It’s all mental.
I repeat, it’s all mental.
When the mind is in the proper place YOU WILL GET BETTER. It’s a given. Your body can’t help but grow in spite of everything.
We can have access to a great gym, all the fancy machines and unnecessary specialty bars…and stagnate for long periods of time…
Yet on the other hand, there are times where circumstance is far far far less ideal…and we progress like we never have before, or after unless similar circumstance happens.
While living in Las Vegas I recorded a video that I’d entitle the same as this article. It was discussing how I’d been training…with no gym, barely any equipment, basically just calisthenics and isometric work at and around my apartment and despite this lack THAT I WAS MAKING THE BEST PHYSICAL PROGRESS OF MY LIFE.
As aforementioned my training was 85% covered by pushups and isometic back work. My pullup bar was a thick tree branch that I had to hang from open handed, thumbless, and with one hand on each side side of it, an open handed neutral gripped fat bar in gym parlance.
As far as equipment I had a neck harness, a 20lb kettlebell, one elitefts light band, and a doorway chin bar that I never installed instead using it as a length of pipe to loop the band around. I had a pillow for bridging and headstands, and a jump rope.
I made the best progress of my life.
Initially I was freaked out that I’d shrivel away to my former skinny fat self. I immediately decided to do 1000 pushups a week, and got the idea to do some form of back isometric quickly finding a deadlift and a one arm DB row simulation.
I often overshot the pushup requirement, never doing less (I broke it down as 100+ reps on weekdays, 250+ reps on weekend days). I did loads of back isometrics, and often superset the pushups with jump rope sets. That was my main schedule.
(10 x 100 supersets of pushup + jump rope was a favorite.)
Often it’s hard to kick ourselves into this survival mentality. You can get yourself there as I did when I first started doing my PT at 14, but external circumstance seems to force you into it far more quickly as everyone seems to be a bitch unable to harden themselves through the mental alone in this piss weak culture.
Fighting and hunger, likely each alone, but definitely combined will get you there.
(Backstory: I was going to a church where one of the pastors had used to own a karate dojo, deciding to “retire” he sold off the dojo, but kept a small adult + invite only class in the back room of the church. After about 4 months the 5 men involved invited me seeing use for another body.
Also of note my diet came out to $5 daily, though I qualified for them I refused to get food stamps and learned to get enough for a buck. I ate 3 cans of tuna at $1.50/day, 6 packs of ramen at $1.o2/day, drank some milk, and had some potatoes at 99¢ per 10lb bag, pork at under $2/lb or chicken at I SHIT YOU NOT 49¢-69¢/lb by buying from a ghetto mexican grocery store and another more corporate Hispanic supermarket.
Food was either calories per dollar or grams of protein per dollar though I was eating around 4000 calories per day, this was still “cutting” quantities.)
See even fighting for a short period will get you into this state of mind.
- Backroom Church Karate- ~2 months- This kicked my progress up, and every day I was circuiting pushups, jump rope, and doing TONS of dynamic Sanchin kata like movement + isometric kick holds.
- Amateur Sumo- ~1 Month- I was doing my Hindu squats in the aforementioned pushup manner of 1000 a week, in addition to the pushups, and was doing rep after rep of 10 yard bursts across my relatives not much bigger than 10 yards wide tiny LA backyard, and daily sets of freestanding headstands. I realized crashing headfirst often into those larger than me that I needed to make my neck strong. The headstand was the best variant I found.
- MMA- 1 free sample week- The first wrestling class I went to I was gassing, not terribly, but to the point I knew I had to get that shit back. One day my buddy and I went to the high school to run bleachers, set a timer for 7 minutes and quit at 3:30 to 4 minutes in. The next day I went back alone and made damn sure I went hard for something like 3 x 5 minute runs. If I didn’t bleacher, I skipped a ton of rope, and in that week time span I went from moderate gassing, sitting out one 2 minute period, to rolling an entire live BJJ class like a wrestler.
(That style of dynamic/isometric movement for punches, blocks, movement, etc.)
Survival mode forces conditioning up in a matter of a week, and other properties very soon after.
If I want good wind, good conditioning…jumping into some form of combat sport gives me it back in a manner that EFFORTLESS mentally, it becomes something you must do, and when you get into this place of survival mode YOU WILL GET STRONGER regardless of what you have or don’t.
Survival mode could make a 300lb barbell and bodyweight turn you into a juggernaut.
Survival mode could get you rugged strong lifting a cinder block or a sandbag in your yard.
For fuck sake survival mode could make Planet Fitness into the place where you get strong as hell.
IT’S ALL MINDSET!
I repeat : IT’S ALL MINDSET!
-J