Change & A Jump Challenge

I hope this finds you all blessed. I also want to thank everyone for the wonderful response we had to last weeks sale and we do have a minor update in regards to that. Normally our shipping time now is within 24 to 48 hours of your order, but last week’s sale was significantly more popular than we had anticipated. Because of that we had to order a new stock of some items so it may take a day or two longer than usual for your order to leave our doors. Nothing significant, just an extra day or two. We just wanted to let you know that, because we understand how it is to be waiting on something you ordered.

Now on to bigger and better things.


CHANGE

Change is probably one of the most important yet feared inevitabilities of human life. There are absolutely changes that we can’t control and we’ve written about that in the past few newsletters. You just can’t waste time and effort worrying about things you can’t change. Don’t blindly accept any circumstance as unchangeable, but once you’ve become satisfied that it’s there to stay, move on and change what you can. The change I really want to talk about today is voluntary change. Not unavoidable and life changes, but things that you want to change about yourself to make your life better.

I think the key point in creating real lasting change in your life is desire. We all know people who are unhappy. And realistically most people are unhappy by choice. I’m not talking about things created by tragedies in peoples’ lives, but day to day attitude. Most of these people, if you sit back and look at what makes them unhappy, you will realize that it’s something they’ve simply come to accept in their life. They have literally come to a place where they are comfortable with their current situation even though it is unpleasant and rather than change, they simply accept it as normal. In fact even though it makes them unhappy, they revel in their current situation. I hope that if you’re reading this newsletter you can have the objectivity and the consciousness of your own situation to be able to pick out this syndrome in your own life. It’s always easier to analyze someone else and I have oversimplified this situation because I want you to see this point.

There are many factors that go into the actions in peoples’ lives, but at some point as an adult, regardless of what happened to shape or misshape you in the past, everything in the current situation in your life becomes your responsibility. Blaming past factors doesn’t help the current situation. This is a sobering realization. Yet, there is freedom in it. There is ownership in it. If you forget about any other reasons of why you are how you are and accept the fact that you are responsible for yourself, then you at the same time empower yourself with the ability to change.

If you believe that you have the ability to change whatever you want about yourself, from there you have two steps. First recognizing what you actually want to change. Then actually having the desire to change it. Knowing what is wrong and actually wanting to change it are two different things. Most people can see obvious things that are wrong with themselves especially in the physical sense. The mental and spiritual sides are where the real efforts of change are deeper and more difficult. Spiritually you have to know what you believe before you can think about changing anything. Many people have never actually decided what they believe. If you don’t answer this question first you’ll never be personally satisfied regardless of whatever else you perfect or accomplish in your life.

There is one God, He created this universe and His Son Jesus Christ is our savior. That is my settled spiritual fact. From there morality and spiritual growth become significantly more easy to define. Mental growth is a very broad subject. I think everyone ought to thoroughly educate their mind just like they thoroughly exercise their body. But beyond basic mental skills and education comes the mind and spirit’s role in day to day life and personality. This is the area we mean to work on. This is the area where you either choose happiness or you don’t. Where you choose to be positive and successful, or negative and hold yourself back. Loving and friendly or angry and difficult to deal with.

Realizing these things about yourself gives you something clear to change and the power to change it. From there it’s desire. That’s the thing that really pushes change. For me desire is the thing that you consistently want. Not the thing that it seems nice if you could have as long as you don’t have to put out any effort to get it. What you desire is the thing that comes back to you over and over again. Boiled down all of us have spiritual need or desire. That’s easy to settle. Ongoing spiritual and mental growth is a little more complicated to work on however.

So be honest with yourself. What’s the biggest change you need to make? What’s making you unhappy? What is it you consistently want and are willing to work for? Accept responsibility for your life. Define your desire and pick a clear area to improve on. It’s so easy to set rational training goals , because it’s a clear, tangible world. Apply that clear disciplined action style to your mental and spiritual life if you want to achieve your greatest results. Physical change, beyond the simple level is the outgrowth of mental and spiritual change. Know that you can change and stop fearing it. It often hides the greatest rewards.


TRAINING TIP

The Jumping Challenge!

This is a challenge workout! No whining, no excuses, get out and do it! I did it.

It’s simple. Find yourself a ¼ of a mile space. Could be a track, could be a short distance that you cover repetitively until you hit a quarter of a mile. Now… JUMP!

What I mean is that you literally jump to cover that ¼ distance. No walking. Jump till you get winded or have to stop and stop. Keep jumping forward until you’ve covered that quarter mile. Mix it up and make a killer leg and lung workout. Standing broad jump, deep squat jump, half-squat jump, toe touch jump, jump high, jump backward, sideways, jump and spin 180, jump and spin 360, jump and bring your knees to your chest, jump and tuck your feet behind you, jump off odd stances, close stance, wide stance, split stance, one leg, calf jump. This adds up to a very brutal workout!

You should already have some pretty good strength and endurance before undertaking this one. It made me pretty sore, but it has several great benefits. First of all by jumping you’re consistently working explosive fibers in your legs. Even if every jump isn’t a full squat you still get great legwork. By varying the styles of jump and stances you reduce the risk of overuse injury and you spread the workout so that every angle and muscle is covered more thoroughly. You’re building endurance but with an explosive strength capacity which translates more easily into combat or strength training.

By adding an explosive movement you drive the conditioning and strength building benefits much higher. This is why those who train high rep body squats mix in jump squats, because they’re harder. They make you breath harder, make your muscles work harder and therefore make your strength and conditioning go up faster. Plus it’s a great activity that’s outside the box for normal training. Yet it was consistently part of the training and competition of ancient athletes. Many of the old time strongmen including the Saxon brothers, included much jumping in their training program. It plays in most martial arts training as well as training of Indian wrestlers. Paul Anderson was a big fan of jumping movements and used them in his squat routines. Jesse Kellum, a modern middleweight, super powerhouse, world champion and record holding powerlifter trains many jumping movements. So get out and do it. Get stronger, faster, enduring and more powerful.

Once you get out and do it I think you will find that jumping a quarter of a mile is challenging enough, but if some of you want to make it even tougher or want to make it into a full body workout, one simple way is to just add pushups. Every time you stop or at preset intervals, drop and hit a set of push ups. Wanna make it even worse? Do explosive clapping push ups. If you die or can’t walk the next day… I’m not responsible.

By the way, jumping movements and several extremely brutal jumping training routines are part of our new book due to come out very soon, “Twisted Conditioning II.” Be on the lookout for it. It will be out very soon.