A quick shot on the "Git 'er done" philosophy of accomplishment

Thought I’d throw a thought or two out on this complex subject, but we’ll hit a high point or two on them for you today and hit them hard.

Getting anything you want done in your job, life, body, mind, business, whatever the case may be, is about three things. Desire. Effective management, and refusal to submit to obstacles.

Desire:

Many people complain about not having time in their life, but the truth is that the things they don’t have time for are the things that they don’t have a desire to accomplish. Nearly no one manages their time or priorities so tightly that they cannot achieve a particular goal. They simply choose not to make the time for that particular goal. Whatever it is that you want to do you must cultivate a desire to do. And you must decide what’s truly important to you. Those are the things you will make time for.

Effective Management:

Most of life is about effective multi-tasking, but most people are flat out lousy at it. Why? Because effectively managing a lot of variables still means intensely concentrating on the variable that is immediately at hand. It doesn’t mean giving lack luster attention to a lot of different activities to effectively manage them. It means keeping them in check and when you are working on one particular thing and you must be 100% concentrated on that particular thing. This is a secret to being fully present in your life. Sometimes the accomplishing of serious goals requires an all or nothing, knock it out of the park concentrate on one thing for short periods of time move. Realistic adult life contains a lot of variables, but you can effectively control your concentration.

Kickin’ Butt! … Okay that should be “Knocking Down Obstacles,” but it’s the same thing:

I have a two-fold theory on this. You project your own world. That means that if you constantly visualize, think about and focus on problems, you’ll constantly HAVE problems. Conversely if you constantly visualize and look for opportunities and triumphs you get what you spend the most time and energy toward. This can be a big realization once you actually get it. And this is a big thought or principle with many of the motivation gurus.

I believe this, but I also believe that there are times that you just flat out have to be tougher than whatever the circumstances which try to knock you off your path are. More committed and disciplined toward your goal than whatever the problem between you and it may be. It’s wonderful to sell and promote a “life is easy if you just think about it that way,” plan. It’s an extremely attractive idea, but it just doesn’t always hold water.

Life ain’t always easy, but if it were we would never have any reason for growth. The more positive mental energy you put into shaping your world the better your world will become, but keep a big stick handy. Some obstacles need a little more motivation to leave.

These principles apply to whatever else you may want in your life and they especially apply to strength and endurance training. When you train be absolutely in the moment. Effectively manage the larger variables that are necessary to complete all of your goals. Most goal accomplishment is almost entirely about desire. Refuse to accept the thought that it can’t be done. These thoughts are the genesis of the training that we put down in our books. Whatever the details and nuts and bolts are of actually getting the job done is grown out of these principles. This is why I’ve been able to do what almost no one else has ever done. This is why you can have and should have unbelievable strength and unbelievable endurance together. Don’t sacrifice them. Get everything in order and get them.

We’ve blazed the trail already knocking down many of the obstacles for you. Do you want it badly enough? If you do… head over to Twisted Conditioning, or Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts. Or to check out any of our products swing on over to our Storefront.

A Quick Conditioning Program and Two Updates

I hope this finds you all doing well. I’d like to answer a quick email question and then give you a little update about some DVDs and then give you quick program to try today.

First every so often we get email from people that says something like this:

“I emailed you and asked you a question and you didn’t respond to me. Therefore I’m insulted and don’t understand why you didn’t drop everything immediately and answer.”

You have no idea how much I wish I had the time to answer every single email I receive, and we do answer everything we possibly can, but you have to understand that it’s a significant volume of email. Most of the time I don’t even get to read many of them much less respond when they come in. Have some reality about things. Don’t get angry or take it as some personal insult if we can’t respond to every question or comment that everyone makes. It simply isn’t possible, but stick with it because over the course of time your question will be answered either directly or in something we write about.

Secondly, we had a question about the DVD we’re sending out to the first group of customers who ordered Martial Arts book. I apologize for it not having gone out. We were ready to send it for finalization, but then my life was put on hold for several weeks now due to my father’s stroke. His rehab is progressing to the point that I will be able to have the DVD out soon.


Third, a quick program for you to try. This is a nice little change of pace kettlebell routine. It’s really a combination of two programs one from Jared Savick, US Kettlebell Lifting Champion and Dan John, US Heavy Events Masters throwing champion.

