Stone Training for Gladiators

Who ever said you need to have perfectly round atlas stones to dig into stone training and derive the benefits of using stones.

I began using the stones from playgrounds, backyards and the woods near my home.

I even carried a few back home, heck, no one else was using them, so it wasn’t really “stealing”

Check the video below of me tearing it up in my parents back yard….

If you have a stone and a pull up bar, you can develop some kick ass strength and muscle.

Try this stone and bodyweight workout on for size:

1) Stone Clean & Press 5 x 5 reps

2A) monkey bar hand walks (yep, just like you did as a Kid!) 3 x max reps
2B) Stone Squats 3 x 6 – 10 reps

3) Truck or car push 5 x 30 seconds

This workout will thoroughly kick your butt and will add strength and muscle without the fancy machinery!

Like I said in The Underground Strength System, ditch your money wasting gym membership!

Kill it!

–Coach Z—

For the ultimate strength building and muscle building program without the fancy, high tech bull crap,
check out The Underground Strength System HERE.

The Ultimate Sandbag Movie

Check out some of my favorite exercises using a sandbag.

This is live, from my Underground Strength Gym in Edison, NJ.

Pay attention and get ready to make your own sandbag!

Check out the movie….

Now go get busy!

Kill it!

Check out the Underground Strength System and you’ll have a full blown encyclopedia of Sandbag Strength Training Exercises at your disposal!

Go HERE and see all the success stories.

SANDBAG Power Cleans!

My favorite sandbag exercise is bar none, the Sandbag Power Clean.

Nothing like gripping and ripping into a sandbag to develop nasty hand and grip strength and full body power.

Squat over your sandbag and assume the bottom position of the squat:

• flat back

• chest high

Grab the sandbag and rip it straight up. You want to try to get the bag air born. Catch with your arms under the bag and make sure you stand straight up.

Squat the bag down rather than dropping it.
This saves wear and tear on the bag and gives extra work to your lower body.

Try hitting the sandbag power clean for 5 x 5 reps first in your workouts.

Don’t fear the heavy bags. It’s the wrestling of the bag that really tests your physical and mental drive.

See the video below….

You don’t have to dip under the bag as David Ellis does in this video. You can try to pull the bag faster to get it higher.

Kill it!

For the ultimate collection of Underground Sandbag Training go to http://UndergroundStrengthManual.com

Pack on Slabs of Muscle with the Deadlift

Above, Bill “Peanuts” West doing modified “rack” pulls while training with his crew in his garage!

I have found the deadlift to be a tremendous exercise for developing overall strength and packing muscle onto your entire body which can only rival the benefits of the squat.

I have experimented with many set – rep variables as well as frequency of deadlifting.

I have found that when deadlifting, I go back to the less is more principle.

A few good sets of no more than 5 reps per set.

Once in a while I’ll crank out high rep deads with 225 lbs for 2 – 3 sets, but once again, less is more.

Sure I can do 5 sets of 20 reps but instead, with the deadlift, I hit it just hard enough, no more, no less.

I suggest you do the same. Experiment and find what works best for you.

You can deadlift once a week to get the technique down, one week go heavy, next week go lighter and use submaximal effort.

Every 4 weeks take a week off from the deadlifts to allow the lower back to recover.

Rather than always utilizing the bent knee deadlift, you can also perform the Romanian Deadlift (RDL), the Sumo Deadlift and rack pulls as well.

No matter which deadlift you use, make sure your technique is text book perfect, no exceptions.

Be ready to start slapping on slabs of rock hard muscle on every ounce of your body with the deadlift!

And if you Really wanna take your strength and muscle building to the next level, then train like a Gladiator and add
The Underground Strength System to your arsenal!

Squats to Skyrocket Your Muscle Growth and Fat Loss

Heavy squats are numero uno for helping your entire body gain muscle at warp speed as well as a great way to skyrocket your fat loss around the clock and speed up your metabolism.

Heavy leg work causes a surge in the release of your growth hormones like no other exercise can. The heavy weights sitting on your back tax the entire body intensely. Your legs and entire back side support the load unlike any other exercise.

