Are you strong at 11:45pm?

May you all be blessed!

Are you strong at any time of the day or night? What if you miss training for a day? What if you have to work double shifts for a week? What if you miss sleeping one night? What if you’ve been on a plane for eight hours? What if any number of circumstances puts you out of your normal training routine?

The first time I met Dennis Rogers was in Savannah, Georgia. We drove up to meet him and watch one of his shows. We didn’t get there till late, but as strongmen do, when we get around each other training and feats just come up no matter what else has been going on. At about 11:45, I’m sitting in his hotel room watching him tear a deck of cards into eighths. That’s right eighths… 1/8. That means he ripped the deck of cards in half, then ripped that half in half, then took that quarter and ripped IT in half! Even for a grizzled strength veteran that is an over the top feat. Yet Dennis had been on a plane and up since early that morning with about two hours of sleep the night before.

So on no sleep and unfamiliar surroundings, I watched a beyond world class feat of strength. Most modern trainees, flounder like a clubbed seal if they stay up and extra hour watching old Gilligan’s Island re-runs. If it ain’t at their gym, at their appointed time of day, wearing their lucky shorts, with the right carbo drink and their special gloves on, they can only lift about a quarter of their normal poundage. I want you to be different. Here are the keys to being strong 24 hours per day not just when you’re at the gym or in perfect conditions.

First, build real drug free strength, using real exercises. Heavy weights, low reps. This builds your tendons, builds up your vitality and hormone levels and doesn’t give you the off-roid let down. The strength stays with you.

Second get in good shape. The better your cardiovascular and muscular endurance, the better you tolerate long days and recover not just from training, but life to be able to demonstrate your strength at any time.

Third, unlock your mind. Get past the idea of a perfect setting for training and into the idea that your strength is always with you and can be displayed at a moments notice. Get past the concepts having to be in the middle of a perfect training cycle to really do anything heavy. Force your body to be subject to your mind.

Fourth, build up your powers of concentration. Even if your body isn’t feeling 100%, your mind has truly developed concentrating powers you can recruit 100% out of your body.

Doing these things gives you the right kind of strength to display at any time. Real world power. It also builds up your internal energy or “chi” giving you the ability to focus your mental and emotional strength as well as the subtle energy of your body along with the physical. This is when you become a truly powerful force.

Since first meeting Dennis I’ve spent quite a bit of time with him. I’ve seen him pull out the same type of strength under even more adverse conditions. I was with him when he did an entire show and had a fever all the night before, most of the day and within an hour after the show became extremely ill. People shouldn’t be able to bend wrenches, and all the other insane feats that he does when they’re in the middle of an illness. But his physical and especially mental training has prepared him to be able to completely control his body and make it subject to his mind. You can too. You’ve just gotta get the right training behind a giant freight train of desire.

You want to know about the kind of training that makes people like Dennis crazy-strong? You need to read Twisted Conditioning I and II. You want to learn more about Dennis and see the most insane feats of strength and the most entertaining strength DVDs around? You need to check out our Dennis Rogers’ Packages.

Twisted Conditioning – and Twisted Conditioning II

Dennis Rogers – Pound For Pound Package

Rest, Flexibility and Variety for Longevity – Part 2

May God grant you all the blessings he has in store for you. Today let’s finish talking about rest in your training. We’ve already established that trying to force the body to work on a schedule its not ready for, or continually pushing down a path when you’re injured will just lead to more injury. That you need to be confident enough to train when you need to and to learn your won body well enough to know when that is.

Now let’s talk about another two keys to training longevity. Actual sleep. I’ve been talking about rest in the context of rest days, how you space your hard training, how well you’re recuperating, etc. But remember that sleep in the most potent, most necessary form of rest. Take charge of your environment and your life so that you’re getting the actual sleep you need. If that means you have to be disciplined about when you go to bed or making sure that things are dark and quiet, that’s great, do what you need to do to get the job done. If you’re getting quality sleep most of the time and training to increase your vitality, strength and endurance, then those days when you do have to miss some sleep won’t matter and you’ll handle them like a champ. Constant sleep depravation leads to over-training and premature body breakdown. This is a simple factor you can control so get hold of it.

Now… variety in training. Another factor to training longevity is not doing the same thing, the same way, forever. I talk a lot about consistency in training and you do need to have a few major things that you constantly come back to, to gauge and actually get long-term progress in. But sometimes even those things can use a few weeks break. Greater amount of variety you build into your training the less total wear and tear you put on your joints, and other susceptible to over-use parts of the body. Variety is actually a kind of rest in training. Even those people who highly tout high rep body exercises to be the end all –be all of exercise, must build in variety. The ones who don’t suffer the same overuse injuries as the ones who lift heavy weights. Constantly presenting your body with new challenges, conquering them and then moving on to different challenges that still maintain your training and conditioning levels keeps training fresh in your mind and your body motivated, not beaten up. This is a big reason why we include large amounts with different exercises in our training materials. The principle we’re training is always the same, but the tools change. The next time you’re run down in training, do one of these couple of things:

• Make sure you’re getting good sleep.
• Take an extra day off
• Do light joint mobility exercises to wake the body up, but not stress it.
• Find something new to try that creates the same training effect, but builds new excitement in the mind and different stress on the body.

Keeping these things in mind, you can train for a lifetime.

Want to learn something new? Do you want to see how much incredible variety you can train in over your lifetime? Then you should get our odd object and alternative conditioning series. Between these DVDs we show over 550 exercises that you can do with real world and result producing implements to build incredible strength and endurance.