Jared posted a challenge of clean and jerking one-armed a 40kg kettlebell as many times as possible in ten minutes. I just did 100 reps, I didn’t really count the time. Dan John wrote about a kettlebell and sled workout where you do one high rep set of swings, 20 or better followed immediately by a sprinting sled drag. Either drag the kettlebell or a sled, etc. This should be a sprint not a slow-weighted drag or walk. I did three rounds of this, used about 180lbs in the sled, sprinted 50 yards, 25 down and 25 back.

The combination of these two makes for a great little conditioning workout. It’s fast and you get to move some moderately heavy weight and breathe really hard when you sprint. The swing spring combination really cranks up the posterior chain, ham string and hip work. It also pre-exhausts your lungs before you ever even start the sprint.

Give it a shot. It’ll definitely give you your monies worth.


By the way if you would like to see any of our other kettlebell based routines or some really interesting combined strength and conditioning work, check out Twisted Conditioning II and Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

Powerful info for making you powerful.

Twisted Conditioning II
Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts

Magic In Exercise

I’ve been reading a lot lately in advertising copy about “magic in exercise.” How someone suddenly found the holy grail that one singular form of exercise has done more for them in the last 35 seconds than the last 40 years of futile attempts at other forms of exercise. How suddenly they’ve seen the error of their ways and become a true strongman. Better looking, even got money back on their taxes since they switched over to whatever their particular brand is. How now they’ve suddenly found the way to become stronger, faster, smarter, live forever injury-free, simultaneously more muscular tougher and stronger… it almost always involves some “secret” way of doing something and yet at the same time they almost always tells you that they get twice the results in half the time and work.

How suddenly by using this one form of exercise and particularly the bodyweight only people are notorious for this, they have become a physically dominant human being in every possible test of strength. How by doing bodyweight only they have become a super-human. Every injury they ever had has completely cleared up and they intend to live to be 130 years old.

Let me set the record straight. Exercise can have nearly magical effects on your health, vitality and strength. But there is no one universal make you good at everything, fix every problem, put no effort in and get all results way of doing anything. There are a few people who have experienced what they term as “magical” results from switching to a particular form of exercise. Generally this is because whatever they were doing before was lacking in a quality that they severely needed.

Let me give you a broad-based for instance. Most mainstream training does not include what I have termed, “Alternative Conditioning.” It is generally based solely on moderate resistance and long slow non-intense cardio. Neither of these two forms of exercises generally has a particularly intense and quickly revealed training result. Therefore if someone is used to training with these particular styles which 99% of the world does, and then suddenly switches over to an exercise form that allows them to do intense combined muscular and aerobic endurance at the same time. Such as high rep bodyweight work, kettlebells, clubbells, sledgehammer, barbell and dumbbell complexes, cable work, hill sprints, sled drags, etc. They suddenly find themselves with a massive gain in useable muscular ability and endurance. Promoting their idea that this sudden form is now “magic.”

It ain’t. It’s just that they haven’t done the combination together with enough intensity to create a real quick result. If you apply the same intensity to any of the above conditioning styles you will get similar results. There is no reason other than marketing to make those claims. I have said this before that the magic is in the work, not the tool you use. The intensity of the effort, the completeness of your concentration, the intelligence of your planning. The decision to make gains no matter what. The magic lies in there.

Something else that bugs me about this whole situation is the claim that without specific preparation their new magic form of exercise has suddenly made them better at everything. There are times and instances where people have improved at non-related strength or sport activities. But for the most part if you don’t have some specific part of your program addressing a particular strength or endurance that you want, you won’t make long term or world class gains in that particular area. You may bridge the gap with a lighter training modality and occasionally make gains in an unrelated activity, but it is not the rule. This is evidenced a lot in the marketing that says, “I quit lifting weights and just started doing push ups and now I’m twice as strong as I was before.”

That’s a flat out lie. It’s all twisted up and wrapped up in how you want to define strength. There is no point in only narrowly defining it with only one tool. If you drop everything and only do push ups, then yeah, your push up strength will go up and in a certain narrow testing capacity your general upper body strength may go up, but don’t be deluded into thinking that you will suddenly become world class in upper body strength by dropping all but one thing. There is no reason to lock yourself into one particular style and live only that one way because some guru says so. There is no point in not using training that pushes into many different areas of strength and endurance. If you ever want to have the real deal to be anywhere close to backing up the wild claims that most marketing makes, then you had better be using some form of combination training that allows you to work strength and endurance together.

If you’re reading this newsletter you’re probably too smart to be pulled in by a lot of that stuff, but not everybody has enough experience to be able to tell the difference from someone who passes himself off as Superman, says that they’ve found the light. From time to time maybe we all need to be reminded of that.

From time to time someone needs to step up and say it publicly and out loud. So… I’m sayin’ it.

