Over the years I’ve had so many clients question me about why working out has to be so hard. Furthermore, when they’ve witnessed the torture I put my self through, like 1000 swing days, or what my friend called the death march, they often question why I want to do that to my body… Or why put myself through so much just to tear a phone book, or just for fun? I’ve never really taken the time to answer that question, but what I do say is it’s about experiencing movement in all it’s different variations. However to say I do 1000 swings coupled with 1000 lateral jumps, coupled with 100 one armed pushups merely to experience all these movements is asinine, because I don’t. Furthermore if you’ve been keeping up with my blogs, a few weeks ago I wrote a whole article on the benefits of fatigue- the lessons you learn about range of motion while totally exhausted, but the fact is it’s more than that. Hardstyle fitness is about the performance coin, thus everything you do needs to focus on improving that performance in whatever ROM you’re doing at that point in time. That means that your 1000 rep workouts or your 25 rep workouts are a journey to that progression. This article is about that journey, and why you ought to be on it.
Ok, So your doctor has told you to exercise, and/or perhaps you’re looking to get in shape for the summer… lose a few pounds or whatever; there’s something you have to understand Fitness is a larger concept. A friend text me the other day asking me what he’d get out of my new Hardstyle Yoga Camp, and my answer was well, “what are you looking for?” He told me he wanted a six pack of shredded abs for the summer, so I answered him with “sure you can get that from the Camp, but you gotta make sure you’re eating clean as well.” He immediately complained and told me but if I eat clean I could get that out of any well balanced workout. He further asked me if I do hardstyle yoga and my answer to that is, “of course.” However when he asked my objective results that I want to achieve from it, I said it’s fitness!
He further said what’s that… How do you measure it? I said, “when the world ends, I’ll be able to survive the longest before I die of suffocation in space.” Latter my friend and I spoke, and he said reading my goal made him laughed. People laugh at that response, but that is what fitness is: the ability to survive in an environment, and to reproduce. Although fitness might be inclusive of, it’s neither a six pack, nor buns of steel; it’s the ability to out last, out hunt, out run, and out live anything and in any environment. It’s about that one more step when you need it, that inside strength when something needs to get done, the pain tolerance to hold on till help arrives, the ability to get whatever done with no rest all by yourself… It’s about being better than you are now “just incase,” but mostly it’s about Living anywhere at anytime, no matter what.
I do sound crazy now don’t I, lol. But there are all sorts of common sense sayings around this idea: luck favors the prepared mind, and survival of the fittest come to mind. Fitness being survival is something which has common sense value. There’s lots of people like me who enjoy setting fitness goals, and pursuing them with vigor, ask them why they want that… or why aren’t they happy with what they look like- [because they’re already ripped]? I bet whatever answer they give will point to this idea of survival. Survival is a human need, just ask any dying person if they’d like one more day. Fitness is about the one more day!
The next topic to cover here is well if we all agree that fitness is about that one more day can’t it just be easy routines? I mean most research says all you need is about 20- 60 min of light aerobic activity a day to get all the heart benefits you might need to stay- in one sense of the word- healthy. Surely you can add 30 min of whole body weights to that, and you got yourself a fairly complete fitness package. In other words what’s up with the 300’s, and the 1000’s… what’s up with the craziness?
So for anyone who doesn’t know what hardstyle refers to, it’s not the kind of fitness routine that makes you throw up- (at least not every workout, hahahaha). No… Hardstyle refers to a type of balance between the “two sides of the performance coin,” according to the RKC manual: 1. Looseness and 2. Tension. A program well versed in such a style can definitely elicit stomach cramps and vomiting, but other times (like today when I grooved my Turkish Get Up) it’s about freeing up your movement- “taking the breaks off.” In fact a Hardstyle fitness routine is always about this idea of mobilizing and patterning movements so that you can perform in an athletic and proper way. Whether you fatigue or not is a by product of merely working; it’s not the goal of the workout, better movement is. How does this relate to surviving?
Well, throughout your life you are called upon to move, and most movements take certain motor skills. Just look at the primitive movement milestones that everyone needs to accomplish to be able to go from an infant to a walking/moving being. Even though the future of everyone’s movement is different, rolling, crawling, scooting, squating, and the like are everyone’s baby fitness program. Thus I don’t think it’s too much to believe that no matter what your movement environment involves, there still exists a few basic movements that must be worked over and over again by everyone. In essence whether you’re a baseball pitcher, a soccer player, or an 80 year old grandmother squating is important, and making that squat a better freer movement is important.
So now picture this: your car runs out of gas on the freeway and you have to walk back 5 miles to the nearest gas station, but because your next business meeting is in 2 hours you have to move quickly. With this scenario in mind what should you have focused on in the gym? If you said speed and cardio you’d only be partially right. The answer is good movement under stress- whatever that stress may be; in the gym stress is normally a resistance, speed or a state of fatigue. That way you can survive the emergency and not break anything doing so. Would it have been a good idea to test a 5 mile walk?
Sure, but what if you don’t do a lot of walking cause your workouts have to be 30 min. How could you have been prepared?
I can literally think of dozens of ways to prepare for this situation without walking as a test- even though it’s the best test, because its the most specific. You could snatch, swing, push up, squat, lunge, combo any group of the above exercises, yoga, etc… and you’d be prepared for this; you’d be fit to survive. But a 5 mile brisk walk/jog if you’re doing a 10 min mile is going to take you practically an hour. Can you imagine how many reps you’d have to do of a circuit of any three of the above exercises to accomplish an hour of work without stopping? It’s a lot, at least 100, probably more like 300. My death march takes me 45 min to an hour dependant upon which one I’m doing; it’s a lot of sets of 5 and 20 reps.
In 30 min you could do 700 or so of almost any exercise in a reasonable amount of sets, even with some rest. So just because a workout is 1000 reps doesn’t mean anything terrible, just that in some time frame 1000 repetitions of a movement was done. BTW doing 1000 of any of the above mentioned exercises would have prepared you for the 5 mile walk, and probably more. Furthermore would you have built an incredible body over time with such a routine? With a sensible diet- sure!
This is what’s great about Hardstyle fitness, you work a few exercises, and you’re prepared for almost anything! So stop doing 3 sets of 10 of 20 different exercises. Pick one exercise, perhaps two, and work at them until you’ve performed them in an athletic proper way. If you want help choosing here’s my advice: Turkish Get Ups, and Swings. Pattern them, balance your tension and relaxation, take the breaks off of them with mobility drills, and don’t worry about how many reps you end up doing of them in the time frame you committed to working out. Do 1 get up at a time, and try 10 or 20 random swings at a time. As you get better at them start taking less and less rest until you’re doing an entire workout in a flowing way without breaks from one movement to the next. If you’re anything like most of my clients and me, some days you’ll end up focusing on drills doing a few sets, and other days you’ll end up doing mostly swings and get ups doing 80- 100.
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