Category Archives: strength

kettlebell, strength

Your Chance to Train with A World Renowned Strength Coach

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You have to have been living under a rock to not have heard about the value of kettlebell training for martial arts.

If you train at Wild Geese Martial Arts, you’ll be familiar with the extensive set of kettles behind the squat rack at the end of the room. You should also be aware of Coach Dave Hedges, WGMA’s resident Strength & Conditioning coach who is always willing to help out our competitive fighters by using these tools.

You may not know that Dave has a coach he learns from.

A man who is also an accomplished martial artist, who knows the body, is known for incredible feats of strength, power and mobility.

A man that BJJ legend Xande Ribiero has recently hired to prepare for his next BJJ cometition.

A man who will be in Wild Geese next month to run a short workshop on his training methods.

Who are we talking about?

Non other than Steve Cotter.

DSCF1834-701476

Here’s a video clip of his presenting some of his methods:

And here’s a clip of him and his business partner, Ken Blackburn teaching a workshop. Jumo to 3min 20s to see Steve really show off!

There’s a reason he’s one of the worlds most popular and sought after coaches.

Tickets are on sale now for May 21st in Wild Geese.

Get yours

Eventbrite - Steve Cotter Dublin Workshop

Wild Geese.

Deadlift, strength, strength training, workout routine

Deadlift, or should that be Healthlift?

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The deadlift, one of the core movements that should be in anybodies training program.
Yet as I spend more time in commercial gyms I don’t see people doing it, when I did my “fitness instructor” certification it wasn’t taught.

Why?

As a lift it has a bad name. It isn’t considered safe and there doesn’t seem to be any fancy overpriced machine based exercise that replicates it.

Is it safe? Like all weight lifting, or in fact any exercise there is an element of risk, it it largely dependant upon the individual. Proper warm up and good techniques will reduce this risk to a minimum, improper warmup and poor techniques will almost guarantee injury.

What is it?
Simply reaching down and picking a weight off the floor. Set a bar up, stand with your toes just under it, reach down keeping the back straight and body tight, drive through the hips and stand up.
The benefits of the lift are immediate, the entire musculature of the back and lower body is used to move the bar. Your back and core will become strong and resistant to injury, reducing or even eliminating that nagging back pain. The legs become like pistons, powerful and enduring. The hips become snappy, essential for a fighter.

Does that mean you get huge like Arnie? Not with a minimalist routine like the one Pavel Tsatsouline wrote in his book dedicated to the deadlift named Power to the People! I have it and highly recommend it.

The book goes into great detail and talks about 2 lifts that together do work the entire body and can build great strength. As a fighter, I believe adding a Power to the People! style weight programme to the training is an excellent way of boosting your explosive power, strength and resilience, without running the risk of overtraining.

Pavel does go on a bit about the side press, and while it is a fantastic lift I think I’d substitute the clean and press, at least some of the time.

I was deadlifing yesterday and feel great today, I haven’t been able to deadlift properly in a while due to injury (from other activities), so approched it with caution. I only planned a super quick workout here’s what I did:
Deadlift, 1 rep followed by 5 reps of Steve Maxwell’s Maxercist burpee (hindu pushup followed by jumping to a high bar to do a pullup).
I added weight to the bar each time round doing:
50, 70, 90, 100, 110kg, all for one rep with a set of maxercist in between. Next week I’ll go heavier as the old injuries are feeling good and there was no pain the following day.

Happy healthlifts

Dave

Wild Geese
www.wildgeesema.com
www.wg-fit.com
any cause but our own

conditioning, Dublin City Centre, martial arts, personal training, self defence, strength, weight loss, wild geese

Wild Geese @ The Martial Arts Academy

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Wild Geese Martial Arts and our newer Personal Training and fitness wing will now be operating full time out of Dublin’s Martial Arts Academy.

At the academy we run regular Filipino Martial Arts, Anti Stab knife defence and Control & Restraint classes and courses.

We also have a selection of basic strength equipment, Barbells, plate loaded dumbells, a selection of kettlebells as well as some of the best conditioning tools ever invented, skipping ropes and punchbags.