Rest, Flexibility and Variety for Longevity

Here’s to you feeling unbelievably vital and rejuvenated. Today we’ll continue on the same line from yesterday, how resting is vitally important to your training. We as humans tend to boil things down to schedules. This has to happen on “this,” day, such-and-such has to be achieved by “this” day, etc. We definitely break training down along those same lines. Always squat on this day. Always do pulls a certain number of days later, etc. The body does not know or care what day of the week it is. It only cares about its immediate physical state. How well it has recuperated from the last time you trained really hard. This is the art of physical training not the science. You must learn to be flexible with your training days. To accommodate the reality of life and the recuperation of your body. Now there are times when things absolutely must get done on a schedule. Preparing for competitions, etc.

However, you cannot expect to live your entire life under a deadline forcing yourself to go when your body is not ready and not pay a price. The body is miraculously self-repairing. A wonderful blessing from God. So you can get away with it at times. But live that way forever and you will build up problems. This is one of the reasons our training material contains so much variety in how to set up the schedules. Because everyone is different and everyone recuperates at different rates. Therefore you need to learn yourself well enough to know how many days per week you should train a particular lift and how long you need to recuperate between.

Don’t be afraid to take an extra day if you need it. The world won’t fall off its axis if you squat on Tuesday instead of Monday. Or if it takes nine weeks instead of eight to complete a particular training goal. I’m not saying baby yourself. There are times when you absolutely must discipline yourself to do your training no matter what the situation. However over the long term you’ll have a better workout with less lasting damage to wait an extra day until you’re fully healed. You still are disciplined in that you train hard when your body is ready, but it takes a more disciplined mind to have the confidence to say no when you need to instead of training heavy on the day that’s written down on paper. You still always work to your long-term goal. In the end you get there with less damage and have more good workouts along the way. This is part of becoming professional in the way you approach your training. Maturing. Being smarter and getting better results.

Are you really ready to crank up your results? Ready to be smart about your training and actually achieve your goals? Then get our books and DVDs! They’ll lead you to real strength. Strength you can keep forever. Real endurance. Endurance that stays beyond the pale results of simple lack-luster cardio. Go here: http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Learn To Rest

Hope you’re all feeling well and kicking lots of butt today. Let’s talk about smart rest in training. Many neuvo exercise Gurus like to loudly tout examples of guys who’ve lifted weights for long periods of time and ended up with supposedly crippling injuries. They say that to push the idea on you that lifting weights is bad no matter how you do it, it will cripple you. And that bodyweight only exercise will save the day. Hog wash.

I recently read a story of a very high-level powerlifter who is currently undergoing a rehab process of sorts to bring himself back from the injuries he incurred. But to really understand this you have to read the story closely. He was not long-term, debilitatingly injured just from lifting weights. He was hurt from over extending his body and never letting it rest even through injury. He talked about squatting heavy even thought he knew he had a torn muscle, he just wrapped it up. Same thing with heavy bench presses even though he had peck tears serious enough to cause bleeding under the skin, he simply kept wrapping and taping the injury and pounding away at it.

Let me tell you something. If you have a torn muscle and you continue to highly stress it even with light bodyweight exercises, you’ll keep building up injury. That applies to any training tool and any sport for that matter. Fighters are notorious for training through an injury and there are times probably when you should. There are also times when you need to be intelligent about letting your body rest. The body is made to have a natural up and down cycle and you need to get in tune with your own. This is why no one holds an athletic peak for forever. I personally believe you can stay much closer than traditional cycling program s tell you to your peak, but you still have to build in rest into your program. The body only repairs itself when it is resting. That includes not only building muscle, but fixing the damage that you do from treating it rough. (If you play any sport or any training style hard enough you’ll eventually rough the body up. The key there is too much and too long, not that activities are inherently bad).

We are conditioned to believe that only hard work gets the job done. The more you work, the better you’ll get. But that’s not exactly true. Hard work is important but hard smart work, not just blindly pounding away when you know the body needs to heal itself.

Work hard, but take some rest. You’ll be stronger for it.

You want to get the greatest strength and conditioning material available to you anywhere for any price? Then check out http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

It’s an absolute gold mine of information teaching you how to get what you want and always at low prices. You invest almost nothing to receive the incredible information here and the ridiculous gains in strength and endurance you’ll get from it.

Good Things Happen When You Step Out

May today find you full of strength, joy and courage. The other day we talked about stepping out in faith to accomplish your goals. How you’re not really committed until you put physical action out along with your spiritual and mental energies. You can have a goal, but until you take the first steps to make it happen, it’s only a wish.

Today I want to talk to you about somebody who actually did it and the great success she’s enjoying, because of that. There are many examples especially from the physical culture world of people who’ve done this and changed their life. Be it in the physical sense of getting in shape or the financial and lifestyle sense from actually having the guts to step out and start their own business or create their own training material. I literally thought of over one dozen names of people I personally know who I could have illustrated this point with, but today I’m going to brag about my sister.

My sister, Rebecca Hughes, is probably the spiritual equivalent to my physical strength. She’s the most disciplined and committed Christian that I know. Most people wouldn’t be comfortable saying you should use their actual life as a moral example, because even though they truly believe the things that they say, they aren’t always strong enough to follow them. However Becky is someone who I would unhesitatingly say that you could look at her actions and find no fault. No conflict from what she says she believes and what she actually does. She’s knowledgeable beyond her years in that area of life.

For a long time she’s wanted to be a professional author and speaker. For a long time we’ve encouraged her to step out, produce some material and position herself to actually capitalize on all the talent she has and accomplish her goals and what I believe is her purpose for this life. For some reason things just didn’t get off the ground, the timing wasn’t right. Sometimes even when you feel you’re ready to do something, the circumstances aren’t right, but you can’t quit or give up on them, because having and overcoming opposition is part of getting to your goals.

