Grip Your Way To Power

            You are one powerful human being; we all are in one form or another. We have certain strengths, weaknesses and we find some way to use a talent we posses. A lot of what we do physically contains within our hands. Our hands are the very essence of what we create. Grip Strength is one of the most important foundations a man or woman should posses. Being able to handle groceries, carry your kid, defend your family or if you’re a sports athlete, your hands are the very foundation of your talent; can’t shoot a basketball, throw a football, swing a bat or coordinate a hockey stick without having good solid hands. You can have very powerful hands not just in crushing strength but many other ways.

            One of the best ways to develop superhuman grip strength is increasing the strength in your tendons and ligaments. How many injuries can you count where an athlete or the average person had to wear a brace on their wrist because of a tendon pull or break? A form of training called Partials where you only lift a short distance is one of the most fun and brutal ways to increase your tendon power. Think of lifting a weight you could never imagine hitting at full range; you can almost have twice as much strength to lift at short range. This not only builds dense muscle but take your tendons into the stratosphere.

            In combat/contact sports, you must find a way to take down an opponent whether you’re a football player or even a MMA athlete, your grip can change the very facet of the match and it either make your or break within less than a few seconds. You’re on the defensive line in football and a running back or a receiver has got his hands on the ball, if you have strong hands, you can take him down and squeeze the very life out of him and he’ll think twice of getting in your path. You’re in a fight against a great Mixed Martial Artist or Wrestler, he’s fast, he’s agile and knows how to slip out of holds, but you have some mighty mitts and you end up one way or another getting him in a lock or have a good hold on him for a takedown. You have him in your grasp, you put your heart into this fight and you even put in the time to train your grip to the core, you get a hold on him, he has no choice but to tap out, he can’t fathom how strong and supple your hands are on him. Want strong hands, you’re going to have to build them.

            You are one strong person my friend but it’s important to continue getting stronger. Like lifting weights, use fat gripz for your upper body movements like pulls, presses, curls, cleans, snatches anything that you can put your hands on, even pull-ups, these will make your hands super strong. One type of implement that will take your grip to a new level is sledgehammers, think of the old-time laborers and how powerful their hands were doing hours of taking out rock and stone with a heavy hammer, think of being Thor and tackling the frost giants with thunderous power and superhuman strength. Build your eagle claws by doing exercises on your fingertips like push-ups, pull-ups and even Animal Exercises; think about that, being able to walk in the steps of a big and powerful bear or the super strong gorilla on your fingertips, that will build tendon strength like an extreme few can ever be done.

            How would you feel if you had the grip power to knock home runs, bend steel, tear decks of cards in half and destroy your competition on the gridiron taking down fast runners and receivers and even taking out the quarterback? Your grip will be a major factor whether you realize it or not and the stronger you make your grip, chances are the stronger your entire body will be. Our hands are not just these little bitty muscles and tendons; they are one of the most powerful energy sources in the human body. Create energy in your hands and you’ll see how powerful you can be. Stay hungry my friends and be strong and smart.

The Stronger Your Grip Is, The Stronger You’ll Be

           Why is grip strength so important? It’s essential to our everyday lives and not just for training or getting in a good forearm workout but it has the ability to save a life or help someone in need. A surgeon needs his hands to construct, repair or save another person’s life, a massage therapist needs strong and supple hands, an athlete needs strong hands to throw a ball or tackle someone, even in soccer at one point you need to throw the ball out into the field to get the best advantage of scoring a goal. A parent has to have some strength in their hands to carry groceries, help keep their baby up, play with them and so on. Catch my drift here?

            Your grip is a major key and I’ll get into different types of grip strength in a second but let me point a few things out. In the world of the strongman, your grip cannot be neglected because if you’re going a specific feat of strength, the majority of the time you’re going to be using your hands. You can’t bend steel if your grip isn't up to par, you can have strong wrists but you need to keep a lock on a bar a spike, if you’re Ryan Pitts at Stronger Grip you can’t swing another human being on his human swing set without having a solid grip and if you’re like Dennis Rogers, there’s no way in hell you can lift a fridge with one finger without training your grip. Now the majority of us aren't strongmen or a specific athlete or really big with genetic gifts of strength; most of us don’t realize how important our grip is, to hold onto a child, to carry a gurney to put in the ambulance to take someone to the hospital, to rescue someone from a burning building, to fight in combat as a soldier. The stronger your grip is, the stronger you’ll be.

