A machine can't do it but you can

I hope you’re all fully realizing the deep blessings you have and expecting new ones to come.

You know we’ve come a long way with the technology and industry of the world. But in all that we still can’t equal the incredibleness of the human body. We can build cars that drive long distances, or cars that haul heavy things or cars that go ridiculously fast, but we haven’t been able to put it all in one vehicle. Why? Because the machine is the invention of man, an inanimate object limited to the mechanical power it can display. However YOU are something different.

First you are designed by an omnipotent God and so incredible and complex is the design that we’re still scratching the surface at figuring it out. Second you can build your body into being a “machine,” that can cover long distances, haul heavy things and go extremely fast. Your body has the ability to adapt to all of those things at the same time. Problem is, very few people have ever unlocked all the secrets of getting all that response out of your machine.

Third, your mind has infinite power over your body. A man-made machine can only respond to the programmed controls that it has. Even our computers are really just playing pre-programmed responses. However a machine cannot decide to change itself and then exert the power of that decision to actually effect those changes. If you put the right mental energy into making yourself any or all of those physical things, your body will become it. Both by the work you put in, they physical adaptability of your body and the power that your mind and spirit have over actually effecting changes in your body.

A Volkswagen can’t just decide to be a drag racer or a 4x4. Someone else has to make it that. You however, can decide through will and training to make yourself into an efficient, strong, and powerful machines, all physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally. What’s topping you from taking advantage of the incredible built in ability that you already have? You have to do the work to unleash it. Decide what you want and start working. Because the raw material for any goal that you want to accomplish is already there within you.

More on cranking up your endurance

We talked last week about one of the secrets on building up your endurance to make it sky rocket and apply to the real world. Today let’s talk about another simple, simple thing to do that really makes a difference in the cardio output of an endurance routine.

Which is harder to do? 100 straight squats and 100 straight push ups, or 10 sets of 10 of each alternated with each other? The answer depends on how you look at the question. For pure muscular strength endurance it’s harder to do the reps straight. However for cardiovascular and general endurance (inclusive of some muscular strength endurance with higher heart and lung function). It’s harder to do the 10 sets of 10 alternated. Why?

Because the act of changing from one exercise to the other, changing direction and momentum requires more cardiovascular endurance. Also you force the heart and lungs to work harder by forcing them to pump blood and oxygen to different parts of the body alternately creating greater over all circulation. You also take advantage of the fact that from set to set, while your muscles are being worked they are still fresher and can move at a faster pace with cleaner reps and more speed. This is why conditioning routines like pyramids, circuits, intervals and things like the deck of cards routine are so effective in building endurance.

Your breathing and cardio goes through the roof and over the course of the entire workout, you’ve done enough volume to stimulate muscular endurance and hormonal and chemical change in the body. As a wonderful side benefit, you don’t effect your max strength as much as straight rep or long slow style conditioning workouts do. Because you can use faster pacing and in effect bursts of muscular effort, you’re still teaching the body to operate at a high level of strength, but now blended with endurance together.

Take this into account in your workouts. By all means, when you’re building a base of muscular and cardio endurance it’s okay and appropriate to do straight rep sets. Everybody should go though them at some point in their training career to build their benefits and build that muscular memory into your strength and endurance, but most of the time your endurance training should be on some type of an interval. The most bang for your buck, and the most change in your life.

Relaxation and Tension Endurance – Key to Big Dog Endurance for the Average Guy

The question of athletic fitness and the way to really train it always draws more attention than your average jihad. You want to start a fitness holy war? Then question someone’s particular favorite style for strength endurance. You’ll end up being called out for pistols at dawn.

I want to talk to you about why the average training system for endurance doesn’t get the job done for most people and how you can use this tip like mainlining Viagra for your endurance training. When you train any new system for physical gains there is a learning curve. The learning curve is always more stressful than what an experienced trainer goes through because the body is not used to that particular style of stress.

