logs, holding up heavy barrels or do partial lifting and get the most bang for your buck. Creating this level of strength has to come from the mind as well and learn to surge that power and tap into level of electrical charge that resides in all of us.

 Spiderman is really the only superhero that has somewhat of a normal build, lean, not heavily muscular and has great definition but has enormous strength for his size and you can develop that as well. If there were any real Spidermen in the world it would be rock climbers, those dudes are just freakishly strong and can climb up the highest of mountains. Another way to be a bit of a web-swinger is learning the strength and agility of a gibbon where you brachiate on your hands like in hand balancing or moving across the monkey bars at the park. Progressing in this manner takes patience but with time you can move in ways that the average person would run for the hills from. Almost like becoming a real life Tarzan. If there was a real life Spiderman in the fitness world, Brad Johnson would be just that. The way he moves is just insane and nobody can do pull-ups like he can.

 We all have special powers within us whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual it all depends on what gives you the most benefit to develop powers of your own. Finding that power within you is more reachable than you would believe. Once you find it and can tap into it anyway you want, you will see what it’s like to have great powers and using them to benefit your goals and to help others. Practice them, learn them and tap into them the best way you can possible because there’s no greater feeling than developing your own superhuman powers.

Isometrics & The Limitless Possibilities

Since ancient times, Isometrics has been used for many forms of strength, health, war and longevity. Think of the Archers of Greece and Mongolia, those guys went through a series of combat training techniques that in order to successfully shoot an arrow through the bow, they had to use muscles they normally wouldn’t use on the battlefield. The strength of those bows was so fierce that they practiced on bows that could not be pulled all the way back. When they finally had the bows in battle, the velocity of the arrows was amazingly fast. Speed is another cornerstone of Isometrics, not just strength.

 In the early 16^th century an Indian Buddhist traveled to China and taught the monks how to get in shape because at that time, Shaolin practices was mostly meditation and building on enlightenment but not for also being in physical shape. This Buddhist sat in a cave for nine long and meditative years to find the inner strength to not only rebuild him but help rebuild others. After the near decade long hideout, he began training the monks in a way they have never practiced before and one of their requirements for reprogramming their philosophies was to practice Isometrics. After many practices and a few 500+ years later, these monks are now considered the real life Jedi and masterful athletes of many arts in Kung Fu, Win Chun and other forms of Martial Arts.

 Wrestling is man’s oldest sport, it’s a fact whether you like it or not and it’s by far one of if not the most disciplined sport in the world. The training is tougher than any other and with its many styles going as far back as ancient Egypt or earlier; it is one of the most rigorous forms of training by far. In the early 20^th century and in the modern era, two wrestlers took isometrics to the extreme in their style of wrestling was Dan Gable and quite arguably the most feared wrestler of the modern age and that’s The Great Gama of India. In my opinion, no two wrestlers were better at using isometrics than the two I’ve just mentioned. When Gable was in school, he uses to grip class desks so hard that at one time, it ripped right off. His pinning style was so fierce that not even men twice his size could get out of it, that’s how powerful he was for a guy who was no more than 155 lbs. He went undefeated in the ’72 Olympics and didn’t surrender one point during his quest for the gold. Was Isometrics part of the reason, you tell me? Gama however was a massive man of power, strength and conditioning that no man before or since has topped. When he uses to rise in the early mornings before training, he would take a belt and wrapped it around a tree and do with all his might to rip the tree out of its roots. He never took the tree out but after many years of doing this, he threw guys around the pit as if they were rag dolls and they weren’t small guys either, he once threw a 290 lb. wrestler 13 times in 13 minutes. He was undefeated in a staggering 5000 matches and just about every known wrestler at that time never wanted to take him on, not even the two biggest names of the time Frank Gotch & George Hackenshmidt. Again, did Isometrics play a role? You be the judge.

 Isometrics is practically the very best system in the world that teaches you to break through your weak points in the range of motion category whether you’re a lifter, gymnast, fitness fanatic or an athlete, this type of training will skyrocket your strength and speed to levels you have never imagined before. When you hit a rough spot in your training it’s frustrating to push beyond it and Isometrics done with a proper structure can increase your range of motion beyond its own limits.