Her husband is the music minister at Riverside Church in New Orleans. She and her family were part of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and out of what was a devastating circumstance has come the fulfillment of her dreams. After dealing with that tragedy she finally sat down, stepped out and wrote a book. Even though she has said it’s one of the hardest things she’s had to overcome she finally had the time and took the initiative to put feet on her dreams. Now just a short time later, she can barely keep up with the speaking engagements and has two publishing houses looking to publish two different books of hers.

Because of the delay in the process of getting a book published with a major publisher (it takes a while), she self-published a first-edition of her first book – a devotional called, “Winds of Hope.” And with nearly no publicity has sold almost all of her entire first run. All because she took a step.

That’s the difference between where you are now and being at the end of your goals. That’s the difference in people who actually get things done. Who actually change their life and their world. Once they’ve decided what it is that they want, they actually put a physical step toward getting it. They work and then like magic, things happen.

Decide today what the step you need to take is in your life. Where do you need to actually be committed enough to put real effort. What do you want physically? Spiritually? Mentally, financially, emotionally and in your relationships?

99% of the time if you’re not achieving your goals it’s because you don’t have all your forces directed at them. Without a clear mental picture, physical effort means nothing. Without physical effort you’re not really directing your mental energy. It’s great to talk about goals, but it’s better to achieve them.

If you’re ready to get on the royal road to unlimited strength and endurance then you need to be reading our books and watching our DVDs. If you’re ready to go far beyond what other people believe is possible, you need to have Twisted Conditioning I and II. Don’t sell yourself short. Put the feet on your dreams and watch them start coming true here at http://strongerman.com/storefront.html


P.S. In my sister’s first book she tells about how she came through the greatest natural disaster on American soil and through her faith was brought to a stronger, better place. How other people survived and were blessed because of their faith. If you have a story about surviving a disaster, she’d like to hear it. She’s looking for stories to put into her new version. If you don’t mind sharing we’d love to hear.

Practicing a Combat Skill in A Fatigue Environment

God bless you on this Monday. Here are a few thoughts on effective skill development and a wild routine for fun.

There’s a lot of scientific study or opinion on where to put your skill training in the context of your physical training. This applies to the development of martial skills as well as to any athletic skill. The general thought as applied by science is that you must do your skill training while you’re still fresh. If you’re working on the “how-to,” of a particular exercise grappling or striking technique you should do it when your energy is high. When you haven’t depleted your immediate muscular reserves. I think for the learning of the skill this is true, but in the further development of that skill you need to practice it in an environment that is as close to possible as when you will actually use it.

The first time you learn to punch you should do it at the beginning of your workout when you can solely concentrate on getting it perfect. After you have the skill you should practice it sometimes at the first of your workout to continue to hone that skill and sometimes at the end or at the hard part of your workout to force yourself to continue to perfect and use that skill under the hardest circumstances. This applies if you’re learning a squat, learning an olympic lift or a club swinging move, or a martial arts strike, kick or throw. After you actually understand the skill you need to take it out for a spin so to speak. What good is it to solely practice a skill under completely perfect conditions? If you’ve ever been to a competition of any kind – powerlifting, strongman, Highland games, fighting, etc., or in a real fight for self-defense or if you’re one of those brave souls who has a job that depends on real life defense – military or law enforcement, you should know this.

The real world is a different place than a practice room. The real world is always harder and never are the conditions as perfect. It’s one thing to be able to throw a fast, perfect looking punch (or any other skill), when you just began the workout in a nice clean environment. It’s an entirely different thing to throw a fast perfect punch at the end of a fight when you’re already bloody and breathing like a steam engine. Those other sports may not make you bloody, but combine the factors of competing in different places, at different times on different equipment throws the game off your normal style. But I think our training should make us ready for the real world and in essence ready for anything. It should so physically prepare you that you can adapt very quickly to any physical surprise.

One of the ways to do this is to put some of your skill practice into a fatigue environment. Do something that normally takes speed and coordination when you’ve already exerted strength and are breathing hard from significant endurance training. When you can force yourself to execute those techniques as quickly, cleanly and perfectly as possible when you’re already tired and pushing into the limits of your strength and endurance, you know you’ve gone a long way toward mastering them. Toward mastering yourself and being prepared in any martial or life situation.

There’s no reason that the physical training you do shouldn’t have carry over benefits to your mental, spiritual and real world life. This kind of training is an opportunity for you to toughen yourself and force yourself to work in a disciplined manner when it’s the most uncomfortable. Train hard to make life easy.


Here’s an example of a circuit. It’s just for fun. Don’t think of me as a gun toting nut. Think of me as somebody concerned with real-world, practical, over the top training. You will of course need a significant outside training area if you wish to carry this circuit out exactly as planned. The specific exercises are not as important as the theory. Improvise and pick your own exercise or whatever you have available to you as equipment. The point is to combine several maximum strength, max endurance and combat skill (or athletic skill if that’s what you’re after), movements to make a training circuit that simultaneously increases your strength, athletic ability, balance, speed, timing, endurance and skill at the same time.

Here’s a starter for you:

Five rounds –
Heavy lift of your choice (squat x 1)
Strongman lift of your choice (barrel clean and press x 10)
Kettlebell or bodyweight exercise (swings or squat thrusts x 1 minute)
Martial skill that requires speed, timing and endurance (heavy bag x 1 minute)
High skill movement (for fun for today, target shooting – 10 to 20 rounds)

Move through this circuit five times, no rest between exercises, one minute between rounds.

