Alexiev and The Pool

I hope this finds you all blessed and having celebrated a wonderful Memorial Day. Usually when a holiday comes around we try to put something out in relation to that holiday, but one of the things that bothers me about holidays and such is that they are too short lived. A day like Memorial Day symbolizes something we should be thankful for and reverent to all of the time. (For those of you receiving this outside of the US, if you’re not familiar with “Memorial Day,” it is the day on which Americans remember those who have/are serving in the armed forces who lived, fought and died for our country).

Christmas, Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and Easter all fall under the same idea. They should represent how we should be all of the time in our thoughts and toward each other. Our thanks and prayers for blessing go out to those who have served so nobly for country and those who serve now and those who are in harm’s way. Thank you for your courage and your conviction. While it is important to have a central day that we all take time to remember and celebrate these things, let us try to live in a way that remembers them all of the time. Let us be thankful for our blessings and freedom and those who fight for us. Let us be thankful to God for a free country and remember those who struggle for freedom around the world. Let us also thank Him for His Son Jesus and the freedom that He gives us through Him. Make sure you know Him. And make sure you thank anyone who has served the country.


ANTHONY CLARK

If you don’t know who Anthony Clark was you probably are very new to the Iron Game. And for those of you, who may not know, he passed away last week.

Anthony was one of the preeminent super-heavyweight lifters of our time and it is very sad that he passed on so early in his life. He was however a strong man of faith and I think we can rest assured that he has gone on to be with the Lord and is at peace. He will be remembered not only for his Titanic strength and size, but for his kindness, genuineness and for all of the people he touched by not only showing his strength, but also by speaking to them with positive messages of God’s love and having a better life.

May we remember to pray for his family and loved ones, that they would be comforted in this difficult time.

I actually met Anthony for the first time in 1992. He was indirectly involved with putting me into my first strength ministry. I was at the University of Florida at the time and the church I attended in Gainesville was hosting a Bill Glass Prison Ministry crusade. For those who may not know, Bill Glass is an ex-FNL football player who runs a very large prison and evangelistic ministry. It features notable sports and cultural personalities who are also born again ministers.

Anthony was one of the featured performers for their upcoming crusade and I was asked to do a pre-promotional show for the church, which broadcast a local TV program. (Because the college minister at the time knew I had been a champion powerlifter so it was set up to show a preview of strength). That was the first time that I gave a strength demonstration or shared my testimony in church. When the Bill Glass team actually came to town two weeks later I spent the weekend with Anthony. He really was a very genuine, nice and caring man. He also up until that time was the biggest, muscular human I had ever seen. He had legitimate 24-25” arms and his chest looked like somebody put skin on top of a 55-gallon drum. We went around to the different prisons in the area and then back to the church at night for the evening meetings.

I took him to a local gym and watched him do a “light” workout. LOL I can still vividly remember how easily he did 5 reps with 405 on the incline press. We went to a movie after one of the nights after the crusade was over as he was killing time waiting to leave and we had finished everything else to do. I can remember watching people’s reaction to him and I was no slouch at the time around 300lbs myself. We were sitting on one of the side sections of seats. He’s on the aisle and I’m a seat over. It’s late and we’ve had a full three to four days so Anthony falls asleep. It was a boring movie. He begins to snore… LOUDLY. Yet, shockingly… there were no complaints from the rest of the theater. At the time he represented the Toka Company whom were making nylon lifting belts. He sent me a belt with his logo on it that I still have.

He’ll probably always be remembered for his insanely heavy reverse grip bench presses. I believe he was the first guy to do 800. I actually reverse grip benched for a long time because of him and the shoulder injury that I sustained in college football.

I saw him again at a bench meet in Daytona several years later and he remembered me. I can also remember thinking at the time that even though he was benching strong he didn’t look well. Shortly after that he began to have severe physical problems and he battled them up until the last.

