Category Archives: Spirit

The fit Warrior has an awakened spirit, remains determined, and actualizes a healthy lifestyle through their ability to stay positive, motivated, and to Keep Going!

Life Advice from Musashi

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If you are not already familiar, Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵, c. 1584 – June 13, 1645) is arguably one of Japan’s most famous swordsmen.  He is the author of Go Rin No Sho, or The Book of 5 Rings, one of the most widely read yet probably least understood guides to strategy ever written.

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The Book of 5 Rings is divided into (as you might expect) 5 chapters.

Within the first chapter, The Ground Book (or “earth” depending on which translation you read), is one of my all time favorite Musashi quotes in which he outlines his broad principles of strategy, he gives 9 principles for those who wish to study his way:

1.Do not think dishonestly.
2.The Way is in training.
3.Become acquainted with every art.
4.Know the Ways of professions.
5.Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
6.Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
7.Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
8.Pay attention even to trifles.
9.Do nothing which is of no use.

He then goes on to say how important it is to set these broad principles in your heart in order to begin learning the way of strategy.

While I agree with Musashi that each one of these principles is important and deserves greater exploration, in this post I want to hone in on my favorite one, number 9, “Do nothing which is of no use.”

Do Nothing Which is of No Use

Wow.  Read that again.  What an unbelievable qualifier on how to live your life.  Imagine if you could actually take this principle to heart and follow it every day for the rest of your life.  How much would you accomplish?  To what great heights would you soar?  Think about this deeply…

If you really followed Musashi’s advice to do nothing which is of no use, what would change?

How would your job change is you eliminated all the superfluous crap that you do on a daily basis?  The busy work that seems urgent, but is not very important.  The mundane tasks that you somehow inherited that really contribute nothing to your overall productivity, but you still have to deal with day after day.  What would transform in your job or your business if you simply eliminated them because they are of no use?

How would your relationships with other people change?  Would you continue to make time for people who are a complete drain on your life and your energy?  Would you choose your relationships differently be they business relationships, friend relationships, or intimate relationships?  How much closer and stronger would your real relationships grow if you could push aside and remove the ones that were of no use?

How would your training change if you did nothing which is of no use?  Where would you focus your time?  What unbelievable results could you obtain if you only spent time on the training, the exercises, the movements that contributed the most to your overall development as an individual martial artist or athlete or complete human being?  How fast would you progress towards and achieve your goals if you eliminated the things which were of no use?

How would your entire life change?  Think about it.  Put it into practice.  Live it.  Do Nothing Which is of No Use.

 

Going Further into Musashi’s Teachings….

Miyamoto Musashi penned several other lesser-known manuscripts prior to his much more widely known Go Rin No Sho, or The Book of 5 Rings.

In his Thirty-Five Instructions on Strategy, written 2 years prior in 1641, he discusses The Body of a Rock.

The Body of a Rock

“The body of a rock is the state of an unmoving mind, powerful and large. Something inexhaustible that comes from the universal principle exists in the body. It is through this that the power of the mind resides in every living being.”

How does one obtain the body of a rock where the mind permeates every aspect of the body?

Learn exactly how to implement Musashi’s “Body of a Rock” strategy in both your strength training and martial art practice to build superhuman strength and incredible all around martial power inside Lesson 4 of the Warrior’s Inner Circle – you can grab that here.

 

Become Unreasonable

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Being reasonable gets you mediocrity.  Being reasonable gets you the status quo.  Nothing great has ever been achieved by men and women who were reasonable.  Every major (and most minor) human achievement has been accomplished by unreasonable people.

It was unreasonable of Thomas Edison to fail over 10,000 times before creating the incandescent electric light bulb.

It was unreasonable to think that a man could walk on the moon until Neil Armstrong stepped onto its surface in July of 1969.

It was unreasonable to think the 4 minute mile could be broken until Roger Bannister broke it on May 6, 1954.

In the world of Bujinkan Martial Arts, it was unreasonable of Stephen K. Hayes to think he would be accepted as the first American to study the mysterious art of Japanese Ninjutsu, yet today he is known all over the world.

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Over and over again, unreasonable people are succeeding, accomplishing great things, and leaving their mark on the world.  So tell me again, why would you want to be reasonable?

