Look What I Found

Well, I'm apparently not the only person in the world who thinks we should walk on our hands. I told you so. Check this article out: Gorilla Training 

Eat Well, Eat Alot, Get Big

      Most people don't realize that the main, THE MAIN, reason people put on size and strength is food. Many high school and college athletes do not see optimal results from their lifting because they are not eating correctly. I used to be a kid who saw little results from lifting and did not know why. I saw everyone getting string around me, but my lifts stayed the same. I bought whey protein and saw little results; I tried new ways of lifting but still saw little growth. Then I researched more and finally realized how much I needed to eat to put on weight. I have a very high metabolism; I'm someone who loses weight when I am lazy, so I get a weight gainer and began taking that twice a day. I also began eating better, replacing unnecessary foods with better ones, increasing my calorie intake to over 6,000 calories a day. Don't get me wrong, I realize that was way WAY overboard now, but here's my point. Soon, very soon, I saw increases in my strength and size. I gained almost 25 pounds in 2 months, obviously putting on a whole lot of fat; however my bench went up twenty-five pounds as well. To start seeing results like this, add at least 500 good calories to your diet and if that does not help more.

       Eating is the key to gaining muscle, and using a healthy weight gainer will help enormously. I use GNC Mass XXX. It sounds crazy, but it is just whey and a lot of good, complex carbs. The new formula has a tiny amount of creatine but not nearly enough to be dangerous or make your muscles puffy. It is much easier to drink a shake than eat alot of food, but take the shake a half a serving at a time. If you drink it all at one time you will crap out alot of it, wasting your money because shakes aren't cheap.
       If you stick to a natural diet, I suggest drinking a half gallon of milk a day, eating lean meats, plenty of fruits and veggies, and WHOLE WHEAT carbs. Complex, slow burning carbs are a key to putting on weight; and, believe it or not, fats are a key agent in your body's digestion of protein. High amounts of saturated fat is unhealthy, but they are necessary for digesting protein so do not eliminate them from your diet. So eat well, eat alot, and get big and strong. GO EAT!!

Crazy hits that should pump you up for the work week ahead. Work hard
and you will have the confidence to play like this.

Day 5

       To conclude the work week, I like to do something fun, so I end with strongman training. Good strongman training makes your whole body stronger, gives you endurance, provides muscle coordination, and burns fat. It works on functionality and "farmboy" strength that can be used outside of the weight room - for us the field. I got three friends to join in and we began, starting with farmers walks and tire flips. To do farmers walks, just find big buckets and fill them with water; you can also throw in some bricks or stones to make it heavier. These really help your grip strength, condition and strengthen your whole upper body (especially the lats), and work the legs as well, stabilizing your joints. The water is a good variable because it sloshes, forcing your lower body and core to stabilize the enter time. We split into pairs and would switch exercises, doing a total of 4 sets each and then ended with a tire flipping contest to see who could flip it the most times in 2 minutes.
       After that we did sledge hammer hits on the tire and worked on grip strength by holding heavy metal plates in each hand for as long as possible. The sledge hits provide a very functional exercise and offer a motion that is completely different from any exercise in the gym. It is very good for conditioning the shoulders and arms and helps flexibility and core strength. Moving to the other exercise, the grip holds are great for increasing grip strength, a very important aspect to overall strength. Having a strong grip helps your lifting in many ways and could make weight increases happen much easier. I cannot tell you how many times my hands have given out in the gym and prevented me from continuing my workout, so get your grip strong and it will help strengthen the rest of your body as well.
       Lastly, we finished up with the deck of cards game for pushups. We went through the whole deck using the number on the card to tell us how many pushups to do. Every face card is also ten pushups and diamonds are diamond pushups. If you are not tired after a workout, I beg you to try this. YOUR UPPER BODY WILL BE DEAD, I promise. It is the day after and my chest is still blown out, I cannot open a bottle of water, and my triceps hurt if I straighten my arms. I think it was effective.

Game Changers

      Since I already told you about my thursday lifting on monday, I'll talk about something different today. I like to draw my inspiration from just plain amazing athletes, so I'm going to share with you which athletes I find remarkable. First and foremost is Adrian Peterson; this guy is just a rocket. He won NFL rookie of the year in 2007 as a running-back for the Minnesota Vikings, and has become one of the most dominate running-backs in the NFL. You can see every muscle in this guys frame, yet he is not bulky or unproportional. He is the most athletic-looking man on the face of this earth, in my opinion. You would expect someone like this to be cocky and flaunt himself, but he does not. In fact, he is one of the hardest workers in the NFL and has no counts against him, a real role-model athlete.