So if you fancy training in a non conventional gym under the watchful eye of a qualified and experienced trainer using the types of methods used by fighters and old time strong men to forge physiques like stone and near legendary conditioning levels.

We offer Personal Training, Semi Private training and Supervised training.
Personal Training – You, Me and your personalised program, be it Martial Arts, Self defence, strength, weight loss and fitness. This runs at €50/hr
Semi Private – Bring a friend, up to a maximum of 6. You will then help and hinder each other to accelerate the results in the field you choose, strength, fitness or fighting. We charge €70/hr for the first 2 people with an extra €10 per person up to a max of 6.
Supervised Training – Come in and do your own training under our watchful eye for a nominal fee. Simply €10/hr or €50 per month.

You may combine packages to suit, and if you block pay for classes you can use them as you wish.
For example pay €100 and get 1 hr personal training and 1 month supervised training
or
Pay €100 and get 1 month supervised training and jump into 5 scheduled Wild Geese Martial Arts classes

For a map to our location click here:

http://maps.dublinbynumbers.com/visiting-dublin-map-gyms.html#

We are number 19. Alternatively visit our websites listed below.

Regards

Dave
Wild Geese
http://www.wg-fit.com/
http://www.wildgeesema.com/
any cause but our own

bodyweight exercise, cardio, conditioning, kettlebell, martial arts, strength, strength training

Sweep the leg. Do you have a problem with that?

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It’s on TV now, I’m sat here mucking around online while the missus is sat flicking through TV channels, guess what she found, hang on it’s the final……..

……………Go on Danny Laruso!! That’s right, The Karate Kid!

Anyway back to the point, 21 years ago I was sat on the sofa, aged 10 watching this same film. Within the month I was training. I had joined the local karate school (St Martins Jnr Karate Club, under Sensei Jack Parker) and finally started something.

This had a major effect me. Karate was one of the few things I really stuck at as a kid. As I grew up, all the other lads grew out, I was a beanpole. While I cycled everywhere, I wasn’t strong. Around the time I was 16/17, Jack turned to me and said that if I wanted to continue improving to black belt standard and to stand a chance in the tournaments.

As a result I asked my mates on the school rowing squad if I could join their gym sessions, they asked their coach and a new era started.

We had two gym sessions per week, the lads obviously had other sessions out on the water, I ran and practiced karate. Plus we’d meet once or twice a week for a session on the ergo’s (what we called the concept 2 rowers, still my machine of choice)
One session was “light day” consisting of Pyramids, the other session was “Heavy day” using 3×10. The exercises were always:
Leg Press, Bench Pull, Power Cleans and bench press. I think that was all, there were certainly no isolation’s!

It’s the warm ups i really liked though. A 20 minute circuit that would make Steve Maxwell blanch, then onto the weights.

Now, I realise it wasn’t the most scientific training we could have done, but we got results!
I put on a little weight, but got much much stronger with conditioning to match, got my black belt and fought for my country. The rowing squad were in the top 15 in the country.

When I need to train up for something these days, I always look back to those days, my first gym experience. Although I know much more now, it was the heart and soul we put into the training, it was the basic exercise selection, it was the high intensity circuits.

I look around the Gym I work in and see the girlie boys spending over an hour trying to get from a b cup to a c cup while I’m in and out in less than an hour, full body done, heavy weights moved and heart in the mouth intense cardio ( I like to finish with a 4 minute tabata after a strength workout). I could never get my head around bodybuilding.

I got into training to improve my martial arts, I continue training to improve not only my martial arts but everything else I do. If strength isn’t functional can it truly be called strength?

Fuck it, the sun’s shining, the Karate Kid won his fight and I’m in the mood to get out into the garden and do some training of my own. Bodyweight only, cos I took my Kettlebells to the gym.

Lets go

Dave

Wild Geese
http://www.wildgeesema.com/
http://www.wg-fit.com/
any cause but our own

abs, bracing, combat core, core strength, dynamic, hips, integrity, non-conventional training, planks, power, rehab, shoulder, strength, strength training, torso

The Next Level of Core Support

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Since I got a copy of Jim Smiths recent book “Combat Core”
i’ve been posting articles and informatin that he’s been kind enough to send through to me.

