Showing posts with label Wild. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wild. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Crazy Strength While Walking
When it comes to Mythology, there are many creatures in certain stories like dragons, half man half beasts and many others but when it comes to pure power and strength one of the most legendary creatures the Centaur is famous for. A Centaur basically is a man with a human head to torso with a horse's lower body. When you have that much strength to go with it's not just that it's crazy speed, the tendons of a great animal and if you want to put a little humor to it you can call this guy a real horse's ass. We're going to be looking into The Chiron Program where it teaches how to handle weight while carrying it in different ways.
Now one of the greatest exercises for pure raw strength is the Farmer's Walk, taking an object of each hand (hopefully with equal weight) and walking with it for distance; this could be dumbbells, kettlebells, buckets of sand and/or water putting thick grips on the handles to make it harder and other possible ways. This is truly a man's man exercise. Now imagine pressing the weight overhead and walking that way in different directions, why not clean them and walk that, it's all how you use your imagination. Being able to imagine you're this mythical creature with superhuman qualities and progressing to a great amount of weight, think with great focus. Ever see the strongman competitions that are on ESPN from time to time? These carry weight pretty much with ease, now think what it would be like to lift and carry furniture to help a friend move or being able to save someone's life if they're trapped, bringing that dead weight to your torso and just take off.
Using your imagination is a key to being very successful in your endeavor, if you're too realistic and think nothing of what you only see with your eyes, you can be successful but not in a much bigger manner. When you open up your mind to the world of the possible, picturing yourself with a much stronger body and can handle greater stress, applying it productively in real time with a progressive system that gets you firing your success rate will jump. Work towards building up to bigger weight or whatever you can handle, lift with efficiency so you don't hurt yourself in the process. Imagine being a real Centaur with a powerful upper body and a superhuman lower body with legs that can kill a man with a single kick, a back that can carry a couple people and has vast energy burning within of the wild beast.
Like the story of Atlas, you literally and figuratively have the weight resting on your shoulders and body. It's not easy holding up vast weight and having to carry it but it can make you crazy strong and fast. Imagine having a weight vest on and walking a mile or less with it that's around 100 lbs. more than your bodyweight, take it off after you're done and you're practically floating as you walk and doing it with speed. It is important to train and let it be useful for nearly any situation, a powerful body that can help others and not just to pose like a pretty boy. Being a beast is not always how big or bad you are, it's the strength you possess both inside and outside and using it to the best of your abilities to help one another. The weight may rest literally on you but you have the power to move and not just carry it but push and pull with great power. You can be a smaller guy and have incredible strength, it's all about how you're willing to carry the weight from a mental stand point and letting it carry over to the physical side, hint Mind/Muscle Connection.
Have a great Wednesday guys, be awesome and carry your weight with power and might.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
The Ultimate Beast
As a species we've been striving for strength since the dawn
of time. The early evolution of man was to hunt, run, swim, climb and didn't
have a choice to be strong, you either were or you died that simple. As we
became civilized, we've lost touch of our roots of what is strength and
life-long health and power not just in physical form but emotionally,
spiritually and mentally. Most ancient man of strength was either in slavery,
farm work, blacksmith, sporting man or soldier and no more than that. There was
a time when kings were great warriors and their physical strength was
incredible, nowadays most don’t value the strength they've developed or don’t
realize the true strength within them.
A key
ingredient to successful physical stature of strength and fitness is to evolve
backwards and it’s one key way to become naturally superhuman. Today with all
these gadgets and machines, “aerobics” classes and other things, we are nearly
fading in the shadow of our ancestors and forgotten more about strength and
health than any other time period. If you value your body, give it strength;
give it a reason to be resilient to disease and learn to control what you put
into it. A great form of exercise is to move like a wild animal. Build your
body that can become three times stronger than the average person. Imagine
powerful tendons, a mighty back, arms with powerful functional muscle,
abs that can take a punch, legs that have full of energy and build your
hormones to levels that couldn't be fathom before and all with great strength,
tremendous balance, graceful agility and devouring power. Think about that.
