Some of the old timers, the men who did this before the invention of modern training equipment, machines, steroids, etc., did some truly amazing feats. I mean freakishly amazing! Things that haven’t been duplicated in 100 years or so for some of them. I think, in a conversation with a close friend the other night, I may have hit on one of the key components of their training that allowed them to perform so powerfully.
My key upper-body exercise and one that you hear me talk about a great deal is the one-armed press. This was also a staple of most of the old time lifters. I don’t think it’s so much magic of that particular lift, but it is two factors that that lift allows you to train that’s the secret here. They are total body unification (especially total body unification behind a single limb), and maximum power, abdominal work (especially as it pertains to a unified body and the sides of the abdominals).
I talk a great deal about efficiency in my training. One thing I’ve been doing lately to increase efficiency is to add a windmill every time I do a one arm press. Why? Well because I’ve already got the weight pressed up and locked out overhead. I can add in the windmill at that point without extra time being spent. Plus the windmill simultaneously allows me to work my abdominals heavy, while focusing on the sides and in a total body movement. I have noticed that by doing this I feel stronger in other exercises, squats and pulls, and even the transfer of core strength over to pressing. These are the types of movements that the old time strongmen concentrated on. It allows you to build the muscles of the arms, shoulder and back, while simultaneously building strength and flexibility in the legs, hips, abdominals and back.
So how does this transfer over to their amazing performances? Well first it eliminates a weak link in the chain of strength of the human body. We all know that our back, legs, etc., can only put out as much pressure as our abdominals can match. So most of us do some kind of ab training, even though most of don’t really do it heavy enough. You see the legs and back can put out a tremendous amount of pressure and if you don’t train the abs with the same weight you’ll never be able to truly realize the potential of your legs and back. Also most of us focusing on training the front of the abdomen if we do heavy abdominal training and don’t train the sides of the body with the same type of max weight and effort. I’ve come to believe that many of us, even though our heavy squats and deadlifts are going up, are still weak in the abdomen. Because I think that we’re not just missing lifts from pure abdominal failure, but the fact that our obliques and front abdominals are not just as strong as our legs and back, is falsely limiting to the strength that our legs and back will put out. I think this is why you almost uniformly hear that when a lifter adds heavy abdominal work to his routine, his squat and deadlift go up. Also why many of the modern powerlifting systems focus so heavily on trunk strength. The front and sides of your trunk need just as much if not more maximal strength training than the back, and your shoulder girdle, hips and thighs. A pipe that has weak side walls isn’t very strong.
I think this type of exercise also added to their performance by teaching the body how to totally focus its power into a movement behind one limb. By doing that you make a movement such as the one arm press carry the strength of not just the pressing muscles, but you involve the whole body into this lift. By constantly training this you teach the body to demonstrate a strength in which the unified whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. You are in essence teaching the body efficient strength, because you are teaching it how to literally unify all of its members and how to work together. Think of how this applies to the martial artist and how much more powerful his strikes or throws could be if his whole body can unify and transfer its power through one arm. Think of the football player or the athlete of any sort. I think these two factors account for why they were able to do feats that seem almost miraculous and is definitely a missing factor in most modern training.
Bud Jeffries has much more to teach on building super human strength and conditioning. Visit http://www.strongerman.com were you can sign-up and receive additional tips now.
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