I hope that everyone enjoyed the last installment from the Tapp Brothers. Did you guys make a choice on which direction you’re headed towards. Either way, your going to have to zero in on how you’re going to go about that training. In this video The dynamic duo while give you more insight by helping you figure out what the frequency of training should be for you!
Just to let you know. There aren’t going to be any snapshots in this post because, there isn’t much to show visually. But take a second to listen to the knowledge that’s about to be dropped!
Few Key Points to pay attention to!
What are you training for?
Weekend Warrior vs. Athlete
The number 1 secret to getting gains
Watch the video below to increase your training knowledge!
Try out one of the Tapp Brothers Primal Workouts Below:
And just in case you loved the information from this video and want to learn how to be in shape and move like the Tapp Brothers, check out their new program Rapid Primal Fitness!
What does it mean to maximize your muscle? Well, when you witness incredible strength from someone with the average man’s amount of muscle, how is it explained?
Let’s take, for instance, Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is probably the most recognizable figure for a lean man whose strength far surpassed the sum of his parts. He was and is heralded for having sinewy strength, or powerful tendons and ligaments, which boosted the strength of his muscle.
Even Bruce Lee knew the benefits of handstand training
Now Dennis Rogers is known as the Grandmaster Strongman in the physical culture world, and is pound for pound one of the strongest men on the planet.
After displaying his incredible strength on Stan Lee’s Superhumans, despite weighing about 150lbs and possessing overall average muscle mass, the researchers determined that he was able to activate more of his muscle strength than most of the population; they came to the same conclusion for Chad Netherland, the man with more Guinness World Records in martial arts than anyone else in the world.
Finally, Shifu Yan Lei is a 34th generation Shaolin monk who opened a training facility in the UK. Compared to many of the other rather lean monks, Shifu Yan Lei appears muscular, albeit well into his 30’s. The power of his Iron Shirt technique (which allows his body to absorb powerful blows with minimal damage) was tested by researchers, and the results were quite interesting: although he had roughly the same muscle mass as an Olympic rower, his muscle had much more elasticity than the rower’s muscles.
Knowing this, I can’t help but relate his technique to that of Maxick (145lbs), a 20th century strongman and hand balancer who would have 200+lbs men climb a 7ft ladder and jump onto his abs. Court Saldo, who trained with Maxick and wrote a muscle control course with him, said of jumping onto his abs: “I bounced as if jumping on solid rubber!”
This is the kind of definition that proper hand balancing can help you develop
Handstand Training to Maximize Muscle
Sinewy strength, muscle activation, and elasticity. Maximizing your muscle means accomplishing these three things in your training. Accomplishing these three things means having muscle control.
So addressing the main point, how will a handstand increase muscle control? Let’s break down the anatomy of a handstand: it involves your hands and wrists, forearms, triceps, shoulders, scapulae, chest, upper back, traps, neck, lower back, lats, core, and even your legs.
In order to maintain the handstand, all of these muscles have to be tense. Static contraction will progressively increase your muscle control, as will daily training, so to maximize your muscle strength with handstands:
Daily Training: you will need to dedicate a bit of practice to your handstand training daily. Sinewy strength doesn’t develop as quickly as muscle strength, as the blood flow to your tendons and ligaments is smaller than the blood flow to your muscles. If you want to truly develop the strength of your sinews, you’ll need to train the handstand progressively and daily.
Static contraction: You will need to focus in order to contract your entire body as you are training your handstands. A good way to build up to flexing your whole body is training progressions with dynamic tension. For instance, practice doing pike presses while flexing your shoulders, abs, traps, upper back, and chest. Flexing through the movement will not only increase the speed of your myelination (muscle memory), but also improve your muscle control for those groups.
Elasticity: Maxick was a strong advocate of having elastic muscle, saying that even a flexed muscle should be somewhat rubbery. That will come with developed muscle control in your handstands. What is just as important as learning how to tense your whole body is also learning how and when to relax your muscles. The greater and deeper relaxation of your muscles will boost their true strength when the time comes to fully tense them.
Logan Christopher is a big advocate of handstand training, and as a strongman he personally knows the benefits of handstand training for overall strength, which is why he wrote a fantastic guide on learning to do handstand pushups for overall strength.
Check it out and watch as your strength reaches new heights!
Coach Jon here. Every now and then we’ll receive an email about what you have been able to do while utilizing our programs. Needless to say, we love hearing from you and want to know how your progress is going! We might even give a pointer or two. This week we got an email from Matt telling us a bit about his journey!