You’d want
to spend as much time outside as possible. If you live in an area where weather
conditions aren't so great aka Idaho
where weather is almost like Sybil and still has all four seasons, you learn to
adapt. In the summer and spring when it’s warm and beautiful go outside and
live around nature, be adventurous and play, in the winter, keep warm and train
as much as you can. There’s no excuse to not train everyday of the week even if
you only have 5 min. do something. The wild is our gym, you can lift odd objects, if you go to the gym; do some basic lifting (presses, squats, pulls)
and leave the bunny weights alone. You live in an area that has snow, shovel it
out of the way, that’s a great workout, got a tire and a hammer, strike it down
and become more powerful than you can possibly imagine (if you don’t get that
reference I feel sorry for you). You live in the city, adapt to your environment
and walk to certain places. There’s always something you can do to make the
best of your training. Live out in the country, chop wood, who said a gym is
the only place to train.
We all have
an animal within us. In Mortal Kombat: Annihilation despite its horrible acting
and overdoing the characters, there was a distinct message in there. Within us
is our own what’s called Animality. Animality is the spirit within us that has
a distinct animal. No one has the same form of animal and it makes us unique.
We move a certain way and our Animality is what we strive to be even if we
don’t know it. When you do physical animal movements, there will be at least
one animal you will do more frequently, you may not know or you may come to
grips with it but whatever animal comes up and you end up having more fun, more
results and you do it more often because your mind is fixated on it that is
more likely the animal spirit within, your Animality.
Kids are
the real inspiration for our future but nowadays that’s fading away due to
obesity, the way kids are taught in school, bullying, depression and not enough
love and encouragement to help them strive to be their best. One of my friends
Bud Jeffries has a son named Noah, this kid has had obstacles in his life that most
wouldn't dare to fight back but yet at nearly 17 he’s one of the strongest
teenagers, very intelligent, is one of the sharpest shooters in the world and
learned how to develop his mind in ways most can never understand. He is one
inspirational kid and had great parents to get him through life. You don’t have
many kids like that today and it’s sad.
Kids should
be encouraged, loved, showing them how they can be great at what they love to
do. Help them find what they’re best at and have it be a positive influence.
Get them to exercise like an animal, let them play, have fun create friends and
share stories with them. I’m not a parent so I don’t have the luxury or the
tools to tell you how to treat your kid and don’t need to but I've been around
kids my whole life and observed from a lot of families including my own. Show
them what a great life they can have, how they can change the world for the
better and give them something to hope for, encourage them, and give them
something that brings them joy.
It’s time
to unleash the best within us and become strong in every possible way whether
it’s fitness, business, sports, teaching and/or entertaining, we all strive to
be strong in our own way, let it bring out the best in all of us because it’s
more freighting to feel locked up than to be free.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Born To Be Wild
Ever since I was little I loved that song. It was one of my
first rock songs at a very early age. Rock in the late 60’s was a cultural
change in the system throughout the Vietnam War and people wanted to be able to
live and be free from the political crap Nixon was throwing and having the
country behave like civilized people (yeah sure the hippies loved that and the
Black Panthers). Songs like this gave you a reason to be alive and because of
it, it became timeless.
We were
born as a race of beings to be strong and fit, conquer our own destiny and live
the world the way we choose to. Over the last few decades, that’s become a
daydream as people today because of the obesity “epidemic” just throw
themselves away, eating terribly, partying like it’s the end of 1999 and just
take advantage of the things that are giving to them. It doesn't matter if
you’re black, white, yellow, brown, green or blue you are still a human being
and there’s still a chance to become healthy again.
One of the
keys to becoming super strong and fit as a fiddle is the ability to open your
mind. Have a mindset that you can live forever and feel as if you’re
invincible. Now I’m not saying you should test this theory with stupid ideals
but when I say feeling invincible, I mean in the sense where you learn to
channel your energy. Reality is we can’t live forever like Conner or Duncan
McLeod of the Clan McLeod but we can learn to live a lot longer than we are
told to be. Hell I don’t care what anyone says I want to be 100 and still
walking and talking and moving as best as I can without being in pain as much
as possible. Most people who get older feel like it’s going down from there and
just living the life of an older person and this starts right around 40-50.
What a load of crock.