Jim is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and an expert trainer who writes for Men’s Fitness and the Elite Q/A Staff etc, he has been involved in strength training as a performance enhancement specialist for over 8 years and has worked with athletes from various sports who compete at various levels and is on of the founding members of a group of lunatics collectivley known as the Diesel Crew.
He has published many articles about his unique training style and innovative methods for many prominent strength and fitness related sites and also the authored of three renowned strength manuals.

I’ve just posted his latest article, The Next Level of Core Support – Dynamic Planks, on my WG-Fit.com site. In it Jim takes one of those useless mini trampoline things and turns it into an instrument of torture.

Have a look if you dare……

Wild Geese
any cause but our own

body building, conditioning, Jason Ferrugia, non-conventional training, strength, strength training, workout routine

More Effective Muscle Building Workouts

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By Jason Ferrugia
www.musclegainingsecrets.com

Why is it that almost all of the muscle building workouts you read about advocate body-part splits? Monday is chest day, Tuesday is back, Thursday is legs and Friday is arms…or something like that, I guess.

Why does everyone just do what everyone else is doing and follow the herd like a bunch of sheep without stopping to ever consider why?

You need to understand that most forms of muscle building workouts have just been passed down for decades from one generation to the next, without the inclusion of rational thought. Sometime in the 60’s, sensible muscle building workouts started becoming less and less prevalent with the rapidly growing usage of anabolic steroids.

In the days of old, men like Steve Reeves and Paul Anderson trained with far more reasonable, lower volume programs. Unfortunately these smarter muscle building workouts started to disappear during the 60’s. By the time Arnold got to Gold’s Gym in Venice for the first time, high volume, body-part splits were the widely accepted way for everyone to train for size and strength.

These types of muscle building workouts are not based on deductive reasoning but just on the fact that “it’s what everyone else is doing.” The proponents of these training methods will always blindly tell you that “higher volume training is needed for hypertrophy gains.” Says who? I can tell you for a fact that the University of Chicago isn’t wasting time examining the effects of Jay Cutler’s marathon workouts. There are no studies saying that you need 8-12 sets per body-part to grow. In fact there are studies that show the opposite; that one set is just as effective as three.

The proponents of this type of training will also tell you that higher volume training is associated with higher levels of growth hormone secretion. What they don’t tell you is that the level of GH increase is not enough to make any difference at all. In fact, almost anything you do elevates GH. Extreme temperatures elevate GH but my biceps don’t get bigger every time I take a shower. The increased GH secretion from training is so minimal that it is not enough to make the slightest difference whatsoever.

For the drug free lifter who does not possess muscle building genetics quite up to par with the current Mr. Olypia, training this way is a huge mistake. Not only does it drain your amino acid pool and glycogen stores but it dramatically enhances your recovery time between workouts. If you do 8-12 sets for chest on Monday you can not recover from that workout and be able to train again for seven days. So you are only getting one growth stimulus per week or fifty two per year. Now if you reduce your volume to the point where you can recover faster and more efficiently without draining your amino acid pool and glycogen stores so greatly, you can train bodyparts twice per week instead of once. Now instead of 52 muscle building workouts per year for each bodypart, you can now do 104. In fact, if your volume is kept low you can even get away with training bodyparts three times a week in certain situations. Now, which do you think will be more effective; 156 muscle building workouts per year or 52?

To train more often you absolutely have to lower your training volume. The total sets per workout should be kept low and the total sets per exercise should be even lower. There is no need to hit four sets of incline presses, flat bench presses and decline presses for your chest workout. Doing that is a form of neuroses; you think that you need to hit every angle and do and endless amount of sets to stimulate every last muscle fiber, but this is simply not the case.

The reason these types of muscle building workouts remain popular is because nobody wants to be told that they are wrong. Admitting your mistakes is something many people can’t do. It is why when something radically different is proposed, the high volume proponents get upset and offended. Nobody likes to have their ego bruised so they keep on doing and promoting the same old high volume workouts that they always have.

That’s fine, let them continue to do what they choose; personally I have way more important things to do than spend all of my waking hours in the gym. If I can get better results in a fraction of the time with short, highly effective muscle building workouts, I will choose that option every time.