You can squat with high reps or low reps, heavy weight or light weight. You can squat with various tools in various positions. A barbell or a heavy sandbag on your back is awesome for building muscle.

Muscle being added to your quads, hips, glutes, hamstrings, lats and lower back cover a large area of your body. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism revs, even when you are NOT training, helping you burn more calories around the clock compared to a weak, skinny individual (or fat and weak individual).

I have performed heavy barbell squats for heavy singles or up to 5 reps, I have also performed high rep back squats up to 50 reps! Talk about brutal!

Try throwing a sandbag on your back, walk 10 yards and squat 2 reps, repeat until you can no longer walk or until you squatted 20 reps.

This workout is not for sissies, only the strong and mentally tough will survive.

Try squats for heavy sets of 3, or several sets of 10, or 1 gut busting set of 20 – 30 reps. The high rep squats will leave you exhausted and wiped out on the floor for a good 10 minutes afterwards.

The question is, how badly do you want to pack on rugged muscle and transform yourself into a ripped and rugged beast?

If you want it badly enough, then I have the answer for you below.

Get the 12 Month Beast Training Program and Follow the Underground Blue Print for Packing on Mounds of Rugged Muscle and Serious Strength. Click HERE for Details.

Ultimate Garage Workouts

People think Underground training has nothing to do with barbells and dumbbells.

Very Wrong.

Underground training means going against the grain, breaking the rules and straying from the chrome and shiny bunny training methods.

It means heavy dumbbells and barbells.

Water filled kegs and heavy, awkward sandbags.

Thick ropes and stones.

Who knows what else? It’s up to you.

When I first began training in my garage the workouts were amazing.

I had a 300 lb barbell, a utility bench, a pair of 50 and 100 lb dumbbells and a LOUD Stereo! NO Heat – and man that got brutal during the winter! My garage was colder than the outdoors.

I had 2 space heaters, but, the problem was if I turned BOTH of them on the entire electric shorted in the house. My Dad NEVER liked that, so I was stuck with one space heater, which did absolutely nothing for keeping me warm!

Workouts consisted of squats, deadlifts, rows, presses and cleans. Cheat curls with 100 lb dumbbells even!

It wasn’t pretty, but the results were amazing, unlike anything I ever experienced before.

On the weekend I would take a trip to a new gym and get a workout in. I did respect the heat that’s for sure

But the muscle I packed on from my powerbuilding workouts were amazing. The strength was certainly freakish as well.

Stop following the rules and start training like a beast. A barbell, a few dumbbells, a sandbag and a heavy stone and you will build a physique that rivals what is seen in the comic books.

Of course, you need to be ready to put in the work?

Are you ready to transform your body? Then combine your free weights with some Underground Strength by clicking HERE. You won’t be disappointed, just look at all the testimonials!

Power-Building for Strength and Mass

Bill Pearl was a bodybuilder back during the 50’s – through the early 70’s. The man was built like a tank and ripped. Not only did he look strong, he was strong!

Bill’s training program was a heavy volume workout with lots of exercises, lots of sets and a wide variety of rep ranges. You would find barbells, dumbbells, machines, cables, bodyweight and more in his programs.

Bill NEVER trained to failure, he was smart, and always left a rep or two in the tank and left the gym feeling like he had a great workout, but not a workout that left him spent all day.

Bodybuilding is great, but, if you want to incorporate Power-Building, where you mix movements like those you see above with some strongman type work you will no doubt develop a physique that is ALL Show and ALL Go!

Try The Underground Strength System with some of your bodybuilding/ / gym workouts and you will develop a rock hard physique like no other.

Click HERE for more information

Time Under Tension for MMA Fighters & Grapplers – Part II

I still get goose bumps when I think of how John Smith, 2 X Olympic Wrestling Gold Medalist, was training when I attended his intensive wrestling camps. He always brought two nationally ranked D 1 wrestlers with him to assist in the camp and to train with. He drilled so aggressively and so intensely that the two best collegiate wrestlers in the country couldn’t keep up with him!