To be
strong and fit, it takes guts to go out and do something. Want to lift weights
at 85, why not? You’re in your 60’s and retired, why not have fun and embrace
what you have and do something that will get you over those dumb plateaus. Love
what you have achieved in your life but never be satisfied of what you can do
more of. I’m nearly 30 years old, some say that I’m still young and vibrant;
others say it’s the trend of going downhill and even there are others who just
have nothing better to do than be bitter than turning a certain decade starting
at 30, for me I haven’t nearly peaked yet and I still have a lot more to
achieve that I haven’t begun to touch yet so bring it on.
Being wild isn't about getting drunk with your buddies or doing stupid shit that you’ll
regret later on sooner or later but it’s about adventure, going to different
places, finding new people to meet, taking a chance on finding that spark in
your life and living it to the fullest that is positive and wholesome to you.
Embrace it and live with great vitality and vigor, move freely and believe that
there’s more to life than dwelling on past failures, things that you hate and
the people you don’t need in your life. Everything happens for a reason and
however you choose to do it is your choice. Find something that you love and
make it work for you because when we finally reach that time of death, how do
you want to go out?
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Build A Connection Outside
Training out in the open has a special feeling to it, out in
the open air, building that connection to the earth and gaining a perspective
of what it was like to do things from a long time ago. It’s fun to go run,
jump, play and do all kinds of things with the right imagination and having a
bit of that inner child in you.
Unlike a
closed in space of a gym, you have total freedom out in the open, go running on
the grass or on a field at a park, move around like an animal out in the wild
and give your body that Vitamin D it needs to help the skin. Being free gives
you opportunities you can’t get from other places. Imagine being at a park,
running around, having a good time, do a few exercises here and there or if
you’re like my good friend Bud Jeffries, try to find some heavy ass stones to
lift.
The ability
to go anywhere and do all sorts of things is our birthright, exploring, trying
different things, being in beautiful places and making the best of it. Training
outside is more natural, getting out in the sun or maybe even in the snow a
bit. Being in the snow builds a level of toughness and you burn more calories I
believe in the snow because your body is like an automatic heater, it has to
keep warm and your body’s nervous system kicks into a different gear. In the
sun like in the summer, your body’s cooling system is shifted and you have to
hydrate more.
The best
time I believe to train outside is in the morning, the air is fresher and the
connection is better between you and the earth. When it comes to weather
however I prefer the summertime when the sun’s out, its warm, bringing
something to drink to keep you hydrated and just have a grand old time, if you
live by the ocean or a lake, go jump in and go swimming, got a pool, use it and
have fun. The snow can be fun too but you might not last as long and you want
to wear what you can to keep you warm but being in the snow has it’s benefits.
In the snow it builds a different type of mental toughness and it builds
character in a certain way, sometimes you have to walk somewhere and it’s less
than 20 degrees out, that’s just insane and I wouldn't do it in shorts trust
me.
Get your
ass outside as much as you can, there’s a whole world to see and you can train
in ways you never have before, it’s like being a kid again and you’re playing
on the playground. Have fun, be adventurous and explore. You never know what
you’ll find.
Monday, April 8, 2013
What Is My Fascination With Tarzan????
Ever since I was little watching guys like Arnold, Stallone,
Ford, Van Damme, Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and others, I always wondered
what a picture perfect athlete would be like. Yes I even got a kick out of Brendan
Fraser in George Of The Jungle being a Tarzan wanna-be. As I got older and
transitioned from a weightlifter to a bodyweight guy I loved the way certain
athletes moved through the air like a gymnast or an acrobat in the circus and
how they’re built not like a bodybuilder but like a real and graceful athlete.
In reality (contradiction I know) Tarzan to me is the picture perfect athlete.
The beauty
of Tarzan’s development is that he is forced to adapt to his environment in the
jungle, swinging, climbing, moving in awkward positions and being free out in
the open. There have been a lot of Tarzans in films over the years from Johnny
Weissmuller to George Scott to even the original Highlander Christopher
Lambert. To train is to think and very rarely you see that today in your
commercial gyms and health spas because too many people just go through the
motions, hop on the treadmill reading a book or watching TV, even blasting
their ipods while lifting weights not even paying attention at times to what they're doing.
