5 Reasons to NOT Train with Me

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Jon

A bit tongue in cheek, but here are 5 excellent reasons why you should NOT train with me:

1) If the price of your gym membership is the only deciding factor in where you train, please go to a commercial gym.

2) If you do not care about ever achieving your fitness goals or getting results from your training, please go to a commercial gym.

3) If you do not appreciate hands-on instruction and lots of personal attention and accountability, please go to a commercial gym.

4) If you do not care about learning correct movement, form, and exercise technique, please go to a commercial gym.

5) If you have no interest in experiencing the powerful results conferred by properly designed training programs based on years of experience and learning, please go to a commercial gym.

5.5) If you are perfectly content with being mediocre and never, ever challenging yourself or pushing your limits, please go to a commercial gym

If however, none of the above fit or describe you in the slightest, than I implore you to experience the difference here at Warrior Fitness Gym and come train with me.

What Business Am I In?

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Jon

The text for this post came from a speech I gave last week to my BNI (networking) Group…

You may think you know and understand the business I am in, being that I own a gym. Perhaps you think I am in the business of helping people lose weight, or get in shape (whatever that means). Or, maybe the business of helping people get stronger or improve athletic performance. You would be wrong. Certainly those things are components of what I do, but they are not the complete picture.

Without stepping on the toes of my friends in the financial planning and life insurance industries, I will unapologetically tell you I am in the business of Long Term Care. How can I say that?

Fat loss, muscle gain, increases in flexibility, mobility, and performance are not end goals, in and of themselves. They are ALL merely byproducts of better movement. Whether you are an athlete, martial artists, soccer mom, or business man, and everyone in between, better movement will always equate to better performance, better body composition, and better health.

Exercise Improves Life

Exercise improves all facets of life. People who exercise regularly are better at their jobs, kids do better in school, they get sick less often, and in general have much higher levels of energy and health. Exercise does not just improve your biceps, it improves your brain. That pump you feel in the muscle when doing a curl is caused by blood flow. That blood flow is not isolated, that is physiologically impossible – it increases all throughout the body, including the brain. Think about this – your head is roughly 1/8 of your entire body. If you simply sit at a desk and work with your mind all day long, no matter how smart and productive you may be, you are only using approximately 1/8^th of your entire potential. Descarte was wrong – the mind is not separate from the body.

I say I am in the business of long term care because I teach you much more than mere fitness. I teach you how to train for life. People do not stop moving because they get old. They get old because they stop moving!

Warrior Fitness is not a set of disparate parts cobbled together, but a system based on my life long experience as a physical culturist. To be able to recreate what I have put into it, you would have to study Japanese, Chinese, and Russian martial arts, strength training, bodyweight exercise, Kettlebell training, oldtime strong man training, sports science, yoga, qigong, etc…

I have put in all the work; done all the research, experimented with the protocols and the programming. I have given my clients, both locally here at Warrior Fitness Gym, and worldwide the product of it all– a fully developed, cohesive system of training the body, mind, and spirit for health, fitness, and performance – Warrior Fitness

Fitness Dangers for Bujinkan Students

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jon

Martial artists need to be extremely cautious when choosing a fitness program to compliment their training. While the right program can support, enhance, and protect budo practice, the wrong one can just as easily derail it.

Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu relies on relaxed, whole-body power devoid of excess muscular tension to properly execute its techniques.

Think About This

Think about this – each and every action you repeat over and over again encodes in your nervous system and creates change in your body, no matter how you value that change. Meaning that if you want to train yourself to move softly, subtly, and with relaxed power for your martial art practice yet you perform high tension power lifting exercises at the gym, guess what gets carried over to your budo? Yup. Too much tension.

If you are working towards using your whole body as a unit in budo practice so that when one thing moves, everything moves (can you do this?), but you perform bodybuilding style splits and isolation exercises in your strength training, what do you think happens to your functional integration? Yup. Bye-bye.

The critical thing to note here is that, as stated above, every action you do, no matter what your opinion of that action is, has an affect on your nervous system. When 2 actions compete, both lose out.

Shouldn’t your supplementary training and fitness support and enhance your main goal of becoming a more proficient martial artist? If it doesn’t, you might want to ask yourself what is more important to you? These are tough questions for a life long, committed budoka to wrestle with – trust me! I know. I walk a thin line in my training every day. But I made my choice long ago… You see, I love fitness, but budo is in my blood.

So when you go looking for a strength and conditioning program to support and protect your martial arts practice, remember something – I have been there, done that, and got the t shirt (several, actually).

Already Done For You

The research has been done. The exercises, protocols, and programs have been rigorously tested. The results are in. I have created several Done For You programs that I KNOW will change your Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu practice for the better. As a 20+ year veteran of the Bujinkan (I started training in 1989), I have put together these programs for you – Bujinkan students and teachers alike. It’s all here….

Who is This Program for Anyway?

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Jon

It recently came to my attention (yesterday, as a matter of fact) that several people are under the impression that my Evolve Your Breathing program is only meant for a small demographic of the population, ie – male martial artists.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the last time I checked 100%, that means ALL, of the population breathes – am I right? 🙂

So why would someone assume that a program on breathing exercises for health, wellness,performance, and stress management, applies to just a limited segment of the population?

Let me help – No matter who you are and what sort of activity, sport, or martial art (or none) you are engaged in, your breathing is an essential, and I mean critically essential, component of that activity.

Want to make it better? Get Evolve Your Breathing. Period.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

To make this an even easier decision, I am so sure that EYB will increase your energy levels, improve your response to stress, and speed your workout recovery that I am offering a 30 day money back guarantee.
Try Evolve Your Breathing for 30 days and if you don’t like it, I will give you 100% of your money back no questions asked. (well, I might ask one question, like – did you actually try it???)

