Balancing Invincibility & Secrets of The Old Time Strongmen

Well I hope this finds you all being highly blessed. Fact is, most of us are blessed almost all of the time, we just don't stop to realize it. I hope we can all stop to be thankful for it. Well, we planned to put out a couple of more newsletters last week, but that didn't work out so we're making up for it now.

Let's talk about balancing invincibility.

I said this in the last newsletter. the more I think about and learn and grow in life, the more I keep coming right back to the idea of balance. It seems to me that in pursuing your own personal best you just can't get away from it. There may be times when it's important to go completely wild into one area at the expense of everything else. Short periods of time. And it is in my nature to do so. But when you think about being your personal best in every area of your life, not just the physical and in a long-term aspect, then balance just can't be escaped. To forsake the idea of balance has lead to some brilliant success for a few people, but most of them have also paid some awful prices. And many people in their lives have had to pay part of that price as well. But if you look there are those who have had just as an intense passion and success in their endeavor, whatever it may be, but have also upheld the values necessary for a real life. They've achieved whatever goal without being completely defined by that one thing and sacrificing the rest of their life to it. I think this is what we want.

Almost all true, high-level strong men have some belief in their own invincibility. Now we all know that no one is invincible and I'm not referring to this literally, I'm referring to a type of attitude that they carry. They may not be able to consciously voice it or have openly admitted it, but something in their actions will have defined that they have a deep enough belief in themselves that it borders on a belief of invincibility. This is both a blessing and a curse and a deep part of the root to why many of us are training.

You see to get really strong, I mean really strong, you have to have an attitude that says, "I'm going to achieve this, I believe I'm going to achieve this, no matter what it is." Part of this is good. It destroys fear. It leads you to go where no one else has gone before. (Cue Star Trek music - Da-daa-da-da-da-da-daaaaaa. okay, just kidding). If it is balanced it can spill over into other levels of your life and lead to being a great man. But if it is not, it can destroy you. It will get you hurt, put you in no-win situations, and cause you to act with a recklessness that can be downright dangerous.

We've all seen or know or know of somebody who starts to feel 10 feet tall and bulletproof when they've had too much to drink. This is the type of recklessness that can take you over all of the time even without drinking if you don't control it. It also leads us into situations that can create extreme mental stress. You see there are some things and situations, no matter how tough we want to think we are that just can't be controlled. I'll give you an example.

I have a close friend who is extremely strong. He was recently robbed at gunpoint while getting out of his car to go into his home. Thank the Lord he is okay. But there was a point during that robbery where it looked like the robber was going to kill him. By the grace of the good Lord he wasn't. Now I know we all want to think we're tougher than nails and that it would be almost impossible for that to happen to us. Deep down this is one of the real reasons why we all train. But truthfully the way this happened was probably a blessing in disguise. You see that mindset of invincibility that makes you strong, will also make you fight with someone in a no-win situation. It can make you make decisions that normal people wouldn't even consider. In fact it was probably a blessing in disguise for my friend that this was done by a true professional thief. This thief knew exactly how to hold a weapon so that it couldn't be easily taken away. He knew exactly how far away to stand to be close enough to shoot you, but far enough away to keep himself out of your reach. If he had been an idiot or an amateur, more than likely the attitude of strength would have gotten the best of my friend (and probably me and most of you), and he would have attacked him. Someone may have been permanently injured or killed and my friend might not have gone home to his wife and family.

Don't in any way think that I have any soft spot for thieves or bullies or what have you. In fact while I believe every man's soul is important to God, and must therefore be important to me, if the thief who robbed my friend had died during that theft I wouldn't have shed a tear for him. What I want you to see is how that attitude that pushes you to attempt ridiculous weights or feats of strength and endurance that normal people can't believe can also get you killed. If you think about it I'm sure you can come up with more than one example. I could tell you a few insider stories about some strongmen that point to exactly this problem.