            There are different types of grip strength; there’s pinch gripping which is having that alligator type snap, crushing strength like from grippers and thick bar lifts or using fat gripz, working the fingers like fingertip push-ups, twisting strength, working the wrists, playing an instrument like playing the piano or guitar hell even the drums, for carpentry you need precision and accuracy in your hands to build and carve things and also lifting something like the blob; there are many ways to develop your grip but focus on the ones that geared toward a specific goal. The more you focus on a particular type of grip strength, certain things fall into place where your whole body becomes apart of the exercise. A lot of people think isolating the lower arm will make them stronger, which is true in certain cases but when you engage your whole body as you focus on the lower arm, bigger things arise like your conditioning, strength in other place, muscles being used that aren't normally used. Think of Arm Wrestling, its not just slamming another guys arm down, it’s a full body effort.

            Mighty hands build mighty things period. A key thing to remember is to focus on the tendons and ligaments when you’re training your grip, this is where it’s most neglected because people mostly focus on the muscles and only do half the work. The more you focus on the tendons the more you realize that’s where your strength falls into place and will prevent you from getting injured. Using different implements like Sledgehammers for example to strengthen the tendons will help you succeed in your life. The most common injuries in sports and the work place are torn tendons/ligaments and carpal tunnel, you can prevent these if you focus on your tendons. Isometrics work very well with this because it gives your body the maximal effort without moving a single muscle. Steve Justa makes this very clear and it keeps things in perspective. Make it a habit to include grip strength in your training and you’ll see how much stronger your body will become just adding a good amount of tendon work. 

Isometric Conditioning

            

              I seriously believe and quite a few others believe this to is that Isometrics really are the ultimate anytime, anywhere fitness program. Why do I believe this? For good reason, you can’t really bring a barbell into a grocery store, you can’t really do jumping jacks in the middle of a movie at a movie theater and you certainly don’t want to be doing aerobics during dinner but you can do Isometrics during all those times and if you’re smart, no one will ever know. In reality, Isometrics give you that power you can’t get anywhere else and its fun to do even with simple exercises.

            When it comes down to it, Isometrics give you that tendon strength, the strength you need the most. Muscle building is great to do but it can only take you so far, tendon strength moves you far forward and the more you do it right, the stronger you’ll be in many areas. Sure it’s tough to find what to work on because Isometrics focus on that positional strength but with the right mindset, you can find a way to get that strength that will give you an edge beyond your competition. In sports, injuries happen all the time but the most common ones are on the tendons and it’s because they’re not trained enough, if they were the less chance you’ll get injured.

            Conditioning in this manner you won’t be able to get from much else because even though it’s different directions, you still won’t have that speed power. We all move in various directions but at times we get stuck in a certain position that is just tough to do, whether it’s from a certain number of push-ups, or that last rep in a Bench Press hell even curling a Dumbbell can be tough but if you worked on that tough position to gain speed wouldn't you want to get it going? Hell yeah you would.

            Isometrics go as far back as ancient Egypt, the golden era of Greece & Rome, Asia and other cultures around the world. One of the great examples of Isometrics was for practicing warfare believe it or not because when soldiers were preparing for battle when at a time when the Bow & Arrow was the most fierce weapon, they’d have men pull a bow they couldn't possibly pull hard enough to shoot so when they used the bows in battle, that pulling speed strength would have the advantage and can shoot faster than their counterparts. Even in Japan where Sumo Wrestling is as old as the culture itself, you’d have these big guys pressed up against pillars pushing and pulling for long periods of time and you wonder why they’re so strong in that position. Isometrics have a long and rich history that it’s almost forgotten today even though there are some things here and there.

              

            To keep the great level of Isometrics going today isn't easy but we can all take part in learning, showing each other different ways to do them and what can we do to prevent the wrong ways of doing them (trust me they’re there) and help others show the way to keep fit, healthy and vibrant throughout their lives at any age. This type of training is a healing form of training and can help rehab old injuries and build stronger bones, tendons and ligaments. You don’t need to exercise for hours on end, most you’ll need really is like 10-20 min. at best and you can spread that out throughout the day without having to do it all at once. Be open minded, learn and practice different styles to find what works for you. If there’s a way to make the world healthier and living a pain-free life, let’s help teach the wonderful and powerful ways of Isometric Conditioning.