Add weight to the squat on every round, fifth round should be close to your max or at least something appreciably heavy. Try to get to the target shooting portion as fast as possible from the heavy bag so that you have to shoot while you’re breathing hard. This might be easy for many of you if you use rocks or sandbags instead of barbells and a striking shield instead of a heavy bag. That way you just take a heavy rock, a moderate sandbag, a striking shield, a kettlebell and your weapon to the range. If you do not have access to a gun or are opposed to them, use a paintball gun or bb gun… or a slingshot for that matter… or play darts. Anything that requires high skill and is fun. I can pull this one off because I have enough property around me to have my own shooting range. For Heaven’s sakes… don’t do anything stupid with a weapon! Be safe in everything. Both in your physical training and absolutely in any weapon training you may do.

This is one that might really pick up the interest of you law enforcement operators out there.

For the rest of us, just good clean fun. A chance to improve your mind, body, spirit and play with loud explosive toys along the way.

If you’re interested in more for developing skill in martial arts and combining the most incredible strength and endurance training known to man, you should be reading Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts and backing it up with some of the rest of our incredible products.

Stepping Out

Hope this fine Friday finds you experiencing a peaceful life and yet fired up beyond all reasonable comprehension at the same time. Today we’re going to talk about one of the key tenants in training as well as business and spiritual life.

Stepping Out

Nothing happens if you don’t commit and take the steps to first make it happen. Read that again. There is no area of your life that this does not apply to. Deciding what you want and then taking committed steps to making it happen puts you in the game. It puts your mind in a place of projecting your success. Without a mental picture of your success, there is no success. Most of the time people never get past that point. They think they know what they want and they think they have a clear mental picture of it. They think they’re actually projecting their mental energy into getting it. But they’re not taking actual physical, committed steps to getting there. That is the difference between having a picture in your mind of what you want and having a picture that you’re actually projecting your energy into.

Faith without works is dead. That’s a biblical quote, but it applies here. Thinking and hoping are wonderful jumping off points, but actually taking the steps to get the job done is what actually solidifies all of that mental action directing all your forces toward reaching your goal. In effect you don’t really believe and aren’t really concentrating on achieving your goal if you’re not taking physical steps to getting it.

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted something for a loooooong time? And even though you couldn’t admit it the truth is deep down you weren’t sure you could have it. But then… finally, you actually made a real, committed, physical stab at getting it. And suddenly all the other things necessary for you to have that goal began to click and fall into place. Until you make that step you’re not really pursuing what you want. Your ability to change your focused mental energy into reality never comes to fruition without the level of commitment that makes you take a step.

What is it in your life that you want? Do you have a clear vision of the life that you want? Of your training goals, your mental, spiritual and business goals? What’s holding you back from taking the steps necessary to getting it done? Whatever “that” is, is what’s stopping you from having the life that you want. Are you going to lay down and let something else control your destiny? Is it fear? Is it laziness? Is it being subject to other people’s expectations? Whatever it is, if you really want to make your goals a reality then you gotta bite the bullet. Get over that fear, that obstacle and just take a step. You’ll be amazed at what happens after you take the first steps.


If you’ve decided on your physical goals and you know that there is no reason you shouldn’t have world-class strength and endurance then what are you doing to actually step out and get them?

We’ve blazed the trail and we’ve written down exactly how to get them. All you gotta do is follow it. Maybe your first step needs to be to commit enough of yourself to actually invest in the training program that’s going to get you to your goals. It’s only a small step, but it’s enough to kick the doors wide open to supercharge your training and your life. It costs you next to nothing to benefit from a lifetime of experience written down showing you exactly the way to get to your goal.

You just have to take the first step.

A great place to start investing and step out is http://strongerman.com/training_trio.html You pick the combination of manuals to help achieve your goals and pick up a copy of “50 Power Points,” for free.

More On The Fountain of Youth

Hope this finds you all blessed and counting your blessings. Here’s a reply we received to yesterday’s newsletter. It helps illustrate an important point for going to the next level in training and in life.

Here it is:

Bud,

This is one of the best newsletters you've ever sent.
Thank you for writing it.

Another thing to remember is that it is a blessing to be
able to squat; people should relish it and their ability to
perform it.

I'm currently not able to, due to a hip that is higher on
one side than the other. When I squat I have a strong
irritation in my right hip/ pelvic area.

If you have the chance to read this, and have any
suggestions, they are welcome.

Best wishes and stay on the sunny side!

Matt Wilson

Thanks Matt. It’s always a blessing to hear that you’re encouraging people. I will have some suggestions for your hip problem, but I’d like you to email me with some more specifics about it and we’ll answer them in another newsletter. Now everybody pay attention. Say it with me…. “This is the important part…”

The important thing expressed in the letter that Matt sent in reply to us is gratitude. Being thankful for your ability to do any physical task. Developing an attitude of thankfulness will take you further on your goals. Forget the fact that it is a key for developing a happy, successful life. When you create an environment of gratitude in your life you open the door for more blessings, more success, more achievement of your goals. It is a way to put your mind in the place to receive the real benefits from your training and your connection to other people and to God.

Realizing the little things we take for granted are really deep blessings will go a long way toward developing a deep sense of gratefulness in your life. Sometimes when you try really hard for a long time to achieve a goal be it making a certain amount of money, a certain personal or business goal or a training goal, it’s easy to get wrapped up in either the immediate struggle or frustrated because it’s taking longer than you think it should. It’s easy to lose sight of all the basic blessings and abilities that brought you to the higher achievement of the goal. Be thankful for them. When you are, that changes your perspective and with new perspective comes new success.

Have you ever been in a place where you thought you were doing everything right and you still weren’t getting the success you thought you should? You’re training hard, you’ve got a brilliant workout, or brilliant business plan and you think you’ve got all the little details dialed in so that things should work flawlessly, but for some reason it still just doesn’t work. Attitude is often the difference. It is important enough that no matter how perfect your training, if your mind isn’t right you may not make any gains at all. If you do succeed, but your mind is not in the right place, there’s no joy in it. One of the keys to having your mind in the right place is an attitude of thankfulness.

