Hand and Arm Strength

Hey Yall,

Just had to jump out and say hello with my correct southern slang.

I want to really say thank you again to all of those who prayed and responded to our last request in our newsletter. Mr. Davis is doing very well from our last communication with the family. Let's keep them in our prayers.

We also got quite a response from the last topic of being politically incorrect about CHRISTmas. Thank you all for the kind words. We also want to reiterate again that we would not intentionally offend anyone. We simply don't want our beliefs stepped on by a trend of popularity anymore than anyone else does.

Merry Christmas to everyone and whatever you might be celebrating this time of year, may you be blessed exceedingly in it!

As we come to the end of the year I hope we're all taking stock of how we've done and what we've done this year and where we're going next year. Even though we may not be promised any extra time on this earth, you still need to have intelligent planning. One of the secrets of life is balance. Being able to live each day as if it was your last and still take calculated, planned, intelligent steps towards the future. Balance is a big key in everything in life. Without out, you'll never achieve a truly successful happiness. Being able to put the appropriate importance on spirituality, physical training, work and family life and spend appropriate time with each one is a great challenge. Maybe the REAL challenge of the adult life.

In looking at that remember these things:

1. The spiritual has to come first, because it's the only thing that has eternal essence. Without settling your spiritual matters, you'll never be free to concentrate on the rest of your life and you'll never find real happiness. All things in the physical world are touched by the spiritual.

2. Putting your family first is the act of a true loving grown up. Putting others first is the key to happiness.

3. One of the ways we honor our family is to provide for them. Maybe the difficult part is to balance the effort and time necessary to provide a living with the thing they truly care about, which is our love and time. Be smart about this. Work when you need to and do your best to take care of them, but don't miss baseball games, or tucking them in or telling them that you love them every day.

4. Beyond just being our hobby, physical training is another area with which to help provide for our family. The better you insure your health and strength, the better you can give to them. Be it an energy, or protection, or whatever the case may be.

5. Organization is the key. You can make time for whatever you truly want, but you have to be brave enough to step out and do it. That means time for kissing the wife or reading stories to the kids or prayer or making some extra money or training or visiting your parents.

6. Count your blessings and then dropkick every body and every thing that has a negative connotation out of your life. We're way more blessed than we know. Way too blessed to allow negativity to cause a problem.

We'll talk further about putting the boot to negativity in future newsletters.

The men of the Renaissance, although humanistic in their endeavors had the idea that you could be balanced, but not suffer for it. Not giving mediocre effort or amounts of time to simply include it but striving to be great at everything. This is he direction we need to go. Don't strive for ALLOWED balance. Strive for balanced greatness.

WE TOLD YOU THEY WERE COMING.
NOW THEY'RE HERE!

We finally have all of our books up in eBook format. That's right, no muss, no fuss, no waiting, buy it.. And BANG.. There it is right there on your computer for you to read. We even have them discounted for your viewing enjoyment.

Seriously, as we've moved into the computer age of business we've gotten used to instant gratification. Instant shipping, instantly getting what we want. Well here's your chance to get all three of our powerful training manuals immediately sent to you via digital download.

"How To Squat 900lbs With Drugs, Powersuits and Kneewraps," THE book on serious heavy, drug free squatting. right there waiting on you. Squats are the real key. Don't miss out. How To Squat 900lbs.

"50 Power Points for Super Size, Strength and Endurance." Looking for those tips to put you over the top? Those ideas and directions that will lead your training to new heights? Well here it is . 50 ideas on gaining strength, size and endurance all encapsulated in one format for your right here. RIGHT NOW! 50 Power Points

"Twisted Conditioning, How To Combine Barbell, Strongman and Bodyweight Exercises." Well this is the big boy on the block. It really is about so much more than just combining those types of exercises. It's about WHY it works, how it can work for you and how to get the ultimate in strength, along with the ultimate in endurance and not have to sacrifice between them. This one is selling like crazy. Why? Because everybody is realizing that there is more to putting your program together than the old models. And because if you don't understand how to train them together it can be a tricky thing. not losing endurance for strength or strength for endurance. If you really want to get the best in training, and go beyond what you thought was possible, then this is the book for you. Twisted Conditioning

Want an unbiased opinion on the material? We stumbled across this review of Twisted Conditioning from an unsolicited source while surfing the web one evening. We STILL don't know who ordered it or wrote it, but they do have an awesome site. SFUK.com

A NEW TIP, A SUPER-STUD NEW FRIEND, A CHANCE TO SEE A LIVE STRONGMAN SHOW AND A HEADS UP ABOUT A NEW COURSE COMING OUT

We got a lot of great feedback about one of the new articles up on our site, Outlaw Strength. I think because it struck a cord with people and it said some of the things that people have been thinking and not seen articulated anywhere else. One of the major themes was, "Train by your own rules." DO what makes you fulfilled and happy and words for you, and if it puts you outside the mainstream. so what?! Anyway, to illustrate a point in there I mentioned Dennis Rogers.