 One of the most awesome displays of Isometrics is through Muscle Control; you flex and relax the muscles. This is probably one of the very few times that isolation is a good thing. Mastering this teaches you to infuse your mind and body together as you learn to contract various muscles from a single point on the body that contracts and relaxes. One of the best known masters of this was Otto Arco, not only was he superhuman in this type of training but this helped him wrestling, hand balancing, Gymnastics and weightlifting. The way he could transfer from one muscle to the next was nothing like anyone had seen before or since.

 In my opinion from personal experience and learning from some of the best in the world, Isometrics is one of the golden keys to developing superhuman strength because it hits the body in ways weights and bodyweight exercise in their ranges of motion can’t touch. Just the feeling of flexing so hard for a period of time and then relaxing is one of the best highs you can have. There are a limitless amount of exercises to choose from to do Isometrics and can be done just about anywhere at anytime. It develops the mind/muscle connection in a way that can’t be duplicated and it’s one of the toughest forms of strength training there is but the rewards are endless. Take the time to practice Isometrics and you will see how it can be applied in ways you never thought of before. It’s well worth the practice.

There’s No Suffering In Exercise

Back in the early 90’s there was a baseball movie called A League Of Their Own and one of the most famous lines of that film was “There’s No Crying In Baseball.” If you ever get a chance, check it out it’s a great movie and one of Tom Hank’s best performances after Big. Now what does that have to do with exercise? Well, some of us do cry while training, sometimes if we get hurt and others when we accomplish a goal. Many people in fitness feel like exercise is torture and think its just another day in the gym, in the end they end up suffering and that’s something that should never happen. “There’s no suffering in exercise.”

 Most trainees put so much stress on themselves that they drain their emotional strength and mental strength to keep up with them. That’s one of the ideal problems with the fitness magazines and routines they put in there. Forget for one moment trying to look like a Ronnie Coleman or a Jay Cutler and try to realize how ridiculous these routines actually are. Almost every routine you’ll find has no realistic approach to progression and people don’t realize how painful some of are as well. I had bought a Iron Man encyclopedia when I was weight lifting back in the early-mid 2000’s and tried every possible routine to see which one worked and at one point one did work but only for a short time. I was promised that I would build strength and muscle if I did this routine often but yet one came, the other didn’t and I’ll leave that a mystery to you readers.

 You suffer because someone told you to do this for strength, that for endurance, the other for flexibility and some go awful crap for building big chests and biceps I mean seriously, who the bloody hell can manage all that let alone doing 30 min. of cardio before doing your weights and god forbid that if you can’t handle it, they’ll tell you you’re weak and shouldn’t train at all. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. To get out of your suffering, research what you want to learn, test exercises you want to do, work on the technique that suitable to your body’s structure and build your own routine. Everyone can be good at something, just because some trainer tells them their lousy and have no real strength tells me that they’re nothing but low-life scumbags. The real way to get results is to make a goal, find what works, work on technique and make the damn thing fun.

 Flipping the coin of suffering and enjoying yourself doesn’t have to be one or the other, your goal is to enjoy yourself, challenge yourself and master what you want to learn. Trainers come and go but your health is a life-long quest and if you want to make the best of it, quit seeing it as suffering and set your mind to looking forward to it and have a smile at the end. I have suffered just like everyone else at the gym and I hated training at one time and if you hate doing something you love there’s a major problem there. Mentally program yourself and you will find that if you make one little change, it can have a big impact not just building your body but building your life all together. Don’t suffer, be happy and make things happen for you.   

A Top Notch Method For HGH

Quick fixes are the biggest trend in fitness today. They want results fast, easy and with little effort as possible so for fitness trainees and celebrities alike for a movie they inject themselves with pills, steroids and needles to get that look that they always dreamed of. Not saying all do this but a good sum of them does and they’re more likely killing themselves than getting healthier.

 Artificial enhancements are quite dangerous and I’ve seen what it’s done to people and very few ever stay healthy with the right cycles but that’s another thing all together. Generating natural levels of Hormones is actually a lot simpler than you would think. Sure as we get older our hormone levels begin to drop as much as 5% by age 30 possibly younger and that shouldn’t be happening. To get the best out of saving money on supplements, pills, injections and those “creams” that some athletes use, work on specific type training. Moving at a clip where it takes a short amount of time to start breathing really hard is a sign that you’re building high levels of hormones which growth is a factor.