For instance if you do bodyweight exercises for the first time for ultra high reps, it seems like some kind of fitness epiphany. You can’t believe the burning sensations from the high reps or the soreness or the fact that even though you can squat 500 pounds, you can’t do 100 unbroken reps of bodyweight squats. However after a while you learn that the key to high reps with any lightweight implement is alternating relaxation and tension.

This is a skill that lends itself to any type of endurance activity. If you bike or run for long periods of time you develop the most efficient form that allows you to relax the most while putting out the right level of tension to maintain your pace and stretch out the endurance. The same applies to grappling or boxing. That’s the reason cyclists and runners often die on hills, because a hill requires a radical increase in the amount of muscular output or tension.

It’s one thing to maintain a paced level of any training exercise, but it’s another thing to have to go from moderate to all out pace and back and forth during an endurance session. Eventually all light training especially if attempting to do high straight reps succumbs to greater efficiency. You learn how to relax the most and apply the least tension to still get the job done. It’s necessary, but it diminishes the returns especially as it applies to sport.

So what’s the solution? Mix in a heavier or faster pace implement or interval into you endurance training. If you’ve been training kettlebells or dumbbells or what ever the case may be and you’re cranking up to 100 rep sets one way or the other you’re learning to relax during those sets. So if you want to truly train your system to be able to go harder and longer, amp up the workout by throwing in something truly difficult in the middle of those reps. Could be heavy barbell work, strongman or simply heavier, faster work or a light implement, or a sprint style pace or heavier, more difficult bodyweight exercise that allows you to really lay it on the line in the midst of a conditioning session.

This way you can still keep your conditioning session short, but push the intensity up and get massive gains. You can actually be prepared to take those gains from the gym to the real world.

Remember just because a guy may be a world champion at a particular endurance feat or sport doesn’t mean you should train like him. Many of the champion level professional athletes are simply so gifted that they can play the sport with moderate to low intensity work outs and still be unbelievable. However, for everyone else, if you really want to make amazing progress either in your sport or in taking your training to the real world, you have got to over prepare. You have to make it harder than the game or whatever real world challenge you might be looking to conquer when you train in the gym.

That’s the key to mind blowing endurance.

A Fast Workout

Many of you may know that we spent a week in Houston with Dennis Rogers working on some upcoming projects. One of the things we did was to work on an exercise program for a friend of his. The average guy working out at the average gym is laboring under the assumption that he has to do three hours and hundreds of sets of everything available to get real results. He’s been sold that by the average training magazine available in the US right now. The programs of the bodybuilding stars. Built to look great on paper with absolutely no value in the real world.

The fact is those things just aren’t true. It’s the effort that you put into the training that you do. Much more so than the amount of training. So we gave him a quick program. Three 15 minute workouts per week. This combined with proper effort, proper form on the exercises, proper food, and progression will get you tons of results. Here’s a variation of that routine.

Workout 1

Warm up
Then barbell squat 1 set of 20.
Followed by 1 x 20 breathing pullovers.
Followed quickly by stiff leg deadlifts of 1 x 15
Then 1 x 20 breathing pullovers.

Workout 2

Warm up
Then dumbbell row, dumbbell press and barbell curl 3 to 4 x 1, 1 x 10, 1 x 20 plus your choice of what type of dumbbell press or row.
Start with one set of 10 very light on each of the exercises to warm up, then jump immediately to progressively heavier sets of 1 up to a max for the day then back off, do another set of 10, and then a set of really high reps.

Workout 3

Warm up
Hindu squat x 10
Push up x 10
Dumbbell or Kettlebell swing x 10
Repeat each of those non-stop dropping one rep per round (10 for all three exercises, 9 on the second, 8 on the third, on down to one round).

Move as fast as you can, taking as little rest as possible and repeating as many times as possible in 15 minutes.


There you have it. A quick routine that gives you a great template to work off of. Three 15 minute workouts that’ll make you pour sweat and build massive conditioned muscles all at the same time.

