An Update and For Those of You Who Pray

Greetings!

We’ve been delayed sending this message to you a few days. This has been our first chance to sit down and put some messages together. Last Thursday my father had a stroke. He has been in the hospital ever since and is doing well considering all of the situation. I’d like to ask that those of you who pray please add him to your prayer and the rest of my family as well as we move through this situation that we would be able to be a blessing to those around us.

He seems to be recovering fairly well considering the short time since this happened. He’s being moved out of the intensive care unit today. Thank you all ahead of time for your prayers.

Friendship is one of the greatest commodities that we have and is quickly being eroded in our society. It’s always amazing to me when something like this happens to see the friends come out of the woodwork to visit. Thank God for them and thank God for His blessing through difficult times.

We’ll be updating you on this and many other things in the next few days as our regular emails will continue. Look for a big announcement from us regarding a new website and new DVDs very soon.

Also, my sister just released her first book, “Winds of Hope.” It’s a 31-Day devotional book which came out of her experience in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina last year. Those of you looking for encouragement can find her book here:

Winds Of Hope

In situations like these I’m always glad to have a strong faith first and then be physically strong second. Faith is your proverbial right arm. Life is extremely difficult without it. The stronger and better shape you’re in the more physical help you can be to other people and the more you resist stress. You don’t think about that need for strength until you really, really need it.

As always visit us at http://strongerman.com/storefront.html


God bless you all richly,

Bud Jeffries

Instant Seasoning

INSTANT IN SEASON AND OUT OF SEASON

Greetings friends!

Life is busy, very busy. A quick note today. The pastor of our church is sick today (those of you who believe, please pray), and through a series of minor happenings I found out at about 4 o’clock that I might need to pinch hit for him at tonight’s service. Putting aside the ridiculousness that most people fear public speaking more than death, those who wouldn’t rather commit suicide than stand up in front of people might be freaking out about having to do it on short notice. Well I think that as an adult you should be working toward losing any fear or lack of ability of handling things on short notice. That includes your physical, spiritual and mental life.

Now it might be different if you asked me to preach a seven day, two service a day revival with 10 minutes notice, but little challenges come up every day in every area of your life and it shouldn’t take us a week’s prep to be able to handle those things. Number one, life moves too fast for that. Number two think of all the opportunities you miss by stepping away from a challenge, because you need more prep time.

Is your physical training leading you to be able to jump in at a moment’s notice? One of the most profound things anyone in strength ever said to me was a guy named Mickey Strickland and was one of the first guys I ever lifted weights with. We were discussing suits, wraps and bench shirts and the state of preparation needed to perform a competitive powerlift. He kind of laughed and said, “You know I train for my life. If something heavy falls on my wife or kid I don’t want to have to run in the house and spend 20 minutes to put on knee wraps, suit and a belt to pick it up off of them.” I was young at the time, but the realization of the truth of that statement hit me like a ton of bricks. If your training isn’t increasing your ability to live your life as well as use your physical strengths and pursue whatever other goals you might have then something is wrong.

The same is true for your mental and spiritual life. It’s not enough to say you have a positive or unconquerable attitude, you have to actually put it into practice on a regular basis. It’s not enough to know a little about what you believe spiritually or your job or whatever other mental challenge you might face. If you’re not learning it inside out and developing confidence in your ability to express yourself in those areas something is wrong.

So how do you solve this? Practice. The more prepped you are in any area the better you’ll perform at jumping in at the last minute. That includes prayer and knowledge on your spiritual beliefs, confidence and a clear well organized mind and physical traits of useable strength and endurance. Guess what? You can build a lot of those traits all at the same time with your physical strength. Confidence and clarity are built through hard physical training. The greater your confidence, the greater your ability to apply yourself mentally and physically. Are you heading in the right direction prepping to meet the challenges of your life?

Ten Things I Would Have Done Differently (6-10)

Greetings Friends,

A bit over a week ago we sent out an email in which I talked about the great start I got in heavy physical training. How I was blessed to start the way I did, but that the wisdom of years has taught me that there are things I could have done better. Things that would have given me a faster start and a leg up on the road to super-strength.

Here are the other five things I would have done differnetly:

6. Started combination or “Twisted” training from the beginning. The combination of single rep training and high rep training together has been one of the most productive things I have ever done. In my study since the beginning I have found in one way or another everybody who is super-strong does some form of this training. I would have wasted less time on cycling reps and spent more time training different exercises in consistently low, medium and high reps.

7. Really heavy upper-back work. Very few people I think really do this even today with the exception of a few of your bigger lifters and strongmen. We pound our legs with low rep squats, lower back with low rep deadlifts and upper body with low rep presses and then we finish it with for some reason, high rep pulldowns and other moderately effective exercises instead of the big bang-for-your-back upper back moves. For some reason we’re afraid to treat rows like any other major compound upper body movement. But my upper body strength, musculature and appliable strength took a huge jump when I started to train brutally heavy rows just like any other big movement. Low reps and with as much weight as I could handle.

8. Power rack and partial training. When I started this training no one thought it had any validity. It was an old way of doing things that even the hardcore training people thought they were “more advanced than.” The phenomenal muscular and strength gains I achieved fromt hat kind of training prove that it’s not out of date or ineffective. I think the benefit you get from that training especially in the joint strength, bone density and body loading is indispensible for that kind of strength gains.

9. Stayed away from supportive gear. At the time I began lifting weights it was with competitive powerlifters. The supportive gear they were using at the time is nothing like the hydraulic suits of today. And they only used it for short periods of time in a training year. So it’s really neither here nor there. I don’t think it did me any benefit in long-term training. The real thing I should have been doing is staying out of a weightlifting belt for everything except the heaviest sets giving my abdominals and back a chance to strengthen in the same proportion as my hips and thighs. I think you should use a belt for your heaviest lifts, but only those lifts. Stay out of it as much as possible to create the greatest strength benefits.

10. Odd object and strongman training. Even though this was only 18 years ago, as far as strongman training was concerned it might as well have been the dark ages. You think odd object lifting is an underground theme now?? At that time it was barely even a historical anecdote or a glimmer of evil in most insane people’s eyes. So consequently I was already weightlifting strong when I started picking up rocks and kegs and anything else that wasn’t bolted down. But… my ability to apply my strength to any area of life and sport as well as my general level of strength took massive jumps when I began this outlaw form of training. How much stronger would I have been if I had started it from day one? Not bragging, but I was tough enough to play college football. Had I had four years of the kind of training that I do now at the time that I went to college, I would have been lethal. It makes THAT much difference.

Examine your training to see if you’ve done these ten things that we’ve talked about. If all of these things aren’t in your training then you’re missing out. If you’re training someone new and you’re not teaching them these things they are getting a short education in strength. If these ten facets aren’t there you’re only a whisper of the strength that you could possess. If you want to learn more about how then you should visit us at http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Ten Things I Would Have Done Differently (1-5)

I was really blessed to come into the training world the way I did. Fell in almost immediately with an experienced and knowledgeable set of competitive powerlifters. Although they may have been a bit wayward and I was certainly at an impressionable and tender age, I learned a lot of the smartest things you can do right of the bat. So I had little or no backtracking to break bad habits and wasted little or no time in not getting muscle and strength gains, because they taught me the immediately important things like heavy lifting, good form, progression, important exercises, etc. But as you learn more in the strength training world, you can look back and see things that you should have done that would have been even more helpful. Things that if I could create the perfect training scenario would have been included from day one instead of learned along the way.

Here are 10 things I would have started from day one and 10 things you ought to have in your workouts right now. If you don’t then fix it and get started.

1. Intense grip training. It is immeasurable how important this is in the real world. You can build all the strength in the world, but without a great grip you can’t apply it.

2. Intense conditioning focusing on intervals and both muscular and aerobic endurance. My heavy training would have been much more productive and I would have recovered much better had I focused on being in shape from day one.

3. Serious heavy abdominal work. The abdominals are like the grip. You can have all the strength in the other big muscles, but you won’t be able to use it unless your abdominals can stand the pressure. My lifts and appliable power would have been much stronger with abdominal work.

4. Joint strengthening exercises especially for the shoulders. Heavy partials, windmills, one-arm lifting would have gone a long way to keeping myself injury-free while playing football and other sports.

5. Making a habit of the above four points. I think when you begin training and learn a specific style, after a while it becomes difficult to really change or consistently change because you’ve built a habit. The earlier and more consistently you can work the above four points as a habit of your training, the greater your long-term ability and progress will be.