Be thankful also for those struggles. Relish in the joy of the moment. In the fact that you can push yourself and even in the fact that you fail. Failure is not tragic it is a stepping stone to greater success. The difference between turning a failure from the end of the road to a stepping stone is never quitting. Step back and be grateful for the fact that you can do hard exercise and that you’ve been put on a path that very few can walk. In the end you will know more about yourself and come farther than most people will ever dream.


Are you ready to have the keys to unlock your own inner universe? Are you ready to have a plan that takes you beyond normal training? Are you ready to defy convention? Trash genetics? Drop-kick pseudo-science? And actually get the world class strength and endurance that you deserve? Then don’t wait any longer, don’t waste anymore time. Get Twisted Conditioning I and II right now!!


Remember the more grateful you are the higher you can climb.

Your Fountain of Youth

God bless you all.

A quick one today . If you don’t know who Milo Steinborn is you’re probably new to the hardcore iron game. An old timer and probably the reason we all do serious back squats today. A German who came to America after being in a prison camp and became one of the preeminent lifters of early last century. Pioneered the squat styles of the Olympic lifts, was monster-strong and was one of the first to demonstrate the kind of over-all muscular strength you can get from prolonged heavy back squats. This is the days before squat racks so for his squats he simply up-ended the barbell, rocked it onto his shoulders and squatted from there with 550lbs for three reps.

It’s also said that he once squatted 330 pounds for 33 reps on a bet with famous millionaire J. Paul Getty. He went on to become a celebrated professional wrestler the rest of his life up into his 70’s. They say for exhibitions at wrestling matches they would carry a 400+lb barbell to the ring which he would promptly rock up onto his shoulders and squat for reps just to toy with the crowd. In an article written about him in MILO a few years ago, his son said he kept coming back to the squat over and over again throughout his life, building himself up. It was his fountain of youth.

No matter where you are in your training, squats have a big place. Whether you do them like the Hindus with hgih-rep bodyweight style or JC Hise 20-rep breathing rep style or multiple heavy singles, or some crazy combination of all of it like me… it’s a foundational exercise. The squat and whatever form of deadlift you prefer are the foundational exercises that will tell how big and strong you’ll get. Coming back tot hem over and over again over a lifetime is what makes a true ironman and continues to build your health, vitality and strength over a lifetime.

Are your squats on course right now? It doesn’t have to be insanely heavy all of the time. In fact switching around from time to time and focusing on different styles of squat will have a greater overall training benefit and will prolong your lifting career. It will teach you about yourself inside and out and give you a hormonal kick in the butt to get new muscle growing.

Get squattin’!!

If you want to know more about how to squat the right way, how to take your muscular destiny in hand and really jack your squat up hundreds of pounds you should have our book and DVD, “How To Squat 900lbs.”

Explaining The New Sandbag Exercise

God bless you all.

A couple of days ago we printed a post that a gentleman put up praising our Twisted Conditioning and Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts books. In it he talked about trying out a killer sandbag exercise from the martial arts book. Sine we sent that email out, we’ve received multiple questions about what exactly that exercise was. For some reason maybe it didn’t come across clearly so we’re going to explain it for you. It really is an over the top gut buster strength and conditioning builder. If I were training a grappler this is the main exercise I would concentrate on.

To do this you need a sandbag. Something you can tie around the sandbag, a heavy rubber cable and a stationary object to tie your rubber cable to.

Load your sandbag to whatever weight you’re going to use. I suggest you go moderate the first time till you get the feel for this. Tie a rope or a strap of some kind around your sandbag, preferably going one time around the bag vertically, then one time around horizontally so that the strap criss-crosses each other.

Next, fasten your rubber cable to an immovable object. I use my power rack. Probably want to tie it about waist-height to start, but you can experiment over the course of multiple sets. Then tie the other end of your rubber cable to the strap tied around your sandbag. Bear hug the sandbag, pick it up, and walk away until the rubber cable starts getting tight. Now set yourself in an athletic stance, squeeze the sandbag very hard and simulate a lateral throw from wrestling or any of your favorite grappling-based martial arts. You make basically the same motion that you would if you were chopping a standing tree with an axe. The beauty and probably pain of this exercise is that it directly simulates grappling and works your strength and endurance from multiple directions at the same time.

Not only are you lifting and supporting the weight of the sandbag itself, but you are being directly resisted horizontally from the tension of the rubber cable. So not only is gravity pushing the sandbag straight down (like carrying your opponents weight), the cable is trying to pull the sandbag out of your hands and resisting you as you turn. (Like an opponent resisting you throwing him).

Chris, the guy who wrote this letter raving about how brutal this exercise was, also took it a step farther (as was intended in the book), and did multiple sets of squats with his sandbag varying the direction that the cable was pulling from. (straight away, left, right, etc.). He found out like you will that every muscle from head to toe gets ripped using this multiple resistance exercise. I don’t think there is an exercise that blasts your abdominal complex more intensely and more functionally than this exercise. Not only are you training all muscles of the body with an extreme emphasis on arms, back and hips and abdominals, but you are at the same time training your grappling skill. If you’ve read our martial arts book you understand that I think martial arts and strength training are absolutely inseparable. In fact martial training is strength training because it strengthens not only the function of your muscle, but you efficiency in combat. It always behooves a man to be able to express his strength and prepping for combat is an unfortunate but necessary part of life. You never know when you may be called upon to protect those that you love. This is an exercise that conditions and strengthens you and builds those qualities in a way that they directly apply to martial arts. What a killer! Why not have it all? Bizarre strength and endurance and 100% carry over to the real world of combat. You won’t be disappointed with this exercise.