Examine your own training.
Make sure you’re firing on all cylinders.
Getting strength and endurance together.
There’s no point in settling for less.

By the way if you want to learn about putting strength and endurance training together and getting world class results then you should be looking at our materials. It ain’t magic, but it might open the door to getting super-human results for you.

Find them at our Storefront

Training Your Strength of Character

For those of you celebrating Easter, I hope you had an outstanding weekend. We most certainly did! We were doubly blessed by the celebration and service of the day and also because our son was baptized Sunday morning. It was particularly special for our family.

Stemming from that baptism I’d like to discuss the importance of strength of character. Now my son IS a character to begin with. He is extremely inquisitive, always has to know how and why everything works, will engage anyone in conversation and has a tendency to speak like an adult when discussing things. He also has a flair for the dramatic and quick with a great comeback. He’s also easily embarrassed and probably his number one fear is doing something wrong in front of a group of people and having them laugh at him.

This is something we have discussed at length trying to overcome. I have told him time and time again that absolutely everyone, including mom and dad makes mistakes. There is no reason to be embarrassed or feel self-conscious in front of anyone, ever. It’s a crippling personality trait that can cause you to recoil in fear from doing things which you may be great at or cause you to live your life with no flavor or passion.

Sunday morning we had two baptisms. One teen from our youth group, whom I was especially proud of to see him take that step in his life, and Noah. Joey went first and then it was Noah’s turn. At one point in the church’s history the steps down into the baptismal were textured to prevent slipping. One day someone got the bright idea to paint them with latex paint thus making them slippery when wet. Well since it’s a baptismal pool, they tend to pretty much STAY wet.

As Joey turned to walk up the stairs, there was a moment of silence as our pastor motioned for Noah to come down. The preacher stood there for a few moments waiting. The church was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. We were filming of course and what is heard on tape next was much louder than a pin. There was halted, “WHOA!” from behind the wall and next came a “sploosh,” sound. The choir was sprinkled, the pastor was rained on and Noah fell into the pool from the top steps.

The church broke out in a roar of laughter, the preacher was trying to maintain his composure and we sat wondering if Noah would actually emerge and complete his baptism… and much to our joy he did. Already completely soaked he swam his way over to the pastor and stood before him. The pastor said, “And with a very dramatic entrance here we have Noah Jeffries.”
Noah maintained his composure, answered all the questions asked, and received his baptism. We were very proud of him, not just for the baptism, but in knowing his personality, what it took for him to still stand before everyone and complete his task at hand.

Afterwards after my wife asked him if he was alright, he told her, “Yeah I’m fine. I just remembered what Daddy said about it not being any big deal and that everyone makes mistakes. I figured it was more important what I was doing than everybody laughing at me. I can’t be the first person who ever fell in.”

Okay, so I personally have never seen anyone else fall in, that doesn’t mean he isn’t right. None the less, there is great importance in this instance. He conquered a fear at a pinnacle moment. That took great strength of character. He came another step closer to being a man and his life will be all the better for it.

So what’s your fear?

What are you doing to overcome it?

Strength does not just lie in muscle, tendons, ligaments and bone people. There is strength far beyond that and when you tackle life head-on, you hone it to a diamond-tough consistency. THAT strength helps you to perform better, enjoy this amazing life more, and accomplish things that truly let you feel you are alive and not just existing. It’s that same passion and drive that you can apply to any area of life be it powerlifting, strongman events, endurance training, martial arts, work, family, fun or any pursuit in which you want to be a success.

So what’s it gonna be folks? It’s time to belly-up to the proverbial bar of life and make your choice.


If your choice is focused on reaching beyond mediocrity in your training then check out our Training Trio. Three books of your choosing and you receive a copy of “50 Power Points for Super Size, Strength and Endurance” for free. An outstanding marriage can be found in Twisted Conditioning I, Twisted Conditioning II, and Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

Combine the three together to tailor an awesome training arsenal for your health, strength and fitness. Not everyone is looking for the same things in their training so why train with materials that are single-minded. Your body functions in more than one way and needs multi-faceted training to be at its peak performance. With these three popular books, you can learn how to combine all the training elements you enjoy and need without sacrificing one for the other.

Check it out at http://strongerman.com/training_trio.html
For training DVDs that compliment these materials check out all of our products http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Can’t decide what to choose, there’s always The Total Package. A complete combination of all of our products, the entire megillah. It’s truly an outstanding savings!

http://strongerman.com/the_package.html

Training while Healing. What's recommended?