Tomorrow we’ll do five more.

Save yourself the time trouble and hassle and start these things right now if you don’t already do them. They’ll go a long way to keeping you functioning at a high level and turning your performance up.

Unusual Use of Classic Technique 3

Greetings! Hope you all had a blessed weekend. We certainly did. My son made a profession of faith and decided to be baptized. Nothing greater could have happened. Hope you all experience that for yourself and for your loved ones. No matter what else is going on our hope is always in Jesus Christ.

Here are just a couple more ways to use the interesting pre-exhausting techniques we discussed last week. Excellent programs to use short-term to help round out all the bases of your training.


HIGH REP PRE-EXHAUSTION

If you ask me how to build the most muscle and power I would tell you you need to do heavy exercise. I would also tell you the best way to do those exercises is to do a general body warm up and then a short specific warm up to the exercise that does not wear you out or burn you up before you get to your heaviest sets. However if you ask me about the totality of training I would tell you that at some point you need to be doing a combination of high, medium and low reps and in multiple exercise orders to ensure that you have a superior type of strength. Not just short term high level strength, but high level strength you can display after a large volume of work or in any conditioning or sports situation or at basically any time you choose. High rep pre-exhaustion is one of the ways you can train this.

I’ll give you two examples of how I’ve used it. My normal squat workout would be five sets of one rep. Afterward I would do some type of leg exercise for higher reps. However I have occasionally done the high reps first and built up over a short period of time to be able to get close to my normal maxes after high rep exhaustion. The first way is to do one to two sets of high rep barbell squats, 20-50 reps and then complete my normal 5 x 1 workout.

The second is do an extremely high rep bodyweight squat workout, 300-500 reps and then complete my normal 5 x 1 barbell squat workout. I’ve also used this alternately for other exercises. For instance 100 total reps of one arm dumbbell pressing with a moderate weight and then 3 x 1 up to a heavy single for the day. 300 push ups then 5 x 1 heavy bench presses (I no longer advise that workout. It’s tremendous body conditioning, but I believe that you put your pectorals at serious risk for injury because of the mechanics of the bench press when they’re already seriously pre-fatigued. However you get the point of the training), barbell row 100 reps then 4 x 1 heavy one-arm dumbbell rows.

When you get back to using your normal weights after the conditioning of the high reps, you know you’re in good shape and your strength has plenty of staying power.

Abdominal pre-exhaustion. The big lifts pay the big dividends. Squats, deadlifts, etc. They do so because they work the most muscle. Meaning every part of your body has to get strong and be strong to successfully complete big lifts. Your abdominals are of paramount importance for this. That means most of the time it’s not smart to exhaust your abdominals and then do a heavy full-body exercise. You need your abdominals to be just as strong as your legs and back if you’re going to successfully exercise the big muscles. But what if for a short time you pre-exhaust your abdominals with heavy work and then force them to overload with heavy partial or full-range whole body exercises? Your abdominals will very quickly become much stronger than they were. Stronger abs is the big key to success in almost every athletic discipline.

Speed/agility pre-exhaustion. Generally speaking, speed is something that is best to work on while you’re fresh. Whether you’re talking about running speed or hand speed, lifting speed, etc. However, in most athletic situations you need to be fast not just at the beginning of a contest, but all the way to the end. And I believe that speed can be trained with pre-exhaustion. Think of it this way. If you spend half your time doing a normal speed-first workout and for example you run a 40 yard dash in 4.9 seconds doing all the things necessary for working on foot speed (running technique, fast starts, flexibility, strength, etc.), then begin doing a pre-exhaustion workout where you train strength and endurance first and then finish with speed training. When you begin that workout let’s say that you run a 6.0 forty, but over the course of a month you adapt and your ability becomes better and you can now complete that workout and run a 5.1 forty. I think that with a short period of adaptation you would come out with an ultimately faster fresh 40 yard dash as well as the ability to hold your speed for longer under more adverse conditions. The same could be said for physical agility as well as for general body speed which would be applicable to martial arts.

So there you have it friends. Lots of different ways to spice up your training, different ways to throw in a little essence and yell, “BAM!” (Little Emeril joke). But serious food for thought on a productive technique and the completeness of your training. That’s what we’re striving for. We don’t want to just give you one card to play. We want you to hold all the cards and hold them at the beginning and the end of the match. That is the way to athletic greatness. Serious training in every aspect and balancing them so that you achieve them all. We’re leading the way in that realm and telling you the absolute truth about how to get it.

If you haven’t picked up the Twisted Conditioning series or Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts then stop punishing yourself. Take advantage of the training that will take you to unbelievable strength and endurance. Get them here: http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Also remember that you can get them in eBook format and be looking at them just moments later absorbing the information that will put you over the top.

Unusual Use of Classic Technique 2

Yesterday we started talking about pre-exhaustion in the classic bodybuilder sense. It’s a great trick for muscle and strength, but let’s talk about using it in a more real-world applicable functional ability. I think that pre-exhaustion workouts are great because they toughen you up. They strengthen your mind muscle connection, help increase the size and strength of muscles, lots of great benefits. However what if you’re satisfied that you’re already a big enough behemoth. What if it doesn’t matter to you if you get any bigger or smaller as long as you can walk into a herd of water buffalos and immediately disperse them with one sharp look? What if your life-long dream has been to have the Conan-esque ability to knock out any wayward camel that chooses to disrespect you?

Well let’s talk about using this technique to further your abilities. As a general rule, it is smart to start most of your strength based workouts working from the big exercises down. You are most likely to put the greatest concentration into them, have the greatest energy and performance by doing the big, really important exercises first. But there are several ways you can take advantage of the pre-exhaustion technique to drive a particular muscle group or physical ability to a higher level.

Let’s talk about some of those now. Conditioning pre-exhaustion. Most workouts follow the strength first, conditioning later rule which is smart to do most of the time. But what if you reverse the order and pre-exhaust with a conditioning workout first. At first your strength will take a hit, because your body isn’t used to the stress. But you’ll quickly adapt and be able to handle respectable poundages even after conditioning. Lots of benefits here. Pushes your conditioning to a higher level because you force yourself to do high level strength work immediately after. Over a period of time it will force your pure strength to go up, because once you’ve come back to handling most of the weight you can, while you’re fresh after your conditioning, you have gotten stronger not just more efficient. When you revert back to the regular style of training you’ll see new gains in strength.

Grip pre-exhaustion. Most everybody trains their grip at the end of a workout. Again, smart to do most of the time, because if your grip is blown out your other exercises will probably suffer. But what if for a short period of time you did your grip workout first? Then adapted over the course of a few weeks to being able to handle the regular loads and exercises you use after your heavy hand work. Don’t you think your grip will have become markedly stronger if you can do the same pulls and presses after the specialized grip work? Then slip back to your regular order and see the new PRs in your pulls and presses.

This brings another question. Why do you include presses in that workout? Because many times, especially in an overhead movement the wrist may be the weak link in the chain. You can have all the power in the shoulder and triceps that you want, but if you can’t apply that pressure because your wrist can’t hold the weight, then you’ll never maximize what you can lift. A great way to get a PR on pressing movements is to train your wrists.

Use some serious nail bending, club or hammer levering, or Dennis Roger’s “Lever wrist curls” for a few weeks. Hit a PR on them and then test how strong your presses feel.

Tomorrow, we’ll go over more facets of how to use this pre-exhaustion to jump to new gains in strength, endurance and unbelievable physical ability.

Unusual Use of Classic Technique

Now we all know I’m not a bodybuilder at least not in the modern sense. I espouse almost all the facets of old-time physical culture and I like the idea of having large, thoroughly developed functional muscles, but the looking pretty and standing around in pink underwear ain’t happening. However I think you can learn from a lot of different places and you ought to be able to recognize a smart technique even if it isn’t being used by the smartest group to ever come down the pike. So today we’ll take a small page out of an old bodybuilder technique.

PRE-EXHAUSTION

Those of you who are newer might not be completely familiar with what that is. I’ll put it in a nutshell for you. It’s the idea of using an exercise that particularly targets one muscle to fatigue that specific muscle and then applying a larger more compound or muscle group-based exercise to push the “exhausted muscle,” into further development by training it harder than usual. “Huh??”