If you’re ready to see intense and unbelievable exercises like this one, ready to take your conditioning to a whole new level, ready to find the missing link to taking your gym strength and making it carry over to your fighting strength, then you need Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

Don’t waste anymore of your time on programs that don’t tell you the truth. Don’t give your well rounded training and don’t get the job done. Get it now!

Three New Articles

God bless you all. Hope you’re out there training hard, having fun, making massive gains, getting smarter, stronger, faster and more spiritually in-tune. Along those lines here are three new articles on our website to kick your physical training into gear.

First Mike Bruce completes the third installment in “So You Wanna Be A Fighter,” series. Discussing some more of what it takes to get the job done, get your mind in shape and some of the right foods to be eating.

Then right back with another article from Mike Bruce on "Training the Dumbbell Swing." An excellent old time throw back exercise for building muscle, speed and power throughout the body. Mike tells you why and how he trains it with a complete week by week program.

Then Dave Whitley has a great new installment entitled “Simple vs. Easy.” With several unbelievably challenging workouts taking a simple exercise and working it so hard that it changes your strength and endurance at the cellular level. Smart, hardcore stuff.

By the way Dave Whitley has a great new kettlebell DVD out. It’s all about mixing the kettlebell and bodyweight exercises and to killer circuits to blast your conditioning way up. It even has three follow along workouts where Dave does the work right along with you and has it all completely timed and set up for you. It’s about time somebody came out with a mixed bodyweight and kettlebell conditioning DVD. It really cranks up the benefits on both styles of exercise. Dave’s a great guy and a great trainer. You should have this DVD. http://irontamer.com

You know… “Simple vs. Easy,” is a great line. It really sums up a great deal about productive training. Event he training that we do which is a combination of strength and endurance exercise and contains a lot of variety is really simple. But if you want to make it work and you put in the work to get world-class results, that’s where the easy part goes out the window. When you’re ready to step up and be your best get these products:

http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

A Secret, An Incredible Fall and Courage To Get Back Up

I hope this message finds you all blessed. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. I wasn’t going to say anything, but it was such an interesting night the other night I had to tell this story. It illustrates an extremely important training point and an extremely important life point as well.

The secret is we’ve been filming footage of Scott Weech for a future squat video from him. If you don’t know who Scott is, if you follow the lifting world you will soon. Scott is the young lion of Super-Heavy weight powerlifting. In the next few years I believe he’ll be the dominant super-heavy in the world. I know Scott because he happened to begin training at the same gym I trained at. He was brought there by a guy I used to train. In fact on his first few sessions I helped him tweak his squat technique. He has since then gotten seriously into competitive powerlifting.

Now he uses a different style than I do. I have a well-publicized penchant for raw lifting and all around strength and endurance with a very wide focus. He trains raw a great majority of the time but he competes in a normal suit, wraps, and bench shirt powerlifitng style. But hear me folks…. He’s strong! Both raw and equipped. He trains hard and he’s articulate and smart. Hence, regardless of different styles the common bond of strength.

How strong? Well he’s 21, 310lbs, raw probably an 850 squat, 500 plus bench, 700 plus deadlift. (In fact we videotaped him pulling 705 for three raw singles after having done grip work earlier in the day). Equipped you’re looking at an 1,100 to 1,200lb squat, 700 plus bench and a 700 plus deadlift. He’s a little leaner, but built like me. There’s not much deadlift leverage there. Although I believe in the next couple of years he’ll pull over 800.

I say all that to tell you this story and to put you on the lookout for future articles and a DVD or more with Scott. Last night, even though I don’t regularly go to a gym anymore I went there with Scott to shoot footage and help spot. When you get into really heavy competitive squats you need multiple spotters who know what they’re doing and are strong enough to actually do it. These are very difficult to find and people used to do it for me therefore though I rarely have time anymore, when I can, I go and do it for others. In fact that’s one of the big reasons I went to the bottom position power rack style is the spotter problem.

So we’re at the gym taping and spotting and in the process of training for a meet with equipment, especially the new style of powerlifting equipment it is very much a “find your depth, groove, get everything right” kind of process. So Scott’s done multiple heavy sets already and he takes a set with 1175. That’s right 1175. He begins to squat down and is trying to stretch his suit so he can get all the way down to a passable competition depth. As he begins to get close to parallel the suit basically stops his movement downward. At this point he begins to force it to go a little lower and the suit bucks his hips forward instead of stretching straight down. This pops his shoulders backward which pops the bar off his back. It then slides directly down his back, catches on his belt, whips him backward causing him to head-butt his father who is the center spotter and knock his father down. The bar then pops over the belt, continues falling straight down and the combination of bar, suit and wraps shoots Scott straight forward into the wall directly in front of the squat rack.

When I say shoots him forward, I mean literally propelled him forward. It looked like one of those trampoline jumps where people put on velcro suits and jump onto a sticky wall. The difference being that he then slid down the wall like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The reason I know all this is because we were taping and watched in slow motion afterward. Again… and again…. And again. But there in-person this all happened in a split second. Way too fast for even experienced spotters to catch. Initially everyone in the room gasped and feared the worst. In fact, even for me it was one of the scarier looking drops I’ve ever witnessed. BUT after a quick inspection everybody was okay. Thank God.

Here is maybe the kicker of that whole night. We talked it around, there were many different opinions bandying around about what to do next. However we unloaded the bar, replaced it on the rack and Scott got up and did another set successfully with 1100. Not the prettiest set you’ve ever seen, but he overcame it and got it done. Very few people in the world will ever put a weight like that on their back. And it becomes a whole other level of feat to fall with a really heavy weight and takes another level of guts to get right back up and do it again.