 Sprint Training done up to maximum 3x a week is a sure way to get your hormones firing like crazy. Hill Sprints are even better but if you don’t have a hill near by then find a long track or a big stretch of land. Now if you wish to not do sprints there is another option and that’s moving like a Wild Animal. Animal Training gets every muscle group in your body going right off the bat and the more muscles being used the more chances of fat being burnt, muscles are building and your growth hormone will skyrocket faster than a speeding jet. Think of it this way, imitating a wild animal isn’t just building great hormone levels but it also helps you stay young and fit plus its fun to do.

 The greatest athletes are of the Wild Animal Kingdom. They’re strength; power and agility are the most inspired forms of our world. Think of a silverback gorilla doing a one finger pull-up out of the crack of its enclosure or a lynx trending many miles with its incredible endurance and let’s not forget one of the largest cats in the jungle and that’s the Tiger, it’s tendons are insanely strong and can drag its prey weighing well over 500 lbs. Who wouldn’t want that kind of strength? Functional Movement is keen to our development and makes the body function far better than isolating the muscles which can cause injury and destroy joints. Moving like a Animal is the type of fitness that cannot be duplicated by any other method.

 The great benefit of doing this form of conditioning is that it’s more like playing than working out, you are free to move however you want and you get to build muscle without straining yourself so much. The key ingredient is not just physical but mental as well. When you stop using the word “workout” and use “play” your mindset changes completely and believe it or not when you play around with these movements, your results will come faster than expected and you’re having fun in the process. It’s never too late to feel young again and progress at your own pace and play your way up to a challenging animal. Have fun and make it a habit of playing instead of working when it comes to exercise, it’s a whole different feeling.

The Indiana Jones Mindset

The character is the ultimate embodiment of an adventurer. Seeking new civilizations and bringing them to the forefront for all to cherish. He is a man’s man with great intentions to stop those who oppose all that is decent, resourceful and good productivity. We can all learn from quite possibly the greatest explorer in the history of film. What does this have to with training and great workouts? We can symbolize on finding that great quest on finding the greatest exercise or the ultimate workout or even the most productive program. Each workout is never complete without having some kind of adventure.

 We learn all kinds of things and the people that we learn from is just as important as the workouts themselves. There are those that are in it for the glory and never give you the right road to success. Consumed by greed, money and luxury, there are trainers out there that are like that and rather hurt you and take your money then give the valuable info that can help you live longer, get stronger and become a better individual. To me those are people like René Belog (Lost Ark), Mola Ram (Temple Of Doom) & Nazi General Vogel (Last Crusade). They want to destroy what’s awesome about real training and finding the true nature of strength, conditioning and personal health.

 The people that give us the true meaning of strength and fitness show us how we can learn for ourselves and show us the true path to becoming strong, athletic and conditioned for the things we want to do and love to do. Some do have expensive things to help us but they want to teach us, how badly do you want it, do we have what it takes and how far forward do we want to go? Training is all about learning, finding who you are, where do you want to go in life and sometimes there are road blocks…Financial troubles, not finding that magic pill, what you’re doing is right or wrong, we all have had these issues but there are ways to work around them and still give yourself that adventure you’re always craving. The best I’ve learned from taught me how to push myself in ways no one else could, they gave me a sense of hope and they gave me the power to find my own path in what I can accomplish.

 We will never know if there actually is the Holy Grail that is from the bible, the one cup that caught Christ’s blood in the crucifixion and said to have powers of healing. The truth is, we’re all searching for ultimate power of healing or even the fountain of youth. The search is the search of the divine in all of us. I believe from a fitness standpoint that the Holy Grail is finding the right way to train that keeps you young, healthy and vibrant that keeps you pain-free and live a long, happy life. Very few have found that Grail. Jack Lalanne was one of them, George Hackenshmidt, Paul Bragg, Charles Atlas and a few others. It is that one true quest that keeps us going, finding what works and what doesn’t, learning where you will go.