Forearm Development

          

             One of the most neglected part of the body is the lower arm. If you trained it well you have developed a powerful grip, strong tendons and your lifts can become much easier to handle. Developing the forearm can be done in many ways but not always what you think. In the magazines you see the wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and that’s just about it. Bodybuilders pump up the muscle to make it look bigger but in the end that’s all it is a pump. In the world of old school physical culture however you can develop the lower arm in ways that make bodybuilders look like little chumps.

            There are a lot of ways to get a strong and developed forearm and some of them have nothing to with isolating the muscle. Want to develop a powerful grip, work your hands in different ways like Fingertip Push-ups, Bending Steel, picking up Odd Objects and moving Partial Lifting. For Bodyweight type training, work your fingers in different exercises like pull-ups, chin-ups, Isometrics pulls and pressing into walls all of these work the lower arm like crazy. Some people like using grippers (and I’m not talking about those dumb little colored ones that has 5 pounds of pressure) which you can close for a number of reps but one of the things I've experimented with is just closing and holding it locked. If you can close the trainer/#1/#2 relatively easily it can get boring just repping it out all the time, instead, close it and see how long you can last, developing that crushing strength in a different way.

            An important look at how the forearm is developed is not always through Muscle Building. Just doing that alone is just a closed minded way to build your body and you can only build so much muscle till you get injured. However, if you work the tendons and ligaments of the hands, wrists and elbows, you’re building strength in a way that makes you more powerful and far stronger in the long run. Arm Wrestling Training really works well for forearm development because you’re building on tendon power as well as muscle. When you train in this manner, work on high repetitions somewhere up to 50 reps per arm per set. The stronger your tendons are, the stronger you will be.

            One last thing to look at for building a super strong lower arm is to use a thick bar, this puts more stress on the lower arm because you have to grip hard enough to hold on to it. Thick bars make you work far harder than a regular bar. Say you’re doing a bench press with a weight that you can do 10 good reps with a regular bar, put in a thick bar with the same weight; your reps will be cut down to about half the amount. Since thick bars are very expensive, there’s another way to make a bar thicker, grab yourself some Fat Gripz. These babies you can take to any gym and put on any normal bar or dumbbell, you can even put them on your in-home pull-up bar whatever you’d like to do to make it a little more challenging.

            With Fat Gripz and the way you train hard, you can build up more natural growth hormone and develop muscle and strength at a more rapid rate because the more of the muscle fibers break down, the more muscle gets developed and because you’re working the body at a different pace and difficulty, your strength grows later on as well. I love building strength in my grip and its fun doing something that’s out of the norm and you develop muscle an strength in a way most will never get. Take your time and remember, even Popeye wasn't born with those big forearms; he had to develop them someway. These are just ideas to give you a sense of how to create your own style of forearm development and help you achieve a level of strength that’s just insane.

Let’s Go Clubbing

            And you thought I was going to tell you to hit the bars, go dancing and have a night on the town. Wrong again. Having fun can be one thing and there’s nothing wrong with going out and having a good time but for right now, health is the focus point here and I’m going to share with you some history, training, ideas and things to try on to get you up to a higher level of strength, flexibility and super power in the joints and muscles.

            The club wasn't originally known as a group of people or a fitness place to go to or even the name of some pampas ass rich people’s venue. This club or series of clubs was the training tool for wrestlers in the middle east for their sport called Kushti, similar in style to our Greco-Roman but still can use the legs for take-downs and such. Each morning a typical coach or Guru would have his athletes get up before dawn, run a couple miles, come back and do warm up drills, wrestle, eat/drink and get back to training until the day was over. In the middle of these sessions, the wrestlers would often swing what’s called the Jori or the Gada/Mace in various weights and proportions. These tools would help the wrestlers learn to move weight in various movements mostly circular.