While I haven’t managed a free standing handstand it has really helped me improve my base skills and build the foundations. Also managed finger tip crow pose and 4 finger no thumb Plank, thumb and two finger plank and 2 finger headstands.
Great stuff especially being free, I also have hand balancing made easy and have had a lot of fun with that and it’s sped up progress where coming from the wall I managed a 10 second handstand. Also the the headstand stuff is great I’ve always had alot fun doing headstand and it was nice to have a bunch of new variations to learn.
…While the freestanding handstand is a big goal for me I must admit headstands are where it’s at for me. Well headstands and increasing my digit strength, feel like I can do holds that would have snapped my fingers previously
If you like what you hear and want to check out one of our programs, why not start out with the Hand Balancing Made Easy eBook that Matt was talking about above! Click here to have a look.
Last week I told you we’d be getting some great instruction and tips on body movement from the parkour experts, the Tapp Brothers. Today they are going to break down athleticism and how weightlifting or bodyweight training comes into play toward reaching your athletic goals. They’ve broken down these pieces into the 5 categories below!
Coordination
The ability to control your body to perform a task.
Strength
The ability to generate force with your muscles.
Speed
The ability to move rapidly.
Endurance
Your body’s ability to resist fatigue.
Flexibility
The ability to reach your full range of motion with body joints.
Watch the video below to see how these pieces work together to build your athleticism!
If you loved the information from this video and want to learn how to be in shape and move like the Tapp Brothers, check out their new program Rapid Primal Fitness!
If you guys don’t know the Tapp Brothers. They’ve been a mainstay in Online Parkour Instruction for a number of years now. Whether you want to wall run, work on your tumbling skills, or get better at your aerial kicks; they are definitely a resource. We have been long time supporters of their work and wanted to showcase some some of their tips! Expect to see some great parkour and fitness tips from them in the future.
Wall Running
Climbing
Tricking
Tumbling
If you’re wondering what they can do, check this out!
If you want to learn how to be in shape and move like the Tapp Brothers, check out their new program Rapid Primal Fitness!
I did it. I did five thumb pushups, and so can you.
I never thought I’d reach this goal, the kind of strength that only cartoon and comic book characters can flaunt.
The kind of strength that Bruce Lee inspired within me.
Bruce Lee doing a two thumb suspension on the set of Game of Death
I first saw this picture of Bruce Lee when I began delving into my isometric training. I’d seen the one inch punch, the two finger pushup, and all manner of strength and training feats from Bruce Lee…but somehow this one had slipped under my radar, and caught my interest more than any others.
I mean, I had seen others perform two finger pushups, and I had achieved some myself after training, but…
I had NEVER seen anyone balancing on their thumbs.
So I looked more into the feat. Apparently, a two thumb suspension was only the tip of the iceberg.
In 1980, Jim Arvanitis, the founder of Neo-Pankration, went on the Guinness Game World Records Show and performed a feat unmatched to this day. He performed 61 thumb pushups in 47 seconds.
A thumb suspension was certainly no walk in the park, but a thumb pushup was a whole new territory that I had previously never thought of exploring.
The flame was lit within me, and no matter what obstacles presented themselves, I was determined to achieve the thumb pushup.
Jim Arvanitis performing one of his famous thumb pushups, which he can also do with one thumb
Thus began my training journey, arduous and rather unique in its goals. Coupling some fingertip pushup variations with high intensity isometric training laid the foundation for my fingertip strength.
Fingertip pushup variations will be your best friends when it comes to having the strength to do a thumb pushup. Practice doing pushups on all your fingertips, removing a finger as your overall hand strength increases. I started with a 5-4-3-2-1 drill where I’d pushup with all my fingers, remove the pinkies, then the ring finger, etc. until I could hold the position on my thumbs at the 1.
Take it slow, because this is a skill that can easily cause injury if you try to speed through it. If you don’t feel safe removing fingers, continue to practice with all of your fingers, and progress slowly.
When you’re ready to take these progressions to the next level, elevate your feet on a chair and try the 5-4-3-2-1 pushup variations and hold the two thumb suspension at the 1
Grip Training
Having a strong grip will do no wrong when it comes to preparing for any fingertip pushup variation. Train as many facets of your grip as you can. Your flexors and extensors should be trained equally, so exercises that involve an intense crush grip and powerful extension. Personally, isometric grip exercises are optimal when it comes to the overall ability to skyrocket grip strength in a short time, and ensure that the tendons in your fingers are strong enough to support you.
