So today’s blogisode is getting back to the roots of strength. You see when examining strength I like to think that there are many traits that make up its characteristics. Yes, I’m getting deep in the philosophical side on you in this post so just buckle your chin strap and don’t get busted thinking too hard on this one especially if you are sitting at your desk at work. We wouldn’t want to get you in trouble while you’re on the job, right? Keep on reading my friend.
So the other day I’m explaining to one of my beginner students about maintaining a straight wrist by diagonally gripping the kettlebell when pressing it. After demonstrating this with a lighter kettlebell for the purpose of practice I then watched him press it. What did he do? Immediately he did exactly what I told him NOT to do.
He gripped the bell horizontal at the handle instead of diagonally which in turn caused his wrist to break back and he immediately started feeling pain at the forearm. I quickly made some adjustments with some simple coaching cues and he was able to correct it. I just looked at him and asked “Is that how I showed you?” and he replied “No.” You can imagine my next response. 😉
So in today’s post I figured I would continue the trend of hammering out another list of stuff that could benefit your strength and conditioning program. In most any endeavor there are some good hard rules that develop due to the pursuit of any goal within any endeavor. Because of this you know ole BR here is going to tee up some of those rules for your strength training journey right here and now. As a matter of fact I’ve got 10 of them for you to hold near and dear to your heart of iron so keep on reading.
The other day I had a couple of jiu-jitsu guys approach me wanting to know how I prepared one of my other students for the North American Grappling Association (NAGA) tournament. We want to get stronger to get better, they said. I immediately replied, well then I think I can help you out. They followed up with some additional questions. How can we develop more power? What about getting faster to shoot in on an opponent? These are typical questions, but they are also very good questions. Let’s take a minute to dive into the matter at hand.
The pursuit of an athletic functional body is a solid plan. I had a friend the other day that was just starting back into working out and he was asking me “what is the best thing for me to do to get back into shape?” I proceeded to tell him that he needs to start training like an athlete again. Why, he asked? I followed up by asking him at what point in his life was he in the greatest shape to which he replied “when I was doing preseason workouts for football in college.” I rest my case.