            When the British colonized in various Middle Eastern countries such as India learned the skills of club swinging and other exercises and took them back to the English colonies in Europe and eventually to the Americas most notably in Northern America and trained with these very same tools for battle during the American Revolution and other wars soon after. It became a hit in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries as you had Physical Culturists from one side of the earth to the next teaching the various movements of the Clubs. Unless you were an advanced athlete, you had to get a weight heavy enough to work but the majority of Clubs used were very light in weight no more than 10-20 pounds and even less than that. The less weighted clubs were used to aid and strengthen flexibility in the arms, shoulders and elbow joints of the upper body giving you that awkward but effective range of motion if you were an athlete or just an average guy looking to be in shape.

            The most famous Wrestler of that era in India was The Great Gama, if you ever read my articles you would know who he is by now. He is considered by many to be the most feared wrestler of his generation, not even the legendary grapplers Frank Gotch & George Hackenshmidt wanted to face this beast of a man. At 5’7 and no more than 270, Gama was at his peak the best conditioned athlete, although his numbers are exaggerated by any stretch he like many other students at that time wrestled, swam, did hundreds of calisthenics such as squats and push-ups and being on a diet that the majority was vegetarian. At times during his 5000 undefeated winning streak, Gama would receive a basket of tropical fruits and vegetables as a championship trophy in his honor as a vegetarian. One of the most famous pictures of the legendary grappler is of him standing with a massive club on his shoulders. This club wasn’t used for training but was considered a Trophy for a big time championship. The club is said to have weighed at 80 lb.

            Club swinging when done properly takes strength training to a whole new level. You can lift as many weights as you want but if you tried to swing a 30 or 40 lb. club you’d getting your ass kicked in the first minute. With lighter clubs however these can help strengthen the joints in your upper body to peak condition. Clubs have been used by top MMA athletes, Football players, baseball players, strongmen, gymnasts, wrestlers, war vets as far back as the Civil War. Some Clubs are made out of natural wood but you can also get them steel made or with very hard rubber. Two guys I can think of that have really cool versions of the Club are Ryan Pitts at Strongergrip.com and Scott Sonnon at Clubbells.tv. Each of them have their own style of swinging and one of them believe it or is used in Yoga to get that extra edge from doing free-handed postures.

            Like with everything else, it takes skill and practice different movements in precise dynamic fashion but they’re a lot of fun to do. I can’t wait to get my own set of clubs that I can play with but for now I’m settling with what is just as fun and even cooler than the clubs and that’s a couple Thor Hammers that I have. The Thor Hammer is just as effective as a regular club for swinging but the extra benefits of hitting it with a tire and the fact that the handle is much thicker than a regular hammer or club makes it that much more effective for grip strength, hand/eye coordination, tendon and joint building and the ability to just hold it for a period makes it a hell of an isometric exercise. Get your hands on your own sets of clubs or hammers and jack up your strength and conditioning faster than ever before. Keep it interesting and have fun, that what it’s all about.

Powerful Muscles & Tendons Through Pull-ups

When we look in the mirror at times we usually see the front like the arms, shoulders, head, neck and torso but we don't always see the back. When you have a powerful looking back it helps make the rest of the upper body look good. Now do we really need to do that for looks? No.

Building muscle in the back is a key component to having great strength and power. The columns all over the back with strong spinal erectors and the latissimus dorsi that makes the upper portion of the back powerful and strong. With pull-ups you can create the ultimate workout with that part of the body but its bot just building the back, its building the upper arms, forearms, your grip and believe it or not the shoulders and abdominals.

Strengthening the tendons goes a long way with pull-ups. Look at the apes in the jungle and how muscular they're backs are for their size. Do they do pull-ups for reps? Hell no but they climb and use every part of the body to make that climb. We can adapt to that by doing pull-ups. Now at first doing them is a bit of stretch especially for a big person (take it from me i'm 240+). So with that in mind we must work on tendon strength not so much muscular strength. Building muscles won't always be enough but when you build up your tendons thats where the real strength comes in.

Most people look at pull-ups at 2 different variations (palms facing away and palms facing towards you) but there are many variations and hand positions. This is where being mindful and learning from different angles creates your own training and being your own personal trainer.

At first doing pull-ups may be out of your reach so start with hanging onto the bar. Learn to hold on and build that grip strength. Move up a bit inch by inch in isometric fashions. Keep that consistant and before you know it you're doing pull-ups. I know this and am an expert on that because i've been there and its not easy especially for a guy my size. With that in mind if you want to become a pull-up master you have to learn from the best. In my opinion its Garin Bader & Cees De Kok. These two strength powerhouses are some of the best at what they do and it not only keeps them healthy but injury-free and they want to show you through Pull-up Workout Strength Training. I have met both these men and trained with one of them personally and I can honestly say they know what they're talking about.