They were sweating bullets and breathing like they just finished a deep water dive with out oxygen! What Smith did during all his drilling was pushing himself so intensely it looked as if it were a wrestling match. His high speed, high intensity drilling was very likely his best form of conditioning, not running or jumping rope or any of the other methods he used.

One thing John did on many of his drills was to incorporate some form of lifting in most of his take down drills. He would shoot his low single or high crotch but for the finish he would throw them over his shoulder or lift them off the ground and then bring them to the mat. Coach Ethan Reeve told me a similar form of conditioning for his wrestlers when he was coaching. He had them perform hundreds of lifts during the takedown drills to improve their strength and power endurance for when they competed.

These lifts represent a squatting and dead lifting motion mixed in with rotational movements. If your partner weighs 175 lbs and you perform 200 takedowns with each drill that is one hell of a work out!

When I spoke to Louie Simmons about conditioning he spoke about time under tension with weights and drilling mixed in. I would be an idiot not to listen, so I began mixing in some wrestling and strength training for time. The result? I have watched these grapplers increase toughness big time (they fight like deadly Gladiators out on the mat) and their “mat conditioning” has soared!

I watched one of our guys have a few close matches through first and second periods and then during third period he simply out conditions his opponents and scores again and again. This improved conditioning is a by product of the SPP (Specialized Physical Preparation) we have incorporated into the program in an effort to prepare him for the big tournaments that he was entering.

Let’s get to the real meat of the training and see how I used loaded conditioning and time under tension to prep these grapplers for tournaments.

We head to a field with dragging sleds & kettlebells. The group is often 3 – 5 athletes together. Performing various dragging, rowing and pressing movements for about 2 minutes they immediately go and perform what we call sumo or brawling drills and some take down drills.

They work on hand fighting, head and neck control, snap down drills as well as shooting high singles while their partner uses a defensive move to get out of the single. The pace here is very hard fought and intense. It is a complete stray from the normal theory of conditioning, which is that of performing a movement such as sprints, jogging, jumping rope, etc.

This goes on for an explosive bout of 1 – 2 minutes, give or take 15 seconds or so. From the brawling drill they move immediately into some kettlebell training using a simple exercise such as 2 hand swings, the clean and press and sometimes snatches. This will be performed for 5 – 10 reps per hand when doing single handed movements, or 10 – 15 reps on the swing.

What we’ve done is mix in some “loaded conditioning” with the weights as well as some actual wrestling training. This style of training can be implemented in a dojo or MMA school where the athletes can use the heavy bags or sand bags for exercises such as Turkish get ups, squats, rows, presses & lunges. What I would NOT do is perform the conditioning before actual training. The intense drilling of takedowns or stand up fighting will serve as a form of conditioning first of all. Secondly, performing the conditioning first can fatigue the grappler or fighter too much to a point where they begin drilling with poor technique, or, they get injured due to the muscular fatigue.

So, either perform the loaded conditioning after technique work or as a separate work out altogether. If you have absolutely NO equipment for loaded conditioning, try performing loaded conditioning by lifting on EVERY take down for a time that simulates your rounds.

Choosing a list of my favorite indoor tools that can be used for loaded conditioning would be the following:

• The Grappler (Louie Simmons has fighters use the grappler for 5 – 10 minutes non stop, performing various movements with the empty bars, and, he also uses it himself for GPP work)

• Kettlebells and / or Dumbbells

• Rope climbing

• Sandbags and / or heavy bags (sand bags will be more versatile)

• Bodyweight exercises (pull ups, push ups, burpees, squats, lunges, etc.)

Sample indoor loaded conditioning work out (tweak the specific drills for your sport, whether it be Grappling, MMA, or Muay Thai):

1. Takedowns with and with out lifts and submissions for 4 minutes
2. Sandbag Turkish get ups x 1 minute
3. Sandbag Squat x 1 minute
4. Pull ups with towel x 5 reps
5. Repeat skills / drills for 3 – 5 minutes (takedowns, stand up, etc.)

Repeat the above loaded conditioning as you feel is needed, or, repeat for the same amount of time your fight / match will last for. Add an over time round to really step it up, and change the exercises every round.