 Like the Temple Of Doom, you are caught in a web of deceiving jackals that want to destroy your very well being and make you believe in something that not only can bring you to the brink of destruction but destroy your own personal beliefs for life and love. In the beginning, you’re crawling through a dark, mysterious and frightening cave, never knowing where you’ll end up. You find deadly creatures that not only look ugly and fierce but can also kill you in the process. You fight off the creatures a bit and each phase of this dark tunnel; more things tend to find you challenging your deepest fears. Sharp and destructive spikes rain down and you have to fight for your life to get out. You eventually walk out but the ultimate challenge is not too far ahead. Your ultimate challenge is fighting off the one thing that you fear the most and that fear is in yourself. This fear at times can take over you like an addictive drug that controls you more then your own well being. In order to destroy it, you must find that fire within you and set that fear ablaze and bring that spark of life back into glory. Those that don’t want you to have that spark or fire within will try to take you down into the depths of hell and make you they’re own little puppet. Never become someone else’s puppet, pull on your own damn strings and use whatever fight you have left.

 When it comes to the Ark, you are looking at one of the most prominent objects in world history. It is an object that in legend if its power is harnessed, you will be invincible. Reality check, no one is invincible but we can learn to harness the power of regeneration. Our bodies heal from certain injuries and therefore can help you be stronger in some cases. The human body is one of the greatest mysteries of all-time. We can learn anatomy, physiology, neurology and whatnot but the whole mystery of how powerful the body is just incredible. Regenerating is a major key in our body’s system and helps us build ourselves back up from some of the fiercest things like disease, aging, injuries and painful mental attributes. Now there are certain things that our body can’t recover from but with the right tools and with great people to learn from, we can harness our own healing powers and prevent certain things that can destroy what we need to keep healthy the most, ourselves. For most of our society today, we have lost touch of what’s important and that’s being healthy and living a long life. Diseases like obesity, lung cancer, heart problems, drinking and osteoporosis have plagued our way of life and we need to get back to what’s important. Being fit is a tough gig but it’s never too late to start working your way up and having the adventure of a lifetime.

 People need this, want that, this works, this doesn’t, we need this type of equipment, this machine blah blah. Why not just shut the hell up and look at what you’re doing. You’re putting more on your table then you need to and you need to see what the big picture is. Look at Indy, does he have a boatload of things to carry around that people tell him what he needs and should have? Hell no. He has a small change of clothes, a satchel, pistol, whip, his body and mind. He doesn’t use the latest gadget or tries to find a local store to get food, he’s in the f*cking jungle. Having less is more then enough. In fitness, you are seeing thousands of exercises, machines beyond the radar and equipment that you can’t possibly store in a small space. The less you have, the more you might gain something. There’s nothing wrong with variety but choose the things that will suit your needs. Find the best things that will give you superior results and give you success in your workouts. For the most part all you need for life if your own bodyweight, if you want variety then go here and see what can work for you. Use what you can and become the strongest and healthiest person you can be. There’s nothing that should be stopping you.

Internal Conditioning

A lot of mainstream gyms today help you build your body from an external point of view as in you see what’s in the mirror and for most that’s the only thing that counts. Some even go on extreme diets and do extreme type workouts that not only can hurt you from the outside but more on the inside. Have you ever thought of what it’s like to feel alive both in and out?

 Building the body from the inside is a key ingredient to your fitness success. The reason why that is it’s because your body is a system of not just bones and tissues but your organs as well. The organs are what are keeping the body alive. You have your heart, liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys and the largest organ of them all, your skin. Too many people neglect training these areas because to them either they take it for granted or don’t realize how important they are.

 Working the body internally is not just taking a few deep breaths no, its loosening the joints to keep them fresh, strengthening the organs to keep your energy floating like a beautiful river stream, it’s opening up the meridians (pressure points) in your body that help you stay energized and vibrant. Deep breathing is essential to any program but when you learn to target certain parts of the body that can help cleanse the body of toxins and breathe new life into your system.

 In Chinese medicine, it’s said that there are 300 pressure points on the body. Now whether there’s more or less I don’t know I’m not a doctor but because of that many you only need a few to help energize and vitalize the body. Did you know that certain pressure points hit spots on the body that hit in places that you never thought they’d hit? There’s a pressure point on the body that’s within your own hands that can help relieve headaches. Didn’t know that did you? There’s even a pressure on the wrist that opens up the heart in a way that vitalizes it and helps blood flow. How about a certain spot just below the navel where it gives you sexual energy like crazy and no it’s not your sexual organs. My personal favorite is a certain spot on the sternum that after I slap it a few times I end up smiling more than a kid on a Christmas day.