Greetings friends,

Today we’re going to answer a question from a reader.

Here’s a question that might help clarify some things for a few people coming back from injuries out there. It comes from a 68 year-old gentleman who has been lifting all of his life.


“Bud,
Excellent article, great advice and well written.

I used to do partials and was quite good at them having long limbs I was not good at full motion. My best short-range lifts were 10 reps with 1065 in the quarter squat and 10 reps on a dead lift hopper with 625. This was 40 years ago at a body weight of about 225 at 6".

I am now recovering from a hernia surgery and wonder if you have any advice for me to get strong again after it heals. It will be three weeks on Monday and My doctor told me I could start training light in two weeks. I was thinking partials may be the best way to start. Any thoughts on this? Do you like the leg press in short movements? What about dip machines for lockouts? If you don't have the time to answer this note I understand. I'm now about 185# and back to walking my pups, without leashes, for 40 minutes a day.

Thanks,

George”


ANSWER:

George thank you so much for the compliments. It’s always wonderful to find someone with a like-mind on training and people who are blessed with common sense are few and far between. It’s also great to see someone at your age still kicking lots of butt.

Sorry to hear that you had to have hernia surgery but I’m glad to hear that you’re doing well. Here’s my answer:

First I’m not a doctor so I cannot legally tell you one thing to do or another regardless of if I know more than some of them or not. I think you definitely want to be fully healed before you start any type of heavy training, but I do think partials would be great way to start especially for someone who already knows what their leverages are because of their particular body build (long limbs). Of course I think you should be doing some full range of motion work, but so long as its not brutally heavy that’s perfectly alright. I think the partials will give you an excellent way to get back into good strength without having to overstrain yourself or put yourself in positions of extreme compromise. For instance, if you can full squat 300 as a max you can probably do short range partials with that much weight with very little effort. It will definitely be enough stimulation to begin to rebuild your core muscles and keep your bones and joints strong, but not enough stress to be damaging, and you can slowly come back to your full strength.

You asked about leg presses and dip machines. I’m not a huge fan, but I think we use whatever is at hand and what works well for your body, especially if you have enough experience to decide if they fit you better than another alternative. If the leg press allows you to train well while keeping your other issues in check and it’s a well designed machine then good for ya! Same with the dip machine.

I don’t think either of them will give you 100% of the benefits of squats or regular dips, but it definitely depends on the benefits you’re looking for. Especially when coming back from injury I say be open to any therapy that will get the job done and continue to allow you to exercise and keep moving. I might also consider some just bodyweight movements without weight to begin rebuilding the body and without overstressing anything. I’m not sure if you have access to it, but you might think about a hip or harness lift as they can give you great strength without overstressing and it’s still a stand on your feet movement.

Now we all know we’re playing in the hardcore weight lifting world where any machine work is made fun of or frowned upon but I say use any resistance as long as it really does its job.

God bless you George. Hope you heal quickly and get back to ridiculous strength. Maybe you can inspire some of those young whipper-snappers who aren’t half as strong as you to man up and get strong.


By the way if you want to know more partials and what the absolutely most complete and effective ways to use partials are then you should pick up our DVD and workbook, Partial Training for Super Human Strength.


Look for more questions answered soon.

10 Fast Thoughts On Self-Defense - Part 2

Greetings Friends,

Today we continue with the next five tips on self-defense. Remember life is what you make of it and sometimes you may have to hold on to it by protecting it. Here are five more principles that may help you do so.

6. Most really tough people don’t fight outside of the job or absolute emergency. Picking bar fights makes you an idiot, not tough. There’s nothing to prove there. If you do have something to prove, you won’t prove it there. It’s also a really great way to spend time incarcerated or get the crap beat out of yourself in a recreational manner.

7. Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. I mean that both literally and figuratively. As cool as it may be to think you’re tough enough to handle any situation, you can’t outrun or out-punch bullets. (Conversely just because someone has a gun does not make them the winner in a survival situation). On a larger scale, the principle is always, “Use a bigger stick.” That means make yourself physically more powerful so that any adversary you may have to face on the street you’ll have the tools to get the job done.

8. Hit ‘em with a brick or a shoe, or a garbage can lid, or a rolled up magazine or a dinner fork for that matter. The big idea here is improvised weapons. Whatever happens to be at hand, use it, because we’re not playing for pretty points we’re playing to survive. That also means have some idea how to handle any weapon you choose to use or carry. And some idea of how to pick and choose an improvised weapon.