Okay, let me make it a little more clear. A classic bodybuilder pre-exhaustion set up might be to do dumbbell flies immediately before bench presses. What this does is take an exercise that targets the chest muscles specifically, but doesn’t really tax the other connected muscles of the upper body. Then you take the compound exercise, the bench press and take advantage of the fact that your shoulders, triceps and other accessory muscles that drive the bench press are still fresh, but the chest muscles are already fatigued. So you then force them to work harder than usual in the basic exercise and use the fresh muscles to push the chest muscle to new levels of stress therefore development. By the way, a question we often get is, “How do I build a bigger chest?” or “I’m bench pressing, but my pecks aren’t developing. How do I fix that?” This is an excellent way. It’s simple, doesn’t require a whole lot of time and can reap big benefits for strength and development of the chest.

This was a popular technique in the 60’s and 70’s with the high-intensity crowd. They developed entire routines that took advantage of pre-exhaustion and were very successful with building big, strong muscles with it. In my formative years I experimented with and got good gains out of this type of training. Another side benefit is that it’s tough and it helps make you tough. You can come up with your own combinations, but you can basically work any muscle in a pre-exhausted manner. The classic way to apply this is to do a super set. Meaning you do the first “pre-exhaustion” exercise and then immediately with no rest go to the next exercise. I believe there are however several ways to apply a variation of this technique to work on building higher level function of the muscles and working on different pathways of strength and development.

For today I’m going to just give you couple of pairings for working specific muscles in case you’re interested in being ridiculously massive. I also found that the first time you do this technique your strength takes quite a hit. But after you work it for a couple of weeks you get a massive jump in what you can handle In your second compound exercise and then when you resume regular training you get a corresponding jump into new maxes for your regular big movements. It’s also a great way to develop a feel for exactly which muscles are working at what points in a particular lift.

The better this feel is and the better you can activate the muscles through a particular lift the higher your max will be. (Read Bryce Lane’s new article on our site for more in-depth thought on how to activate a muscle in a particular lift. Great article!)

Here are the pairings:

Biceps (barbell curl/ bent over row)
Triceps (tricep extensions/overhead presses)
Chest (dumbbell fly/dips)
Upper back (pull overs/chins or rows)
Quads (leg extensions/squats)
Ham strings (leg curls/stiff leg or single leg deadlifts)
Low back (back extensions/deadlifts)
Traps (shrugs/cleans)
Shoulders (lateral raises/presses)
Forearms (wrist curls/regular curls)

As you can see this is a basic bodybuilder pairing with exercises that I generally don’t use because they are machine based. You can however do basically all of them without machines if you’re creative or willing to work on alternative methods to doing these exercises. Now that you have a basic grasp on how this works, tomorrow we’ll look at ways to twist it into really intense training that works on different levels of conditioning and more functional movements. Things like pre-exhausting your grip, your abdominals, your strength, your conditioning, a weak link in the chain, and high-rep pre-exhaustion. Ya know… the fun stuff.

A Testimonial

Here’s a sample of some the testimonials we’re received with people raving about Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts. If you haven’t gotten your copy, don’t wait!


“Bud—

When I was first getting involved in "full-contact" fighting, as it was known in
the 1970's, I would have a tremendous edge back then if your book was available.
I have been studying "Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts" and have
found it full of relevant insights and training strategies.
Your broad base of experience shows itself well in this book.
The scope and content is excellent, and it is well-written, too.
Thanks for putting it together!

GOD bless,

Frank
CrossFit Gulf Coast”


This is just one of the many testimonials we’ve received by people who are overwhelmed by our “Super Strength & Conditioning for Martial Arts,” training manual.

This one is sent from Frank DiMeo who just opened a new CrossFit facility in Florida. This cat has been training a long time and knows his stuff! Lots of martial arts and training experience. In fact most of the testimonials we’ve gotten are coming from guys who’ve been training a long time and all saying the same thing, “I wish I’d had this when I started.”

Well don’t wait anymore and don’t miss out on your chance to kick more butt than ever before.

Here it is: http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

Four New Articles

We finally got some new articles up after a few technical delays. There are four new articles that you’ll find links for below.

Two incredibly powerful articles from Mike Bruce. The second in his “So You Wanna Be A Fighter?” series and another tremendous article entitled, “Training Maximum Poundages for Mixed Martial Arts.” Both help to blow the myth that martial artists only need light, high-rep work out of the water. If you want the real deal on getting fighting strong from someone who has been there you’d better not miss these articles.

A new article from Bryce Lane, “Myo-Feedback,” who is fast becoming one of the top thinking-man’s strength writers and is one of only a couple of people I know who has tremendous ability to make high-level concepts useable in a practical way. Bryce also has written a couple of physical culture courses that you should have. These are unique courses in that they’re like a dagger. Short, to the point, absolutely effective and can cut both ways. Meaning that they have deep implications and carry Bryce’s unique twists to the subject that they cover. You can get them at http://home.comcast.net/~joandbryce/

Finally a new article from me that helps shed some light on why the principles of Twisted Conditioning work so well and why they’re used by men and strength cultures all over the world. Even though I was one of the first people to encapsulate these principles in a workable form, I didn’t invent the principles. They are used worldwide by the strongest men, because they are what works to give you strength beyond normal and unfailing endurance.

http://strongerman.com/articles

Arrogance, Learning & The Internet

In this newsletter I spoke the other day of how, because of the massive information exchange on the internet, you would think we would have hit an enlightened age in regards to training and how unfortunately that just ain’t the case. It’s amazing to me the level of arrogance displayed by some of the people floating around making noise on the internet.

The internet attracts and promotes that kind of arrogance and mouthiness, because of its lack of personal contact. Which means you can either be totally anonymous and say anything you want without even having to back it up because no one really knows who you are or if you are brave enough to tell who you are you can insult and disrespect people at will, because chances are you are 500 to 1,000 miles away from anyone who might take you to task on what you say.

That is probably one of the biggest reasons that most of the big dog writers or trainers only communicate with people via their own email lists or personal forums on their own websites. (And the fact that most of them are extremely busy people who just don’t have the time and have grown up past petty squabbling). But I’ll let you in on a little secret. No matter how much bravado is spouted about expertise about the people we consider the field leaders of strength training, everyone of them I have met, which actually is quite a large number, is to a man humble enough to learn.

Because everybody needs to make a living, basically everybody says that their training information is the greatest thing since sliced bread. However, most of them also collect each other’s training material, because they understand that no matter how much you know, and how much you learn, you can always learn more. You can always get better at your craft. I suspect this is the same with all the other areas of personal endeavor. Artists learn from other artists, scientists, business leaders, ministers, writers, they all learn from each other, because becoming great at something means you always learn more about what you do.

Don’t let yourself be sucked in to time wasting arguments on the internet. They never solve anything. They do nothing but waste time and they promote a weak and ineffectual manhood. My friend Pavel Tsatsouline says that in the company of real men problems like this are self-resolving. Meaning that real men don’t waste time like children bickering over candy and don’t insult each other face to face without action. Only cowards hide behind anonymity.

Another friend of mine said it’s amazing how many people are such incredible experts at tearing down people whose gym bag they aren’t strong enough to carry. I’ll give you an example or two of this. I recently saw someone say that, “Hossein Rezazadeh has sloppy technique.” If you don’t know who he is, let me fill you in. Rezazadeh is the dominant super-heavy Olympic lifter on the planet at this moment. He clean and jerks within a pea-snap (technical term) of 600lbs. Now I’m not promoting or defending him one way or the other, because of the possible drug use involved (I don’t know the man personally and I’m not looking to cast aspersions on anyone, but it’s because of the league he’s playing in that I say “possible drug use”, that’s not the point). The point is the guy who was arrogant enough to say that literally can’t do half of what Rezazadeh is doing and has the gall or idiocy or combination thereof to say his technique is sloppy.

Let me tell you something folks… you don’t get to the level that gentleman is lifting at without years of intensely scrutinized technical practice. Especially because his particular sport is very technique driven. Even if for some reason to an outsider his technique does not look like what an orthodox lift should it IS the perfect technique for him. If you have any level of deep understanding about strength you understand that individuality dictates technique. Statements like that are akin to saying Einstein was an amateur scientist or Bill Gates don’t know squat about computers or the Pope don’t know how to pick out a big hat, or Billy Graham really needs some preaching lessons.

Amazing that someone could actually come up with that! I’m not saying that you should blindly accept anything that anyone is saying or doing. I’m saying that the best people in the world in every field still learn from each other even after they’ve achieved the level of “expert.” Don’t you think you should be doing that too? And as a side point I’m saying don’t let the negative idiocy of the internet get around you and don’t waste your time with it. Be confident, but humble enough to learn and real men have respect. Choose the company of real men.