For outdoor loaded conditioning:

* Sleds
* Kettlebells
* Sand Bags
* Stones (You heard me correctly! You can carry stones, perform rows, dead lifts and much more!)
* Ropes (performing hand over hand pulls with the sled)

Remember, this is one variation / option you have for using a form of conditioning. I always emphasize tweaking things to best suit yourself or your own clients / athletes. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box to take your conditioning to the next level!

Want to know the secrets of developing brute strength and steel-forged muscles? It’s time to ditch your money wasting gym membership and start training Underground! Click HERE to get started!

Time Under Tension for MMA Fighters & Grapplers – Part I

Fighters and grapplers need to be incredibly fit all around. They need it all; great aerobic and anaerobic endurance, great strength endurance, power endurance and extreme mental toughness. There is a lot of confusion on how a fighter or grappler should train. Managing their time between training in the ring / mat and in the gym (or out of the gym) becomes important.

With all the time these athletes spend in actual skill and live training sessions their energy levels and the amount of recuperation is much less than the average athlete. A lot of their sparring is strength training per se. They are constantly pushing, pulling, lifting, rotating and more. Due to all of their time spent training we want to make sure we do not overdo it by pushing them more and more to the point where overuse injuries, mental and physical burn out become a side effect of the training.

Above, Fedor Emalianenko, the greatest heavyweight fighter of all time, stands amongst various size and shape Kettlebells.

We use a variety of methods for training our grapplers but there is one way that has worked very effectively and you can use it or tweak it to see how it works. The art of coaching is key here so learning how to taper or apply training methods for each individual comes into play.

The problem with fighters is they have the mentality of “out working” their opponents. The philosophy of training smart equates to harder training for most fighters. This is where you need to understand their body while communicating with your fighters constantly. Asking about current injuries, emotional and physical state will be a huge step towards learning what works best for your fighters and grapplers.

We always start our work outs with a thorough warm up. We take some from the Parisi warm up, and also added some other calisthenics and band work using the Jump Stretch bands. We may also incorporate some light reverse hypers and kettlebell swings before we start the grunt of the work out. Sometimes this warm up is slightly extended to get the athlete mentally warmed up.

After working or going to school for half a day, then training at their dojo or club and then coming to strength train can be a long day. A good warm up with some pumping tunes might be all your athlete needs. As mentioned before, incorporate the “art of coaching” and determine if your athlete can go through a tough training session or if they need a lighter more recuperative day.

We will often start with a max effort exercise using short rest periods and reps in the range of 3 – 5 on our heavy sets. The warm up sets as we build up have a rep range of 5 – 10. Some examples of our max effort exercises might be:

• Flat / Incline barbell or dumbbell bench press
• Deadlifts (all variations: trap bar, straight bar, bent knee, sumo, RDL, and sometimes we add chains to the DL movement)
• Heavy Rowing motion: 1 arm rows, bent over barbell rows, t bar rows on the grappler
• 1 arm or 2 arm clean and press or military press: Kettlebells, dumbbells or sand bags
• Squats of all variations: box squat, sand bag squat (sandbag held in front or on shoulders), kettlebell squats

After the athlete performs a good 4 – 6 hard sets (on average, sometimes less & sometimes more) in the 3 – 5 rep range we move on to our time under tension training using various tools. The time under tension (TUT) builds great strength endurance as well as mental toughness.

The tools for time under tension can be almost anything, but here is a list of tools me way use for TUT:

• Sandbags
• Barbells
• Dumbbells
• Kettlebells
• Sleds
• Sledge Hammer
• Bodyweight
• Tree Logs

For example, let’s say that the first lift was the bent knee dead lift with a straight bar, after the heavy sets we might move on to using a 50 – 70 lb sandbag for 5 minutes with out ever placing it on the floor! Five minutes represents some of the time frames for a round used in MMA fights or Grappling tournaments. Below is a list of exercises with reps that we will use with the sand bag for 5 minutes, repeating until the 5 minute “training round” has ended.