Do you ever get the feeling you were destined for greatness?  It starts like a slight nagging feeling in your gut that there’s something missing.  That you don’t quite fit in with the status quo.  It’s a dissatisfaction with ordinary or mediocre.  It’s the fleeting thought on the fringes of your consciousness that maybe, just maybe there’s something more than this for you.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.  You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus

Unfortunately for the world, the majority of people out there will ignore that feeling.  They will make excuses why they can’t act on it.  They will be too busy, too tired, too involved in something or someone else, too lazy, too scared.  But not you.  You will act.  You will feel the fear just like all the rest of them, but your desire for greatness will allow you to overcome it.  You will have all the same excuses and rationales, maybe more, but the restlessness inside will not let you rest.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” – Henry David Thoreau

To bring this from the general to the specific, how do we become unreasonable in our training?

For starters, I have never believed that any highly skilled martial arts master was special.  Never will.  You and I have the ability to be as great as any one of them.  What one man can do, another can do.  The only way to insure you never succeed is to put them up on a pedestal and tell yourself they are special.  That they are geniuses.  That they are a rare, unusual breed.  That they are set apart.  Nonsense!  You want it?  Train harder.  Train more.  Train better.  Become unreasonable in your training.

You must train yourself to be so good that they won’t be able to ignore your skill, no matter who you are and no matter what your rank – or lack of!

Learn the ancient warrior’s methods of building an unbreakable body HERE.

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You Are Already Masterful!

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A long time ago, Socrates said, “Learning is remembering.”

Famously, Michelangelo “saw” David trapped within a solid block of marble.  According to him, he did not so much sculpt David, but rather liberated him from the prison of stone.

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What if you too are already a masterpiece that is simply trapped inside your own block of stone?

The stone prison surrounding your personal mastery though is not made of marble.  Rather, you are being held captive by all the unnatural patterns of movement(s) and limiting beliefs that have built up over the years of conditioning.

It is the belief systems you have created within yourself that pulls you down, away from reaching your own mastery.

It is the negative self talk that continues to chatter away in your head whenever you attempt something great that pulls you back.

It is the little voice that says – “Who are you to think you can do that?  Who are you to dare to be great?  Who are you to think you can be masterful?  You’re nobody.  You don’t deserve it.  You’re not good enough.  You’re not smart enough.  You always fail, why do you think this time will be any different?”

The question, in reality, though is this one: WHO ARE YOU NOT TO?

Remember this – you are always the only one in control of what you think.  Whether you believe you can or you believe you cannot, you are right!

Your patterns of movement, your patterns of breathing, your patterns of thought, your patterns of belief all have been conditioned over the span of your entire life to effectively create a prison of stone confining you, limiting your level of mastery.  You can break free of this limiting conditioning by gradually chipping away at the outer layers, slowly revealing the true nature of the masterpiece “David”  that is you.

The first step in setting free your personal mastery is to first realize that you are trapped.  Without this level of conscious self-awareness, the process cannot begin.

 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

 

 

Where Do You Locate Your Control?

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Ever feel like everything is spiraling out of control?  Like the only thing that actually responds to you the way you want it to is your TV remote, and lately even that is on the fritz?

How do you reign it all in?

The answer is simpler than you think…

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Internal of External?

Your locus of control determines everything.  Where you source your control is what governs how you live your life.  According to psychology, those people who have allow their lives to be dictated by outside forces have an external locus of control.  These people are all over the map.  They are blown by the wind, allowing whatever happens on the outside to move their thoughts, their moods, their actions.  Because these people allow themselves to be pushed around by external forces they constantly feel as if they are out of control.  And they are.

Conversely, those with an internal locus of control are much more stable and steadfast.  They understand that it is not what happens to them that determines how they respond, but how they choose to feel about it.  The only thing you control in this life, aside from the temperature on your thermostat, is your ability to choose how to respond to external situations.  What happens on the outside, happens to pretty much everyone.  We all get sick.  We all have bad days.  The sun set on all of us last night.  What differentiates these people is their ability to choose how to feel about, and respond to (if they do at all), the bad things that happen to them.  They are in control.

Immovable Spirit

In Japanese budo (martial arts), we have a very similar concept called, Fudoshin.  Fudoshin means “immovable spirit”.  Basically it says that the warrior maintains a calm in the very heart of the storm.  He is not moved by external events and situations, but is able to bring his full capabilities to bear because of this immense mental and emotional stability.  He is in control.

Does this mean that warriors are heartless, unfeeling people?  No, not at all.  Quite the opposite, actually.  They feel anger, sadness, bitterness, regret, frustration, happiness, joy, ecstasy, and yes, even depression.  But, they do not allow these emotions to rule their lives running them up and down like a roller coaster at Six Flags.  They stay the course.

