How Much Power?

Much of modern training presupposes that it impossible for you to get very strong and dangerous for you to do so. A great deal of money is being profited I think, on people’s fears. Fear that if you lift anything even remotely heavy you’ll injure yourself. That any heavy training will eventually damage you beyond repair. That 25lb dumbbells are actually heavy weights. What a load of hog wash! And what irresponsibility and downright criminal negligence on the part of people selling these lies.

Our life for the most part has become very easy. Most people’s top necessary physical effort for living is getting up off the couch to go to the refrigerator. Therefore 99% of those who do train, do so only because it makes them physically more attractive and mixed within those group are some health interested people. They’re all missing a major part of the equation and a major point of training. Life is better with strength. You can get tremendously healthy and build endurance, but you will not have the absolute ferocious vitality that you could have without strength. The building of strength, and I’m not talking about being able to lift something very light many times, is natural and necessary to human health and vitality. It is both healthy for you and almost inevitable consequence of proper training. The only reason people have decried it so is because they have never felt what it feels like to have it. And they found a way to profit off the media based fears of others.

Properly done training is both safe and will add to your life. Ultimate vitality is achieved through the building of health with strength and endurance, not without it. You can say that you’re healthy because you’re thin or you maybe look like the common popular, yet rather effeminate stereotype of what is “in shape.” Maybe you can even ride an exercise bike for more than 15 minutes without coughing up a lung and lift the really heavy pink dumbbells, the ones nobody else tries… the 30’s! You’re fooling yourself, because true manly vitality is not achieved without significant strength. It adds a depth to your physical reserve and your mental power that can only be achieved through hard training. Why is it you think that the Eastern disciplines whose primary focus was spiritual betterment through meditation spent so much time on hard physical training? Because they understood that they are inseparable. To have one without the other is to be incomplete. To never be able to explore the full depth of your own mind and spirit as well as to live with real power

It is assumed by most modern trainers that if you lift over a couple hundred pounds you must be some kind of genetic-freak-superior and that the average person will never be able to do that especially without steroids. This is being sold to our children, our teenagers, to women and grown men. This is an absolutely idiotic mindset that takes away from what a human being can and should be. This is living life with fear and allowing it to control you instead of living with valor and creating your own destiny.

Given the proper mindset and their willingness to train I could take almost anyone who didn’t have a severe physical defect and make them strong, enduring, vital and healthy. Why? Why could I do that and yet other trainers spend hours upon hours with clients and achieve crappy results. Partly because I understand how to put all the components of training together and have the experience to coach things like technique, etc. That’s knowledge. I don’t mean that to brag… what I’m saying is it takes a certain amount of knowledge to achieve any goal. You know the real reason I could do that, because I won’t take “no,” for an answer in training. I fully believe the results are not only possible, but they are inevitable.

We get a lot of emails from people who say, “I look around at all this training information and I don’t ever really seem to make the gains off of it when I get it.” All training is a template. You must fill in the gaps on that template with your own effort and attitude. If you follow a program and you don’t feel like it’s getting you the results that you want, then think about why. If your program doesn’t have specific training for all of your goals, then maybe that’s a problem. You know what the big problem is for most people? They “hope” to gain…. They don’t “expect” to gain. When you train with a program, you have to train as if the gain you want is already happening. Take control of your mindset. When you’re convinced that what you’re doing will give you what you want , then you’ll attack it in a way that makes it happen.

Refuse to be watered down by the popularity of weak-mindedness in our society. The men who make the most gains in physical ability, and I’m not talking about Stairmaster-spandex wearing ability, I’m talking about real-world physical power and health, are men of strong will and strong mind. It’s unpopular to be so sure of yourself that you don’t question things, but it’s necessary to get to your ultimate goals. The men who founded this country, the men who fought for it are the men we should be taking mental lessons from . Regardless of how daunting the challenge, they overcame fear and went forward with absolute assurance of victory. Less than victory was not even an option. You have to apply that to your life, to your training if you want the absolute utmost out of it.

How much power? All you can get! I don’t think you need to be afraid that you’ll suddenly get “too strong.” Regardless of the popularity of the “anything heavier than your bodyweight will hurt you,” mindset, (this is pushed because they say, “oh you’ll suffer when you get older,” but you know what… the people who conceived all the bodyweight training ended up with injuries just like lifters. Being smart about training has less to do with weight or bodyweight and more to do with self-knowledge), real strength is not achieved through timidity. It is achieved through confidence. Don’t’ go through your life without real strength. Don’t fear heavy training once you really understand the lifts. I’m not saying don’t be smart about taking care of your body. I’m saying that real strength is a key missing element in a lot of mainstream and even in what is called “hard core” training. I squatted 1,000 pounds because I worked hard, but I was able to lift it, because I believed it was only a matter of time and unlocking my own physical secrets to make it happen. 1,000 pounds might not be in the cards for you, but almost anyone can hit 500 with the right amount of time, belief and dedication. Don’t accept less from yourself. Almost anyone can lift 1,000 pounds on a partial lift as well. Given again time, belief and dedication.

Is it necessary for you to chase a number like that? No and I’m not busting anyone’s butt who hasn’t lifted any predetermined amount of weight. This is all an individual journey for everyone on this path. But is it good for you? Yeah. And you can achieve it. That’s what I really want you to get out of today’s email. You CAN. The question is… do you want to? We all have to search out our own goals, but not matter what they are if you live in fear, that’s exactly what you get. If you conquer it then that also is exactly what you get.


Attitude and desire are the most important things you need in training, but real knowledge of how to actually achieve what you’re trying to do is the only way to complete the whole mission. You want to know how to put your training together to get complete strength and endurance then look at Twisted Conditioning I, Twisted Conditioning II, and Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

You want real strength? “How To Squat 900lbs” and “Odd Object Lifting Barbells, Logs, Rocks and Barrels,” not only do they show you how, but they show it actually getting done. The proof is in the pudding. Two, three, four and five hundred pound rocks, logs and barrels actually being lifted. You can too.

Go to http://strongerman.com/odd_objects.html to learn more about these training DVDs.

Visit http://strongerman.com/how900.html to find out more about How To Squat 900lbs book and DVD.

Go to http://strongerman.com/twisted.html to learn more about Twisted Conditioning.

http://strongerman.com/twisted2.html to learn more about Twisted Conditioning II

and http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html to learn more about Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.