Sandbag / 5 minutes:

• Clean & press x 5
• Zercher squat x 5
• Good morning / RDL hybrid (hold bag in zercher position tightly against chest) x 5
• Reverse lunges x 10
• Turkish get up x 5 (holding sandbag against chest or w/arms extended)

The above TUT round is an ass kicker no doubt about it. After this round we may perform some shorter rounds of 2 – 3 minutes using kettlebells or a barbell. There are a lot of variations for TUT training and I have also spoken to Louie Simmons regarding this method. I asked him about how he trained MMA Fighter, Kevin Randleman. Louie would have him perform a 10 minute round of a 205 lb barbell complex that worked like this:

1. Power clean from ground x 1 rep
2. hang clean x 1 rep
3. hang clean and press or jerk x 1 rep

After the 3 rep complex above, Kevin rested 30 seconds and would keep repeating for 10 minutes. This complex represented an explosive bout that may happen during a fight. Notice I said “May happen.”

Every program has flaws and nothing is perfect. There may or may not be a 30 second explosive bout of action during a fight, who knows! The fight may not even last 30 seconds!

This is why I use a variety of TUT rounds such as 5 minute rounds like above, or one exercise for one rep done for 5 minutes such as a burpee, clean, squat & press combo with a barbell, kettlebells or sand bag. We might do this 1 rep combo followed by a 15 second rest period. The 15 second rest period can represent the time where the grappler is in the guard and working for good positioning but not exploding aggressively.

How can you create a work out that has carry over to your style of fighting or grappling? Perhaps you might perform exercise on your back to improve your ground game. You might perform floor presses and various sit up movements with kettlebells and only perform the bottom portion of Turkish get ups for a total of 5 – 10 minutes.

One last point I must drive home (which has led me to listen more and more to my athletes) is that of individualizing the program as much as possible to meet the level of GPP and overall conditioning that you or your athletes posses. Some athletes can handle a lot of volume and intensity while others reap great gains from short work outs that have a lower intensity level.

For example, I trained a high school wrestler with only time under tension variations during his in season once a week for no more than 20 minutes including his warm up! To me this seemed it wouldn’t work but he kept stating things such as: “I feel so strong out there and I feel like I am never tired”.

I watched his performance improve through the entire season where as most kid burn out mentally and / or physically. In addition this athlete performs little if any max effort training. It worked because we listened to one another and found a time and intensity level that worked best for him!

Want to know the secrets of developing brute strength and steel-forged muscles? It’s time to ditch your money wasting gym membership and start training Underground! Click HERE to get started!

Rules? There Are No Rules! Part 2

I’ve got another story for you, and it always brings back some of my favorite times in the gym. Actually, I have countless “favorite times” in the gym but this one is special to me, but honestly, all these memories are special to me.
It was the summer of 1994, I was in Israel and I was staying there for about one month. My older bro was in the military there and he had told me about a small gym that was in town.

Before this time, my workouts in Israel consisted of going to a local park and doing 15 – 20 sets of pull ups every other day. When I found out there was a gym I was amped up! Not being able to lift was a tough ordeal to handle because I was seriously addicted to training. I used to cut school so I could get to the gym in the morning and then have my parents drive me there in the evening. I was addicted and still am.

This gym was not hard core. It was not meant for people like us, it was meant for the local people and there were no hard core lifters at all. It was a small place, less than 1,000 sq. ft. and it had some old equipment that seemed flimsy and weak. I have no idea how that equipment even held up.

The owner was cool as hell, a former member of a Special Forces unit called “Golani” and then became a trainer for all Special Forces units in the Israeli army. He certainly had a few screws loose. Ask him how to get big, ‘Eat more and train heavier.” Ask him how to get ripped, “Stop eating so much.” Talk about the science of training & nutrition! Jim Wendler would have liked this guy. He couldn’t speak English unless he was cursing at us which reminded me of Ferruggia. That worked fine for motivation because you never wanted this guy to out do you in a training session. He was tough and he loved training heavy. It was war every time we went in there to train.