What's Your Excuse

Every now and then I think we all need a little kick in the butt or a heavy dose of inspiration. The following could be either or both depending on how you look at it. You see I think that quite often we get bogged down in the minutia of life. Distracted by a lot of little details or even by events, occurrences, situations, soap operas, the neighbors dog, work, kids, the in-laws, whether or not the grass conforms to the Neighborhood Association’s approved length, etc. We lose focus. We spread our energy out to so many different things that we forget about actually getting the job done on the things that we want. We end up making excuses for why we didn’t achieve our goals. But are there really any valid excuses?

Now I’m not talking about a man who devotes a great majority of his time to his family and other worthy pursuits and prioritizes things in his life understanding that some personal goals may have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the ones that you love. That is part of being a man. But I’m talking about the reality of accomplishing your training or other life goals. So many times we allow unimportant things to be the barrier to achieving our goals. So I think the inspiration or kick in the butt comes from watching someone who has overcome tremendous hardship or odds to achieve greatness. It is both inspiring and humbling to learn about someone who has dealt with harder circumstances or worked with less and achieved more than you, because they are examples of focused determination to succeed in something. Not letting distraction or obstacles be in their way. I would venture to say that many of the greatest achievements in life have come from people who started with unbelievable deficits, much more than the average person has to deal with, but worked harder and wanted it more and ended up with the life and achievement that they really desire.

Let me give you just a couple of examples. Some of this I have mentioned before, but it always bears repeating. Many of the greatest strongmen started with tremendous physical disadvantages. Paul Anderson overcame serious kidney disease and significant injury from car accidents to become one of the strongest men to have ever lived. They Mighty Atom overcame abject poverty and prediction of death multiple times from doctors to become one of the greatest strongmen ever. Dennis Rogers and Pat Povilaitis both had severe scoliosis, but are now the top two performers at their strength specialties. I should have died three times and spent months in a body cast and had to learn to walk again as a child. These are just a few of the examples from the strength world, but it goes deeper than this. To every part of your life, not just training. Training many times is just a metaphor for someone willing to put the work in to overcome any obstacle.

I’ll give you three quick examples that are the reasons that I actually wrote this email. I have a friend who has just recently gone through a difficult divorce. Something that’s one of those things that many times is a significant obstacle. But he’s put his life back together and is now stronger than ever at his training. A lot of people deal with issues like this and it’s not as dramatic as some of the other examples, but it still bears witness to the overcoming spirit you need. Not everyone can relate to being completely physically disabled, but most people can relate to having serious personal issues that you still need to work though to succeed in business, life, training and anything else you want.

I read recently about a personal trainer who was born with cerebral palsy which caused significant loss of function to one side of his body. However he began to learn and study physical training. He actually worked hard and long enough to be able to build himself up to the level of being able to compete in a strongman contest. The man essentially had one arm that had no function, but he forced it to work over and over again until he brought his total body strength up enough to be able to flip tires and do all of the other events that the rest of us find so hard. Think about that the next time you worry about how bad the suffering is from your workout or your questioning why you can’t do something better. Stop questioning and start working.

Finally I met a gentleman the other night at a concert. He’s a member of a blue grass band that I took my son to see. This gentleman was born with only 47% of his hearing. You can tell by listening to his speech how significant the hearing deficit is. To know which song is next when the band plays he has to read the lips of the band leader, yet he can play ANY stringed instrument as well as piano, saxophone, and probably several others I don’t even know about. And he doesn’t just play… he’s gooood! Think about the difficulty it must take to play an instrument when you can barely hear it and the determination it has to have taken to have learned all of that and successfully play in a world where what you can hear is paramount.

Most of us never deal with a deficit like any of these. The biggest problem most of us have is not having the focus and follow through to get the job done. We’ve got most if not all of the tools we just have too many excuses. What’s your excuse for not getting what you want in every area of your life? Does it really hold water? Probably not.

Kick yourself in the butt and find inspiration in these things and get going!


A big obstacle to achieving your training goals is having the knowledge of how to get the job done. You provide the work and we’ll provide you with the knowledge. You want to know how to get seriously incredibly strong and build other worldly endurance? Then you need to pick up Twisted Conditioning I and II. The most straight forward and complete work on building incredible physical ability available. Find them here at http://strongerman.com/twisted.html and http://strongerman.com/twisted2.html

Training Myths

You would think we lived in an age of strength enlightenment especially with the prevalence of the internet there’s probably 1,000 times more information available today on every type of physical training than there has ever been. That however has not brought us to a higher plane of training existence. In fact in some ways it has served to propagate myths and keep them alive longer than they should have been. So I thought we would start with a common training myth and over the course of a few newsletters work through a few more so we can do our part to help keep the water clear so-to-speak.

Here’s one that annoys me. The Athletic Stance Squat. It’s long and loudly talked about in the training world… “If you’ll just hold the position this way and squat this particular way your quads will suddenly burst the seams of your pants, you’ll turn green, you’ll be at least a foot taller, your IQ will jump at least 20 points and you’ll be exempt from income tax.”

All hogwash. When you squat all the muscles of your legs activate. The harder and heavier you squat the more development you’ll get and the more you’ll learn to activate all the muscles of the legs and whole body together. Individual builds will require slight differences in their stance and will demonstrate themselves in the way the squat looks. Some people will lean more, some will be more upright, some will use a wider or closer stance, heeled or flat shoes. Some people will be able to deeper than others because of the build of their thigh to torso ratio and the stance they choose to use. There is no magic stance. Squatting one way or the other will not make you more athletic regardless of how many times you’ve heard that said, it doesn’t make it anymore true. The best stance for you to squat in is the one that causes you the least discomfort and allows you to lift the most weight. For most people this will be a bit wider than shoulder width. So are most athletic movements.

There are only a few absolute truisms of the squat. Don’t purposely shove your knees forward. Keep your chest up. Go at least to parallel. Find the stance that gives you the greatest leverage and spreads the load to as many muscles as possible. Lift heavier and the muscles will grow. Get stronger and watch as you get magically more athletic from the hard work and progression. You want bigger quads? Squat more and you’ll get ‘em along with bigger more powerful hamstrings, hip, back, abs, arms, shoulders, lungs, heart and probably even earlobes. No one who has put in the effort and force the progression to a respectable weight has failed to get huge muscular gains. This is a long term process. You can add muscle and strength quickly, but you don’t add 100 pounds in six weeks. You can over the course of a few years become nearly mythological to the average fitness buff simply by forcing continual progression on a handful of exercises. No one will see the years of effort when they see you in the gym, they’ll think you just magically appeared one day, sent down from Olympus, Valhalla, or Cleveland… whichever fits your personal taste.

They’ll miss the simplicity of why you’ve become a superman, but you’ll know. Maybe even one day you’ll find a budding superman in training who actually has the ability to listen, learn and apply the secret of strength and you can pass it on. You can tell them stories like, “This one time… at Squat camp…” He won’t get it at first, but after a couple of years, he’ll know.

Sticking with squats and putting in the effort is the secret to them. There’s no magic stance that will suddenly make you into Hercules and conversely there’s no stance that will doom you into weakness and being crippled. Recklessness and the way you treat yourself with the exercise may do that. Over the course of your career you’ll experiment and probably should experiment with different styles and stances of squat, but you better have one that’s your old faithful, always come back to, measuring stick of progress. Switching around every 10 minutes because someone says so, without a consistent form that you practice all of the time is a sure way to spin your wheels.

I have a friend who says, “You see that groove at the bottom of your traps and the rear of your delts? God put that groove there to hold a squat bar.” When you’ve become intimate with doing squats for a long period of time and you know exactly how and where that bar should sit and feel you’ll understand the multiple levels of that statement.

Until then… find your groove, find your stance and position, be sure to keep the wandering fitness bunnies off your squat rack, for Heaven’s sake if you see someone do curls out of it disembowel him immediately and keep getting bigger and stronger.

