Training here at Warrior Fitness Gym is so much fun that sometimes after classes I find myself still wanting to train. Well, last night was one of those nights.
I’ve been playing around with 2 handed clubbell training in my own daily personal practice so I figured I’d put together a quick, impromptu workout for myself with this as the center piece. Continue reading
Every year millions of people worldwide make firm, committed New Year’s resolutions.
“I’m going to get in shape this year.”
I’m going to lose x number of pounds this year.”
“This will be the year I reclaim my health and fitness.”
“I’m going to join a gym this year.”
“I’m going to cut my carbs this year.”
Sound familiar? But what happens to all those firm, committed resolutions? Continue reading
Warrior Fitness Gym
Hainesport Business Park
4004 Sylon Blvd.
Hainesport, NJ 08036
|
Time |
Session |
| 10:00 AM | Warrior Fitness Group Class |
| 10:30 AM | Bujinkan Martial Arts Demo |
| 11:00 AM | Little Warriors Class |
| 11:30 AM | Bujinkan Adult Martial Arts |
| 12:00 PM | Warrior Fitness Group Class |
| 12:30 PM | Bujinkan Martial Arts Demo |
| 1:00 PM | Little Warriors Class |
| 1:30 PM | Bujinkan Adult Martial Arts |
For more information about the gym including class descriptions, times, and membership options, please check our Warrior Fitness Gym page HERE.
One of my favorite motivational quotes of all time comes from Antony Hopkins in the movie, “The Edge”. They are stranded in the woods and he is tyring to psyche up Alex Baldwin’s character to help him kill a bear. Killing a bear seems like such an impossible task. It’s fraught with danger. It’s incredibly risky. Unbelievable hard. But they must do it.
Hopkins tells him – “What one man can do, another can do!”
Now, most of us will probably never be in a situation where we must kill a bear for survival. But look at it as a metaphor. The bear is any seemingly insurmountable task in your life. Any goal that you long to achieve, yet seems unconquerable. Doesn’t make a difference what it is – what one man can do (or woman, we’re equal opportunity here!), another can do!
It bugs to no end when students place highly skilled martial artists like Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, or Masaaki Hatsumi, head of the Bujinkan Dojo, or even Bruce Lee, founder of Jeet Kune Do on pedestals and hold them up as unreachable and impassible icons. Are they great? Yes, of course. Are they worthy of our respect and admiration for their skill and achievement? Hell yeah! But are they an enigma? Are they once in a generation geniuses that the rest of us mere mortals cannot hope to reach? No. Not at all. They are men. Human beings like you and me. They put in ungodly amounts of hard work, study, and practice to reach the peak of their craft, but what one man can do, another can do.
Thomas Edison failed over ten thousand of times before he successfully created the first incandescent light bulb. No, that’s not a typo. Ten thousand. What if he gave up after the first failure, or the hundredth, or even after the thousandth failure? Where would we be? In the freakin’ dark, people, that’s where!
Do you want the martial skill of a Hatsumi?
The Internal Power of Ueshiba?
The legacy of a Steve Jobs?
The money of a Bill Gates?
The body and fitness levels of an elite athlete?
The strength of a world champion strongman?
Go out and get it. What one man can do, another can do. Why can’t you?
Remember, striking power is not just about hitting harder; it’s about hitting smarter. Here’s a few reasons why this program is something you should incorporate into your martial training:
Want to know more about this unique Warrior Fitness product? Click HERE!
Thanks to everyone who responded to my I Need Your Help post last week. I received a ton of replies via email, which was really cool!
5. Warrior Warm-up (Warrior Fitness style junan taiso)
4. Sandbag Training for Martial Arts
3. Kettlebell Training for Martial Arts
2. Warrior Bodyweight Workouts
1. Ninja Fitness
If you have any additional suggestions, comments or variations on the above 5 topics that you’d personally like to see, let me know – don’t be shy! Email me here, hit me up on Facebook here, or even drop a Comment below. 🙂
Luckily, I’ve already been hard at work on a couple of these topics and will begin fine tuning based on your responses. It also seems that about 99.9% of you out there prefer an e-book or downloadable video type format, which is great. This is gonna be fun!!
One last thing – I really enjoyed the interaction with you guys over the past week – I hope you did too. Let’s keep it going! The more you guys get involved, the better this blog (and subsequent products produced) becomes!! Thank you!
This is going to be a different post for me today. A little off track from my usual fitness, nutrition, budo, and motivational fare, but definitely a necessary, maybe even vital topic. First of all, I just want to say thank you to all my Warrior Fitness blog readers and subscribers. Whether you are one of the many readers who have purchased my Warrior Fitness book or Striking Power e-book or not (yet! :)), you guys make this blog a sustainable enterprise; without you all, I’d just be talking to myself! I’m grateful that what I write and how I write it resonates with you and also may benefit you in some small way.