 Now do you have to be a hardcore gym rat to practice this type of training? Hell no. Most of the time it’s usually for people who have crossed over to the middle aged range but who says you can’t do it far younger say in your teens, 20’s or 30’s. They say life goes downhill after 40. I don’t believe that for a damn bit. I may be in my 20’s and not that far from 30 and I do this type of program almost every day and for good reason. It wakes my ass up more then a cold shower, gives me more energy that I need throughout the day for both my mind and my body and it puts me in a blissful state that you can’t get from anything else.

 Let me put it this way. You strengthen your organs and joints you get stronger internally and the amount of energy you develop can be used in other forms of training. You have a much higher chance of living longer if you practice a program like this. It’s not that difficult to learn and you can do it anytime, anywhere. You can even do it just before your regular training or do it in the morning before you leave for work, ditch the coffee. Your long-term health is in good hands if you practice it regularly. Build your body from the inside out and get your body on the track to superior health and vitality.

How To Deal With Minor Injuries

Anything can happen in a workout especially when it comes to injuries. You can break a bone, sprain an ankle or you can pull muscles. One little minor injury however happens often in the strongman world and at times its common in gymnastics and that’s tearing of the skin. You get a cut or a bruise and you automatically think your training is done. Well hate to burst your bubble but you can still train while you heal but might need to cut back (no pun intended) a bit.

 I went for a personal record this past St Patrick’s Day weekend and ended up having my skin being torn in two different places in my right hand. Now I’ve dealt with this before and have had big time bruises from bending and tearing stuff and I can assure you it’s no picnic but that doesn’t give me an excuse to stop training all together. Taking a little time off from certain training can do you some good but you should also focus on another realm of training.

 When you get a cut or a bruise from a workout its not a laughing matter if you just left it alone. If you want to heal faster you have to treat the wound and if it’s at a point if it’s too severe then you need to see a doctor. Other than that is sure to treat your injuries with ointments and stop training at a hardcore pace and let yourself heal. Healing is just as important as building muscle and from recovery. I stopped some training because my hand is not in the shape to be in but I don’t stop training. I can train my legs more, do qi gong, practice muscle control without gripping my hand as a fist, all sorts of varieties I can do till my hand is back in the shape I want it to be.

 Switching things around for healing purposes can be a great and rewarding experience. Practicing Internal Training is a healing method of training just as it can be used to train the mind and your whole body. As you begin to heal, you’ll notice that as you get stronger, your mind becomes stronger because you’re learning how to handle different things for different situations. We’re all different and do our best not to get injured but it does happen in the most unexpected ways and no matter what the injury is, we should treat it well so when we get back, we can learn certain lessons on how to prevent that ever happening again.

 Some people take it too far and get injured more often then they should be healing. Now a scratch or a bruise is one thing but certain severe problems can arise and it can haunt you and bite you in the ass. Believe me from personal experience, you don’t want that and never push hard when you’re making a recovery. When you’re healing, take some time out of your training and think into your body, learn to electrify your body and practice building strength from inside the body like the organs and tendons. When I got hurt from bending steel and cut my hands, it was not pretty and it looked like it will be a long time before I get back to doing what I love, but in a two day span of using some ointment and very bandaging along with internal training, I’ve seen major improvements in my hands and now it just feels bruised more then a cut but less painful and the healing process is incredible. Now that may not sound true but let’s face it, I’m a terrible liar. Some people don’t heal as quickly as others which is understandable and it takes longer to get back from certain things but if you learned to harness the power of your mind and practice building your body from the inside, that’s where real strength and healing come from and you’ll be surprised how quickly you can heal from doing these kind of practices.

 Some say that the little things can make a huge difference. I believe that with just about anything. Doing big things all the time can lead to a downfall and you won’t know how to develop little goals of challenges. When I learned about the injury Paul Levesque (WWE Legend Triple H) had with his quad tear back in ’01, he said during an interview that if you want to get back into something, you set little goals for yourself. Small goals can create a monster positive outcome not just as a recovery and getting back to something but it’s the journey that makes all the difference to make one big explosion and you’re back stronger, hungrier and more determined then ever.

 Never believe the training is ever over. It’s just taking a break while you learn and experience the type of training you can take on and conquer so when you get back to regular training, you’ll have a new found respect and appreciation of what you can accomplish. It’s not always about pride or ego; it’s about becoming a stronger individual no matter what the obstacle is. I never want to see any one of you guys out there getting hurt but if it does happen to you, do what you can to get back and learn the best and safest ways to do it.

