“Help them understand you know what you are talking about when it comes to training, and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your more fringe ideas.”

I started writing for Breaking Muscle several years back, and I have had an agenda the entire time. In an attempt to get me established as someone with some strength chops, the good folks on the editing team thought it would be a better idea to ease up on the articles centered around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

“Help them understand you know what you are talking about when it comes to training, and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your more fringe ideas.”

I wrote an original piece, What’s Daoism Got To Do With It? which was a first attempt at offering up some of these ideas. This article was my underhand toss to this community on some heavy ideas.

Well, I’ve waited long enough, and it’s officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I’m about to give you the cliff notes to a much larger project I have been working on since I was conducting clinical research for my Medical Qigong doctorate over 13 years ago.

What you are about to read is real.

Yes, some elements will feel fantastic and whimsical and moments where you will think I’m taking a form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Much of what I will present today have all been proven in studies—if you are inclined to look.

This short dissertation is the exact phrasing I use with my patients who come to see me for help with a medical concern and don’t have a tremendous understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But, you get to look at the world I live in through the strength lens and not the healing lens: even though you will quickly find they are not independent of one another. So sit back, and listen to some ideas that you likely have never heard before.

Everything is Energy

Okay, well, most of you have probably heard that, but it’s a fundamental concept that needs to be accepted if we will make any headway with all of this.

The good news is, any high school physics book will confirm this if you need convincing. That computer/phone screen you are looking at, the shoes you are wearing, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. You are, in fact, energy.

Everything that is material in this world, everything that is not, and everything in between is, you guessed it, energy differentiating by tone, vibration, and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of the one, sees the world as it indeed looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors beyond description.

Yin and Yang

With that being said, we may learn the most fundamental understanding of this through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two teardrops that have come together to represent duality, the circle of life, and the expression of opposites.

The yin and yang are established right around the first cellular division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways, that moment is as important, if not more important, than when the sperm hits the egg. That division is where yin and yang take form, where every child’s virtues are escorted in, and software of the divine spirit begins to run its program.

In that moment, and all through gestation, the developing child is in a nuclear nirvana of sorts that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother is enduring.

I like to think that the yin and yang of that being are in total balance, and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and maintained for nine months.

Before we go much further, we probably should give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first, it’s yin, not ying with a G. And it’s yang as in yawn—not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and mean it?

Joe Dirt said it a couple of times, and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear that, immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it needed to be said.

For this article, yin and yang will be defined as the quality of the energy we are talking about:

1. Yin represents female, calm, cool, the shadow side of the mountain, the moon.
2. Yang is male, aggressive, hot, on the light side of the mountain, the stars. Inside of every single atom in your body lies these qualities.

Gather up all the atoms, and we have you, and during the time you are in the cozy confines of mommy’s tummy, all is balanced, as balance pertains to you individually.

My balance is different than yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some degree in all of us.

In moments of true balance, everything in the body works beautifully. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and during that nine months, the miracle of life is taking shape. And then, you take your first breath.

It’s a Boy

Those words are followed by one of the most blood-curdling screams that you will ever hear. I know it well. I’ve heard that scream three times.

I was in a position with our doctor when the entire process happened for my wife and our kids, and I remember that sound. Many people think that is inherently reflexive, and it’s the baby’s way of announcing that he or she has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the room the woman is in having one of the most cataclysmic events of her life. Then think of the woman that was there before her, and then the one before that.

Over time, that room becomes a petri dish of emotion and the electrical charge as those events soak into the walls.

Think of how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself, but I was a nervous wreck for each delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Think of how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff is at the moment the pushing gets going.

Come back to the mom’s true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror, and all the most explosive emotions of which a human is capable are permeating into every square inch of that room.

Baby has spent approximately nine months in the most glorious environment he/she will ever know, and in one breath, all that energy of the room is taken-in for their first toke of life.

At that moment, the equal union of yin and yang is radically altered, and the rest of that person’s life is spent chasing balance.

Dis-Ease

Think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

• As a noun, ease is defined as freedom from labor, pain or physical annoyance, tranquil rest, comfort.
• As a verb, it’s defined as to free from anxiety or care.
• Throw “dis” in front of it, and there you go.

Now, I’m not betting my farm on Alexa being the all-knowing soothsayer that only spits truths, but if we can agree that her definition is close to accurate, then what is missing?

