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