9. Understand how to generate power. Any idiot can throw a punch, but if you know how to generate the power that makes a punch really effective, then you begin to become really effective in fighting. The principle behind developing power is more important than the actual technique you apply it with. If you understand that, you’ll be able to punch, kick, grapple or use a weapon with extreme strength.

10. If they offer it… break it off or gouge it out. This one applies especially for women. Fight dirty. Break a finger, rip an ear, gouge an eye, attack any soft and sensitive, vulnerable area of the body. This ain’t pretty, but it can be a good equalizer. Do NOT however think that just because you understand how to do that it will equalize you in a fight against a vastly physically superior opponent. If they are 10 times your strength, you’re probably out of luck, but it may buy you time to escape and save your own life.


Martial arts have a long tradition of trying to sell the idea that, “If you just learn our secret technique you don’t need any physical ability, you’ll be able to defeat any attacker.” In my opinion that’s one of the worst lies ever propagated in the physical training world. All authentic martial systems take into account a stronger more enduring body with effective fighting technique.

You must have both technique and strength/endurance. Regardless of what anybody else tells you there’s no reason not to have all three. By the way, if you want to learn how to get the most out of your physical body and how to train it to become more than you thought it ever could be, especially in regard to combat, then be sure to pick up Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts, It’s the most powerful book of its kind of physical training.

If you don’t have it, you’re not fulfilling your potential.


PRAYER REQUEST AND THANKS

One more thing… to those of you who pray, thank you again for the continued prayers for my father. Yesterday we found out that a friend of my wife’s 3 month old daughter was in a severe accident. Whether or not the baby will live is still up in the air. She was life-flighted to the nearest major hospital in their state and is on life support. Her name is Brielle. Prayer has power and can change things. These things really make you think about how blessed you are no matter how tough your current situation is. Please pray for them.

10 Fast Thoughts on Self-Defense

Greetings Friends,

Today I thought I would give 10 really fast tips on self-defense. We live in a world regardless of how tough you are you’d better learn how to defend yourself. Law, as much greatness as it produces, only protects you so far. The rest is probably up to you and it may be up to you to protect the ones you love.

I think the smartest self-defense plan you can have is common sense, but everybody needs to be reminded of common sense occasionally. Here are a few fast thoughts.

1. Expect the unexpected. Sorry…. I couldn’t resist. Let’s change that to, “Be aware of your environment.” Know where you are, who’s around you, look in and around the car before you get in, etc.

2. Know yourself well enough to know how you fight best. Make no mistake if you have to physically fight somebody for your own safety the word “control” is probably out of the equation. So think, “beat them until they stop.” That also translates into understanding whether you should be hitting with a fist, or elbow or kicking or stand up grappling, because it fits your personal build and skill level.

3. Get physically fit. Most real street encounters are very short. But even short encounters seem like forever if you aren’t in shape. The stronger and more muscular you are the better you are likely to withstand an attack. The more physical tools you have to dish out the more likely you are to stop an attack.

4. If you look like a victim, you probably will become one. Only insane crack-heads or highly motivated professional thieves or absolute psychotics attack people who look like they might actually put up a fight. Most of the time they are looking for the easy way or the compliant victim.

5. If in doubt… hit first. Hit hard and don’t stop hitting until they cannot hit you back. I’m not talking about what Tim Larkin calls, “Social Violence.” I’m talking about real need-to-save-your-own-skin. The old I-don’t-swing-on-you-first-you-have-to-swing-the-first-punch axiom is a load of crap. Most of the time the guy with the first punch wins. That may not be pretty, but it’s the truth.

Five more tomorrow…

If you wanna get as physically tough as possible, you’d better be visiting our storefront, because it’s one of the only places you can get the real deal on how to get super-hero tough and enduring all at the same time.

http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Fighters Just Have To

Greetings Fellahin (that’s a fancy word for, “my buddies”),


I think one of the coolest things about doing what I do for a living is being able to talk training with people who really have the nuts and bolts experience to know what they’re talking about and can really add to your knowledge. Even though the “expert” thing to do is to never admit that you learn from other people the truth is that everybody does, even the gurus.

This is a tip geared basically toward fighters and I picked it up from Mike Bruce. An ex-amateur and pro-NHB fighter, former Marine, nearly 700lb deadlifter at only a 200lb bodyweight who also happens to have insane endurance. If you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably read some of his articles on our site. Later this year you’ll probably see a course and some DVDs that we’ll put out together, because he’s got some phenomenal info.