A Workout to frighten beach goers

One of the things often lamented about the hard core lifting community is that it is “frightening” to the average fitness person or lay person. Lots of talk about how to make sports like Strongman and Powerlifting more acceptable to the general public by making them less intimidating. Or make the participants more mainstream looking. Yet also within this exists an odd dichotomy. To get more publicity the events need to be as freakishly heavy and bizarre as possible, but to get more “acceptance,” the athletes need to look less large and intimidating.

All hogwash!

I believe that we as strength athletes need to make a move for our own independence. To do what we want to do and be how we want to be regardless of sport or the mainstream. I never want to intentionally intimidate anyone who is in a gym environment or seeking fitness for strength or whatever, however I refuse to water-down the manliness of the challenges I put before myself to make it more acceptable to anyone’s idea of what is mainstream. The mainstream should be looking to man-up and get strong and in shape and not be so easily intimidated by any minor expression of physical intensity or passion.

You don’t get to be exceptional by caving to mass opinion. If you’re not finding your own expression of strength, health and fitness regardless of what anyone else thinks you ought to look or act like then you’re not being true to yourself. In fact I’m a little glad that the average fitness person is intimidated by a hard workout. Not the idiocy that steroids has brought or lame histrionics or people who are intentionally, personally intimidating to other people in a gym setting. I’m talking about effort that bleeds though your skin. Weights that bend bars, objects that people don’t think can be lifted and feats that people don’t think are possible.

I want to do the thing that requires the effort that separates me from the mass of the fitness world. If you refuse to be separated then you choose to have their results, which is mostly pathetic and for show. Higher results require higher effort and that is what separates us from them. Not some imaginary disquieting presence that they choose to assume.

Intimidation for intimidation’s sake is idiocy. Just like being intimidated by someone’s effort in the gym is idiocy. Most people don’t ever see themselves as having the ability to produce that kind of strength and they realize what a person who can produce that kind of effort is capable of. That’s why they’re intimidated. However most of the truly tough people I’ve ever met are also quite nice and are generally the exact opposite of the assumption of the mainstream. In fact they are an asset to the world because of their strength instead of a detraction. They help to preserve the abilities of strength, effort and heroism in a world that tries to water everything down and looks down on them for it. Be one of these people and be your own man.


Now that we’ve fired our volley in defense of strength, personal choice and standing up for yourself I’ll tell you a story about the title of today’s newsletter.

We spent the last couple of days at the beach taking a little family time. Had a wonderful time at a very nice little, secluded beach. I always enjoy the water and the time with my family away from other distractions.

Caught a little workout while we were there. Nothing fancy, brought a kettlebell with me. It’s just inspirational to have that type of setting. On the sand and surf, it’s one of those places that drives you to enjoyable effort. So I did a couple of hundred swings, finished the workout by doing sprints from the water up onto the beach, back to the kettlebell for another set of swings. I did five sets. It’s a workout you should definitely try because the water really adds to the effort. Believe me you’ll huff and puff like a steam engine.

Now I tend to be oblivious to other people when I’m doing something like that. I’m wrapped up in my own little world of the workout and nobody else is really effecting it. My wife was telling me later about watching people’s reactions when I came sprinting out of the water. Everybody on the beach, particularly those in the water would suddenly jump and start searching the water as if there were a shark. The really funny thing is they did it every time I ran a sprint out of the water, not just the first time. As if there were a new shark every time I ventured back into the water. My wife and son were there swimming along with me. She said they kept looking back at her like, “Why is the big guy running and the woman and the boy are staying in the water?!”

All in all except for the slight moments of shark-induced fear, I think everyone had a good time watching the 350lb guy run out of the water and swing the cannonball with the handle around. No one was intentionally intimidated, but I had a great time and improved my fitness along the way. You should try this workout. Do things to make your workout tougher to separate you from the weak and frightened masses.

Am I a genetic freak?

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is, “How did you get strong?”

“Were you born that way?”
“Did you take something?”
“Do you know some secret?”

Well, yes, I do know a secret. But it isn’t some secret training routine. Or some secret food to eat or supplement to take, or drugs or anything like that. One of the other criticisms that everybody who is strong and puts out information about how to train gets is this: “Well anything would work for you. Your genetics are so good you couldn’t help but get strong.”