Cut your volume down, up your weights and intensity and get ready for the “what are you on” questions to start rolling in.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For More Effecive Muscle Building Workout tips, check out www.musclegainingsecrets.com

Wild Geese
any cause but our own

abs, balancing, combat core, core strength, hand, lunges, non-conventional training, power, strength, strength training, torso, walking, wall

Brutal Wall Walking for Serious Power

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By Jim Smith, CSCS
http://wildgeese.dieselcrew.hop.clickbank.net/

Hand balancing and other gymnastic movements were used by the old-time strongmen such as Eugen Sandow, Otto Arco and Sig Klein. As you know, these physical culturalists had some of the strongest and most ripped abdominals ever displayed. In fact, some of their feats of strength have yet to be equaled. What most don’t realize is that these men used gymnastics and simple bodyweight movements to build their insane strength.

A movement that I utilize with my wrestlers and combat athletes is wall walking. It is one segment of the full execution of walking on your hands. The full version of walking on your hands takes a while to really get the hang of, so working the same musculature but with a more rudimentary movement is easy and quicker to implement.

Wall walking involves having the athlete setup in a hand stand position against a wall. From there, they will walk their hands out until their body is parallel to the ground. To complete the movement, they begin walking their feet back up, returning to the starting position close to the wall. That is one rep. Continue walking out and walking back up the wall for the desired volume or until the athlete collapses!

Building huge upper body strength, elite levels of torso strength and helping to regulate breathing, wall walking will without a doubt provide your athletes with a truly brutal exercise that will have them crushing their opponents.

About the Author
Jim Smith is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and an expert trainer who writes for Men’s Fitness and the Elite Q/A Staff. Jim has been involved in strength training as a performance enhancement specialist for over 8 years and has worked with athletes from various sports who compete at various levels. He has published articles about his unique training style and innovative methods for many prominent strength and fitness related sites. He is also the authored of three renowned strength manuals. For more innovative training solutions, visit http://wildgeese.dieselcrew.hop.clickbank.net/.

For real core strength, check out:

http://wildgeese.dieselcrew.hop.clickbank.net/

Wild Geese
any cause but our own

abs, combat core, core strength, interview, Jim Smith, non-conventional training, strength, strength training, torso

Interview With Jim Smith, CSCS – Author of Combat Core

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By line: By Dave Hedges
www.CombatCoreStrength.com.

Wild Geese are always on the lookout for new, updated informatio not just in the martial arts but also the fitness industry. When looking at fitness training we look from the stand point of a fighter and martial artist, in other words no BS, effecient, effective training with real, functional results.
I recently had a chance to sit down with Jim Smith, CSCS of the Diesel Crew and the author of Combat Core. I was able to get the low down on his new product and talk to him about what “real” core strength is all about.

[DH] Question: Jim, First off, thanks for the interview. What do you think is the biggest mistake most trainers make when trying to develop core strength?

[JS] Most trainers focus on what I have dubbed building strength of movement patterns. What they fail to realize is that this is only one piece of the total puzzle. Building strength in the gym with movements like leg lifts, sit-ups, reverse sit-ups and so on…is a compliment to a bigger, more comprehensive core strength program. There are other criteria that make up the rest of the pyramid that I have established in Combat Core

[DH] Question: What, in your opinion, is the biggest myth concerning abdominal programs?

[JS] For trainers, I would point to my previous response. For the general public and even athletes, I would say that they believe that “more is better.” They believe, if they do 1000 crunches each workout, they will get ripped abs. Of course, the real answer is that being able to display a sick set of abs is the direct result of low body fat levels. If you want abs, you better get the fat off that is covering them.

[DH] Question: How does core strength affect back pain and posture?

[JS] Your abdominals and back musculature work together to stabilize and protect the spine, hips and pelvis. If any of these muscle groups (and surrounding structures) are weak, posture is affected and sometimes the muscles (groups) become inhibited which causes the secondary movers to become overactive or on-tension. This will inevitably lead to injury and poor performance. Building torso strength by incorporating compound exercises that activate many muscle groups at the same time, teaches the lifter or athlete to move their body as a single, coordinated unit. Isolated exercises tend to lead to imbalances if used too much.

