How strong do you really need to be?
This guy looks healthy and fit!
So how strong do you have to be? Do you have to lift heavy to get strong?
And what is your definition of strength? Did you decide what being strong
is or did social proof decide for you? You do know what social proof is, right?
It’s what everyone else say’s or who you decide to believe and you go with the masses!
Is a 300lb or 400lb bench press? Is it a 500lb squat? I hear experts telling you to get
strong you need to lift heavy. I know a 400lb bench press never helped me in an athletic
sport or in my job as a laborer. So why did i want to bench so much?
Social proof that is why, bench pressing 400lbs is a strong bench. Some will even say you
can’t get strong without a kettlebell, or you need to train in crossfit because it’s the only way.
I have said it before, your body has no idea what it’s using as weight, and all weight is not equal,
a 100 lbs is 100 lbs but 100lbs on a barbell is different than a cooler with 100 lbs of weight in it.
Try it press a 100lb barbell then try to press 100 lbs in a cooler. In all my years as a laborer,
a big press was useless, heavy curls and rows were useless.
Being strong in the gym is not the same being strong digging ditches, moving furniture, hauling
trash, metal scrapping, etc. After 30 plus years as a laborer and training I will stay with what I call
“Conditioned Strength”, the strength to keep you going for long periods of time.
Big strong gym athletes will find picking up 45lbs 3,000 times in one session a different type of
work and they will wish they were in the gym working through a set of about 6 seconds with a
3 to 5 minutes rest.
You only need to be as strong as you feel you need to be, to do what you need to do!
Try this workout: Non stop jump rope 100 times 10 Military squat thrusts (non jumping burpees)
as many rounds as possible in 1 hour. I finished with 55 rounds of 5,500 skipping rope and 550 Military
squat thrusts. People will say this is nothing but cardio, it’s not the cardio most anyone is doing or even
can do.
1 hour see what you can do if you dare!
Toughness Builds Winners
Johnny Grube
www.wildmantraining.com
Train for feats like this in short, very intense training workouts
John,
That’s a ball buster of a workout. You can call it cardio, you can call it whatever you want. I don’t differentiate between cardio and stregnth. My experiance in martial arts & wrestling has tought me a few lessons. The first of all is cardio is king. I don’t give a damn how much you can benchpress or squat. The second you get tired. You are dead. The second you get winded and can’t breath, fight’s over and you are gone. Bodyweight exercises done in high numbers are unbeatable. More useful than weights.
Dr. Boots, you speak from experience so how do John’s methods develop the grip and forearm strength necessary for judo and wrestling? Are you saying curls are not necessary? .
Grip strignth ?
Develop the capacity to wrestling on the mat for a long period of time and you will have all the grip strength you need. I stand by my original point. Wrestling or striking, whatever you martial art, cardio is essential. You need to be a cardio machine. The minute you get puffed and can’r breath, you are finsished. Bodyweight exercises done in high numbers will give you a level of fitness which is superhuman.
Oh, out of all the guys I wrestled with the strongest one had been in prison. Once this this man grabbed you, there was no way you could loosen his grip. Want to know what his routine was ? I’ll tell you. Get ready now:
20 Puships, followed by 10 chinups.
He would do 20 rounds of that rouitne. That amounts to 400 pushups and 200 chinups. But nahhh, that can’t make you strong….. I mean, it’s so simple……..
Thanks for clarifying. That will definitely make you strong. And chin-ups/pull-ups are ultimate grip builders. Simple, yes, easy, no.