Especially when it comes to hand balancing, strengthening the tendons of your fingers are just as critical as strengthening the muscles of your forearms, so steady and progressive balancing training and isometric exercises with high intensity will make your training progress consistent and enduring.
One thing that I’d do often, as in the photo above, is grip a thick railing or table, thumbs on top, and squeeze my thumbs into the surface as hard as I can for 7-12 seconds, and repeat 8 times. Time under tension is an important factor of the exercise, so try to rest as little as you can between the 7-12 second reps, if at all.
Visualization
Logan Christopher often speaks on the importance of mental training to achieve your fitness goals, and it really applies for the thumb pushups. You will likely be ready for the pushups physically before you are ready for them mentally, at least that’s how it was for me.
The idea of doing such a feat was daunting to me, even when I believed I could achieve it.
Honestly, the first few weeks I tried, even after the training preparation, I still didn’t get it done.
Although I got the two thumb suspension down.
But I sat down one time before training, I breathed deeply and steadily, and visualized the feat. I mentally felt the floor under my thumbs, felt the blood and tension running through my tendons, felt the cry of victory resonating in my chest after I finally achieved my goal.
I could see, hear, practically taste what that moment would feel like to finally do a thumb pushup.
And instead…I did five.
It’s no Jim Arvanitis feat, but it was a foundation that I was more than happy to start building from.
Frankly, I look forward to all of you building your foundations too.
When I think about my personal hand balancing training, I try to remove luck from the equation. After all, training should be about the strength and technique you develop from continued progression. Luck isn’t something you can replicate, it just happens.
But sometimes luck is just what you need. It’s what I needed for my first front lever.
I was in the North dorm at UConn (University of Connecticut) and I was using the hallways as a gym of sorts. I would do pullups on the top lip of my door and handstand walks down the hallways.
On this occasion, as I was doing pullups, I heard a few friends of mine talking in the stairwell at normal volume, and then suddenly get quiet, which was rarely a good sign.
Call it a Spidey-Sense, but I just had the strong feeling that they were preparing to tackle me mid-pullup.
Just as I had the thought (mid-pullup, go figure) I heard sprinting sneakers preparing for a bull rush into my back.
If I got hit while I was pulling up, I would’ve gotten ripped off the door frame and maybe hit my head.
But if I let go, I’d still give them the satisfaction of tackling me, and I couldn’t have that.
In that moment, somehow, I tightened my lats, depressed and retracted my scapula, and executed a front lever in just enough time for my buddy to crash headlong into my desk.
I hadn’t trained the front lever with any consistency, and my progress up to that point had been spotty at best.
So I suppose I just got lucky. I needed that luck though, because I never forgot how my body felt when I performed a front lever, and it helped my progress thereafter.
Plus, it showed some creative practicality of hand balancing skill.
Still, the levers (front and back) are difficult skills that should be trained with focus and progression, and if you want progressions that will give you steady progress, look no further than the Front and Back Lever Training DVD.
Although I hope your motivation involves more personal progress and less tackles.
(pt. 2 of interview with Curron Gajadhar, a.k.a. Aspernaut)
You see, parkour is not about competition, but about expressing wildness, being liberated on a primal level, and allowing you to re-establish your relationship with the Earth around you. Methode Naturalle was so influential that the French military adopted it as a full system of training, which expanded and developed as parcours du combattant, (so you can guess where the name parkour came from.) But Georges Hebert’s goal with the natural method was not preparation against anyone, but training for yourself, your spirit, and your moral integrity.
More so than the strength and technique you develop, a sense of nomadic comfort washes over the soul like a warm wind when you can put your feet to the ground and move through your environment the way you were meant to.
Curron, currently living in Atlanta, GA, has been doing parkour for about 6 years and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. In his view on parkour, movement is a lifestyle. Viewing indigenous peoples around the world with phenomenal strength, Curron realized how they had no specific “workout” or “training” time because they were moving so often throughout the day. So he started moving. He’d climb trees, run around, crawl, and move as freely as his body would allow. “Parkour helps express wildness; I need to be feeling my animality,” Curron noted.
Curron’s tips for anyone looking to express their wildness through parkour? “Move. If you’re a beginner, even if you workout, you’re probably mostly sedentary. You do an hour in the gym, then you sit for the rest of the day. Go do a mud race, go climb for your life, go Spartan race, get out of your comfort zone. We’re not doing sets, we’re doing ‘we have to make it there by nightfall.’”