It’s very easy to allow outside events and circumstances to push us around and dictate the course of our lives.  We’ve all experienced it and allowed it to happen at some point.  The key is recognizing it and moving your locus of control back to inside yourself.

Do NOT Go With the Flow

People have all sorts of excuses and rationalizations for being swayed by every outside force.  We even have a very philosophical, quasi-intelligent sounding way of putting it; we say – “go with the flow”.  You’ve heard this, right?  You’ve probably even said it to someone, I know I have.  But here are 2 very important things to remember about why you should NOT go with the flow:

1) You cannot drift to the top.  You’ll never achieve your goals and dreams by going with the flow.

2) Only dead bodies float downstream.

Remain steadfast, Warriors.  Stay the course, my friends!!

The Myth of Stagnation

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Many people like to believe that if they don’t take the time to train themselves on a daily basis their skill levels will somehow remain stagnant, like on a plateau.  That their skills and abilities will somehow remain in stasis, neither improving or regressing until the next class, the next workshop, the next seminar, or the next time they can get their Daily Personal Practice on track again.  The truth of the matter is not so cut and dry.

Here’s the Reality

Here’s the reality – if you are not taking the time to train on a consistent basis than you are steadily declining in skill.  Each practice session you skip (not miss – skip.  Skipping is a choice), your skill level decreases slightly, your abilities atrophy just a bit.  There is no such thing as stagnation.  Your body cannot remain motionless if you are alive and breathing.  Either you are getting better through your daily commitment of consistently going deeper into your practice or you are getting worse.  No middle ground.  No fence sitting.  One side or the other.  Stop fooling yourself.

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The good news is, once you accept that stagnation is a myth, you can begin to look at your practice objectively and actually begin the steady climb to create real progress.  You see, real progress is not a sudden flurry of activity followed by a lull.  Real progress is only achieved in consistent, incremental steps day by day.  It’s the little things that count, not the big ones.  It’s the little steps that build and accumulate.

Do you think your yearly pilgrimage to Japan (or your martial arts/fitness training Mecca of choice) is causing your skill level to jump?  Nope.  It’s not.  Yes, it’s motivating.  Yes, it’s inspiring.  Yes, you are learning new things, getting corrections (hopefully!), and gaining new and deeper insights.  BUT – how do all those new insights come to fruition?  You don’t own them until they become assimilated by your nervous system.  That takes time.  That takes practice.

Deep, consistent practice.

That deep practice is the slow and steady grind of your consistent daily training.

That’s where the magic happens.  It happens in the grind.  In the regular training.  In the ordinary time.

That’s where REAL skill is built.  That’s how masters are made.

The Secret to Becoming a Great Martial Artist

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There is one very special, not so secret, secret to becoming a great martial artist.  Want to know what it is?

Do the work.

Train every day.  Yes, every day.  Great martial artists train all the time.  Not once a week.  Not every other day, not just during class.  Every day.  Multiple times a day.

The not so great martial artists are content to train only in class or at seminars.  They spend lots of time thinking about training, maybe, but the actual doing, not so much.

For you the process is simple – not easy.  Daily training.  How do you do this?  Figure it out.  You don’t have to think about when you’re going to take a shower during the day or brush your teeth, you just do it.  Make your training a priority and get it done.  While others are busy doing other things, you are training.  While others are busy daydreaming about training, you are training.  While others are busy running their mouths about training, you are – you guessed it – training.

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Soon it will begin to show.  The difference may not be too apparent at first, but consistency of training will win out.  It may not be so obvious in a year, or even 2.  But after 5 years it will be very noticeable.  After a decade, you will be miles ahead of the rest of the martial arts landscape.

You will move better.

You will feel different when they touch you.

You will have power in motion and in stillness.

You will stand out, not because of ego or anything like that but because the work you put in day after day, week after week, month after month, and year upon year will cause your skills to grow exponentially.  The growth and development created simply by training every day will become self evident.

So ask yourself – do you want to be a mediocre martial hobbyist (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or do you want to be legendary?

The choice is yours.  As for me, F__k being mediocre. 🙂

 

What If All the Stories Surrounding the Incredibly Powerful, Legendary Martial Artists of Old Were True?

What if greatness wasn’t random, but specifically engineered?

What if YOU Had Access to Their Secret Training Strategies for Building Whole-Body Strength & Power for Martial Arts – ANY Martial Art – in Your Hands?