This brings me to the reason for this post. A few weeks ago at the Underground Strength Coach Certification, see my review HERE, I was talking with Zach Even-Esh about some new product ideas I had for Warrior Fitness. I had been thinking for a while about tons of new product ideas I’d like to develop for Warrior Fitness and wanted to bounce some of them off him. Well, what he said to me blew my mind! Zach said, “Do you know what your readers want?” I kind of stammered and looked at him a little confused and said, “Um… well, no. What do you mean?” He continued on and told me that while I might know what type of products I wanted to create, wouldn’t it make much more sense to know exactly what my Warrior Fitness readers want and need in a fitness or martial arts product and create something great that specifically meets their needs? I was stunned. Flabbergasted actually. It made so much sense and was such a common sensical approach; I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never even stopped to think about it. Sorry guys! So, in an effort to correct my oversight, what I’d like to do is get your opinion on this…
What type of new Warrior Fitness product would you, my readers, like to see? What areas in your strength, endurance, conditioning, flexibility, mobility, breath control, agility, do you feel need the most attention? What part of your martial arts training do you feel can be enhanced by fitness training? Ukemi – rolling, leaping, falling, changing directions rapidly, taihenjutsu? How about structural strength for kamae? Creating and sustaining Flow?
Some areas for consideration (but by no means limited to these!) are:
Also, think about what format you’d like to receive the product in – book, e-book form, DVD, downloadable video?
So in effect what I’m asking is – please help me to help you! Let’s get a dialogue going and keep it going. If I don’t know you, I’d like to. Any ideas are welcome! You can respond in the Comments section below, through my Facebook page (hey, do me a favor and “Like” it while you’re there!), email me, or heck if you want to discuss something shoot me an email and I’ll give you my phone number – whatever it takes to really make you a viable part of Warrior Fitness.
Thanks!
Jon
There are great new things happening here at Warrior Fitness! The first being I am now a certified Underground Strength Coach. This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend Zach Even-Esh’s Underground Strength Coach Certification at the world renowned Underground Strength Gym in Edison, NJ. What an amazing weekend – I’m still sore!
Zach is a top notch educator, motivator, and coach. The man not only knows his material, but can walk the walk. He lives the code and it shows through in everything he does. Each person received individualized attention and feedback as well as group instruction from both Zach and his coached. The level of coaching expertise all weekend was top notch. Zach not only taught the participants his Underground Stength system, he created an experience.
As a quick recap, here is what we covered:
We learned tons of exercises and variations, as well as progressions and regressions to help make them adaptable for all levels of clients. Together we designed and vetted several workouts for various types of athletes and individuals, then did some of them ourselves! As you can see, this was no simply sit on your butt and listen to a bunch of people talk followed by a multiple choice test certification seminar. All the participants were in the trenches going through the adversity together, getting their hands dirty, learning the system by doing. The level of energy this created in the gym and camaraderie between the attendees was awesome!
Huge thanks once again to Zach and his team of coaches, Big Mike, Travis, and Jen C., from Crossfit Central in Texas to help out with the certification!!
Want to know more? Start by checking out Zach’s Underground Strength Manual HERE!
Recently the nice folks over at Karate Depot sent me a Door Gym to review. The cool thing about the Door Gym is that it is designed to be used with a multitude of different exercises, not just pull-ups. This is the perfect piece of equipment if you are into minimalist training and need one tool for multiple tasks!
Door Gym is very easy to install. It requires no fasteners, no nails, no screws, and can be installed in the door frame and removed in about one second. Yeah, it’s that easy! My wife also loves the fact that it wedges in and will not mark or damage the door frame. Plus, it took me all of 5 minutes to put it together right out of the package. Which, if you know anything about my assembly skills, is saying a lot!
A great idea for those short on time is the grease the groove method. Simply install the Door Gym in a door frame that you pass frequently during the day. Each time you pass it, bang out a quick set of pull-ups or chin-ups (or whatever exercise you choose). Over the course of a day you will incorporate a ton of volume without burning out. Try it! You can be creative, have fun, and get a great workout at the same time with this piece of equipment.
At $49.95, the Door Gym is a great investment in your health and fitness. Highly recommended by Warrior Fitness!
There are quite literally hundreds of different diet books lining the shelves of bookstores coast to coast. Each one with a slightly, or radically, different approach than the next to helping its reader shed unwanted pounds, improve body composition, tighten up their waist line, and increase health and longevity. And do this all quickly and painlessly to boot! But what if I told you that even though all these numerous programs, approaches, ideas, and methods are valid and do work, to a point, for some individuals some of the time, there is actually only one diet that is suitable for us all? This is exactly what author Mark Sisson asserts in his book, The Primal Blueprint. You see, prior to the Agricultural Revolution some 10,000 years ago (give or take), all humans – everyone on the planet – ate basically the same diet. Of course there were some variations due to geography, climate, and seasons, yes, but basically the same diet. And what if I told you that this one diet kept our caveman (and woman) ancestors leaner, stronger, fitter, and even healthier than we are today? It enabled them to survive and thrive for over 2 million years.