Becoming Tarzan

Can that really happen? I mean come on who the hell wants to be like the ape man? Well it turns out more people then you know. The fitness on this guy is incredible. He can swing through the trees and climb with the best of them and is strong as hell. It’s no secret that Tarzan is the type of athlete some of us wish to be. Have a great physique, profound strength & stamina and the natural functional ability to handle everything thrown at him. To me he’s a mans man.

If we want to try to imitate the conditioning of Tarzan we must first observe his behavior. He learned what he can do by observing the only family he knows and that was the Gorillas of the jungle. He learned how they walked, climbed and swung through the vines of the forest. He learned to understand their strength and power through fierce battles and studied their anatomy. Contrary to popular belief Tarzan was pure genius. He learned how to survive by learning from possible one of the strongest species on the planet.

Now that you have observed what he does its time to put that into play by practicing the movements. Now before I go any further I just want to state that yes Gorillas have different body structures then we do and have a advantage that we can never imitate but it’s not a bad thing to get really strong in the areas that we can work on. Practice how they walk and how they hang on trees (a pull-up bar or a soccer goal would be better suited). Learn to move the best way you can. Focus on the whole body and not just the muscles but the tendons as well. I know you’re probably sick and tired of reading about tendon strength by me but the fact of the matter is if your tendons aren’t strong enough you won’t get very far in your quest to be super strong.

Doing a workout like this alone can be very rewarding in terms of building strength, stamina, flexibility and not to mention muscle building from having HGH levels shoot through the roof. Moving like an ape can be the ultimate jungle workout for you because you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing it and it gets you out in the open air like the Ape Man himself. Is there really a course on this particular type of training? I believe so and its in Ed Baran’s Animal Kingdom Conditioning Courses: Animal Kingdom Conditioning & Animal Kingdom Conditioning 2: Call Of The Wild. These 2 courses alone can create the ultimate jungle workouts and I believe the Ape/Monkey Exercises are well worth the price for both courses. You can still do the other animals but the Ape Exercises are closer to us humans and its time we start getting into shape.

Why not get a course for the kids with Wild Animal FitnessFor Kids? I’m sure you’ll find some ape training in there for your little ones and it won’t look like training but playing and having fun because that’s what real training is about is having fun. Do you need the strength of Tarzan? No, but you can become stronger then the average human and dominate your life by becoming the strongest you can be.

Taking Natural Pain Killers

No not the pills you take when you have a minor/major injury. These pain killers will revitilize your body and recharge your system. Like your car the oil needs to be changed otherwise it will die without notice and thats because if you don't take care of your joints and ligiments your body will die out prematurely.

When you learn to take care of your joints, tendons and ligiments, your body will be more resiliant to injury and your workouts will be much more efficiant.With the right exercises you will find your joints more mobile and flexibile but with the wrong exercises they can make you prone to injury and if you're in pain you are really doing something wrong. Don't waste your time with training that can cause you limitations to your daily life and put the effort into turning your joints into solid steel but fluid in movement.

If you stimulate the body the right way you will heal much quicker and you will start to live much better and pain free. In my case I have to work my joints, tendons and ligiments on a daily basis because of my legs and the way I need to keep them flexible and agile and keep my body charged and powerful. I have had days in my weight training years where I would be so stiff I couldn't get out of bed in the morning and my joints would ache like hell. Once I learned how to keep my body supple and flexible the pain would be gone and I can handle anything I wanted.

The real benefits of supple joints is that as you age and keep a consistant watch on your exercise you can feel like you can take on the world even after your prime or better yet never know if you reached your peak yet. For Strongman Bud Jeffries, keeping your body supple is one of if not his biggest priority for the weights he lifts or the bending and breaking he performs. At 270 pounds he needs to have a strong body all around.

In this course you will find the following ways on how to keep your body recharged and supple......

Cables that are used to help your joints in the ultimate manner.

Can high reps wear out your bones?

15+ Exercises for the low back.