Healing The Joints For Super Human Health

Was there ever a time in your life when you didn’t have nagging joint pain? Most likely when you were born and as you got older and less active or pushed yourself too much you developed it. I know a thing or 2 about joint pain. Imagine being 19 or 20 years old and waking up some days being so stiff and in pain that every inch you made, some joints will crack in odd places. That was me before I had my major leg injury.

 Joint pain is not good on the body and you’re certainly not healthy from a physical stand point. I’m sure you’ve tried pain killers, morphine, aspirin and inflammatory medication at one point. All those are made to only ease the pain, not cure it and certainly will get you addicted if you keep taking them, now you have all these chemicals in your body that are really not that good for you. There are people that have no choice but to be on meds since the pain is too severe and need it. The majority of you however should work on more exercise and watch what you eat.

 One of the key secrets of building great strength both physically and mentally is to have powerful tendons and ligaments. The reason why that is, is because when your joints are powerful, your muscles will be even stronger. The tendons are what help hold the skeletal structure together. Too many people rely more on muscle building then tendon training and look what happens to them, nagging joint pain, injuries, broken bones and tears that shouldn’t even happen in the first place. Now I realize injuries happen and are common in sports and the work place but if you practiced building your joints, you will be less prone to those common injuries.

 One method of training called Internal Power which means that you build strength from the inside and build strength in the internal organs, bones, ligaments and joints.  Learning to harness the power of your chi (life force) can in fact help you build power in the places you need. In China there are some systems like qi gong, tai chi and various postures you hold that target certain areas of the body that can heal the joints that give you pain. Some stretching programs for example the one you see here, gives you the chance to unlock the unreachable in your flexible and have you become reachable.

 Once you learn to unlock the door to pain-free joints, your body will have a blissful feeling of power, strength and major flexibility that you can use however you want whether it be sports, military and the workplace or just for everyday life. Having a pain-free body means you can play with your kids, take care of your groceries, reach in a high place to get something, run faster, jump higher and have more stamina. All these things can be done if you have good strong joints and if you’re into weights, look out for how much strength you can develop if you kept your joints healthy.

Stretching For Strength

When you think of flexibility, you normally think of limberness, a few stretches and stretching a few muscles but what if you can gain strength while becoming flexibile? How's that possible? There's no such thing as building strength while stretching, or is there?

There are a lot of things wrong with modern flexiblity in the mainstream gyms and even the Yoga classes. But wait, Yoga is suppose to make you limber and lighten your life and body. Truth is the one mistake people forget about stretching is to breathe and use their mind to break through the stiffness. Flexibility is beyond just common stretching. When I think of flexibility I think, loose joints, stretching beyond the muscles and tendons and strengthening the body from every possible angle.

How's it possible to create strength while stretching? Simple really....Use tension in the various exercises like you learn here. Tension creates strength period. However if you also want to move up even a centimeter in your stretches, you have to relax. Isometric Stretches is not moving a muscle but flexing in certain positions and after a few seconds, release and go a little further. Loosening the joints is critical as it opens the body and gives you a sense of bliss as the looser you are the more flexible.

One of the greatest techniques to unlocking your flexibility potential is what's called the Ice Cube Concept. No it doesn't involve actual ice cubes or the Rap legend sorry to disappoint you. What this technique is that you visualize your muscles as if they were a block of ice. each time you stretch, you inhale for a few seconds and when you exhale that ice melts just a little and you go a little further. This is one of the coolest secrets in fitness as to increase your flexibility by a small percentage each time you breathe in and out. You don't want to go all out at anytime whether you're new to stretching or a veteran, be patient, be mindful and think relax, relax.

Strengthening the tendons is a major key not just in flexibility but just as important as strength. The bands and bones holding your body together are more important then the muscle tissue as if to say it's better to pull a muscle then tear a tendon, believe me the pain difference is major between the two. Loosening up the joints are more then just being flexible, you're mobile, you're agile and you are dangerous if your joints are flexible an your tendons are really strong.

When you practice the course that you can get here....You will never look at stretching the same way again. This is the same program that had me go from a stiff 230 lbs weightlifter to a 245 lbs mobile workhorse with powerful tendons and pain-less joints. This can increase your flexibility as fast as 30 days or less. Some will be faster then others but I increased mine within less then a couple days if not the first hour, that's how awesome and powerful this one course is.