We've all heard somebody say, "Oh well. if I die young at least they'll put me in a big casket." I literally heard one of the most respected powerlifters in the modern era say that right before a meet. When you step back and let this sink in, the reality of that statement is pretty frightening. It is also becoming more and more a part of the strength culture and infecting young kids. This may be one of the biggest tragedies of the modern iron game. When you have a chance, help your brothers and any kids you can to learn better than this attitude. Super strength requires some radical self-belief, but it does not require idiotic arrogance. Learn to balance this. Learn to take the good from it and care too much about your family and yourself to let the idiocy of these statements ever be something you truly believe. I'm as testosterone-jacked (all natural) and willing to play rough as anybody, but we should have the good sense to use our minds and not be totally ruled by our hormones. To hit the outer edge of strength you need this attitude, but you can balance it and be able to simultaneously grab the brass ring of super strength and sanity at the same time.

I want you to believe so strongly in yourself that you can accomplish any physical thing that you set out to do. But I also want you to realize first and foremost that we do nothing without God and to live a real life He must be put first. I also think you should love your family and friends and life and yourself enough to be smart. To not give up your life and hurt them, because you didn't bother to find balance in your attitude.


TRAINING TIP

A Secret of the Old Time Strongmen

Some of the old timers, the men who did this before the invention of modern training equipment, machines, steroids, etc., did some truly amazing feats. I mean freakishly amazing! Things that haven't been duplicated in 100 years or so for some of them. I think, in a conversation with a close friend the other night, I may have hit on one of the key components of their training that allowed them to perform so powerfully.

My key upper-body exercise and one that you hear me talk about a great deal is the one-armed press. This was also a staple of most of the old time lifters. I don't think it's so much magic of that particular lift, but it is two factors that that lift allows you to train that's the secret here. They are total body unification (especially total body unification behind a single limb), and maximum power, abdominal work (especially as it pertains to a unified body and the sides of the abdominals).

I talk a great deal about efficiency in my training. One thing I've been doing lately to increase efficiency is to add a windmill every time I do a one arm press. Why? Well because I've already got the weight pressed up and locked out overhead. I can add in the windmill at that point without extra time being spent. Plus the windmill simultaneously allows me to work my abdominals heavy, while focusing on the sides and in a total body movement. I have noticed that by doing this I feel stronger in other exercises, squats and pulls, and even the transfer of core strength over to pressing. These are the types of movements that the old time strongmen concentrated on. It allows you to build the muscles of the arms, shoulder and back, while simultaneously building strength and flexibility in the legs, hips, abdominals and back.

So how does this transfer over to their amazing performances? Well first it eliminates a weak link in the chain of strength of the human body. We all know that our back, legs, etc., can only put out as much pressure as our abdominals can match. So most of us do some kind of ab training, even though most of don't really do it heavy enough. You see the legs and back can put out a tremendous amount of pressure and if you don't train the abs with the same weight you'll never be able to truly realize the potential of your legs and back. Also most of us focusing on training the front of the abdomen if we do heavy abdominal training and don't train the sides of the body with the same type of max weight and effort. I've come to believe that many of us, even though our heavy squats and deadlifts are going up, are still weak in the abdomen. Because I think that we're not just missing lifts from pure abdominal failure, but the fact that our obliques and front abdominals are not just as strong as our legs and back, is falsely limiting to the strength that our legs and back will put out. I think this is why you almost uniformly hear that when a lifter adds heavy abdominal work to his routine, his squat and deadlift go up. Also why many of the modern powerlifting systems focus so heavily on trunk strength. The front and sides of your trunk need just as much if not more maximal strength training than the back, and your shoulder girdle, hips and thighs. A pipe that has weak side walls isn't very strong.

I think this type of exercise also added to their performance by teaching the body how to totally focus its power into a movement behind one limb. By doing that you make a movement such as the one arm press carry the strength of not just the pressing muscles, but you involve the whole body into this lift. By constantly training this you teach the body to demonstrate a strength in which the unified whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. You are in essence teaching the body efficient strength, because you are teaching it how to literally unify all of its members and how to work together. Think of how this applies to the martial artist and how much more powerful his strikes or throws could be if his whole body can unify and transfer its power through one arm. Think of the football player or the athlete of any sort. I think these two factors account for why they were able to do feats that seem almost miraculous and is definitely a missing factor in most modern training.


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