She never mentioned:

1. Proper diet
2. Eight glasses of water a day
3. Taking vitamins
4. Don’t live next to a power plant.
5. Using fluoride-free toothpaste

The things that Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life perceived from the inside and the types of things we all hope to attain.

Her understanding of the second half of disease has to do with calm, stillness, and satisfaction at the moment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so tight because much of the Chinese Medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Tie specifics to organs and what we have is an elegant way of looking at illness and the root cause of everything that delivers us to the waiting room of our favorite MD.

If ease’s opposite is centered on anxiety, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you start to put the picture together that much of our illnesses are rooted in emotional distress?

Take that one giant step forward; if you become inundated with overbearing emotions, particularly one or two, that yin and yang balance is thrown into turmoil.

The longer you stay in imbalance, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I am simplifying this by leaps and bounds.

If I had absolute freedom to explain all of the correlations drawn between this organ, that meridian, and these emotions, I would be able to paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that it’s all there.

The Noise of Life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea I hope you will grasp in this section.

The most centered person on earth is faced with the challenges of living this life in this time.

• Take any monk-ish person on this planet, someone who has cultivated themselves with decades of committed practice to meditation, prayer (something we will visit in the third installment), and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
• Then, give them a cell phone, a corporate job, a bad diet, a new girlfriend, bills to pay, and a right knee giving him problems, and then watch all that work devolve before our eyes.
• See, the devout, the ones who have dedicated their lives to service, particularly service from a religious or spiritual angle, those folks go off to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively locked up and removed from society, so the noise of the day-to-day is filtered.
• They can have the ideal conditions to work their craft. They aren’t anti-social; they create the best possible setting for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in service of God is in a monastery, away from society’s day-to-day.

Now, if you are buying the whole yin and yang position, and we know that the only time in one’s life where balance is genuinely achieved is in the womb, then every second, we are boots on the ground in this world, we are chasing that balance.

I tell my patients that they will likely never achieve that absolute balance ever again unless they adopt some practice.

Our lives Are a Yang Thunderstorm.

Think about that for a moment:

• The hustle and grind of life
• Our jobs
• Our relationships
• The garbage that the media is continuously trying to shovel down our throats, like our diets.
• Everything we encounter in our waking times is stress.
• And in the case of this article, we are having yang-type energy blasted at us and into our energetic field around the clock.

If we don’t have a solution to offset this continual inundation, our teardrops should be equal to each other and start morphing into something so one-sided that illness is destined to happen.

I want to leave you with this.

And then we throw training on top of it. We intentionally add another yang activity into an already noisy day because we love it, and we think we are doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is beneficial, our jeans look good, and I’ll be the first one to say that I go through a legit posing routine in the morning in the mirror right before brushing my teeth (quit lying, you do, too). We love our gym time, and we know it’s good for us.

Or is it?

The post The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The following five exercises will ignite your fast twitch muscle fibers for explosive power. My goal with this system was to include instinctual movements that come naturally, allowing you to apply high levels of power from the day you start. They are easy to learn and apply without too much thought – thinking makes you slow when you want to be explosive.

While I love Olympic lifting, it is not the most accessible system. The learning curve is steep for an inexperienced lifter. In addition to needing the right setup, you also need good coaching and a lot of hours of practice to learn technique that is safe and actually translates to explosive power. On the other hand, presuming you have basic mobility and movement skills, you should be able to start reaping the benefits of this system immediately because training time from day one is devoted to the execution of quick and aggressive movements.

1. The Broad Jump

Broad jumping is my favorite power exercise for developing posterior chain power. There is something I love about coiling my entire torso followed by the violent forward explosion of my arms, chest, hips, and then legs on the kick. The broad jump has the phases I call the load, explode, and transition.

Setup with feet about shoulder width apart in an athletic stance with arms up at chest height. The load starts with a quick downward arm swing as you coil your torso down to the tops of your thighs. Shift your weight forward over your toes and on to the balls of your feet in preparation to project your bodyweight forward, not up.

Once loaded, explode by violently swinging your arms out in front of you, driving your hips forward, and springing off of your toes. Open your chest to your target and think explosive extension at the hips and ankles. After this initial explosion you will hang in the air for a moment before a second explosion of hip and spinal flexion, bringing your feet far in front of you for landing.

The transition is the final phase when you go from landing heels first in a bent-knee pike position to shifting your weight back onto the balls of your feet to take off again for another rep as quickly as possible.