Learn more ==>> 

My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation Part 3

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Guest blog post by Eric Guttmann, U.S. Navy Officer, Author, Fitness Enthusiast and More!
My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation Part 3 – How I trained to achieve 100 consecutive tire flips
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It is amazing what the MIND and body can do when you focus on ONE thing to develop.  As I have written in the previous two articles in these series, the goal of this strength meditation was to accomplish 100 consecutive tire flips with a 300lb tire.  Six weeks after beginning this journey I performed 100 tire flips in 9:55.  I relayed this to my friend Bud Jeffries and he asked me if that was my best time.  I said no, that it was my FIRST time and that I purposely was not trying to go fast, rather I wanted to build a steady pace tied in to the breathing, like a meditation.  Funny thing is, that once an IDEA gets in your consciousness it starts to get internalized and metabolized. Continue reading →

The Most Powerful Form of Training

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“Look at this guy – he’s a beast!”

“You’re an animal!”

“He’s got beast strength!”

In the fitness world it’s become very common to refer to extremely strong and capable individuals as “Beasts” or “Animals”.  We use these terms to separate them out from the regular crowd, to distinguish their strength as something more than human.  These people push past their puny human limits and transcend into the realm of beast-like strength. Continue reading →

My Heavy Metal Strength Meditation

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

Its amazing what you can pick up when you are paying attention.  At the 2012 Super Human Workshop I overheard Bud Jeffries tell one of the participants that if she wanted to get conditioned to work up to 50 tire flips.  That was over a year ago, but I remembered.  I then had a conversation with Bud Jeffries were the subject came up and he mentioned again that if you had to do only ONE exercise to get both strength and conditioning that Tire Flipping would definitely be it.  This spurned in me the desire to focus single mindedly in this endeavor, just like a meditation.  Some regard breath counting as a meditation, I decided to do Tire Flipping as a strength meditation where I count the reps instead of breaths, and since I listen to high energy music when I train, it became my heavy metal strength meditation!

My plan is very simple and I will see what happens when the upcoming Navy Physical Readiness Test rolls around and how my body performs.  Originally I was going to work up to 50 consecutive tire flips. On my first workout some of the staff members at US SOUTHERN COMMAND, where I am currently stationed, saw me and asked me about it.  When I mentioned my 50 tire flips, they said, “Oh yes, we use to have a General that loved tire flipping and he would do 100 tire flips.”

Well, if some General can do 100 flips, then so can I!  So after my first workout and that comment 100 tire flips became my new goal.

Here is my three pronged plan of attack:
GOAL 1: Perform 100 tire flips in one workout broken up in sets of 5 reps
GOAL 2: Perform 50 consecutive tire flips
GOAL 3: Perform 100 consecutive tire flips
OK, since I have never flipped a tire except at that Super Human Workshop over a year ago, I am starting slowly and methodically.  My first workout was 10 sets of 5 repetition with a 250lb tire.  I am currently doing 15 sets of 5 repetitions and next week I am looking to increase it to 20 sets of 5 repetition to achieve my first goal of 100 tire flips in one workout.

Believe it or not the limiting factor is your forearms.  If you are strong and conditioned enough you could probably do 100 tire flips on the first go.  At least I felt I had the strength and conditioning to do this in the first week except for ONE detail, and that was that after 50 reps my forearms where blasted and I could feel it was time to STOP.  When I mentioned this to Bud Jeffries he mentioned how tire flipping trains you in the open hand position which is something we RARELY do, most training is done gripping a bar, dumbbell, kettlebell, etc.  Even if it is a “thick-handled” implement it is not the same as the open hand position used in tire flipping.  Hence the workout is built up methodically to allow your forearms to catch up.

 

Of course if you are deconditioned or have not trained in a long time then you are better off starting with Extreme Military Fitness Basic to achieve the basic levels of strength and conditioning before attempting the 100 tire flips:

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What I have noticed is that I go through two stages.  In the first stage the body gets accelerated for tire flipping.  Heartbeat goes up and it is demanding (fun, but demanding).  As the Russians say, “every exercise is a breathing exercise” and I am applying the same rules to my tire flipping experiment.  I slowly get up to the tire and get in that meditative state where I match breath to movements.  Inhale as I slowly lower myself into perfect position and get my grip.  Explode as I exhale and get the tire up to chest level and then a short inhale and another explosive exhale as I forcibly push the tire. Take one breathing step to the base of the tire and repeat.