[DH] Question: How has your abdominal training strategies changed over the years?

[JS] I used to think that by throwing in a couple sets of sit-ups or leg raises at the end of the workout was enough torso strengthening work. But over the years as I have gained experience and continued to study performance, I have developed a new, more comprehensive training model specific to athletes. The same attention and effort that you put in to planning your primary training sessions, you must also spend on designing your core training strategies.

About the Author
Jim Smith is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist who writes for Men’s Fitness and the Elite Q/A Staff. Jim has been involved in strength training as a performance enhancement specialist for over 8 years and has worked with athletes from various sports who compete at various levels. He has published articles about his unique training style and innovative methods for many prominent strength and fitness related sites. He is also the authored of three renowned strength manuals. For more innovative training solutions, visit www.CombatCoreStrength.com. .

For real core strength, check out:
www.CombatCoreStrength.com.

body building, conditioning, Jason Ferrugia, motivation, strength, workout routine

Body Building Transformation Challenge

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Here’s a fantastic challenge for those of you looking to get bigger and stronger, especially if you’re the hardgainer type who struggles to put meat on you bones.

We all get better results when we have a deadline to work to, a clearly defined goal to aim for. Jason Ferrugia has just given you the deadline and offered $1000 (€640) as motivation.

Jason Ferrugia is a trainer and muscle building expert who won’t tell you to spend all day every day in the gym, he won’t fill you full of supplements. Instead what you get is his 20 years of research and experience on what to lift, how to lift it and how often to train.

He’s just launched a Transformation competition, read on to see how you can earn back your gym membership:

I am very excited to announce that we are holding the first ever Muscle Gaining Secrets
12 Week Transformation Contest.

The rules of the contest are the following:

–You must be a Muscle Gaining Secrets
customer and use one of the workouts from the package.

–You must register in our private forum and post your before pictures.

–You must begin on or before April 4th.

–The contest ends on July 4th, 2008.

The prizes awarded to the top finishers will
be:

1st place- $1,000.00
2nd place- $500.00
3rd place- $250.00

We will also be adding some bonuses prizes as time goes on.

This is the perfect time to start
getting in shape for summer and have a shot at a thousand bucks while you’re at it.

So what are you waiting for?

Get on over to
www.musclegainingsecrets.com, now and start getting jacked today.

Train hard,
Jason Ferruggia
Relentless Athletics
37 Musket Drive
Basking Ridge, New Jersey 07920
www.relentless-athletics.com/
www.musclegainingsecrets.com,

Best of luck.

Wild Geese
any cause but our own

conditioning, kettlebell, motivation, strength, weight loss workouts, wild geese

Mental Toughness

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There is a quote in Enter the kettlebell by Federal counter-terrorist operator saying “Kettlebell Training…the closest thing you can get to a fight without throwing a punch”.

I was just out in by back garden, barefoot in a singlet starting my training today. This consisted of military press ladders followed by EDT swings with the 32kg bell.

Then came the wind, rain and hail.

As if heavy swings for 15 minutes aren’t tough enough, the weather comes in making it cold, miserable, the handle gets slippery making it even harder on the grip. All this while trying to beat the previous personal best.

I was about two thirds through when the quote came into my head. I’ve been in fights, as a martial artist and as a security operative, you need to have the mind set to carry on even when the conditions are against you, when your muscles are failing you and your lungs are on fire.
That’s just how I felt today, Legs and back screaming, forearms barely holding on, heart in my mouth and being pelted with hail.

But you carry on.

And I tell you this when your finished, you feel indestructible, but sore.

Just like a fight.

I’d recommend The Kettlebell Solution for Fat Loss and Mental Toughness DVD from Mike Mahler but it’s shot in sunny California I ought to invite Mike to my back garden in Dublin, then we’d really get tough!

For more on Kettlebells, give us a shout, we’ve just launched our new site http://www.wg-fit.com/, it’ll take a while to be finished but you’ll get the idea of what we’re about. Or visit Mike Mahler’s Site and the Dragon Door Site for some of the best info out there.

Keep training.

Wild Geese
any cause but our own