Is that the truth? Could I have haphazardly done any ol’ program and gotten strong? No, it’s not true and that question explains itself. You can’t haphazardly, randomly pick exercises and suddenly find yourself with the key to strength or magically strong. No matter where you start or how good of genetics you come from, it’s what you do after that which counts. No one is born suddenly possessing the ability to lift 1,000 pounds or do 1,000 pushups. Those things my friends take use of the secret.

So what is the secret?

Focused, progressive hard work on real result producing exercises. Effort. Effort means more than genetics. All the potential in the world is nothing without applied effort. Effort means more than drugs. It means more than supplements, more than the perfect training routine or some “secret” exercise. Effort IS the secret.

Where ever you are, if you’re not getting bigger, stronger, faster or more enduring then complaining about it or blaming it on your genetics won’t get the job done. Comparing yourself to others won’t help to get the job done. Genetics is something you cannot control therefore it is a non-factor. You work with what you have, which is always more than you give yourself credit for and become the best you can be.

Intelligent training applied with effort always beats genetics. There are tons of people out there with starting blocks to build with genetically, but they’re too lazy or unfocused, or unmotivated to do anything about it. Results beats potential. Second-guessing that is a pure waste of time. “Oh if he only worked as hard as so-and-so… he has so much potential.” So what!? Potential without the work is an un-measurable and unrealistic concept. You can do what you’re mind believes you can do and what you actually put forth the effort to accomplish. Everything else is hot air. No excuses, no worrying about whether somebody else has great potential or whether you do or don’t. Put in the work and you’ll get the results.

I already told you the secret, now you step up and apply it.

1,000 Reps up your first mountain

I hope today finds you all deeply pursuing the blessings available to you from God, our Father.

Most of the conditioning that I and many of the hardcore athletes now do has a very quantitative nature. In fact I think that’s what attracted me to that type of conditioning originally. There’s just something more substantial about saying, “I’m going to do “x” number of reps in “y” amount of time.” Than saying, “I’m going for a run, or I’m going to ride the bike.”

Nothing wrong with running or biking except for the fact that I believe that all hard conditioning should have some type of interval built in. It’s the natural state of the body. The deeper I got into the alternative conditioning methods that I now pursue the more perspective I gained about them. Here are some of the things I found out.

Using muscular and aerobic conditioning together is the way to add endurance to your strength without taking away from your top end. Fast pacing and moderate rep sets alternating exercises is superior to one long super high rep movement. Single movement super high rep workouts are fine, they’re great base builders, but shouldn’t be the absolute cornerstone of your conditioning. All the alternative implements give similar results as long as you give the right effort. Alternating implements is a great way to add variety to your training, up your conditioning and stop over use injuries.

Reps of one type of exercise do not have a straight equal in another type of exercise. (100 bodyweight squats may equal 50 kettlebell snatches in the amount of power output and conditioning they may require). Different people will have different exercises that they are particularly suited for. Generally speaking however the mark of solid started conditioning is a 500 rep workout. The next gateway and the beginning of super endurance is 1,000 reps.

Here’s a sample 1,000-rep workout that I did the other day, which you can have a little twisted fun with:

20 reps band twists
20 push ups
20 bent over rows
20 bodyweight squats

Done with no rest between sets, repeating five times.

20 step ups
20 half sit ups
20 kettlebell swings
20 dumbbell arm movements

Done with no rest between sets, repeating five times.

50 band pull aways
50 leg lifts
50 kettlebell high pulls
50 double dumbbell presses

There you have it. 1,000 reps. Working every part of the body at a fast pace building both cardiovascular and muscular endurance. If you really want to spice it up, throw in a strength exercise at the beginning, middle or end. I bent some nails at the end of this workout even though it would have normally been quite easy, they were significantly more challenging because of the total level of fatigue.

If you want to step up to a level of endurance that carries over to everything that you do that really has a long term effect on your health and energy and makes your strength work easier, at some point you have got to explore the upper echelon of what’s possible with your endurance. You’ve got to build up to it and then go to places you didn’t think were possible. Just add a few reps at a time. Keep going, getting one more rep, one more set of 10, whatever you have to get to get there.