After about 25 reps I get something like a second wind or I just get in the flow or something, because I merely focus on the breath and then it gets EASIER.  It is almost as working through the effort of matching breath to movements with your heart beating faster during the initial reps that builds a groove and then it becomes a literal STRENGTH MEDITATION!  Again, what will probably stop you is your FOREARMS if they are not trained and strong enough in the open hand position.  Hey, I am the first to admit it, and that is why I am building nice and slow, like a another General here at SOUTHCOM says “easy peasy…”

I will train tire flipping EXCLUSIVELY until I achieve GOAL 2 of 50 consecutive tire flips.  At that point I might add sledgehammers or something, but until that point ALL MY WORKOUTS ARE ALREADY DECIDED!  All I have to do is flip the tire 2-3x a week until I achieve my goal.  I love having this singularity of focus in my training.  Reminds me of that “chop wood, carry water” analogy.  If you have the strength and conditioning (and an available tractor tire) try this with me and let me know your experience.

All my best,
Eric Guttmann

PS – If you want to increase your recovery so that you can improve faster then I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you add my FULL Mobility program to this experiment by CLICKING HERE NOW! 😉

 

Read Eric’s complete bio HERE.

The Holy Grail of Training

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

Being in the Navy allows you to meet a lot of interesting people with different backgrounds, training experience and skills sets.  One thing that you come away with when interacting with people who are doing the tough, physically demanding jobs that Hollywood makes movies about is that there is NO one way to train.  I know the fitness industry is dominated by people that would like you to believe that there is ONLY one way to train, theirs.  These people would also like you to believe that they are the sole gatekeepers of this information and for a nice entrance fee you too can also learn their so-called “secrets.”  However, when you talk to people who have “been there and done that” you realize that there are MANY ways to train and when someone shows you something it is merely A WAY to train.
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Unless something is unsafe to do, then it probably has intrinsic value.  Now, whether it has value to YOU depends on your goals and aspirations.  I LOVE going to Bud Jeffries and Logan Christopher’s Super Human Training Workshops!  I am constantly researching and experimenting with my OWN ideas, and when I go there I always get more ideas to experiment with and hang out with an AWESOME group of people.  isometrics5 300x225 10 Ways to Build Mental Toughness
Would a marathon runner benefit as much as me from these type of seminars?  Probably not, a marathon runner’s skill set would benefit more from endurance work and recovery strategies rather than bending steel and advanced grip work.  However a marathon runner’s goals and training would still have value to him regardless of what you or I think about it.  I only have respect for ANYONE who can run 26.2 miles in a row, even though I wonder WHY they would ever WANT to do it.
There is only ONE Holy Grail and that is YOU!  You are the one who will know exactly how to structure your training depending on what fuels your internal fire.  In the beginning you need the help of coaches and mentors if you are learning a new skill set, but after achieving proficiency you NEED to start experimenting and developing your very own and unique style of fitness, just like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do would be different for each individual depending on their specific bodytype, strengths and weaknesses.
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Now in building YOUR Holy Grail you benefit greatly from exposing yourself to as many talented people as you can!  Whether it be through books, DVDs, seminars or my personal favorite, PERSONAL INTERACTION, you can come away with the tips, training ideas and insights to take your training and RESULTS to a whole new level.  Those that were at the last Super Human Training Workshop benefited greatly from Bud’s teaching on isometrics.  Six months later I am still implementing them into my training!  Did you know that the Genesis for this was a PERSONAL INTERACTION that Bud had with the legendary Steve Justa?  One personal interaction led Bud to explore an idea and by the time the seminar had come he had honed his idea to the point where it could produce results for anyone who was PAYING ATTENTION. http://www.superhumantraining.com/offer/SteveJusta.png
I personally find that doing weighted isometric wall sits after any leg workout actually INCREASES RECOVERY!  Also, the toughest thing you can do after training the upper body is to do an isometric pullup hold in the UP position.  After a tough and demanding heavy double kettlebell workout for upper body that ran close to 45 minutes I decided to finish with 50 seconds of the isometric pullup hold.  I had to put forth more effort and willpower on those last 50 seconds than in the previous 45 minutes!
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So learn all you can, absorb what is useful and drop what is useless.  A great analogy was when I hung out for a while with the All-Navy MMA team at Whidbey Island.  The coach was very cool and patient with any type of talk about this martial art or that martial art being the best, his only reply was, “Get in the ring and prove it!”  That’s the best approach to training, try it out in the ring of personal experience, do battle with it, and become the grizzled training veteran that only YOU can be!  That is the Holy Grail of Training!
All my best, Eric Guttmann
PS – Guys, make sure you check out Eric’s book, Extreme Military Fitness Basic – click below!
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Read Eric’s complete bio HERE.