Enter the Primal Blueprint. According to Sisson (and considerable research), our genes have remained virtually unchanged since pre-agricultural times. We are quite literally cavemen in business suits – some of us more so than others! The Primal Blueprint premise is that our current genetic expression is influenced, positively or negatively, by our lifestyle. So that how we eat, how we exercise (or don’t), how we rest, play, and sleep all combine to create the body we have today. This means that we literally have the ability to optimize our genetic potential one forkful at a time. Sisson lays out 10 Primal Blueprint Laws to help us begin reprograming our genes by changing our lifestyle behaviors.
Law #1: Eat Lots of Plants and Animals
This is pretty self-explanatory. Vegetables, fruits, and meat should make up the bulk of your diet. Round it out with nuts and seeds. These foods formed the diet that fueled human evolution for 2 million years. The whole plan is laid out in the book.
Law #2: Avoid Poisonous Things
You’ll notice grains and other processed foods at the top of this list. Yes, even the supposedly healthy, whole grains. Why? Simply because humans did not evolve to digest grains properly. They make us fat and unhealthy. Remember our genes have not changed since pre-Agricultural times. Want to know more? Read the book.
Law #3: Move Frequently at a Slow Pace
Hunter Gatherers spent a lot of time walking. This very low intensity aerobic exercise provides a great base upon which to build physical fitness.
Law #4: Lift Heavy Things
Brief intense muscular efforts to climb, lift, carry, drag, pull, etc. were required by our caveman ancestors. These functional, full body movements prompt improvements in muscular size and strength.
Law #5: Sprint Once in a While
Whether running for your life or sprinting to take down a kill, the ability to run fast was definitely a skill needed 10,000 years ago and today.
Law #6: Get Adequate Sleep
This is a hard one for us. Studies constantly tell us Americans do not get enough sleep. Usually 8 hours is recommended as the average, but how many of us get more than 6 hours a night? Find out why sleep is so important in the book!
Law #7: Play
Hunter Gatherers had much more down time than we do today. Take some time to get outside in the fresh air and enjoy yourself.
Law #8: Get Adequate Sunlight
Regardless of the term, Caveman, our prehistoric ancestors did not spend much of their time in caves. They were outdoors most of the day. Adequate sunlight exposure is one of the best ways to obtain sufficient Vitamin D.
Law #9 Avoid Stupid Mistakes
Back before emergency rooms and doctors for that matter, a careless injury which would sideline us for a short time today would be deadly to a caveman. They had to maintain awareness – zanshin anyone?
Law #10: Use Your Brain
Creative expression for mental health and well being.
Let’s get down to the real question though – does it work and how difficult is it to implement? Well, I’m half Italian so I love my pasta and bread, and my wife is Filipino so we love our rice and noodles. I’ve always been taught grains are a staple and necessary for energy not to mention healthy – bottom of the food pyramid, right? However after reading The Primal Blueprint and understanding why grains are not necessary for you and really not as healthy as we’ve been led to believe, I was more than willing to take Sisson at his word and give it a try. Dropping grains out of my diet wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Many of us, me included, have strong emotional attachments to our food. The Italian part of me was literally screaming – no bread? No pasta? Are you nuts??? But once I got over the initial hump, it was actually pretty easy. The fact is though no matter how much I tell you about my own experience you won’t really know until you try it for yourself. I went cold turkey on the grains – can you? Give it a shot. You’ll be surprised at what your body can do!
What about my results so far? I’ve been following the Primal Blueprint laws, as laid out above for about 2 weeks now. I feel great! Energy levels are high and steady, no post meal crashes. I’ve already begun to lean out some more and am looking forward to even greater fat loss while increasing lean muscle mass. The best part for me is that I’m not constantly hungry. Usually, as those who know me can attest, I’m the first one to be ready to eat at meal times. Now I hardly even notice what time it is, I just eat when I’m hungry. I am even able to skip meals with no sluggish side effects. Warrior Fitness workouts align very well with Primal Fitness concepts (brief high intensity sessions, no chronic cardio) so I have not really made too many modifications there. Although, I am definitely looking to add some sprinting in to round out my training week now. It just seems like too much fun not to do it.
My opinion? The Primal Blueprint is intelligently written, well researched, and also quite entertaining to read, and it just might save your life. Highly recommended!!
For more information, check out Mark Sisson’s blog, Mark’s Daily Apple – HERE!