By the way if you want to learn more about squats… we just happen to have a squat book and DVD set. If you want to really figure out how to get super-human strong and control your muscular destiny, this is one of the books you need to have. Check it out here at: http://strongerman.com/how900.html

Can You Be Stirred

The strength training world is ultimately an attempt to look for or become a “tough guy.” It is however unfortunate that most of the training done really isn’t tough. Also much of the attitude employed by mainstream training has nothing to do with building toughness. However if you’re reading this newsletter you’ve probably moved to the dark side of the training world. Your passion for strength has driven you into some maniacal workouts. You think Darth Vader wears a little too much pastel. But being tough is not about whether you train or don’t. It’s about staying the course regardless of what it is. Standing up for others who can’t. Having the courage to suffer to accomplish your goals, because make no mistake about it, if you intend to be the physically best you can be some of the training you do is going to be downright unpleasant.

Seeking pain isn’t the point of either training or being tough. It’s just a natural product of the environment of hard training. Productivity is what we should be seeking. In all this quest for being tough guys, much of the time I think we miss the point, and it can be overwhelming to the rest of your life. A passage in the bible says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?” In our discussion, what does it profit a man to be the biggest, strongest hombre he can be if he acts as if there is iron in his brain as well? Or if he is so caught up in the tough guy act in the rest of his life that he can’t be stirred to powerful emotion because he’s just too cool or too surrounded by the pursuit of toughness in his own life that he can’t be tender when the time calls for it. Rough and tough is great, but there are times when you just can’t be that way.

In my opinion it’s more toughness and more strength to allow yourself to be tender with the ones you love than it is to act like the Terminator all of the time. You should be stirred by a powerful song, buy the look in your child’s eyes, by love for your family. There’s no reason not to be both. A crunchy outer shell with a soft-gooey inside…. Wait that’s an M&M commercial, sorry.

A man with a breadth of intellectual knowledge and the depth of emotional feeling, intense passion for life and love, an unshakeable spiritual faith and an external physical ability to rival a tank. The fact is, most of the truly “tough” guys I know all fit into these categories. Because in the long term you are driven by your emotional connection to life and training. Emotional content builds success and strength in life. Pour that emotion into your training and make yourself incredibly physically tough, but be the man you need to be in the rest of your areas of life as well.

Do you want to know how to get the physically toughest you can be? Pick up Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts. Add the knowledge in that book to passion for physical excellence and you’ll be shocked at the incredible gains in strength and endurance you’ll achieve. Be part of the new era of strength.

http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

A Workout To Try

Here’s an interesting workout I did the other day and something you might want to try. It combines both conditioning and heavy work, because let’s face it that’s what we’re all after. Conditioned strength. This one borrows some of the rep schemes that Cross Fit likes to use and then uses it as a pre-exhaustion to heavy lifting.

In the beginning workouts like this might take away from what you can lift, because your body needs to build the ability to handle the workload and still be strong at the end, but after you get used to it, you’ll find that you’re stronger when you go back to a regular workout set up.

So here it is:

Bent over row, push up, kettlebell swing, bodyweight squat, tuck jump for three circuits of 21, 15 and 9 reps. Try to compete the conditioning part in 10 minutes. Then you get a five minute rest and perform four sets of one rep each of squats, rows and one arm presses. If you prefer different heavy exercises it doesn’t really matter if you want to use partial squats or deadlifts, any other press or pull. The point is to make yourself breath hard and then start the heavy work. You should get the heavy work down in 15 total minutes.

When you get into good condition or you get used to a workout like this, you’ll find that your strength can be maintained because you’ve already worked your endurance and that is the point. Many of the programs miss today that you should have both over the top strength and the ability to maintain it in an endurance environment. The only way to get that is to work it. That means heavy lifting, overloading exercises, intense endurance work that involves both muscular and aerobic work and rotating the order of your workouts so that your body becomes accustomed to maintaining its strength regardless of your environment.

A Tougher Walk

The other day we introduced the walking squat to add variety and conditioning to your routine. Today I’d like to add a little tougher variation of a walking conditioning movement. Actually “a little tougher,” might be the wrong expression. Cruel and unusual punishment may be more appropriate.

Walking Animal Pushups. Again simple to perform yet devastatingly brutal. Pick your favorite animal conditioning movement. I.e., bear crawl, lizard walk, tiger, gorilla… aardvark …. Okay I made the last one up. Now as you begin to perform it, you simply take one full step forward (whatever a step in your particular animal movement constitutes) and then perform a push up. Just a few sets of these would probably be enough as most animal movements are pretty brutal on their own. I would pick five different movements and do say a set of 20 to 25 of each movement. Whatever the particular position that you make your body assume in imitating that particular animal is the position you do the push up in. That way you get muscular strength and endurance from a lot of different angles as well as sky high cardio and total body involvement. You could combine this with the walking squat as we already suggested and double your fun.

Adding a walking element can make any conditioning exercise tougher and more productive. For instance the walking kettlebell swing, walking dumbbell deadlifts, walking sandbag presses, etc. Mix and match and make your own. You can keep progression by reps or by covering a certain distance. These exercises are a little different take on this concept, but if you want to learn more about distance conditioning and how to get into incredible, butt whoopin’ shape, then take a look at the “Going the Distance” section of Super Strength and Endurance for Martial Arts. http://www.strongerman.com/martial_arts.com

A Quick Conditioning Tip

Here’s a quick exercise to do that I included in my workout the other night. It’s simple to perform and will help you to quickly add variety to your conditioning routine as well as give your legs a whole new pump and your lungs a nice little workout.

The Walking Squat

Extremely simple. You can do it with bodyweight or a light kettlebell, dumbbell, barbell or any other light object. You simply perform one squat and take one step forward. Every time you take a step you perform the squat. It’s amazing how doing something as little as taking a step can add to the cardiovascular demand of an exercise as well as changing the pace and feel of a movement. I did 150 of these the other night and even though that’s not too many, my legs were surprisingly sore and I had to breathe surprisingly hard. The step really adds to the lung demands and the altered pace gives you a totally different pump in your legs. Just a quick way to add some fast variety and interest to your conditioning, because THAT gentlemen is the key to doing it longterm. Make it fun, make it interesting, make it hard work, make you sweat and breathe, strengthen your lungs and shoot you muscular endurance through the roof.

The Beginning Ain't the Whole Story

Every year we celebrate lots of beginnings. Birthdays, anniversaries, Independence Day, even Christmas is about a beginning. But all of these things are just the start of the story, not the entire thing. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but let’s not forget the other important points. His life, death for our sins, and resurrection for our salvation. No matter where you are in life, this is the important part of the story. Even though we’ve already finished that celebration we should always be remembering to live in the Truth of the rest of the story all year.

What’s the rest of YOUR story? It doesn’t matter where you began, or where you are. You can control where you go. Now we don’t control everything in the universe, but we control a lot of our own lives. Whether or not you began in a great way or in a humble way, the great thing in life is that you get most of the reigns to decide where the rest of story goes. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can certainly effect the future. What are you doing about it? How are you writing your own story? Don’t let the beginning be all that you concentrate on.

There’s a ton of controversy in the physical training world about how to best achieve any particular goal be it strength, health, endurance, etc. I don’t know everything… well most things… Ha-ha… but I do know this: If you aren’t actively working towards something that you want, you aint likely to get it. If you want strength, but you aren’t actively lifting heavy guess what? It aint comin’. Nobody is going to FedEx it to you like you won the lottery. If you want endurance, training for everything but that and hoping that it will somehow show up on its own won’t get you there. This applies throughout life. If you want to get smarter you’d better be reading. You want to make more money? You’d better have a plan and be executing it. You want to be happier? You’d better pray and you’d better treat people with kindness.

When you think of the story of your life, think of everything you want in it. Then ACT as if it’s there. The action of living as if you’ve achieved and with the confidence that you will, places you in the mindset that you can get it done. Set your mind as if you’re already there and follow it up with actions, real work to achieve your goals. This is a new year. Take a fresh hold on the direction of your life and write the rest of the story.

Happy New Year - A Blessed Beginning

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. A joyful Christmas and rang in the New Year with lots of family, friends and joy for the special time that it is. Everybody thinks about new beginnings this time of year, it’s only natural. In fact all the newsletters that I get, everyone has already talked about making your new year’s resolutions and keeping your new year’s resolutions and everything that goes along with it. I too think this is a great time of year for assessing your progress and making new goals. For taking a look at your life and seeing what you’d like to change.