Find around 10 exercises to keep you lower arms in great shape.

Neck Pain????? There are 10 exercises to fix it.

And any more. Take charge of your body and revive the system with Pain Killers.

Pain Killers

Fitness Tools To Spice Up Your Conditioning

If you're a lifter, strongman, body weight enthusiast or starting training you want to have top quality tools to make your conditioning that much better then the next guy. For me every now and then I would throw my sledgehammer around, do some swings, levers or holding at a certain angle to not only strengthen my grip but to get me breathing hard and when you are training hard and breathing hard, growth hormone comes into play and that helps build muscle, jack up your heart rate, building tendon strength from angles certain methods can't touch. If I were to recommend top quality tools for conditioning it be from Ryan Pitts' Stronger Grip.

From maces to clubs to hammers he's got it. I have had the pleasure of using a couple of the clubs and his hammer and I will tell you off hand they are tough as hell. If you're new to them start with a weight that you're comfortable with and can do a significant number of reps and sets. I'm a body weight guy at heart so I don't do very heavy weight when it comes to equipment but when I need that extra edge and hit muscles from angles body weight exercises can't touch then I would hit the clubs or hammer. It doesn't take much to get you breathing fast and when that happens you're burning off fat like a furnace. Check out Ryan's stuff tell him I sent you and get the quality you deserve for the best conditioning you can create for you and get stronger then the average human. Take a look on the right side of the screen and get your butt in gear. In the words of Benarr McFadden "Weakness is a crime, don't be a criminal."

Yoga For Building Muscle Mass

Most people think that Yoga is for people wanting to lose weight, get toned......not for building natural muscle mass. I happen to believe that its a bunch of crap. For men who wanted to build muscle and likes yoga or wants to get into it, the keys are eating the right foods and adding tension to the exercise. Do less reps if you're going to add tension and focus on the mind/muscle connection. Imagine if gravity is pulling you down and you have to put a lot of effort into the movement or holding the posture. For foods focus more on natural foods and less on the junk food. Not saying you need to be on a diet but you still can eat the foods you love just take a bit less off on the junk food, simple as that. When it comes to tension do not go all out and tense up as hard as possible because not only will you burn out easy but you can also injure yourself, use enough tension to move around or hold as long as possible.

Towel Bar Pull-ups

Grip strength is important in many aspects whether through fitness, sports, emergency situations or weightlifting. I have been able to work up to some good strength from bending steel to ripping phonebooks or simple enough to deadlift a 120+ pound dumbbell with a 2 inch thick handle and hold for a 10 sec. isometric hold. I personally believe that if were one were to increase his/her gripping power pull-ups can do just that, they don't just work the back an biceps but grip as well. I have been experienting a variation that I came up with (nothing's new but I havent seen anyone do this). This variation was an inspiration that I got from Mr. Dinosaur Brooks Kubik not from Dinosaur Training but from his bodyweight book. He shows variations of pull-ups that are insane especially for thick bar training. Since I can't afford a thick bar I thought about what I can do to get the same benefits of thick bar training. I decided to try using a towel. Pretty simple, instead of looping over the bar I'd wrap the entire bar around the towel. Take each end and put it over the top, now roll the towel until it reaches its peak. If you have a slippery bar then it'll take a little time but its better then spending a couple hundred bucks. To create resistance just roll enough of the towel to where its comfortable enough to hang. Just hanging alone would be enough for most people. Once you can do a good amount of reps then roll and make the towel thicker. I attempted the thickest and after 4 sets I only managed a total of ten reps (3 pull-ups, 3 chin-ups and 2 sets of 2 mix grip). My forearms are still sore today and Im happy lol. The harder you make an exercise the more chances of muscle and tendon strength are being built. I may not be a weightlifter anymore but can hold my own when it comes to really tough bodyweight exercises. Try them sometime and give me your thoughts on them.

VRT Bodybuilding

Like DVRs (Dynamic Visualized Resistance), VRT consists of movements that are based on visualizing heavy resistance such as weightlifting. Any equipment resembling a barbell, dumbbell, machine ect. is visualized in this particular manner by flexing the muscle and moving through a range of motion. Its a powerful method and creates muscle in shorter time without the stress of the joints, tendons and ligiments. For more on this method and Greg Mangan look below.

www.vrtsystem.com