Anyway, let me back track a bit here. The first day I walked to the gym I saw a guy working out there, he was American and his name was Joe. He was in Israel trying to get into their elite military unit, the Seals, which is called “Shayetet”. He was one tough SOB and having two training partners like this simply couldn’t make a vacation any better! That day that I walked in the gym Joe was benching 295 for reps. For most of our readers that sounds like nothing, but, this guy also swam 5 miles every other day, then ran 5 miles on the days he didn’t swim. I emphasize the words “ran” as he was not jogging, he simply hauled ass. He was in phenomenal overall condition physically & mentally. When we all met and decided to train together it was a battle every time. There was always someone outdoing the other and the workouts seemed to last forever because no one wanted to tell Avner, the gym owner, that we were tired and wanted to stop working out.

During my stay, Avner had me coming to the gym twice a day, morning and evening. I didn’t even think it was good for me or if he even felt it was good for me to train so much. I simply believe he wanted me there so he can train more because he too loved training. At that time Dorian Yates was getting tons of publicity regarding his short, heavy duty workouts that Mike Mentzer popularized. I was in quite a bit of a shock because I was used to doing two heavy sets per exercise when Avner had us doing 5 sets per exercise on average. I tried to explain to Avner what over training was and he always replied by saying, “F#ck Dorian Yates.” More science and words of wisdom.

As the days passed, every time I got to the gym to train Joe was already there. He already did his morning run or swim, and then he was found doing sit ups with his feet locked under a set of heavy dumbbells. I didn’t pay much attention to it in the beginning. After our workouts when Avner has us working abs, Joe never mentioned the fact that he did 100 sit ups already. I slowly took notice to how Joe was always there before me to train. If we were scheduled for 9 am training, Joe was already there doing one of two things; flat benching and / or sit ups.

What else was odd was that after every long and brutal workout, Joe got the curl bar and placed a 45 on each side and always did 5 sets of 10 curls. After a while, Flex magazine got the best of me and I told Joe, “Dude, why are you always doing curls, sit ups and benching, you’re gonna over train!” Joe replied these exact words, “Shit brother, you think the fucking dudes in the pen think about over training? They do their sit ups, push ups, benching and curls every day!” He turned around and continued to do his curls.

I was shocked because I was 18 years young and too poisoned by the magazines to understand these concepts of ‘No Rules” training. I simply could not think outside the box. I figured that I can find a way to make him eat his words. We had a leg workout the next day and I knew that it was my strongest body part. I had a goal of burying him during the workout and forcing him to push his training harder than ever before that day. My goal was to make him vomit and skip those daily curls. We squatted off of a flat bench’s catch racks. This was scary as all hell! The flat bench had those catch racks that would rise up high enough to look like those gun rack type squat racks. I was scared that the weights would topple over the bench so we piled 45’s on the flat bench to balance off the weights we used when we racked the weight.

Our workout consisted of endless sets of squats, front squats, barbell lunges, leg extension, leg curls and RDL’s. The work out was nauseating, filled with yelling, forced reps, drop sets on the leg curls and extensions, anything to set Joe straight. I was shot after that work out big time. Joe still got that dam curl bar and did his 5 sets of curls and finished with 100 sit ups!

When that 4 week “vacation” ended I was bumming. To find two tough-as-nails training partners who knew no rules or limits was a gem! There was no sophisticated equipment, no power rack and certainly no loud pumping music. There were three guys, all from different walks of life with one goal, to train hard as all hell and to give nothing less than 100 %. We created our own atmosphere and we thrived in it!

Last time I trained in Israel Avner was still training like a mad man and he reminds of Louie in a way. He stays in the gym to train others but all through the day he is doing mini workouts in addition to his main workout and this was exactly why a man in his mid 40’s was having no problem burying us during our training sessions. Joe went on to become a SEAL in the states and the rest of his story in confidential my friends. I have learned a lot from the most “uneducated” lifters out there. I doubt they ever picked up a magazine and followed those workouts or read those programs. They trained six days a week and often times trained twice a day. If your philosophy is “F#ck Dorian Yates” I have a funny feeling you’ll do alright out there! I always said Warriors and Gladiators are a dying breed, let’s do our part and keep them alive! Stay tough brothers.

Want to know the secrets of developing brute strength and steel-forged muscles? It’s time to ditch your money wasting gym membership and start training Underground! Click HERE to get started!