Well through a series of events, Dennis and I actually ended up talking on the phone. I didn't even know Dennis knew my name, but evidently he had been following the site for some time and was extremely complimentary to us. Dennis is like the rock star of professional strongman. So that was a big compliment! Dennis has been given the title, "World's Strongest Man Pound for Pound." He's quick to add, because he's a very humble guy, ".for the feats he performs." But let me tell you, very seldom does a guy come along who has a very legitimate back up for a title like that. Dennis does. As a matter of fact, for the feats he performs, you could leave out the pound for pound part, because I don't think anybody, even if they are bigger than Dennis' monstrous 165lbs can beat Dennis at those feats.

For pure hand and arm strength, he's the man. Very, very few are in that league. And he's a genuinely nice guy. Senior youth pastor at a church in Houston, Texas, using his ministry where he performs at around 200 exhibitions per year to build youth centers and he is a fountain of knowledge as it pertains to training and especially old time strongman and performance feats. He is by far the most successful professional strongman since Paul Anderson and previous to him The Mighty Atom, Warren Lincoln Travis, etc. that's the class of strongman I'm talking about.

So here are a couple of things you might want to know about.

Dennis will be performing his strongman show on December 18th in Savannah, Georgia at the Savannah Harley Davidson. I'm going to meet Dennis in person and see the show. Don't miss this opportunity if this is something you could go to. I talked to him about what he is going to do and it is going to be his full show. Bending wrenches, rolling up frying pans, driving nails through wood and frying pans with his bare hands, bending steel bars, holding back a pair of Harleys while they smoke the tires trying to pull them away from him. you don't want to miss something this cool. This will be one of the only times or places you'll actually be able to see these feats unless you happen to catch Dennis at a church or function near you. But he is literally the only person able to perform some of these things.

Dennis is about to come out with the first in a line of strength and professional strongman training courses. They'll be available on his website soon. The first one will be about tearing cards, but not just a page or two on it, a full progression course of how to start from scratch and build up to ripping decks, the right way to do it, exercises to help and logical progressions on building up to this feat. As far as I know, nobody tears cards the way Dennis does. And nobody tears them as easily as he does. You'll also be able to get other cool stuff with the course like special report on card strength for all of the different commercially available cards, as well as a completely unique training device, the "Rubber deck of cards." Nobody knows these feats as inside and out as Dennis. If you had the opportunity to actually speak with him, you would be amazed at the inside out knowledge he has of these feats. I can wait for this course to come out!

Check out his website at www.dennisrogers.net

A TRAINING TIP FROM DENNIS ROGERS

Of course when two muscle heads start talking on the phone, you know it's going to be a lot about training. I've been picking Dennis' brain about training and strongman feats and all kinds of stuff. Here's one of the most brilliant things he said to me:

"When you're training your hands, train them from as many different positions as you can think of. But train them in positions that you don't normally use them in and make your exercises as efficient as possible by tweaking your positions to make them harder for your hands. Look at guys who have naturally strong hands from hard, manual labor. For instance a guy who runs a jack hammer. What does he do, he starts out in a normal holding position, but then his hands get tired so he switches around to position, after position, every time his hands tire. He's still working them, but he's moving the angles around to emphasize different positions and muscles. He does this out of natural reaction to fatigue, but the by product is to make his hands strong in lots of different ways."

Dennis has a killer story about arm wrestling, (by the way, he was also world arm wrestling champ), that illustrates the point of having strength from lots of different positions, but I'm not going to steal his thunder, you're going to have to wait for him to tell it.

Many of the old time strongmen were doing this as well. For instance Herman Goerner was constantly deadlifting but with an almost unlimited combination of grips, fingers and hand positioning and he came out with some of the strongest hands in the world. Saxon and many of their contemporaries were also fond of doing their basic exercises, but doing them with odd implements or grips. For instance, snatches with thick dumbbells while pinch gripping a plank, one finger overhead presses, etc. SO use this in your grip training. Apply it however the mind strikes you, but apply it with logical progression to whatever feat you might be training for. The more you think, the stronger you get.

We'll hear more from Dennis soon about how to strengthen your hands and wrists in unusual ways while still performing basic dumbbell exercises.

I'VE BEEN NAMED TEAM IXL "DECEMBER'S ATHLETE OF THE MONTH 2004."

Who'd a' thought it?!

Well the TeamIXL website and their gentleman commander and chief, Greg Stott, contacted me last week to let me know that I had been nominated for and had been selected as Team IXL's Athlete of the month.

Team IXL is a great organization run by Greg Stott that promotes drug free training and is looking to take strength sports out to the general public. They believe that our strength sports are just as extreme and exciting as anything else going on out there and should be just as popular. Their slogan is, "There are no limits drug free," which I think I and the other athletes of the month wholly endorse and are examples of. (Some very prestigious strength athletes have been named their athlete of the month. Phil Pfister, Brian Siders, Wade Hooper, Chad Coy, Shane Hamman, Brad Cordoza, etc.)

I'd like to thank them very much for considering me for this and in such great company. We truly believe that in drug free training, there are no limits. And Greg also carries a great Christian message. Thanks to them again.

Here's a link to their website and the interview with me: Bud Jeffries. The main page is www.teamixl.com.

Be sure to check them out