This isn’t anything specific, it’s just something you ought to be thinking about if you’re fight-conditioning. The last thing a fighter needs is heavy legs or lack of explosive ability at the end of a fight. You gotta have great strength and endurance to be a good fighter, but to get that extra over the top need you’d better be able to hit hard, move fast, and explode at the end even if you are tired. So how do you get that? You build it into your training, because the first rule of training is that if you don’t train for a specific ability you probably won’t get it. So no matter what you’re conditioning program is, when you get to the hard part or the end, you should be including some explosive and some jumping exercises. When you’ve already been fighting for 15 minutes you still need to be able to jump up and defend yourself like it’s only been 15 seconds. One other requirement of adding this to your conditioning, when you do it, make sure it’s just like it would be in a regular fight. That means don’t stagger your way up one leg at a time. Explode up like if you don’t get up fast enough a guy is going to run over there and punch you in the head, because that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t have that endurance in a real fight.

Here’s a quick routine:

Start out with five sets of one of your favorite power exercise (read heavy barbell or dumbbell movement). Then do three sets of barrel carries (you can substitute any odd object there), and three sets of your favorite grip exercise. Finish by running through this circuit as many times as you feel necessary:

10-25 push ups
10-25 ab raises
10-25 bodyweight squats
10-25 kettlebell swings
5 full squat explosive jumps

Repeat as needed for 15 minutes or your projected fight time or whatever fits the bill for you. Always over prepare your endurance if you’re actually training for a fight, because real fight conditions are harder than in-the-gym conditioning.


Now suffer…. Oh I mean… uh….. enjoy.


You wanna get more real, incredible combat power and endurance building routines like this? Look for Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts at http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html

See... It ain't just me!

Greetings Brothers!


I spend a fair amount of time and energy talking about combination training. Insisting on and rightly so how that if you’re ever going to reach your physical potential you gotta have a mix of max strength, moderate reps and endurance training. How one style won’t cut it alone. And how if you boil down the complete training info for all of the world-class athletes around the world and through out history, you will find that in one way or another they all include all three of these elements.

Everybody’s system fleshes out differently but the principles are the same because they are the principles that drive physical excellence. Here is just another example of that playing out right now…

My buddy Dave Whitley just completed an interview with another buddy of mine, Jesse Marunde. It’s up on Rugged Magazine. You can find it in our links. Now Jesse is strong. In fact he placed second in last year’s World’s Strongest Man competition. If you go read that article you’ll take away exactly the things that I just mentioned. He talks about training heavy, about training with moderate reps and about getting serious butt-kickin’ conditioning. He talks about training with kettlebells. Why? Because it’s hard and it makes your endurance sky-rocket. He talks about how the most important thing in success for most trainees is how hard and how often they squat. Where have you heard that before? And probably the gem of the whole article which was all great in my opinion, is that he says, “You just can’t get away from the fact that the guy who works the hardest generally wins.”

Hmmm…. Heavy weight, low reps, moderate reps, high reps, odd objects, crazy endurance.. hmmm… that oughta’ sound familiar by now, because that’s how it really works if you want to do more than lip-service to the phrase, “Kick butt and take names.”

So… you want to get the original info on how to put all those power concepts together about how to get super strong and enduring then check out our storefront here: http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Feeding Courage

Greetings,

Courage. Something you’re taught about in patriotic stories as a child in school. Something you hear about now very rarely on the news. But many times it’s not something you think about using every day, but if you want to live your best life, a stronger life, then you need it. You need big buckets of it and you need to make sure those buckets don’t have holes in them.

Let me elaborate. Sometimes life is tough. I don’t care what the positive reinforcement gurus say. Sometimes getting up after you’ve been knocked down aint as easy as thinking about it in a nice way. That’s when your courage had better be up to par. Sometimes you’re going to have a lot on the line and you’d better come through. When the risk is high you’d better have that courage anchored. Now don’t misinterpret me. I don’t mean you should be looking to make everything in life a struggle or a fight, or to think that every situation will knock you down before you finally get the best of it. If you think that way that’s exactly what you’ll attract. But I believe in a balanced view of life. That means there are times when you will literally think yourself into a success, and there are times when you’d better be carrying a big stick to make it happen.

I think courage is like any other mental trait. Some of it is inborn or tied to how badly you desire your projected outcome. When you’ve got deep seeded want for making those physical gains in your being or whatever other area of life you might be thinking about, you’re more likely to step up to the plate. But the rest of courage is conditioned. You start out identifying what you want. Your desire wells up in you the courage to take the first steps, but the more you practice taking those steps, the stronger your courage gets. Be that working out, or business or love, or any area of life.