There friends is the point of this. In your training life somewhere along the way you’ll fall with a weight. Maybe literally, maybe figuratively. As I stood around there immediately after that talking with about six other experienced competitive powerlifters everybody had at least one story about falling with one of their heaviest attempts. If you push hard enough to court your greatest success you also court failure. Failure is a stepping stone to your greatest success. The real secret is the guts to keep trying. To keep getting up, no matter how hard the obstacle or scary the fall. Get up and try again.

It’s the secret to every area in your life as well as in training. That same courage that you should be building through hard training is what will stand you in times of emotional and spiritual trouble and take you through to your physical goals. Build up your body, build up your courage and let nothing stop you. Always get back up.

If you want more information on how to train hard enough to effect your whole life not just your physical being then you should be looking at our books and DVDs. If you want to know about how to get your strongest squats and take hold of your muscular destiny then look at our “How To Squat 900lbs” book and DVD set.

For all of our outstanding products go to: http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

Some prayers for Iron Brothers

As you all know our site is about more than just physical strength and endurance. We talk about important spiritual and mental points as well, because they’re all equally important and no life is purely physical. So from time to time we talk about non-physical things or I speak to those of you who pray about a need. My life is an example of the fact that prayer is real and it changes things. I’ve always appreciated the fact that many of you feel the same and respond when we talk about a need.

Even though I have definite opinions on strength, I respect all forms of strength. Regardless if they train or think differently than me. I consider all of us who train hard and for real results to be more alike than different. I consider all those who passionately pursue physical excellence to be our brothers whether they train at home, powerlift, olympic lift, all around lift, strongman, performers, Highland gamers, track and field guys, combat athletes, bodyweight exercisers, kettlebell or clubbell swingers, we all climb the same mountain just on different paths.

Thank you again for all of those who prayed and continue to pray for my father. There are a few others I would like to mention now in hopes that you’ll remember them as well:

Mike Miller – competitive powerlifter and strongman. (You know the guy… the one everybody rags on about the 1200lb squat even though most of them would never even consider putting that on their back). His daughter had heart surgery. I understand it went well, but I think we should all still pray for her and their family.

Rick Walker – competitive powerlifter and strongman. Grip monster. Associates with the Diesel Crew. Crazy strong Eagleloop deadlift. His sister has a medical condition that seems to be causing her long-term health problems. Repetitive strokes and seizures. Let’s pray for her.

Jason Keene’s family. Jason Keene was a former competitive powerlifter with one of the top bench presses in the 242’s a couple of years ago. He had a severe shoulder injury and switched to bodybuilding. He died two weeks ago. He actually lived in the same city I do, though I never personally met him. We did however have mutual friends and I know he left two young children. I also know it has been difficult for those who knew him. Let’s pray for them.

There are always others. People in need who never voice it. Our first reaction should be to pray instead of our last resort. Our first look should be to the eternal spiritual not to look to bicker over petty differences and concentrate on the physical. Let us look to foster brotherhood and help each other. To find the really important things instead of separating on our differences. To learn from each other so we all advance physically and to remember that the strongest spiritually will eventually be the strongest physically.

We all know each other because of our common bond of training and it’s easy to only know that about each other. But all the people with a known name in the strength, conditioning and martial arts world are real people. They have real families, real problems, real ups and downs, real lives outside of the superhero image we all try to present as the invincible training guy. Toughness is more in caring for others than in any physical conquest. But the physical conquests we put ourselves through help prepare us to be able to give the most mentally and spiritually. On a deeper level hard training is also self-training for life. But no life is really complete without your spiritual needs being met and one of the greatest benefits of all the physical effort we expend is to put us into a place of deep enough introspection to look for spiritual truth. As my brothers I would be remised in not telling you that the most important decision you can make is to accept Jesus. Nothing is guaranteed in the physical life. Salvation can be.

Train hard, live hard, work hard, play hard, and pray hard.


As always… visit us at http://strongerman.com
And http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

"Bud Jeffries is a sick, sick man!"

Funny how within the training world and training lingo a really great compliment can sound extremely odd. A friend of mine sent this post from a forum to me because it referenced me and the martial arts book. When you first read the above title you don’t know what to think. Good? Bad? I don’t know. But if you’ve been around the training world long enough you understand that what that means is someone came up with a training routine that is either ridiculously difficult or heinously painful. Usually references unbelievably productive as well.

Well this is exactly what the sand bag exercise from Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts is. I hesitate sometimes to even talk about it because it’s completely unique to the book and it IS brutal. But an unbelievable way to take your grappling and physical power to another level.

What is referenced in the message below is just one of the exercises for the sand bag from the book, but a very unique one. Check out this message.

Posted on the Dragon Door forum:

“I recently purchased (Bud’s) Twisted Conditioning vol 1&2 and also his Super Strength and Conditioning for Martial Arts in E-book form. Absolutely the best 75 bucks I have spent in a long time. If you don't already own these you are doing yourself a great disservice.

In the third of those books he tells the poor unsuspecting reader to take his/her sandbag and using a rope attach a cable set to it. Secure the cable set to an immovable object. Now do what I can only describe as the old bear-hug turn and toss throw so popular in bar-room brawls without actually throwing the sandbag. Return to the starting position and repeat on other side.