Take the Evolve Your Breathing 30 Day Challenge today!

PS – You can also get Evolve Your Breathing at 50% off the regular price when you purchase it as part of one of my Budo Packs!

My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation Part 4

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Jon

Guest blog post by Eric Guttmann, U.S. Navy Officer, Author, Fitness Enthusiast and More!

My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation Part 4 – THE RESULTS: Leaner, Stronger, Faster.

For 8 weeks prior to my Navy Physical Readiness Test (PRT) I developed a program focused exclusively on Tire Flipping. If you have been following these articles then you know that the main goal was to achieve 100 consecutive tire flips with the 300lb tire with an emphasis on tying the breath to the movement. I will now report on the results that this type of training had on my body and performance as measured by the U.S. Navy.

The Navy’s Physical Readiness Test (PRT) is a two part process that is now called the Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA). The first part, conducted 1-2 days prior to the physical test measures your height & weight and compares it to a chart that determines if you are within Navy standards. If you are overweight then you get your bodyfat measured by a tape measure test. They measure your waist and neck circumference and plug it into a chart with your height and weight that spits out an approximate bodyfat percentage. Males need to be under 22% bodyfat to pass this assessment and be “within standards.” If you score higher than 22% then you FAILED the PFA.

Because of my bodybuilding and strength workouts I have ALWAYS been over the “magical” weight for my height in the last 17 years of military service and have gotten used to getting my bodyfat measured at every PFA. Here is what happened at this PFA. For the first time in 17 years I actually dropped below 215lbs, my exact weight was 211.4lbs. I did not alter my diet at all, in fact my diet was a little off because I have been eating a lot of Cuban food in Miami and when I take my kids out to eat I would be eating ice cream and desserts with them. I do make an effort to eat “clean” 80% of the time. The only thing I did different was the physical training. So it seems that extended tire flipping, which for this article means 100 consecutive tire flips, is a weight loss mechanism. Judging by the way my abs and obliques were more defined I would also forward that it is a fat-loss mechanism.

Now here is the really interesting part. I mentioned that as part of my regimen I added gravity boots. Hanging upside down helps to decompress the spine and provides extra blood flow to the head. For the last 17 years my height has always been the same, 73 inches. When they measured me my height was a little over 73 inches and I heard the Petty Officer who took my measurement say “he is over 73 inches so mark down 74.” This means I was probably ½ inch taller for them to round up. This really blew me away! You hear of people shrinking with age, but have you ever heard of anyone adding a little height to their frame? This for me is confirmation that the gravity boots add an important component to recovery, spine health, and longevity!

Armed with my two official measurement of 211.4lbs and 74 inches the Petty Officers administering the PFA go to the “magical” Navy chart that determines if I am within “standards” and lo and behold for the first time in 17 years I did not need to do the tape measure test! Thus, tire flipping and gravity boots have the capacity to alter the body by making it leaner and taller, but let’s see what happens when you are tested physically…

The Navy PRT consists of two minutes of sit-ups, two minutes of pushups, and a 1.5 mile run for time. There is a chart that determines your score based on the number of repetitions for your age and gender. There is a max number which means you “aced” the test. For a 39 year old male (that would be ME) my max scores were 95 situps and 76 pushups. I achieved the 95 situps and 76 pushups with ease. I did not do a single situp or pushup in the previous 8 weeks. I DID do Dru Patrick’s Last Man Standing drill to train my core on my recovery day. Now, the really interesting thing happened with the run.

I do occasional sprint workouts when I get into a groove, but I checked my training journals and had not done any type of running or sprinting for six months. In other words, the last time I ran was my previous PRT. Since I do not like running, what I do at the PRT is find a guy with a pace I like and just trail in behind him. The key is to pick the right pace, too slow and you feel antsy, too fast and you will get smoked before your time. This time I decided to follow the beat of my own drum and just concentrate on my breathing, just like I do when I do the tire flipping. While the breath pattern was different the idea was the same – use the breathing discipline I developed through tire flipping and apply it to the run. I ended up doing a “weird” pattern almost intuitively that was: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, and 4 short exhales. I felt that the key was in removing the excess waste products and that is what the 4 short exhales at the end of the breathing cycle sought to accomplish.

Keeping the breathing pattern up for the first mile was easy, but after that I noticed that I wanted to change it. Here is where the discipline kicked in and I forced myself to keep the pattern. Lo and behold to my surprise I ran it in 11:45, 30 seconds FASTER than my previous runs! It was also the first time in 5 years that I ran the test in under 12 minutes! While part of it may be due to being a little lighter, a lot had to do with the breathing discipline and conditioning developed through tire flipping.

In conclusion, the Heavy Metal Strength Meditation was a success! I dropped 4 lbs of weight and you could make the case that most of it was fat loss, I increased my height, I “maxed” the situps and pushups with ease without training those specific exercises, and I ran the best run I have had in five years. In case you are curious and want to try it here is the curriculum I followed: My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation Part 3

Very respectfully,
Eric Guttmann

PS As you can see joint mobility is an integral part of the recovery day, to get my FULL Mobility program click HERE:

If flipping a 300lb tire 100 consecutive times is a little out of your league right now then get in combat ready shape using Extreme Military Fitness by clicking HERE and after the 12 weeks you will be primed and ready to tackle on the Heavy Metal Strength Meditation:

If you like the energy in these articles then get Listen Up and read 1-5 pages in the morning to put you in the right mindset to tackle on any task or life change you want to accomplish, whether it be physical, mental, financial, or lifestyle.

Warrior Fitness

Old School Training for the Modern Warrior

Monthly Archives: May 2013