Then you can sit on top of the mountain and know you’ve been somewhere and you can see even higher peaks to climb.

If it aint you it aint gonna work

The internet is a wonderful thing. It allows massive communication all over the world about millions of topics. It also unfortunately because of how human beings act and react, is one of the biggest time-wasters ever invented. Am I cutting it down? Absolutely not I make my living off of it. But if you’re not searching for knowledge on a particular thing, you’re just surfing and you’re spending more time on that than training, then you’re wasting your time.

Ninety percent of the discussion on training on the internet is a waste of time. Why? Because much of it is nitpicking over things that people have no real idea about what they’re talking about. All theory, no personal knowledge. Generally attempting to be governed by whatever they think is the “rules” for their particular sect of training. If you put out a low volume program and ask for discussion about it, some follower of the High Temple of High Volume will immediately jump on it with both feet. The opposite is the same for an initiate of the Low-Volume Order of Holiness. Then a general religious war will ensue extolling why I’m right and you’re wrong.

Let me put it to you straight. There are success and failure stories from every denomination, order, rite, temple, church, group, gang, and commune of training known. The missing ingredient to what makes success or failure from any one of these disciplines is you. What do you like, what do you want, what style suits you both mentally and physically, what works for you and achieves your goals?

People almost always want specific prescriptions for what will work for them. And I and many other knowledgeable trainers can give them to you. However if you’re not making your own choice helping to figure out what works for you and putting yourself both physically, mentally, emotionally into the training you won’t get the greatest results. It’ll work for a while and then what you really want to do will emerge strongly enough to push you in another direction or kill your progress. You have to step up, put some skin in the game and be responsible for your own progress and knowledge of your own body. You also have to spend more time training than you do discussing it.

Get off your butt and put YOU in the game.

Swings and Super Conditioning

The kettlebell or dumbbell swing is one of the most incredibly powerful exercises in modern hardcore conditioning. It works the posterior chain like almost nothing else and you can get a tremendous amount of strength and endurance with little or no damage from heavy loading. You all know I believe in heavy loads, but I also believe in mixing light and heavy work to get the most well-rounded effect and the greatest strength with the least possibility of overwork. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

At the present time I do quite a bit of heavy squats, but not that many heavy deadlifts or goodmornings. I find that the overload of muscles and structure is very close from all three of those exercises and you have to be careful not to overload the low back and hip structures from too much heavy work. I’ve also done a large number of swings lately and even though I haven’t regularly practiced stiff leg deadlifts or goodmornings when I have done them lately I have been very close to my top level. That means I’m maintaining that strength with no training and have the ability to practice those exercises with no pain from over work. Plus I get the benefits of extreme endurance and body conditioning from the swings.

Here’s a quick conditioning routine that I did the other night:

Start off with 100 swings with a moderately heavy kettlebell. Then sets of 20, 15, 10 and 5 of bodyweight squats, jumping jacks, sit ups, and push ups. Between every set jog in place for 50 steps. Try not to stop moving. As soon as you finish your set start jogging in place, and as soon you finish jogging hit your next set. Finish with another 50 kettlebell swings. Try to beat 15 minutes for the whole workout. You should be breathing very hard and you will have worked every muscle in your body along the way.

We’re going to bring you the most effective and most hardcore training out there and the kettlebell is no joke along with all of the other implements we train with. This is a sample of some of the butt kicking workouts that come from our training. If you’re interested in more kettlebell training and combination training with the kettlebell, (one of the most effective hardcore conditioning tools in use today), then check out Twisted Conditioning II, which has multiple kettlebell training exercises and routines.

Super Strength and Endurance for Martial Arts which has kettlebell routines and complexes –

And How to Hit Like A Freight Train, which has live demonstration of how to do multiple kettlebell exercises as well as kettlebell complex for strikers, and a live workout mixing the kettlebell with heavy partials. You can’t beat this info. Get it here:


God bless,

Bud Jeffries


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