After all, the root of movement training is not in any specific technique or style, but in a group of people who moved to survive. One of my favorite videos that I’ve seen is one that compares the movement of traceurs through a city to the movement of monkeys through the jungle. If nothing else, the video shows how natural those movements are, and how movement training allows us to reclaim that mobility.
Survival is not comfortable, so step into your discomfort zone and move. Crawl, sprawl, tumble and roll, whatever will increase your rate of movement. The way Curron views it, parkour is a great way of escaping the mold of sets and reps that is such foundational part of most workouts. “Parkour,” he says, “negates the destructive process of stripping and processing fitness, and lets you become your own coach, rebuild that relationship with your body, and start over.”
Find an open field of grass, and empty parking lot, or just a new space for you to move in, and start over. Feel the Earth beneath bare feet (Curron suggests Onitsuka Tigers if not bare…lightweight with a consistent heel pattern and a flat sole), and move. Run, crawl, apply dynamic tension in some aspects, apply no tension in others, but move. Day by day, you’ll start to chip more at the “you” weighed down by the burdens of inactivity, and start to uncover the original “you” made to walk to Earth freely in harmony. Curron sees parkour as a ritual itself to “corner off [his] ancient land.”
Think about it. Each building and road you see was once filled with trees and stone formations to move about. Yet, from one jungle to another, you still have a world before you prepared to help you reverse the destructive process of a sessile lifestyle. Even fitness itself, with sets, reps, and regimented movements, is often catered to accommodate a sedentary life of sitting, eating, sitting some more, and sleeping.
With parkour, there are no sets or reps. There is just movement. There is just freedom. There is just harmony.
(From an interview with traceur Curron Gajadhar, a.k.a. Aspernaut)
Movement is not simply something you do, but a part of what you are. It is in our structure, our very DNA, to move with strength and efficiency. We have drifted from our original nature with our sedentary lifestyles, and try to compromise by going to the gym for an hour or so a day. Natural movement was never limited to sets and reps; the set was survival, and each rep was the course of a day. If you look at the natural world, the solution to sedentary life presents itself; nature itself is movement.
Parkour is one fantastic expression of the art of movement, and Curron Gajadhar, a.k.a. Aspernaut, is an avid parkour enthusiast who channels himself through the paved lots, railings, rooftops, fences, and general environment of Atlanta, GA. Curron learned about parkour in 2005, but his exploration of the history truly began in 2010, when he learned about the Yamakazi group started by parkour expert David Belle from a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not special; furthermore, the documentaries “Jump London” and its sequel “Jump Britain” (you can find Jump London 2003 full on YouTube).
The movement skill and art of the Yamakazi group is what really helped parkour to be called a non-combative martial art. But David Belle’s new expression of movement was in fact very old; Raymond Belle, David’s father, studied Georges Hebert’s methode naturalle.
This, the Natural Method, is what truly embodies the spirit that Curron expresses as a traceur. Hebert developed the natural method from his observation of well physically developed indigenous people in Africa, and wrote, “Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature.” Movement itself, as Hebert presented it, is both a training and a meditation. In Curron’s own words, “Parkour has been a reintroduction to being competent with my body.” No tree can grow without roots, and learning to reconnect with one’s body through movement across the Earth will allow the tree of might and physical mobility to truly grow.
You see, parkour is not about competition, but about expressing wildness, being liberated on a primal level, and allowing you to re-establish your relationship with the Earth around you. Methode Naturalle was so influential that the French military adopted it as a full system of training, which expanded and developed as parcours du combattant, (so you can guess where the name parkour came from.)
Happy Monday Everybody! I hope that you all had a great weekend and I know some of you spent time with the family this past Sunday. We’re starting back on our 3rd installment for the parkour series from TranquilMVMT with the Wall Run!
In this Tutorial. We Start off with your gathering steps. See which distance you have to be from the wall to take 3 steps and be in a nice position in order to place one leg and push off!
The next thing you want to do is drive up with the opposite knee while pushing off with the planted foot. Remember you don’t want to push away, but rather push up!
Finally reach up for the top of the wall, grab the ledge, and pull yourself up using the climb up to complete your wall run.
Once again their videos are packed with info, so I suggest to watch below and get in-depth!
Remember guys, Parkour is all about getting from point A to point B in the most effective way possible. In order to do that, you have to feel mastery over your own body. With that said, we’ve got an awesome deal this month to jam-pack yourself with the information necessary to gain that mastery. Click Here to develop to start you on the course to Advanced Bodyweight Training!