Broad jumping develops power through the posterior-chain in much the same was as a snatch. It also has benefits to athleticism beyond what O-lifts can offer because the quick succession of repetition trains your body to contract and relax very quickly.

2. The Squat Jump

Squat jumping is the second exercise in the system and is great for athletes who need to get vertical. It carries over well to kettlebell-sport for those who compete in the snatch.

The setup and phases are the same as the broad jump only you are projecting your energy vertically:

Load with an arm-swing while coiling your torso down, though not as close to the tops of the thigh as the broad jump because too much lean will project your power forward.

Explode into triple extension with a violent arm-swing upward leaving from your toes.

Transition by landing on your toes, absorbing contact with the ground through your entire body and then explode back up for the next rep.

Squat jumps develop lower-body power and a quick second jump that is coveted by pro scouts when evaluating athleticism. There are a lot of guys who can jump high once, but how fast (and high) can they get back up there on the second jump, which is more often where possession of the ball is decided?

3. The Slam

Slams are a primarily anterior chain movement that are a great compliment to the jumps because they train the body to move explosively into flexion to balance all that extension work. Slams also train explosive shoulder extension, which has helped get my pull-ups and muscle-ups more powerful, while also being a nice balance to a lot of overhead work.

I prefer slamming with SandBells or duffle bags I’ve filled with sand bags, but they can also be done with medicine balls and kettlebells. I’ll take a moment to state the obvious – if you are slamming with kettlebells you should be outside on sand or on grass that no one cares about you destroying.

Crouch down with a firm grip on your slamming implement that is on the ground. The loading phase is going up into triple extension raising your arms and the implement over your head with elbows slightly bent. The key to this exercise is the transition from loading overhead to accelerating it back down as quickly and forcefully as possible. Bring your entire torso down toward the floor while trying to throw the implement through the floor in front of you with your shoulders going into extension and your arms into internal rotation (thumbs pointed back behind you) to finish it off.

4. The Kettlebell Quick Step

Please continue to page two –

4. The Kettlebell Quick Step

The kettlebell quick step is a great for developing an explosive first step or for fighters trying to improve punching or kicking power. Go into your normal back swing, but instead of doing a stationary two-hand swing, you will drive forward off of one leg as the kettlebell ascends with the other leg taking a big step forward. At the moment the kettlebell is weightless at chest level, you will step forward with the drive leg to re-establish a normal swing stance for the next rep.

Although alternating legs each rep mimics the way the legs move when sprinting, I like to do some sets of one leg driving because it mimics sports that have stopping and starting in the same direction or a fighter throwing multiple punches or kicks with the same side.

5. The Bulgarian Jump Squat

Bulgarian jump squats are one of the most brutal exercises in my system. Set up as you would with a regular Bulgarian squat, with one leg on the floor and the other leg rested back on a bench. Tap the knee of the back leg to the ground and drive up with enough power to actually leave the ground. To maximize your balance and the carryover to a single-leg jumping, swing your arms like you would sprinting or jumping off of one leg (opposite arm and leg in synchronization).

These five exercises from my minimalist system for building explosive power can be done in any gym. I devote two days a week to explosive training at the beginning of my workout. I either split the days up into a double-leg day/single-leg day or a vertical day/sagittal plane day. I include slams or another upper-body power move on both days.

Typically I do three six-week cycles followed by a two week PAP block. My six-week blocks consist of two weeks of 8 reps/set, two weeks of 5 reps/set at increased intensity, one week of 3-5 reps/set of highest intensity, and a rest week.

Weight vests are the best way to add intensity to these exercises while keeping the movements true. Light dumbbells will allow you to have a natural arm swing as well. When those two options don’t offer enough intensity I combine them and use kettlebells or dumbbells held in one of four positions (goblet, suitcase, front rack, or behind my head on my shoulders). What it takes away in arm swing it makes up for in the way it challenges your core, shoulders and grip.

Jump to these for more on plyometrics:

• Parkour Plyometrics: 3 Drills to Develop Explosive Leg Strength
• Proper Plyometrics: How to Box-, Vertical-, and Broad Jump Correctly
• Verkhoshansky’s Depth Jumps Create Gains in Max Strength
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

The post 5 Ways to Build Explosive Power Without Olympic Lifting and Plyo Boxes appeared first on Breaking Muscle.