      Secondly is Jonah Lomu, considered the best rugby player in history. He played for the New Zealand All-Blacks which is one of the best rugby teams year after year, and on top of that could play ANY position. At 6'5" 275 pounds, he was a monster and extremely fast, like Brandon Jacobs, only bigger and faster. Like I said he could play the as the fastest and quickest position, or slowest and strongest position on the field, comparable to a lineman who could be a wide-receiver, absolutely incredible. He dominated the sport of rugby, all opposing teams having to strategize a game plan around him. He is the New Zealand player portrayed in the new movie, Invictus, with Matt Damon. Every aspiring rugby player is now compared to him, but none can reproduce a talent quite like his, a true legend to the sport.

      Lastly, I leave you with a true monster, Sebastian Chabal, a French rugby player who is the most intimidating player to ever grace the field. He is very large, 6'3" 260 pounds, but that isn't the half of it. He has been called  the "Neanderthal," "Caveman," and other nicknames because he truly resembles a someone from 2,000,000 B.C. He is the hardest hitting player in rugby and strikes fear in the hearts of everyone who plays him, not the typical Frenchman. He is incredibly strong and not too friendly on camera. In one interview, the reporter asked him to reply in English and he said, "We are in France, so I will speak French," and walked out of the locker room. He provides both the mental and physical edge to his teams, leading many of them to victory. 
    


      These athletes are true testaments to the remarkable abilities of the human body, and I hope all who read this will use these athletes for motivation in your future training.

Day 3

      Just got back from the gym and I am BEAT. Day 3 is the lower body explosion day, dedicated to sprints and jumps; but it also includes the upper body by throwing in bear crawls and handstands. I mixed all of these together into a non-stop circuit that I was supposed to go through three times but only made it through twice haha. Since it was raining we, me and my friend Dan (shout out), did this on an indoor basketball court, starting with the sprints. We ran from hoop to hoop once, rested for ten seconds, then ran across and back, rested ten seconds, then ran hoop to hoop 3 times (so we added a basketball court each length). Right after this we went directly into bearcrawls to halfcourt, then transitioned to backwards bearcrawls for the remaining half. After, that we did 10 squat jumps, 20 reaction jumps (you jump directly when you hit the ground), and then 50 burnouts (stiff-legged calf jumps). Finally, we ended with 10 handstands. This routine burned the legs to the max and did a number on the upper-body as well.
      Since I already posted on the importance of jumping, bearcrawls, and handstands, I'll talk about sprinting. Obviously, sprinting is key to increasing speed and explosion; you can only increase your running speed by running your hardest (a thing to think about with lifting). However, sprinting also increases both strength and testosterone levels. Sprinters are very strong because of the explosion that there muscles are used to performing, just like lifters lifting heavy weight. Also, it has been proven that sprinting after a workout can increase testosterone levels up to 25 times their normal standing amounts, much more than a workout without sprints. Keep that in mind when you have extra gas in the tank after your next lift.
  

Day 2

       Sorry about not posting yesterday; it's day 3 of my training week and I am SOOO sore from day 1 and 2. The second day of training was dedicated to long-distance running and complemented with boxing and shoulder prehab. It is the rest day that gets in some cardio and sures up the shoulders. In any sport, especially rugby and football, the shoulders are very vulnerable. Two years ago, almost to the day, I tore the labarum in my left shoulder; I had to get surgery and go through therapy for 4 months....awful. The worst setback I have ever experienced; however I did everything right and came back to finish out the football season, against the will of my surgeon haha. The point is to treat your shoulders with respect; you get out what you put in. Beef those babies up and strengthen the little muscles of the rotator cuff.
       The best thing I did for my shoulders after football was boxing. Through boxing I gained the confidence and coordination back in my left arm and maintained almost all of my strength without touching a weight. It is a great exercise for both strength and conditioning, and that is why I will always incorporate it into my workout routines. Plus if push comes to shove, you have a pretty powerful right hook in your pocket.
      Shoulder prehab is a great way to prevent injury to your rotator cuff and labarum. It is a series of exercises that strengthen the stabilizing muscles inside of your shoulders. By doing several exercises like L,T,Y, and W lateral raises lying on a bosu ball or bench, you really strengthen those muscles in the backs of your shoulders. The key to all of these is clenching your shoulder blades together and pulling them back and down, helping to create good posture and muscle-recruitment patterns.
      Lastly, cardio is just plain good for you; I think running is the best because your an athlete. No eliptisizing or I might have to puke; this isn't the Jersey shore (no offense if you are from there haha). Like the nike commercials say, "ATHLETES RUN". There is no getting around running if you are trying to be the best in your sport, so like the my squatting advice, grow a sack (although you might want to restrain it in compression shorts) and run.

Mariusz Pudzianowski World Strongest Man MMA FIGHT - The funniest bloopers are right here






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