Combat Conditioning was the first book that introduced me to bodyweight exercises for functional strength and endurance. I was the kind of guy in high school sports who was the proverbial “talentless clown.” What I mean by this is that I was very strong but the natural talent escaped me. I always promised that there are people who are much more talented, but they would never let me work. Growing up on the exercise craze for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie “Pumping Iron” led me to weightlifting with all my friends. Now when you’re young and you just lift weights to see how strong you are, bad things end up happening. When I received a physical before the start of college football season, the doctor looked at me and politely said, “Hey, idiot, have you ever heard of stretching?” Needless to say, the search for a better way to exercise and gain functional strength began. Lawyer Note: I hate these but they are important. With any exercise routine, check with your doctor to make sure you can perform these routines.
Why is this important to me?
This book will help you gain knowledge of bodyweight exercises that help in three areas: Strength, Endurance, and Flexibility. If these three things are not important to you, save yourself 5 minutes and turn off the video. Otherwise, continue with me.
Have you ever seen any of the following: great MMA fighters, the Cirque du Soleil, or a gymnastics competition? All of these phenomenal athletes have functional strength. This means that they can do things with their bodies that 90 percent of the population cannot. The good news is that 90 percent of you can do these things if you change your exercise routines. Another book you should check out is Convict Conditioning. This focused more on the strength of muscles, joints, and tendons. What’s beneficial about that is that you can maintain that strength well into your seventies.
Don’t get me wrong, any type of exercise is better than none. If you’re not doing anything and you start lifting weights, keep doing it. But if you want an inexpensive way to exercise with compound results, this book is for you. A big problem with weightlifting itself is that it uses muscle isolation. This means that if you curl then you isolate the movement to the biceps muscle. This does nothing to create functional strength for your tendons or joints. The human body was designed to work together, so why not shorten your workout and do compound exercises to maximize your results? If you did a simple pull-up, you still work your biceps, but you also engage your back, forearms, shoulders, and core along with building functional strength.
Matt describes his Holy Grail of exercise, which he mints at the Royal Court. I will explain each exercise.
The Hindu squat is an excellent exercise. When you start out, you can do a half squat with your arms in front of you parallel to the floor, but as you progress and build strength in your knees, you’ll want to do a full squat with the backs of your thighs touching the ground. back of your calves.
Strong legs do the body good. When you work on your legs, you engage your entire body and burn calories all day long, even after exercise. Your legs consist of the largest muscles in your body and it shows the next day when they are sore.
When you do Hindu squats, work up to doing three sets of 100. Doing the real cut in 3-set cycles is a great exercise that doesn’t take a lot of time. If you’re traveling, this is a perfect routine because it doesn’t take a lot of time.
The Hindu push-up is different from a normal push-up. Start with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and your butt in the air. Push in an arching motion (similar to downward facing dog in Yoga). Try to work up to 3 sets of 50 repetitions. If you’ve never done this before and can only do a couple, don’t be discouraged. Like anything new, it takes practice to build.
This exercise will help you with strength, back flexibility, and endurance. Enjoy!
The rear axle gets a lot of bad press. People think it’s bad for the back and neck. Like anything else, do what feels comfortable to you.
You can match three shapes. Think of this as an exercise and NOT a stretch. You will feel your body warm up doing this exercise.
You can start with an exercise ball if you can’t do the neck bridge. Then as you go you can move on to neck bridge (over the head) and then gymnastic bridge (with arms and without head).
Keep in mind that if you’ve never done them before, they may seem difficult at first. Do not get frustrated. Before she started doing bridges, she had terrible pain in her neck and back. Imagine why he was only lifting heavy weights with squats and bench presses. Anyway, when I started to do the bridge, all the pain disappeared.
The back and neck stretch feels great and the results will speak for themselves. Note: DO NOT force this exercise. Take your time and build for it.
Combat Conditioning is a great book to introduce you to bodyweight exercises for functional strength, endurance, and flexibility. He was watching a discovery show where they were making a martial arts video game. They showed a man doing a unique exercise.
There were telephone surveys on the ground at different heights in two rows. He jumped from one to another and landed on one leg. He would jump to the other and do a full one leg squat with the other leg fully extended in a kick stance. This is a true test of functional strength and flexibility. Oh, by the way, this man was 75 years old. Results that last a lifetime are something I always strive for.
I hope you have found this brief summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes a habit. Habits are formed in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is the royal court. Try it as part of your exercise routine for a month and record your progress. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the results.