When it
comes down to it, they say the lion is the king of the jungle but I believe
when it comes to sheer power, size, forced to adapt and having the most
powerful grip strength pound for pound are the primates like Apes and Monkeys.
You won't see a lion swing through trees jumping from place to place, he'll run, chase and wrestle you to the floor but an Ape can crush your bones just by
squeezing them and have tendon strength that most animals don't have. The
Wrestlers of the Jungle are the Gorillas and Chimps, the acrobats are the
Gibbons and smaller primates. They move with power yet with grace at the same
time. Yes they're structure is a little different but yet we can adapt to what
can work for us.
Training shouldn't be a hassle or something you need to punish yourself with but what it
can be is an adventure. Think about it, being out in the open, having fun,
putting yourself in different situations with practical application and having
the time of your life. If you can't get outside due to bad weather or there’s
trouble out or whatever, you can still have fun inside and maybe not move so
much like a wild animal but adapt to what you have and the space you have to do
what you can. Karl Gotch once said “adapt and improvise” this meant that you
can do things anywhere at anytime but yet improvise with what you have to make
use of what you can do. Be open to ideas and have some fun.
As some of
you know, one of my favorite styles of training is moving like an animal in the
jungle, stalking its prey, jumping and speeding up on an object, using my
imagination to make things more exciting. As of late I've been trying different
things and one of them is a system called MovNat which is using only your body
and the environment to create different situations which are used in crawling,
jumping, running, lifting, climbing and carrying different things to build your
body from adaptation. Erwan Le Corre is the founder of this type of training
and is one of the fittest guys in the world today. It’s pretty interesting
considering some of the things he does is almost a spitting image of Tarzan.
Check out some of his Youtube stuff. It gives you a different perspective to how
you move and put yourself in different ways to adapt and improvise in a
practical and safe way.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Animalize Your Exercise
What do a tiger, a gorilla, a spider and a kangaroo all have
in common? Every one of them is super S-T-R-O-N-G. Do you see a gym anywhere in
the wild, no and so how do these animals stay fit and powerful? Simple answer
because they have to be for survival and to take down what their food is for
the next few days. They scratch, claw, climb, maneuver and have super strong
tendons to boot. If there’s anything we should imitate it’s the strength of a
wild animal.
Am I saying weights aren't worth it, of course not they have
their place but unless you have a truck, I highly doubt you’ll be able to
travel with heavy equipment. Animal training is the type of fitness that can be
done just about anywhere at any time. To get the best out your training, start
where you’re at even if it’s taking little steps, you learn to progress. Once
something becomes easier, challenge it at that level. People talk about doing
30 minutes of cardio and an hour of weights 3x a week and maybe throw in some
of that aerobics crap that has god awful club music in the background.
Want to know how many hours a week I train for the things I
do, it’s not 10 hours, not 6, def not 4, it’s less than 2 hours and this goes
on all week long. Training with this type of duration gives you rest, plenty of
time to recover and still be able to do things you love to do, isn't it fun to
gain than the average person?
Kids today have it worse than when I was a kid. Back in the
90’s, there were issues like heart disease and such but obesity wasn't at a
high level of concern, once I left high school, that’s when the obesity
generation blossomed, it’s not on adults anymore, more and more children and
teenagers develop bad habits. When I graduated high school almost a decade ago,
Ipods barely were getting off the ground, ipads didn't exist, Myspace was the
top social network and texting wasn't that big yet, today these kids have way
too many privileges and don’t have the right sense of earning those privileges.
One of my biggest concerns for these kids is the way they
socialize, half the time they’re texting friends but when their sitting next to
them, they get bullied on Facebook and deal with pressures of having the newest
cool gadget while trying to look cool for their peers. Damn sad if you ask me.
Teaching the kids how to exercise not for punishment but for fun and learning
how to push yourself productively and safely.