May God bless his family and may he be remembered well as a genuinely strong man who overcame tremendous odds in his life and truly cared about people.


TRAINING TIP

Alexiev and The Pool.

This has to be one of the craziest workout routines I’ve ever tried. However it was surprisingly productive and educational. There are two famous pictures of Vasily Alexiev that inspired this workout. Along with the fact that I knew for Memorial Day we would be spending time with my in-laws and I and my son always swim when we’re over there.

The first picture of Alexiev is a picture of him swinging a kettlebell. The second is a picture of him doing power cleans in waste deep water. Even though I don’t remember how now, this second picture came up as a topic of conversation and it inspired me to try a kettlebell workout in the water. It is as a whacko as it sounds to be swinging a kettlebell in the pool, but it was actually a lot of fun! I think Alexiev was actually on to something.

Start off with 25 kettlebell swings on dry land to warm up. Then took the bell in the water and did 10 swings in waste deep water, then 10 squat pulls, then 10 one arm high pulls, then some cleans and presses, squats, overhead and rack carries mixing in swimming laps and sprinting through the water while carrying the bell. Experimented with many different movements and in different levels of water from waste-deep, to neck-deep to fully submerged.

It was a very fun workout that was significantly harder than you would think. The important thing was that I got my workout done while hanging out with my family and playing with my son.

Here are a few things I learned and why I think Alexiev was doing the workout in the water.

1. It will work your grip very hard. You have to squeeze the handle extra hard to keep it from slipping while in the water. This kind of sneaks up on you and you don’t realize how much harder you’re squeezing it until after the workout is done.

2. The water creates a drag effect on the bell so that to move it with any speed to do the ballistic exercises that you do with a kettlebell you really have to accelerate it all the way through. It’s similar to attaching a band to the bell for resistance except the movement is not limited to a straight up and down motion that a band would limit it to. Any direction you push, pull or swing it extra drag is created.

3. The buoyancy of the water seems to have a cushioning effect on the joints while you’re pulling the weights. My muscles felt quite worked, but my joints felt looser than usual afterwards.

4. It’s a very energy-consuming workout. Also mixing swimming laps and sprinting with a bell across the pool really ramps up the conditioning. It also makes you very conscious of breathing and how tightness burns up oxygen especially if you do any of the exercises completely submerged or dipping under the water.

It is something I would recommend all the time? I don’t know, but it sure was a fun way to get your workout in for the day. Gave the family a good laugh for my high-speed underwater crab run when running out of air. It was interesting, new and out of the box. I doubt I’ll have time, but it really would be an interesting experiment to see how it affected your grip strength and pulling acceleration if you used it regularly.

So what are the points here? Have fun, water makes for a good workout even if you’re not a competitive level swimmer, creative and unique things keep you interested, thinking outside of normal bounds helps you discover new courses of action. You can workout anytime, anywhere if you have the right motivation, mindset and knowledge. You can still have a full life and get your workout in. By the way… if you try this … don’t drown or drop your kettlebell/weight and crack your pool. We are not responsible and I doubt you’ll have any luck claiming it on your home owner’s insurance.

Open up your mind and find ways to get your muscular and aerobic conditioning. Be prepared to train anywhere at anytime and learn everything you can about making yourself better. Alexiev may have been on to something, it may certainly not be the kind of thing that’s worth a great deal of effort, but it’s the kind of thinking that leads you to the greatest gains.


BY THE WAY

Don’t forget to stop by and check out our Alternative Conditioning video series. Lots of ideas on training with unusual implements that give you unusually powerful results. Implements that build tons of muscle and performance but have been forgotten by the mainstream. People are really catching on to the benefits of cables, clubs and isometrics. These tapes will give you a lifetime of ways to use these implements and the right way to do them for strength, muscle and endurance. Take a look and handle them for yourself and you’ll understand why.

http://strongerman.com/alternative_cond.html
http://strongerman.com/odd_objects.html