I’m not going to give you the same deal that everyone else has already said about resolutions, etc. Frankly most people’s resolutions fail. Not because they don’t have great intentions and not because it’s not a great thing to set new goals. For most people they fail because they don’t truly understand what they want. It’s easy to say you want to live better, act better, eat better, get leaner, stop smoking, stop kicking the dog, get stronger, whatever the case may be. But most of the time we’re actually pretty happy with the way we are. Generally it takes something nearly catastrophic to motivate us to really get it together. Why? Because much of the things we make resolutions about are simply esoteric. They don’t deal with our immediate or long term survival, or the root of our happiness. You can get as fit and pretty as you want to be, but if you’re not happy with yourself to begin with, you’ll just be an unhappy fit person.

The same counts for money, job, relationships, whatever. If you really want to know what your resolutions should be, then you’ve got to know yourself. Now I don’t mean this as an excuse to say, “Well I really know myself and I won’t follow an exercise plan or diet or business plan or take out the garbage on a regular basis.” I’m not trying to give you an excuse to have bad self discipline. I’m saying that whether you accomplish a difficult life goal or not has to do with emotional investment. When the going gets rough about achieving that goal, just thinking that it would be a nice thing to have won’t get you through. Most of the things we think we want are actually just something we think would be nice to have. Not something that we truly, passionately care about. Everyone who is successful long term at anything has significant passion about what they do. It may come from some crazy place inside of them, but they are emotionally committed to their endeavor.

That is the difference between ten extra pounds on the bar or an extra rep on every set or 100 pounds on a lift in a year. It’s the difference in whether or not you keep going at the end of a workout when the pain is almost unbearable and keep coming back, hammering at that goal until you get it done. It’s the difference in whether you keep going or working at anything regardless of set backs, hard times, criticisms, idiots and any other obstacle that chooses to present itself. It’s the difference in living a conscious life where your actions are focused and those who know you know that you care because they’re overwhelmed by your passion. It’s how much of yourself you invest in what you do. When you think about what you want, these are the things you should be considering.

Don’t look for or expect the easy way on anything. Expect and embrace the hard way. Now I’m not asking you to look for obstacles for fun, I’m telling you that regardless of all the sales pitches around the world for fitness, business, making money, being happy, whatever the case may be… nothing lasting comes without serious work. But there is tremendous joy, deeper than anyone who simply coasts through life will ever feel, in the achieving of a deeply held goal that you’ve invested your whole being in. I hope for this year that you recognize and understand your own passions. That you live life filled with them. That you resolve to know yourself, to know God and to stand atop the mountains of your personal goal as the victor. I hope that we can help you do that.

We have lots of surprises in store this year to help you get there. One of the best things you can do to boost your training is to pick up one of our books. By the way, the eBook version of our newest training manual, “Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts” is available for immediate download at http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

Merry Christmas

We will be resuming our daily emails a day or two after Christmas to continue to bring you top notch information and motivation. However, I’m not going to send emails and you don’t need to be reading them on Christmas Day. Let’s all remember that that’s a time reserved for family and for remembering the real reason behind the season, the birth of Jesus Christ.

We hope that you all have an extremely blessed Christmas. We thank you so much for being a part of our newsletter and being our customers. We hope that you are touched by the joy of the season and can also be a blessing to those around you.

As you read the Christmas Story or eat Christmas dinner, let’s all remember to say a prayer of thanks to our Father for the greatest Gift. Let’s remember to tell our family that we love them and remember those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

We’d also like to send out a special Christmas wish and hope that we all remember those serving in our Armed Forces and away from their families this Christmas. May God give you a special blessing, peace and safety and bring you home soon.

REMEMBER THE TITANS

I know many of you have probably seen the movie by this name. It’s a great movie. You should see it, but that ain’t what I’m talking about today. Today I’m talking about the factors that the men we consider “Titans” had in common and that we can use and apply in our own lives.

There are two ways to greatness and most people who get there apply some form of both. The first is to study what those whom you consider great at whatever you want to be great at did and then learn and apply from them. The second is to blaze your own trail. Possibly building on the knowledge you’ve gained by those who came before you, but having the courage and confidence to take a completely unique approach or direction to surpass them.

When you think about people who are great at their chosen profession or work, you almost always see this in action. When you study the history of these people you almost always see this demonstrated. Men like Rockefellar, Carnegie, JP Morgan, Vanderbilt in the business world demonstrate this just like the ancient conquerors Ghengis Khan, Alexander, and Napoleon. It’s not just areas of politics and money it’s a way of getting there in every part of life. Almost all of these men demonstrated relentless study of their chosen endeavor and then the application of relentless energy in achieving their goals. They also all lead their field so to speak not only with personal magnetism, but with being on the cutting edge of new application or new ways of doing what they wanted done.

What is it you want to do? Whatever it is how is your knowledge in that field? If you don’t fully understand something you’ll never get great at it. You also won’t have the tools to be a leader or innovator. Knowledge is the key to success. Knowledge is the key to breaking new ground which is the key to greatness. Energy and decisive action in applying that knowledge are the tools for building your own empire.

Let me also say here that there’s one downfall that all these men and much of the people who achieve greatness held in common. They were willing to do it at any cost. To achieve greatness regardless of who got hurt or by what means they had to do it. I believe we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. In the lifting world many people say, “Well I’ll take drugs, but history will remember me as great anyway.” This is just one practical example of how this plays out in modern life. Refuse to let this be in you. Refuse to believe that you need to do something that stomps on others or cheats or uses some other underhanded action to get what you want. If you gain and apply knowledge, energy and decisive action you can get there without having to stab anyone else or yourself in the back.

THE BEST WAY TO UNTIE A KNOT

There is a legend about Alexander The Great. In his day it was said that whomever could untie the Gordian Knot could conquer and rule Asia. The Gordian Knot was just that. A giant knot of twisted up ropes that had no visible beginning and end. It would have been impossible to untie. So as Alexander marched on the rest of the world to achieve his goal of conquering it, he eventually came to the knot. His solution showed two of the things absolutely necessary for your own greatest success. Instead of wasting time trying to figure out an endless maze with no real solution he simply drew his sword and cut the knot in half.

What can we learn here? First if you really want to get anything done, stop wasting time and get to the heart of the matter. A great majority of the problems we experience in life actually boil down to something that can be solved in one fell swoop. Not by trying to work every angle, but my making an effective decision. Even if it isn’t the “normal” way or if it ruffles feathers, it’s how the job has to be done.

Second, the response of Alexander demonstrated the other quality necessary for true greatness. The courage to act. The absolute self assurity that where he was going was not only what he was supposed to be doing, but what WAS going to happen.

What’s your own Gordian Knot? What are of your life continually plagues you and puzzles you, but you could really solve it if you just made a decision and cut the ropes? Your personal life, business, love life, training?

Whatever it is decide on the action and then have the courage to act. Simply things down. Don’t look to waste time finding the hidden ends of the rope. Draw your sword and make the cut. If you need to make more money, analyze how and then apply it. If your life is surrounded by chaos find out why and then knock it out (I’m not responsible if anybody punches out there boss, that’s not what I meant). If there is some area of your training that isn’t working establish why, simplify and then attack it. More is accomplished by the direct cut of the sword and the courage of the arm who wields it, than by endless intellectualizing.

Be smart! No one is telling you the use of the brain shouldn’t be the first action in any situation, but constant mulling over is just that. An ineffective over thought process that leads to no action. Above all… take action.

If you need spiritual help or peace… pray. If your marriage isn’t working ask her why then do what it takes to fix it. If you need to get closer to your kids, talk to them. If you need to become a better man choose something and work on it. It all sounds something, but the courage is in the doing.

Some Stuff that Ain’t True and a Jacked Up Complex

You know a couple of things in the strength world have been getting under my skin lately. First, you get a lot of emails from people that are just fluff. I certainly don’t mind anyone doing their marketing to make a living, but I just think we shouldn’t have to live on that alone. If you’re gonna give emails to people, give them some good content as well. That’s something we always try to do. Give you plenty of great stuff to train on or learn from.

Second I’m tired of people saying, “Lifting heavy ain’t good for you.” The only way it ain’t good for you is that if you over do it to the point of excess strain or you just don’t understand what you’re doing and you do the exercise wrong. A lot of claims are made about this lately, but it’s all just bull! It’s natural, right and healthy for you to lift heavy stuff. For every story you hear about someone who hurts themselves lifting something heavy, I can give you a story of someone who is healthier, stronger and fixed their injuries by the use of heavy work. The average person will hurt LESS if they’re stronger and be much more injury resistant. They will maintain their health better as they age, and will have more functional ability.

This is nothing against light training. That is also important if not imperative to do. The greatest results and long term health come from combination training. Heavy training for greater strength and greater structural integrity, lighter training for flexibility, muscular and aerobic endurance. You’re fooling yourself if you leave out either section.

