Doing Our Part And Flow Conditioning

Hope this finds you all well, training hard, living a full balanced, blessed life, loving your family and friends, making money and giving the glory to God for all of it.


A PRAYER REQUEST

Dennis Rogers has become a close friend of mine. I spoke with him last night and although he remains extremely busy traveling with his strongman show, he still works as a senior youth pastor at his church in the Houston, Texas area. Their youth group has had four different members either shot, killed or severely injured in the last four weeks. While I won’t go into the details of some of the things that actually happened and it’s always tragic when these kinds of things happen to young people, a couple of these situations are truly grievous. I mean… the kind of thing you see on Oprah type tragedy. It also seems that the city of Houston in general has become rampant with crime and gang related violence. This is nothing against Houston itself, it’s just something that has become a part of almost all of our major cities.

Now they’re part of a very large and diverse church, but even with multiple staff members and the resources that they have dealing with this type of repeated tragedy is extremely difficult, both on the church and on the young people.

Let’s pray for them that they would be comforted and given the strength to deal with these tragedies and spared anymore. May God grant peace to everyone involved here; to Dennis, to the ministerial staff at the church, to the families and the youth involved, to the city of Houston and to the law enforcement officers who protect us and deal with this on a daily basis everywhere. Thank you Lord, in Jesus’ name.


ARE WE DOING OUR PART?

In further speaking with Dennis last night I brought up to him how important his job is. The fact that even in the midst of tremendous tragedy we will never know how much more sorrow has been averted by the grace of God and the effort of people willing to work to teach the young the right way in life. How important it is to share whatever gift you have to help influence those around you for the good. We will never know every life we touch, but we can know that we tried. The lives of young people can forever be better, because of men like Dennis and Steve McGranahan, John Brookfield, and others who share their strength and their life changing message with people across the country.

Now I hear a lot of people these days, especially around the world, talking about how bad America is specifically because of tragedies like those we just mentioned. But let me say that the rest of the world experiences this same violence, it just doesn’t receive the publicity in most other places. America is still the greatest bastion of freedom and positive life in the world. If it weren’t people wouldn’t be trying every day to live here. These problems are not just indicative of America, they’re indicative of the world today and in every part. Because we’ve gotten away from values, from tradition, from kindness, responsibility and love and respect for God Himself.

So how does all of this tie in with us? You know… I guess I’m an old fashioned guy, but I see the pursuit of strength as greater that the pursuit of physical development. I see it as the building of men. The shaping of strength and character as well as muscle. We can choose to be better, we can choose to be better men, better leaders, better examples, better teachers. The iron can help us do that. It is a tradition old with mankind to build a man better not only physically, but by doing so make him better both mentally and spiritually. It was part of the ideal of the Greeks, the Hindus, the Shaolin, the Romans, the Celts, the Vikings, the Indian Nations, the Europeans, the Russians… it’s in every culture. It is unfortunately forgotten in the softness and narcissism of our modern world. We can bring it back. In fact, we are bringing it back.

By changing ourselves we help change the world. Even if it is only in a small way and whether we can see it immediately or not. Realize and choose that when you train you not only build yourself physically, but you make yourself a better man. Choose to exhibit that in every area of your life. In your spirit, in your home, in your work, in your daily dealings with the outside world. Choose to share that gift. Deep down we all train because we want to be better and we can be. Share that with someone you know. Make their life better. Share that with some young person. Help them make their life more healthy and more vital, but help it also to have deeper and more moral grounding and meaning. To change our world we must start with ourselves. We have the tools here at our fingertips and even though they are simple iron weights, they are much more than that. They can be much more than that if you so choose for them to be. The deeper level of learning in strength is not about building better bodies it’s about building better men. Better men build a better world. Live your life consciously, not sleeping your way through, and never caring about your fellow man or yourself. If every man chooses to train himself to be physically better, but also mentally and spiritually better, more kind, more gentle, more honest, more upright, and passes that on to other men not only in training, but in expecting a higher standard, we can change our world. Do your part. Make yourself better, make someone else better and thereby make the world better.


TRAINING TIP

Flow Conditioning

This is a concept that we’ll be introducing in Twisted Conditioning II. It came from the movement of my own thoughts on endurance training and the influence of and great material from Jeff Martone. Probably everybody who reads this by now knows who Jeff Martone is. He is probably the first guy to reintroduce in a useable format the idea of juggling kettlebells, which is flipping and tossing them in different exercise variant manners. If you have watched Jeff in person or on his DVDs (which you should have by the way), you will see what I mean when I explain this further.

