t may not be for everyone, but strongman training might have a place in your routine, whether you are a powerlifter, bodybuilder or just a general lifter. EFS sponsored athlete Josh Bryant has one such story to prove how vital it was to his transformation.
“I had positive changes in my physique with no changes in my diet,” Bryant said. “I got leaner and my biceps were better, just because of picking up stones and fickle fingers. It just shows that compound exercises are the ones that make you grow.”
When Bryant was living in California, he was searching left and right for training partners, finally finding some capable ones 100 miles away.
In addition to squatting, they were also into strongman training, so Bryant gave it a try. At first, he couldn’t lift a 200-pound stone, but within a week he was doing a 400-pound stone with ease.
“It was all technique work,” Bryant said.
Read the rest here at Elite FTS
In 1057 King Malcolm Ceanmore began his reign, and was credited with initiating crude forms of the Scottish Highland Games' athletic competition that we are see today. He developed them as a means of improving the abilities of his military. Scottish men have tested their strength against each other at Highland gatherings for centuries. By the sixteenth century the games had become festive occasions drawing large crowds of spectators. Even though they had become crowd pleasers they were still utilized for leaders to find the best of the best.
The evolution of the equipment currently used for the Highland Games began with items locally available to the early Scotsman. The woodsmen produced the Gaelic or cader (tree) for their event. While the blacksmith's hammer or mall for driving fence posts was what is now called the 22 pound hammer. Steelyard weights weighing 28 pound and 56 pound were used to throw for height and distance. The agricultural region is likely the origin of the sheaf toss. The clachneart stone was originally derived from a rounded riverbed stone.
In today's Scottish Highland Games athletes combine strength, skill and endurance to compete in these time-honored events. In the spirit of the affable Scot, these competitors combine the attributes of the athlete with the fellowship of clansmen to promote and perpetrate the heart of the Scottish Festival, the Highland Games.
Read the rest here. Let me know if you are interested in competing for fun, I am.
We're working up to tall buildings in a single bound.
400m Med Ball Run
Turkish Get Ups
Rest 5 minutes then
3 Rounds for time
10 Muscle Ups
10 Burpees
The face pull may be the most underrated exercise in all of strength training. It falls into the horizontal pull category, but where rows potentially promote a downward scapular rotation syndrome and internal rotation of the shoulder joint, the face pull can do just the opposite.
Because the shoulder is either flexed or abducted 90 degrees throughout the face pull, the scapula is in upward rotation to some degree. Right away this gives us greater activation of the upward rotators, especially the upper and lower trapezius. The upward rotation offsets the pull of the downward rotators and helps prevent the development of the downward rotation dominant imbalance.
Now let's look at face pull performance. Traditionally, the face pull is performed with a rope handle or strap and a pronated grip.
Read the rest of this article here. Look 3/4 of the way down the page for the write up on face pulls.
So you wanna put on some lean muscle mass. And you want to do it within the context of the Primal Blueprint, but aren’t sure where to start. It’s a common question and it’s about time I addressed it head on.
As I’ve made pretty clear, our ultimate goal is to achieve positivegene expression, functional strength, optimum health, and extended longevity. In other words: To make the most out of the particular gene set you inherited. These are my end goals, and I’ve modeled the PB Laws with them in mind. But that doesn’t mean packing on extra muscle can’t happen with additional input. After I retired from a life of chronic cardio and started living Primally, I added 15 pounds of muscle, while keeping low body fat levels without really trying, so it’s absolutely possible for a hardgainer to gain some. The question is how much and at what expense?
I’d be the first to tell you that lean body mass is healthier than adipose tissue. Generally, the more lean mass a person has, the longer and better they live. But to increase mass at the expense of agility, strength, or speed is, in my opinion, counterproductive. What would Grokdo – go for enormous biceps or the ability to haul a carcass back to camp? Unless you’re a bodybuilder (nothing wrong with that, mind you; it’s just not my focus), I can’t advise simply packing on size without a proportional increase in actual strength. Those bulging biceps might look good on the beach, but then again, so does the body that comes with keeping up with the younger guys, knocking out twenty pull-ups in a row, and lifting twice your bodyweight. Form is best paired with a healthy serving of function. The two are quite delicious together, and, luckily, following the PB allows us to get both without sacrificing either.
Most of the pathogens that threaten humans are inhibited or killed off by the acids and alcohols in wine. Because of this, wine was considered to be a safer drink than much of the available water up until the 18th century.
Wine is a mild natural tranquilizer, serving to reduce anxiety and tension. As part of a normal diet, wine provides the body with energy, with substances that aid digestion, and with small amounts of minerals and vitamins. It can also stimulate the appetite. In addition, wine serves to restore nutritional balance, relieve tension, sedate and act as a mild euphoric agent to the convalescent and especially the aged.
The little dude sitting beside me at the Dan John seminar looked like he'd just been spanked by his mommy with an extension cord.
Poor guy had raised his scrawny arm like a kid in an elementary school classroom and asked Dan a question about NO2 supplements. Dan took a deep breath and, in his very best you've-really-disappointed-daddy voice, gave the kid The Lecture.
The Lecture can be summed up like this: "Don't even ask me about THAT unless you're first doing THIS!"
Turns out the kid didn't even know how much protein he was getting per day, an issue he should have taken care of before worrying about any ancillary supplement, especially one as questionable as NO2.
Read the rest of this article here
After years of discounting the practice, I’m about to do something I didn’t think I’d ever do. I’m going to do a public about-face and not only endorse but encourage direct biceps work as an integral component of your training, irrespective of your goal. And no, I haven’t been hanging around the Jersey Shore.
But first, a preamble…I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve called John Berardi a brother, mentor, best friend, and business partner for the last ten years. I work in a market segment that’s growing in number and girth, and I’ve grown up and now practice during a period of robust exercise study, theory, and application.
It’s a painful irony that the world continues to get fatter, sicker, and less fit as we get better at what we do, but our grasp on creating whole body transformations has never been more effective. And I fortunately fell in love with the field just as the grip tightened.
Read the rest of this article here at EliteFTS