One of my mentors Matt Furey let his song Frank watch Winnie
The Pooh but Frank had to earn that privilege so Matt tells him “Do your
exercises first, pick ones you want to do an how many reps and when you’re done
you can watch your movie.” Frank was hesitant at first but he did it and was
proud of himself and was so excited to finally put on the movie. That to me is
wicked cool because you’re not punishing your kid or forcing him to do it but
if he/she wants something bad enough, sometimes they’ll have to earn it but encourage
them to choose what they can do. It teaches how to accomplish something, it
sets boundaries, rules and structure without making it look like you’re in
hell.
A child is already fit when it’s born, it’s very flexible
and is learning on it’s own to strengthen themselves. As we get older, we lose
sight of how we can stay fit and healthy; you start eating too much junk food,
not enough exercise, no play time and rarely socialize anything with a pulse. Teaching
the Way Of The Animal at a young age can set the tone for what they can
develop, better brain power, strengthen muscles, define motor skills,
productive competition, learning a sense of accomplishment, bring up self-esteem
if you’re depressed, more relaxed if you’re hyper and create a better physical,
emotional and spiritual state.
Another component of training like a wild is something we've all striven to find, freedom. You’re out in the open and free to move and have
fun while building your body to its natural state of muscular development and
breathing deeply for a higher form of super endorphins. There are many ways to
train like an animal, you can play tag, roll a dye, treat them as cartoons,
train for 5 minutes or 1 hour it’s up to you that are true freedom. A key to
freedom is to not analyze the workout hell don’t call it a workout call it
going out and play, pick the way you want to do it and run with it, don’t worry
how bad you are or if the other guy is better, just have fun and imagine
yourself in the wild.
One of the beauties of being human is that we have a certain
set of hormones. Men have Testosterone, Women have Estrogen and we learn how to
balance these hormones for optimal results. As we get older, our hormones begin
to go down by as much 5% a year by age 30, I still think its 25 but I could be
wrong. In order to keep a balanced hormone levels we train according to our
levels some people train hard and fast, others train mostly with for form and
endurance but the principles still applies and because of Animal Training, it
helps build those hormones we need to keep looking naturally young, have a
spring in their step, live with confidence and happiness and if you’re looking
to keep that spark with your significant other, it’s not a bad idea to train
like an animal and fool around like an animal.
A lot of people look at exercise as a punishment or
something they feel they have to or just don’t do it all. This type of thinking
is why people hate to exercise and feel they won’t get results. Instead of
thinking this way, shift gears a little just a little. Start with what you can
do, instead of going through the motions like a robot, think as if you were
that animal, you’re either running from a predator or catching your prey,
picture as if you’re a gorilla defending your community, an ibex climbing the
highest of mountains with ease, feeling graceful like a heron and one of my
favorites a Mandrill just looking it was carved from granite with powerful
washboard abs and the strength to break a man’s wrist if you grabbed it.
Imagination is a beautiful thing to practice and using it with animalized training makes it that much more fun and exciting.
Last but not least about the great benefits of moving like
an animal is that it’s very simple, just imitate as if you saw a wild animal at
the zoo or on TV. Granted there are moves far beyond our limits but the ones we
can use can give us strength that the average human can’t fathom. Never need to over analyze how you should move and which arm or leg goes where and if you can
only move either straight or sideways, just do go with it, you’re learning to
use muscles you normally don’t know that are there. Simple is better period.
Give it a chance. Train with kids if you have them because whether they know it
or not they crave structure and want to learn how to be better people and this
can help that in ways that I can never explain. Have fun, be yourself and get
your ass happy because nothing is more sacred than being happy.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Kids & Exercise
When you’re a baby, everything is new to you and you explore all sorts of things. Babies are the most observant at this stage of life. As things progress, you begin to crawl, stand, take a few steps than before you know it, you’re off and running. As we get older, we lose sight of being observant and wanting to explore and new things.
Getting older is something we can’t control but we can also grow younger by using the right mindset. Taking a lesson from Peter Pan who never grew up (Unless you saw the movie Hook), he gave us the chance to see what it’s like to have fun and smile with the best of intentions also fighting for what we believe in. My best friend’s dad is the ultimate grown up kid in my opinion and although he lives a responsible life helping his wife and having raised 4 kids, he still treats everyday as if it were a kick ass day (most of the time).
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