How To Gain Phenomenal Striking Power and Outlandish Hand Strength Part 2

All the other muscle writers are giving you their Thanksgiving well wishes today and their prescription for exercising over the holidays and on generally being thankful for the blessings in your life. We certainly want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, but we’ll send that out later or perhaps even tomorrow. Right now, there are pies baking and it’s very important NOT to interrupt that process. VERY important!

Instead we’ll finish yesterday’s email and give you the next five in our



TOP TEN EXERCISES FOR STRIKING POWER:


5. The Dennis Rogers Lever Wrist Curl. I’m probably not supposed to let this cat out of the bag, but I’m going to sneak around and share it with you. Dennis is as you know, probably one of THE world’s foremost authorities on hand strength. He has some absolutely unique exercises that you’ll be hearing about from him very soon. I’m going to share with you a variation of one he taught me, because I think it’ll be one of the greatest hand and wrist strengtheners you’ll ever do and because it will be a big key towards strengthening your hand and wrist movement to protect it and empower it for incredible striking.

Dennis does it with a short barbell, but I prefer to do it with a dumbbell just for convenience sake. What you basically do is overload one side of the bell by 3 to 10 pounds depending on your strength and the length of the bell you use. You then perform a normal one arm wrist curl with it. Alternating between the overloaded side being on your thumb side or on the pinkie side. By doing this you are strengthening the wrist, but in essence performing a levering and wrist curl at the same time. The unbalanced load puts extra stress on the fingers as well making it a very complete hand strengthening movement. Very powerful and a lot of bang for your buck.

6. Cable Resisted Strikes. There is a ton of argument back and forth over whether or not adding some resistance to your punching, striking, kicking, etc., will actually add to your power. I believe that it will, but I think you have to use the right kind of resistance. Coincidentally so does Pat Militech who knows a thing or two about combat. I don’t think using hand weights does the job, because the resistance isn’t in the right path. While they might add great endurance to your shoulders I don’t think they really add to your power. I like to take a portable power jumper and attach it to some immovable object. Then I can either grab the handle or place the strap around my foot and do resisted punching or kicks with real high level resistance in either path for a strike. Because of the stretching resistance of the cable you emphasize speed, and follow through because the resistance grows the further you move the cable.

7. Upper body partials. I prefer to do one arm overhead or two arm overhead press/support partials. By doing them you involve the rest of the body as well as high level resistance for the rest of the body in a way that adds to your striking power. You could also do incline, or flat, or floor one or two arm press partials, but I believe the standing version is superior. Much of the power generated in strikes comes from the last few inches of the movement. The real “burst” if you will. Partials train this along with accustoming your body to massive resistance and strengthening your tendons and bones. Also very crucial to striking power.

8. Partial Squat or Deadlift. As we discussed earlier the real striking power is developed through explosive motion of the legs, hip, back and abs. By overloading the body and working through the short range of one of these partial movements, you prepare the body to exert as much pressure as possible out of the right muscles and in the right range. As much as full range lifts are necessary, nobody squats to the bottom to begin to throw a kick or start a punch. It’s a short popping/turning motion with the legs, hips, abs and back. Exactly what you’re training with these partials.

9. The full contact twist. This is an excellent exercise brought to light by Pavel Tsatsouline. Taken from Russian throwers and fighters. It specifically targets the abs in a motion that develops real power against real resistance in a coordinated turning/lifting effort. Exactly the prescription for striking power. Plus it really does strengthen the abs which is key to every component of lifting and life and especially the martial arts.

10. Max Effort Striking Practice. One of the secrets of martial arts and of the old time strongman is that while they practiced heavy and varied exercise to build and condition the body, but they spent time practicing maximum effort in whatever their specific art or feat was. This is well evidenced in the lifting of old time strongmen such as Dennis Rogers, The Mighty Atom and Slim Farman and in the evidence from martial arts training form all around the world. Actually applying your techniques at full power and speed, getting the specific nerve and muscle work to coordinate the strength you build with the rest of your training.


I’m going to tell you an extra secret here… The secret to making this really pay off is not just practicing the individual exercises, but practicing them in sequences. Something I’ve termed, “The Anderson Mixing Principle.” That almost makes it sound like I read it somewhere don’t it. LOL It’s a technique I lifted from Paul Anderson. He believed that if you wanted an assistance exercise to carry over to your main emphasis lift you should practice them in sequences so that the strength from the assistance exercise would flow or meld into your main exercise. This has come out in scientific proof and theory some 50 years later. So if you want to double the benefit you get from these exercises and make it carry over to your striking, mix them together and teach the body to use its strength for the specific point you are training.

If you want to explore this and other concepts for taking your martial arts and training to the next level, be sure to pick up Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.. http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

By the way, if you also want to get the most hardcore and original combination training anywhere, pick up Twisted Conditioning 1 & 2 – http://strongerman.com/twisted.html or http://strongerman.com/twisted2.html

Isn’t it funny how what we’ve been doing for years is now one of the most popular forms of training on the net? Don’t miss out on the originals!

Don’t forget to start counting your blessings and keep counting them.