Archive 1/4/19 : Taking Flexing Far
Flexing is severely undervalued, as is Muscle Control, a style of training sadly mostly lost to the history books. Admittedly it’s simpler to learn to feel your muscles by training with a barbell, simpler, but likely unable to take you as far.
To a degree I wonder what one could be built like if they built their base on naught but flexing.
To have spent a few years systematically flexing their entire bodies…but isn’t that what muscle control is, and isn’t that how Maxick built himself up back in the day.
Shit, gymnastics to a degree is flexing in hard pose, and look what it does. You get some crazy leaness, strength, and body control in tiny packages.
That’s really all somewhat aside, and somewhat on topic.
Have you ever heard the story of the Shaolin temple before it was known for badassery?
Somewhere on the giant interwebs I’ve read it before. It went something like this…..
Cue Oriental Music:
Long time ago Confucius say…
“Shaolin monastery full of weak sauce Buddha look alike nerds. Nerds be easy pickings for rice starved highwaymen to rob of rice like future saying to steal candy from baby. Weaksauce monks constantly be hitting themselves, getting flushied in toilets, yes toilets!, and having their rice taken by highwayman with stronger arms who not so fat but more in fact emaciated.
Weaksauce monks were so weaksauce that not so fat ematiated highwaymen were stronger than they and as real a threat (for rice stealing) as Vikings were to coast of England in future I Confucious somehow know about.
At the time apparently some Indian Buddhist decide visit Shaolin monastery. Wanting to be able to eat some rice during his visit he teach monks some simple poses and tells them to flex their weak sauce fat bodies while in these poses.”
That was italicized because I clearly was quoting, and as the story goes soon after rice starved highwaymen were no longer able to steal the rice they were starved for from now lean and mean former Buddha looking fat ass no longer weaksauce Shaolin monks.
That system of isometric poses is basically DDP yoga, and is something a hop, skip, and a jump past some teachings from the martial arts world.
One can get strong getting into a pose and flexing the shit out of the entire body while in said poses.
I constantly come back to this conclusion that I found out of necessity back in 2015.
The best sessions I have are most often mini sessions at home doing full body flexing with a mix of martial arts stances, yoga poses, bodybuilding poses, and slow calisthenics.
2015 I started doing this system naked in front of a large mirror in an empty bedroom of my apartment. Currently I’ll sneak in extra sessions like this naked in front of the mirror in the bathroom.
Nothing beats this for muscle activation, and quite quickly you will start getting out of breath.
It would be an interesting experiment to mix these short intense contractions in pose/hold with Steve Justa like aerobic isometrics (much longer and low intensity poses/holds).