Alright… now that I’m off the soapbox we’ll get a little jacked up complex program for you.


This is a variation of the training programs from Super Strength and Endurance for Martial Arts. It’s also a way to train for combined strength and endurance and extremely powerful health. The complex is a powerful strength and endurance building tool. It is basically the idea of stringing together multiple exercises with the same training implement to train both muscular strength and endurance at the same time and spread the stress out over the whole body. To take it to a whole new level I like to alternate sets of a complex with a heavier exercise. This can be done with single rep training, or strongman or endurance work or simply pure repetition training with a barbell. Here’s a quick one I did yesterday. It’s great as both a strength builder and will drive your conditioning through the roof.

After a basic warm up grab a heavy cable set, something that allows you to do about 10 to 15 reps maximum on the exercises listed. Set up a bar so you can squat. It’s up to you how much weight to put on the bar. When I’m working on conditioning I like to use bodyweight on the bar. That’s what I did with this program. You’ll do three sets of this cable complex, 10 reps for each exercise. Overhead pull down, front chest pull, tricep extension, one arm press, curl, bent row. Right after you finish the complex, hit 20 reps of the barbell squat, repeat for three rounds. Rest as little as possible between rounds. Try to complete the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’ll work the crap out of your upper body muscles and make you breath like a steam engine. What more could you want??

Hope

Hope is the blood of life. If it does not course through your veins, then life is dry and sad. Whatever you do in life be it physical, mental or spiritual, cultivate hope in yourself and in others. Without it a man has no strength to try to better his life. Our hope of eternity is in God the Father through Jesus Christ. His sacrifice and our salvation is the greatest blessing of the Universe. From this flows down the work of cultivating hope, happiness and peace in your daily life. Adding to these is strength of mind and health and strength of the body. The unity of these three is the key to your greatest life.

Nothing comes without seeking it. Just because you don’t start the race with all three of these ingredients doesn’t mean you can’t acquire them along the way. Let nothing stop you. Not popular religious or atheistic theory, not genetics, not lack of time or money, not the fear of work to get the job done. Approach them all with both vigor and excitement. Whatever you’re weak in, fix it. If you don’t pray enough then get in the habit. If you don’t concentrate well start making yourself and you’ll get better. If you don’t feel well educated, read and read some more. If you lack physical vitality then get off your butt and exercise. There are two secrets to life. The first is the need for spiritual peace, build a relationship with Jesus and everything falls in line after that. The second is work. There’s no magic formula to getting what you want. There is only the courage to take the steps toward it. The work to make it your own and refusing to give up or take no for an answer.

One of the greatest feelings you can have in life is to give hope to another person. Who in your life needs hope? All children need it, because there is so much that sends negative messages into their lives. Where do you need hope? In your spirit, in your relationships, money, health, whatever it is, you must actively cultivate it. Hope is like anything else in life, the more you work at it the more results you get. Live a deeper life. Not just in the purely physical, but build greatness in every area and be about it today!


Tomorrow we announce a special new product! A DVD from Dennis Rogers that may change the face of strength entertainment. Even the kids who don’t care about strength will like this one. But you gotta wait till tomorrow.

Tough

We spend a lot of time in the training world talking about reps of this, how many training days of that, who wears the tightest spandex shorts when they squat, blah-blah-blah. When you really boil it down, what we’re talking about is being tough. Training to get tough. I think being tough is a combination of both physical and mental. All the physical training that we do is geared toward making our physical vehicle tougher. Stronger so we can display more power, more enduring so we can do it for longer. I think you’re training should be taking you towards those goals, because a body that is less susceptible to fatigue and has more power to display is much more apt to stick it out when life really gets tough.

The greater physical condition you’re in the greater mental stress you can withstand, because it all really boils down to toughness of the mind. The connection of the mind and body in toughness is sort of a revolving cycle. The tougher you are mentally, the harder you can push your body, the stronger you get, the tougher you become, but you don’t get there without the mind driving the whole engine. You’re training should be moving you gradually toward greater ability and every day doesn’t have to be the most incredibly, soul- splitting, painful workout you’ve ever done. But at some point you had better test yourself. Harness the mind and test both mental and physical toughness by achieving some insanely difficult workout.

Doing this knocks down mental and physical barriers and I think that is much of what is necessary for progress. Much of the time you have the ability inside of you either mentally or physically already to achieve some specific feat, you just don’t really believe that you can. You’ve set up your own mental block or turned on your own mental “governor” as Slim Farman says. The more often you tread into the territory of knocking down walls the better you get at it in both your physical training and in the rest of your life.

Now some people would say that these things are separate and tough physical training doesn’t have anything to do with emotional and life stress. I totally disagree and so did the ancient martial arts and physical training masters. You sink deeply enough into the realm of extreme physical effort you cannot remain dispassionate. You will at the same time conquer your body and conquer your emotions and mental ability. Stresses in life that to many seem overwhelming will not seem so difficult when you’ve ventured into the realm of physical effort so intense that it forces emotional and spiritual as well as physical growth.

So the next time your boss, or you mother-in-law yells at you let it roll off like water. It just ain’t as tough as that 1,000 rep workout or that brutally heavy squat or that unbelievably heavy stone carry. If you can defeat those surely you can deal with the other stresses of life. Next time you think about being tough or worrying about whether or not you are or are questioning whether or not to gut it out in your life or workout maybe you can think about Jim Braddock.

They just released this movie to DVD, “Cinderella Man,” the story of Jim Braddock. I haven’t seen it yet, but I did see some documentary footage of him that is awe-inspiring. He was a boxer around the time of The Great Depression. He had become quite successful although no one considered him very talented. Made enough money to retire from the ring. Lost it all in the economic troubles of the time. Went from being a champion to working on the docks for pennies just trying to feed his family. Got back into boxing with almost no notice, because he was set up to be “tomato can.” That means a boxer who everyone thinks is going to get the crap beat out of him as a stepping stone for another fighter. But he kept winning. He once broke his hand fighting and it didn’t heal correctly leaving him with a tremendous amount of pain. When he finally got back to some level of success in boxing he saw a doctor about the hand, he told Jim it would have to be rebroken to ever heal right. However it would cost $1,000.00 to get it done. Instead of paying that fee, he purposely took a fight and threw a punch that he knew would break his own hand so that the doctor could reset it correctly. He went on to fight Max Baer who at the time people called, “Killer,” because he had literally killed a man in the ring.

People always said he was too slow, too old, but he said he knew what he was fighting for and he just kept winning. How’s that for grit? I know many of us have been through tough times, but I doubt many of us have ever broken our own hand on purpose just to be able to feed our family. Toughness is beyond just that physical although I believe great physical training can help you deal with tough things in life. Sometimes it’s about losing it all and having the guts to fight to take it back. Having the guts to step forward for your dreams in the first place. The next time you’re worrying about whether you’ll make the next 25 reps or whether you’ll get off the couch and go workout, think about Jim.

I don’t think you’ll find it very tough to gut it out.

You wanna get training for the greatest physical and mental toughness you can have? Well here is the trilogy of books that will take you to the ultimate level of toughness.

Twisted Conditioning I – http://strongerman.com/twisted.html
Twisted Conditioning II – http://strongerman.com/twisted2.html
Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts – http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

You want more toughness training? Try our DVDs

Odd Objects – http://strongerman.com/odd_objects.html
Alternative Conditioning – http://strongerman.com/alternative_cond.html
The Secrets of My Strength Series – “Partial Movements for Super Human Strength” – http://strongerman.com/secrets_of_strength/partials.html
How To Squat 900lbs without Drugs, Powersuits & Kneewraps – DVD – http://strongerman.com/how_900.html

The Five Deadlifts of the Apocolypse (Continued)

Alright friends, let’s talk about the rest of those deadlifts and how they might help you achieve your lifting and life goals.