Condition yourself to handle any situation with boldness and resolve. The more often you do it, the better you get at it. Get around other people who build up your courage. Read things which inspire and make you act bravely. Listen to music and watch movies that put you in touch with that part of yourself. Stay away from useless crap that tears away and puts holes in your buckets.

It may not seem like much, but little environmental stimulus that chip away at your resolve, build up over time and little gains in mental strength add up to big dividends. Big dividends equals a stronger life.


It’s been said that, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

If you want the greatest conditioned strength you can possibly attain check out our Store Front, especially the Twisted Conditioning series. Be sure while you’re there to check out our Alternative Conditioning series for some of the best conditioning and heart building training around.

Conan Or The Camel?

Greetings Friends,

Today let’s talk about how you approach a problem. How every young budding physical culturist has at some point seen their mandatory viewings of the Conan movies. I mean no matter what kind of lifter or athlete you are they don’t even let you in the gym unless you can answer the secret password Conan trivia questions.

I jest. Even though I actually do like the Conan movies. There is a scene in the first one in which the “Governator,” is riding through a town with some of his accompanying bad hombres and whilst parting the crowds he passes a camel which promptly spits on him. In true Barbarian fashion he simply punches the camel in the side of the head and it then staggers and falls to the ground. What in the world does this have to do with real-life application and problem solving?

Simply this: Every difficult situation in life you’ll either approach from a position of strength looking to overwhelm the challenge or a position of weakness hoping to just survive it and spitting when you get the chance.

How successfully you deal with these problems and what kind of life you have is directly tied to the attitude you approach them with. Defeatist, hope-I-get-through-it attitude will produce exactly the equal results to the power of its attitude. Gratefulness, strength, and looking to knock the challenge out of the park, will also produce exactly commiserate results.

Which one are you?


By the way, if you want to build the real physical power to knock out the literal or proverbial spitting camels in your life you should get Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

You might also want to check out our Odd Object Lifting Series, because you never know when you might need to toss that problem or camel on your shoulder, carry it outside the gates of your city and dump it like the rest of the challenges you might face. Always standing as the stronger, unconquerable, powerhouse that you can be.

Pyrrhic Success

Greetings Friends,

Alright class here is our lesson for the day. Is everyone familiar with the term “Pyrrhic Victory?” No? Let me elaborate. It is a term stretching back to the ancient Greeks that refers to winning a battle, but and this is a big but, the price of winning that battle is so high that it may not have been worth it. If you take your whole army out to fight just a portion of your enemie’s army and you win the battlefield for the day, but it costs you all your troops and the enemy still has another 50,000 troops around the corner waiting to fight another day then it probably wasn’t worth the fact that you lost the war just to win that one day.

Many of the things that we consider success in today’s world can be achieved, but if you are not careful achieving that success will have pyrrhic costs. More over, sustaining that success over any significant period of time may become pyrrhically impossible. Let me give a quick physical example.

Now I can exercise or you… or anyone else can workout probably three total hours a week and can eat a moderate whole food diet that still leaves room for enjoyment, practicality and building of health. In that three hours I can gain world-class strength as well as world-class fitness. I can build the ability to perform multiple strongman stunts or compete in any number of strength sports or be a devastatingly powerful and enduring martial artist or a phenomenal athlete. Plus I can have the time to actually run a business, take care of family, build my mind and spiritual life, walk the dog, read a book, watch a movie and generally manage a busy life quite successfully and happily. I can maintain this type of schedule basically indefinitely. OR I can workout six to seven days a week, three or more hours per day and I can eat and extremely strict, every two hours, very little enjoyment, but very effective cosmetic application diet. I may or may not gain the other physical qualities of strength, endurance, athletic ability, etc. I probably will not be able to maintain this for any significant period of time if I’m working out with any intensity. That is if I wish to stay married, employed, maintain any sense of sanity, family relationships, ever spend time with the kids, actually be able to pay for a mortgage and car, not have to eat cat food, etc.

The one victory you might achieve from adopting that extreme lifestyle would be that you probably would drop enough body fat to look “ripped.” You may very well end up weak as pond water, injured and over-trained with relatively permanent joint and muscle damage, not to mention one-dimensional conversational and mental skills. Also you will only maintain this for a short period of time unless it is how you make your living which will constitute you into less than 1% of the world, most of that 1% not actually making a living from that.