Now attaching the cable set to the sandbag was something that had honestly never occurred to me. So I rushed down to the basement, used an old gi belt to attach a cable set to a pole just above waist level. The sandbag was 100 lbs and I used a single loop made of L.L. magenta cable. I backed away until the cable was at about 10% stretched and did the exercise as described. 3 sets of 5 later I was feeling pretty good. Then I said to myself "Hey why not use this to add a new dimension of resistance to other bag moves?" So I did 2 sets of 5 bear-hug squats facing the pole, 2 sets of 5 with the pole on my right side and 2 sets of 5 with the pole on my left side. Finally for the sake of a complete circle I tied the gi belt around my waist attached the set it and did 2 sets of 5 facing away from the pole. All the squats were done with the cable stretched between 50% and full stretch (2x cable length). In the end I was tired but not wiped out.

Yesterday I woke up and wished I hadn't. I was sore in places I didn't know I had places. Why in God's name did my ribs hurt, I asked myself. Had I gotten in a fight? Every muscle in my torso was fighting for full attention of my CNS. My traps felt like I had Andre the Giant standing on my shoulders all day. The rest of the day is a blur.

Today I am still sore. I have discovered a sure-fire way to tell if you have worked your posterior chain past the point of reason. That is when you look down and every muscle from your hamstrings to the base of you neck tightens up. My ribs still ache and my entire abdominal girdle is on slow burn. The soreness in my legs isn't too bad, but the hips are more sore than they would normally be.

Bud Jeffries is a sick, sick man.

Thank you Bud.

I'm going to lie down and die now.


Chris”

Chris – so glad you enjoyed the sandbag exercise also so glad you got the idea of pulling the sandbag not just in the position shown, but using the cable attachment to make it tough and brutally effective for lots of other training. The cable attachment really does put this exercise over the top. Not only do you have to support and move the weight of the bag very similar to holding an opponent, but you have to turn or move against the strength of the cable as well as lift the actual bag. REALLY like grappling a live opponent. Lifting their weight plus overcoming their resistive strength and an incredible strength and endurance builder.

Thanks also for the great endorsement. The material in those books will take you over the top. The rest of you reading out there, if you haven’t heard of or tried this exercise, well now you know what it is and have a rough estimate of how to do it.

If you want to read more about it and some more incredible training get Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts

Or do like Chris did, pick up the whole enchildada – The Training Trio – and save some bucks at the same time.

By the way you can do that cable resisted exercise with any odd object. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a sandbag. If you think THAT one is tough, wait till you read about the sandbag sled drag.

Hope this gives you another exercise to light a fire under your training. I know it will and when it does, big results are right around the corner.

Check out all of our training products at http://strongerman.com/storefront.html

We Will Not About-Face

Greetings Friends,

Below is an email, one of many that I received in regards to an newsletter we put out last week about the Magic of Exercise (blog post appears as 3rd post on 4/28/06).

In that email I hit some pretty pointed and harsh (well at least to some people), truths about exercise and the fact that done correctly it does have some nearly magical transformative powers to your life. However, the magic is in the effort and the work not in any singular form of exercise no matter what any kind of crazy marketing says so. As well as how no single form of exercise covers all the bases and gives you every type of strength and endurance that you might need or want.

Here’s the email:

Dear Bud,

I’ve just read your email on the Magic of Exercise and it is refreshing to hear from someone like yourself writing something that I’ve thought for a long time. More power to you. It’s about time someone told the truth AND stuck to the truth. If only more people could.

All the best,

Jim Mills

Thanks a lot Jim. We always appreciate great responses like that. You’re right more people should tell the truth about exercise, but sometimes the truth is just hard to swallow and it ain’t easy to sell. You can make more money by twisting things around to say things that you know aren’t true, but make it easily palatable for the general public. One thing you can count on us to do is to tell the truth and to uphold the standard of truth in exercise. I don’t believe in trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes in trying to make a buck. I also will not about-face in regards to things I’ve said about exercise because I believe they are true and will always be true. They are the core principles of developing human physical prowess.

I think some of the people who said the things that they said in regards to changing their mind and having some magic epiphany about the all encompassing merits of a new exercise have been brought about by the results they’ve gotten in working away from long-term overuse injuries. But just because something created a problem for you doesn’t make that thing wrong in and of itself. Anything you do over the course of a lifetime will create some wear and tear on the body. Anything you overwork may have damaging effects. It’s a wonderful thing to ride a motorcycle. It’s an entirely other thing to make an Evel Kneivel life time career of riding the ragged edge and jumping it over death defying distances and heights.

Every form of exercise no matter how light and easy, if taken too far, will eventually ding you up. This is why we include a great deal of variety in our lifts and conditioning. You can maintain a few basic core strength and conditioning moves and then from there branch out into what is a vast array of fun, exciting and rewarding possibilities in physical training that still trains the same pathways of strength and endurance with a slightly different angle or vehicle. You can stretch out a lifetime of productive exercise while minimizing risks and injuries.

Did everyone get that? If you were reading thoroughly you should now understand that if you never do anything but lift heavy or never do anything but ultra-high reps and constantly drive yourself to your upper limits you will probably end up with some pain. BUT that doesn’t make lifting heavy or doing high reps wrong. It means you need a better balance.

If you’re smart you can still be hardcore and explore new territories of untapped strength and still be long-term making it a lifetime builder of health, energy and ability.

Find the exercise that excites you and pour your passion into it, because it will pour that energy right back into your life and you’ll live a stronger one, not just with the weights, but with every other area of living.


By the way, if you want to learn how to get the ultimate in your personal physical achievement, how to correctly put your programs together to extend them for a lifetime and to see what the possibilities are for creating your greatest strength and endurance and the infinite variety you can experience then you should get Twisted Conditioning I, II and Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.

You should also check out our Odd Object and Alternative Conditioning series. Between these DVDs we show you over 550 exercises for building super strength, health and endurance. A virtual lifetime of power at your fingertips.

Find them here:

Alternative Conditioning
Odd Object Lifting