3. The “Bosco” Deadlift or Rack Pulls… or Partial Deadlifts, whatever you want to call it. I called it the “Bosco Deadlift,” because Harry Paschall, (whose famous muscle character was named “Bosco”), along with Charles Smith were two of the first really influential muscle writers to rave about the partial deadlift and its developmental and strength building potential. They had different recommendations for this lift, but I think they all kick butt and take names. Here also is what I spoke about before in that the starting height of the deadlift when done off of the floor is purely arbitrary. It counts in powerlifting competition, but other than that it is no more or less “correct,” a lift than any other. These two esteemed gentlemen also believed that because you did not have to get into such a low position to start, you were able to assume a more biomechanically correct position and were therefore safer. Also because of the better starting position and increased poundage potential you had increased intensity for building muscle. They both wrote about how this could literally transform your physique on par with the back squat. One recommended pulling from below the knees and the other from just above the knees. One recommended low reps, one recommended high reps. Both are great, both work, both will make you a man of uncontainable power. I spoke with strongman Steve Weiner about this and he also found that doing a long partial like this is particularly good for the strongman in that it will allow you to continue to pull heavy while giving your back a break from the beating it sometimes takes from the very low position lifting necessary for stone lifting.

4. The hand and thigh or quarter deadlift. Now if you get down to real hair splitting technicality these are two different lifts, but for the average lifter I think it makes little difference in how you perform them. The hand and thigh lift is a lift done generally with a specialized piece of equipment, a chain bar and set up so that you only need to move the weights half and inch or so. It is an old time “poundage” lift. The quarter deadlift might move two to four inches and is done in a power rack. Or you could build a set up like Steve Justa out of a pair of barrels with a bar welded between them and just keep throwing junk steel in there for weight until the neighbors complain and you scare them off with your ferocious Llhasa Apso.

The point is this is the very top end overload, as much power as I can muster, and just break the bar off the pins thereby stimulating the whole body and overloading every tendon in my back type of exercise. I believe it radically adds to your body’s ability to synch itself for pulling. Is it going to transfer to a full range deadlift? Not unless you use some type of progressive distance training, but is it great for muscle development? Absolutely. It builds a type of body power almost forgotten among mainstream trainers. Plus anything that you can teach your body to lift heavy enough that you might actually need to buy bulk steel for weight is goooooood.

5. The One Leg Deadlift. This is an exercise that I had seen around, but not really paid attention to until I picked it up from Pavel Tsatsouline. It’s part of the exercise curriculum in his RKC course and they favor the bent leg style done with kettlebells and your non-working foot held off of the ground. It is exactly what it says. A deadlift performed while standing on only one leg. When you first think about it, it sounds a little too hoaky to really be a great exercise, but after you try it you’ll change your mind. It teaches you not only body control, but I believe is one of the greatest hamstring developers in all of training. I personally prefer to perform it using dumbbells and a stiff leg style while placing the toes of my non working leg on a low box. I use the low box because I’m working extremely heavy and believe that it allows you to concentrate on the weight more than the balance. It also tends to naturally set you r back into a good position for pulling and even though you would think it would be tenuous, it’s actually quite comfortable. I also like almost any exercise that allows you to work one limb at a time, because it teaches you to coordinate the rest of your body behind that one limb.

Pavel told me that track coaches have used this exercise and almost completely eliminated pulled hamstrings among their trainees and increase their speed. It’s also great for taking your kicking power up to the kicks-like-a-mule category.

Is that all the deadlifts I ever do? Nope. They’re just my favorites. Anyone of them worked hard will give you muscle and power gains that have to be seen to be believed. The important thing… pick the one that works best for you. Get good at it. Work hard on it, add weight, get better, add more weight. Build a back that is made of molten steel. One that is both resistant to injury, recovers faster if it does get dinged up, radically increases your internal energy via the massive nerve stimulation of back work and gives you that old time.. “WOW that guy is STRONG!” strength.

The Five Deadlifts of the Apocolypse

Squats, presses, pulls. The basics movements of the human body, the basic movements of strength. Deadlifting or lifting something off of the ground has to be one of the most basic of all human movements, and one of the most result producing. Even though there’s a great deal of mainstream literature that says, “Never deadlift. It’ll kill your back,” there are at least as many or more people who have rehabbed or eliminated pain from their backs by doing deadlifts.

Herman Goerner, on of the monster old time deadlifters said that it was the basic test of human strength. Many people believe that it is the ultimate test of strength. I think that many people are either born with the leverage for great squats or great deadlifts, but few are born with leverages for both. But everybody will fall into one of the categories and if you want to explore your true potential for strength, you have to work both hard. You may or may not have the potential to be a world beater for one or the other, but they both add to each other so well and complete the full lifting potential of the body. Whatever your leverages are, accept nothing less than a good deadlift.

I also believe you should find the variation of any exercise that fits you. Be it physically the most comfortable or least pain or injury producing or most fun or mentally satisfying way of doing a particular exercise. In doing this you enable yourself to find the exercise that allows you to work the hardest and at the same time motivates you to work the hardest via enjoyment for the greatest gains possible.

Many people who come from a powerlifting purist background will tell you that nothing other than the regular powerlifting style deadlift is acceptable or maybe pulling while standing on a 4” block might be okay as well as long as you strictly duplicate the conventionally accepted form. The conventionally accepted form is knees bent, back arched, head up, pull dragging the bar up the legs starting from the shins. (An over simplification just to illustrate a point here). If however you look at some of the greatest deadlifters in history you will find significant variations from the form as well as training variations that have been productive for other lifters. Many of the great deadlifters pull in a semi-stiff legged-high hip style as it suits their physical structure. Bob Peoples, one of the greatest deadlifters in history pulled that way with a rounded back and the air let out of his lungs.

What’s the point here? Find the way that works for you. For many people this will actually be the conventional form and even if you use a non-conventional form you want to keep tight control over your movement and body mechanics. But think about this. Human’s have been lifting all kinds of objects from a standing position since the beginning of time. Starting at all different heights. The barbell that we use now and the height of the plates is purely arbitrary. Experiment and find the variation that works best for you.

Whatever that variation is, the combination of deadlifts and rows are the surest way to a big back and great torso development. You want big traps and lats, you ain’t gonna get ‘em shrugging little dumbbells or on machines. Heavy overloading deadlifts and pulls are what gives you big boy world class mass and strength in the back.

Here are my favorites:

1. The stiff legged deadlift. I’m not talking about that thing you’ve seen bodybuilders do where they stand on a flat bench and take that little tiny weight off the rack s and walk back and try to balance their way into thinking they’ve done some real deadlifts. I’m talking about heavy pulls done either off the floor or standing on a block with legs locked in an almost straight position. I find with a combination of the way that I squat and the loads that I squat with, this gives me the best muscular development as well as strength that carries over to regular deadlifts and squats while causing the least pain. I’m not necessarily and naturally built deadlifter, but for pure strength purposes this is the winner to me. It helps “keep everything together.” It’s my pick as the best deadlift for martial artists. It’s also the pick of many of the great lifters including Hugh Cassidy, Dr. Ken Leistner, and Greg Pickett to name just a few. It’s also probably the greatest deadlift for odd object lifting, especially if you do it with a thick bar. It’s definitely high on all the competitive strongman’s lists because of how much it helps in loading stones.

2. The Farmers Deadlift. Or maybe it could be the Strongman Deadlift, it doesn’t really matter. This is probably my personal favorite of all of them purely because it suits me and I enjoy it. This is done by deadlifting two farmers walk implements. Although alternatively you could deadlift two barbells. Similar would be two dumbbells or a trap bar. The farmers implements allow you to start a little higher than a regular barbell, placing the implements to the sides of the thighs which spreads the stress out more evenly through the whole body. The trap bar is wonderful, but for bigger guys sometimes it’s hard to get down and the set width of the bar may make the handles too close or wide depending on your personal structure. I also find that this deadlift when worked heavy provides lots of low back and hip work and is probably one of the greatest trap builders in existence. If you work this hard you will feel the stress all the way through the upper back. Allowing for both comfortable performance and tremendous development. Also makes for great shrugs as the implements hang directly down to the sides not impeded by the barbell dragging against the front of you thighs. I also find that if conventional deadlifts hurt your back these may work very well for you because the resistance comes directly into line with the center of your body instead of in the front which takes off some of the vertebral stress at lockout.

We’ll continue the rest of the “Five Deadlifts of the Apocalypse,” tomorrow as this email is already running a little long. By the way, if you want to learn about barbell training, our DVD on Barbell Training for strongman is a perfect place to start. Lots of basic exercises, demonstrated and explained as well as the exercises that will help you get the right kind of strength for strongman training. Find it here: http://strongerman.com/odd_objects/barbells.html

If you want to know how to work deadlifts into your training then definitely take a look at Twisted Conditioning I and II. They’re the ultimate resource for setting up unbelievably productive training.

http://strongerman.com/twisted.html
http://strongerman.com/twisted2.html

Till tomorrow…