In the former example you may not end up looking as ripped. Depending on how you concentrate the rest of the exercise, diet and life you may get leaner. Depending on genetics you may actually get ripped, that however is just a look, not a function. You will however if you structure the routine right, gain victory on many fronts without paying an unsustainable and unreasonable cost. This physical example has easy and clearly demonstrated victories, but the principle behind this applies to every other area of life.

Is working 100 hours a week for years on end missing the rest of what life’s about to make some extra money worth the cost? Is selling your soul to please other people worth the temporary gains it might get you? The truth is that we all know that the answer is no. But if you’re not living consciously and defining success, you may be paying those prices and not realizing it.

Everybody goes through times where they pay the price. Working 100 hours or depriving yourself or putting out the effort that’s above and beyond gut busting and if you’re ever going to be a stellar success, some of those things are unavoidable. However if you aren’t holding the reigns to your own wagon and looking at the big picture of those costs in your life then you never get to the real side of lasting victory.

Think about it.


I don’t believe in giving you crappy training information just to waste your time. I believe in giving you unilaterally successful and flexible training information that you can easily put together to bring you to your ultimate physical goals. If you want the most complete and effective training information anywhere, get Twisted Conditioning I and II. Find them at Strongerman Products

Thanks for the prayer and a Grip Tip!

Greetings Friends,

I want to thank you all for the outpouring of support we’ve had for my family and father since his stroke. Thank you ALL for your thoughts emails and prayers. It’s extremely gratifying to know that when you send out these emails that you’re not simply talking blankly into cyber-space and that we have a rather large community of genuinely caring, spiritually interested as well physically strong people.

My father is home and definitely getting stronger. I believe from all the prayers, possibly mixed with a fairly heavy dose of Bud-Therapy. It’s interesting to see the overwhelming response of friends and the underwhelming response of the medical community. Don’t take that as a blanket statement against a medical professional. I know many of you are involved in it and do a wonderful job. It’s like any other activity. It depends heavily on the individual doing it. It’s also interesting how so many of the principles that we train by are useful for rebuilding of physical ability even at the most basic “learn to crawl again” level.

The further I go in life, the further I see that focused determination is one of the most important attributes you can have. Refusing to quit under any circumstances. The will to keep hammering at your goal no matter the set back, no matter what, is one of the biggest steps in building your own successful life. Resolve to grit your teeth and refuse to settle for less than what you want. There may be some pain along the way, but no body said that life would be easy, at least nobody telling you the truth.

If you want a great life, you have to earn it. You want great training? Great results? You have to earn them as well. You can’t earn grace, or salvation, but they’re free for the asking, which is greatness beyond anything we can accomplish. Life guided by faith in Christ still has tough times, but it has the strength and peace necessary to get through them. Putting one foot in front of the other even when you can barely stand is easier when you know that in the end you’ll win.


A QUICK GRIP TIP

Here’s an exercise that will drive your grip and conditioning over the top all at the same time and with a special twist on it for you martial artists that will help you really kick some butt.

Towel grip sled-dragging

Everybody and their brother is working on dragging sleds these days. Why? Because it flat out works! It will sky-rocket your conditioning, drive your muscular and aerobic endurance up with very little damage to the body and soreness. It also helps to build and preserve muscle while increasing your work capacity. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You can buy or make a sled or drag just about anything that will give you some descent resistance.

To kick it up a notch try subbing a towel for the regular handle. By doing this you force your grip to work overtime to pull whatever load you happen to be moving. It’s super simple and very versatile. You can twist both ends of the towel together to give yourself a very thick grip or split it in half and grab each end to give yourself a moderately thick grip. Either way will cook your forearms as well as drive your conditioning way up.

But you say that’s not enough for you?
You say you need to dominate someone so thoroughly on the grappling mat, football field or combat arena that they surrender to you just from a stern look? Try these towel grip sled drags, holding the towel like a gi. Instead of folding or rolling the towel up and pulling it like a rope handle, spread the ends of the towel out and grab the material as though you were grabbing a judo jacket or a football jersey. Then start dragging away. Don’t come crying to me if your fingers cramp permanently into the towel and you have to light a signal fire to call for help by rubbing the soles of your shoes together really fast as your forearms cramp in agony.

But… do drop me a line if after working this exercise for a while you’re suddenly flinging your opponents about the mat or field of combat as if they suddenly lost the ability to be held down by gravity. Which you will be because this will turn you fingers into steel claws and make you stronger and more enduring at the same time.


If you want more interesting sled dragging exercises as well as the top exercises to drive your routines and combat ability into a downright frightening level, be sure to check out Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts as well as the rest of our training products for extraordinary people.

Find it at http://strongerman.com/storefront.html