Jeff moves seamlessly in a “flow” so to speak from exercise to exercise switching hands and exercises at will. He doesn’t really use a pre-planned routine, but he is practiced enough and comfortable enough with the exercises to move quickly from one to the other without stopping or having to over-think them. In this way he works his whole body with strength and conditioning and especially powerful aerobic conditioning without overtaxing any one body part or over repping any one exercise. This to me is flow conditioning I just apply it differently.

So how would this work in practice? Well it can be done using any alternative conditioning type either singly or with multiple types together. That means you can pick just one implement to use or line up multiple ones and grab them as you choose. It is similar to watching a boxer or martial artist work a heavy bag. They have an entire arsenal of different punches and kicks to use and they move in and out from the bag working in multiple different combinations. It may be a pre planned or totally free form combination. Each individual strike may be done only a couple of times in any one combination or flurry or movement, but over the entire period they will have executed hundreds of strikes. This is exactly what you’re doing in flow conditioning; you’re just doing it using an exercise base.

For instance if you were to use bodyweight exercises you might simply set out a period of 15 minutes. Your “combinations” might include squats, push ups and burpees. You might use multiple different types of squats and push-ups. For instance Hindu squats, jump squats, medium stance squats, wide stance squats, plie squats, and regular push ups, Hindu push ups, close grip, wide grip, feet elevated, atlas push ups, etc. The whole idea is to keep moving as quickly and as seamlessly as possible from one exercise to the other doing moderate reps of each exercise.

So you might use 5 to 20 reps of any particular type of push up or squat and 3 to 10 reps of burpees. You can switch from exercise to exercise for instance 20 squats, 10 push ups, 5 burpees or from variation to variation within each exercise for instance 10 plie squats, 10 wide stance squats, 10 jump squats, 5 Hindu push ups, 10 regular push ups, 10 Atlas push ups, 5 burpees. You can use a pre-planned interval or just go exactly by feel and move back and forth as quickly as possible without stopping.

So what are the advantages of this type of conditioning?

1. You’ll never get totally bored or adapted to the workout, because it always changes and can be applied to any conditioning implement or combination of implements. Barbells, dumbbells, bodyweight, sand bags, kegs, kettlebells, clubs, sledgehammers, cables, both chest expanders or the power jumper, isometrics, etc.

2. It give you complete freedom to adapt it to whatever your needs are.

3. It gives you consistent high level cardio with decent muscular endurance in a way that won’t take away from your maximum strength.

4. It applies the sprint type of intense cardio in a very adaptable way that can be applied however you choose.

5. It can simulate real world athletic situations in that it’s constantly moving and adapting vs. a pre-planned routine, which does not have the chaos of a normal sporting event. For instance in a fight you may have to come up from the ground, go to the ground, strike, grapple, protect, and none of it will be at a pre planned interval.

6. It allows you to work in a wide variety of exercises thereby strengthening as many muscles as possible, from as many angles as possible and reducing the risk of over use syndrome.

7. It can be modified to any type of work/rest cycle you like to use or to work around and injury or to provide extra work to any particular area you think needs it and can even be adapted with heavier work for great time efficiency in your workout.

8. You can get all of the benefits touted by each individual exercise style rolled into one thereby getting the greatest training effect. For instance the rhythm and suppleness of bodyweight exercises, the ballistic explosiveness of a kettlebell, the muscular building and stabilization of cable exercises can all be put in one routine.

9. It forces you to mentally focus on your workout in moving from exercise to exercise to maintain your pace. It will help you learn your own body and its particular reactions to any particular exercise so that you can move smoothly in a workout.

10. It’s fun. It avoids the drudgery of going in knowing I have to do 300 reps of this, or 500 reps of that. You just go in knowing I’m going to do 300 to 500 total reps in a certain time period without over burdening on any one exercise or body part.

The one thing I don’t want you to do with this type of training is take it easy on yourself. You should mix it with some conditioning workouts where you have to maintain a stricter rep/set/pace schedule. Just to make sure you keep yourself on track. Don’t automatically default to an easier exercise when you get winded during this training although flowing back and forth from easier to harder exercises is the body’s natural interval system.

Hope you enjoy it. I certainly am. The sweat, the blood, the tears… the frightened gym members. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!