Legendary Strength Blog

“Logan ,with such an emphasis upon bodyweight and kettlebell lifting. I am an ex-college football player. I remember seeing some big ,powerful, fast, flexible athletes. This was at a time in which kettlebell/bodyweight training was not the norm. These guys training a lot of the powerlifts ,bench,squat, and deadlifts. Was it my imagination when I saw them running 4.4 40 yard dashes at 240 and squating 550 plus pounds and bencing 420 Ibs. Honestly Logan if you read a lot of what is said today you would think that these guys are not “functionally strong”. Are we sure that is right ? It seems to me that strength training is starting to make the common mistake of throwing the baby out with the bath water. I myself only lowered my 40 from 5.3 to 4.9 when I took the squat seriously. I love kettlebells ,keg lifting ,sandbags ,etc. I have used them exclusively in some training cycles. But man Logan I also felt strong in college when I squatted 465 Ibs. For 10 reps. Benched 420. And then was able to run 15 100 meter sprints for conditioning. Sorry for the long email. Your thoughts please?”

I’ll have an answer but before that I’d like to hear your thoughts. Just post your comments below and let me know what you are thinking on this topic.

Your answers really can shape the whole of your training.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

Plus feel free to suggest any articles or videos you’d like to see added to the site. That’s all for today.

I’m off to go train. Going to work the conditioning hard today. What about you?

In strength,
Logan Christopher

It can be a hard thing to do. When you love training to give it up for even as little as a week.

But if you’ve been training hard for a period of time you may need to back off a bit. Not necessarily drop all your training, but ease up and not push everything to the max.

You can work on your flexibility, mobility or your conditioning. Though if you are resting I wouldn’t push the conditioning too hard as that can be as taxing as strength training.

If you don’t take the time to recover then your body will make you take the time to recover be it in the form of getting sick, injuring yourself or something of the like.

Personally, I’m not one to follow periodization plans or anything like that. I just learn and listen to my body. If you get in tune you know when you need a little extra time to recover.

The thing is when you come back you’re likely to be stronger than ever.

Since I took most of the last week off I expect this to happen. Now expecting to improve each workout is something you should always possess. But now I expect to blow by the previous weeks workouts.

Make no mistake about it. Your muscles and strength only grow when they recover. The training is the stimulus to force them to do so but without proper recovery you’ll get no where.

In most cases a good night’s sleep and good food will be enough. But sometimes you need to go beyond the basics.

As I mentioned not too long ago, when I saw Dan Gable speak, he talked about working as hard at recovering as he did at a workout. This was his secret to being able to train with all he had every single day.

If you grasp this and put it into action your gains will go through the roof.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

Big Red was an anchor weight. Instead of letting it sit unused my brother got a hold of it and we started using it to lift. We decided to paint it one day to cover the rust and give it a bit of personality (hence the name).

It’s roughly 160 lbs. Not the heaviest but it is an odd object.

As you can see there are handles on each side but they’re not really big enough for you to grasp with your hands to get a good grip. You more or less rest them on your palms and get a bit of the fingers in.

It’s a great tool for putting overhead. In the video I am doing a push press but I’ve also used it for Jerks and a normal press. It works well for a few other exercises like Zercher squats, rows and finger deadlifts. In addition to building strength you can see and hear it will work your conditioning.

It’s not likely that you’ll have the same odd object but that’s not important. Just find something big and heavy to lift. Its more fun than a barbell and will work you harder.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

If you don’t have the book, get your hands on it. Plus Brooks Kubik, has a new website.

It’s a great way to finish the workout. An all out set against the iron to leave you winded and muscles aching.

Odd objects build strength that something like a barbell can replicate. Barrels, kegs, sandbags, and the like will take all your effort to stabilize the shifting and moving weight.

There are other objects that don’t move on you, but still aren’t easily managed. A large rock or log for instance. Something without an easy to grip surface or handles.

You could classify kettlebells or clubbells the same way. Certainly for a person who has never lifted them they are awkward. But once you put in thousands of reps they cease to be.

In addition odd objects tend to work the grip in a big way. You have to hang on and tighten up just to prevent the object from falling out of your hands.

However you train, you’d be wise to add some sort of odd object training in. They’re a bunch of tools that will build strength that can’t be gotten elsewhere. Good for training and great for feats of strength too.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

If you don’t know who Brad Johnson is you’re missing out. This guy is pretty much the king of bodyweight exercises. And I’m not talking about hundreds and thousands of reps.

I’m talking strong, like one finger, one hand chinnups. Dragon flags with added weight. And so much more.

If you don’t have his book, Bodyweight Exercises for Extraordinary Strength, you need to pick it up at Ironmind. Only $13.95.

He’s gotten so good because he loves to train like this. More than once he got blisters on his hands because he spent over an hour training on the rafters.

Having fun with your training is what I just wrote about. Then I get on the phone with someone performing at this high level taking about the exact same thing. Think you ought to pay attention?

When you get excited and can’t wait to train you’re going to get good.

If you’re thinking you’d have fun too if you could swing from rafters but you’re not good enough to even come close, your mind’s in the wrong place.

No one starts out that good. Have fun with what you can do and build from there.

I can’t hang from rafters…yet…but training progressively and having fun along the way I’ll get there. You can too.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Brad was quite impressed with my kettlebell juggling. I just added a new video to the kettlebell juggling blog with a few tricks you’ve likely never seen before. Make sure you sign up to get the updates.

If you actually enjoy the process of training hard, however that may be, you’re bound to have bigger gains. As opposed to just going through the motions because you want to get in shape.

It amazes me that many people don’t workout in some shape or manner when I have so much fun doing it.

In fact, I’d do more but I can’t because of that little thing called overtraining. Since I can only put in so much time on any given day, you can bet I’ll be making the most of it. How about you?

The sad thing is too many people think getting in shape means running on a treadmill. If I thought that’s what it took than, yeah, I’d hate it too and wouldn’t do it!

But the kind of training you and I do. Now that’s some fun stuff.

I’m talking about heavy weightlifting, odd objects, bending steel, crazy bodyweight exercises, kettlebell juggling, doing handstands, in general pushing the limits every which way.

Here’s the thing. You may not like doing one thing. That’s fine because there’s hundreds of ways you can get in awesome shape.

Don’t like weights? Not a problem you can use bodyweight exercises or cables. Love to lift kettlebells and nothing else. Do that than.

This is a call to enjoy yourself when you get to train. That’s right, ‘get to.’

Not have to workout. No I’ve got to do this. You get to.

Make the most of it.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. A prime example is juggling kettlebells. I launched the new site the other day but there was problems with the signup process. It’s fixed now. If there ever was a time I couldn’t keep having fun training because I was too tired this is it.

And let me know if you like the video. Post your comments on the kettlebell juggling blog.

Bodyweight Strength Training can be used by itself or in combination with other tools to help you achieve any goal.

Go read the article to find out more.

P.S. I’ll be doing some things besides just articles in the future. If you have any suggestions or questions you can ask them here.

Even if you’re not interested in bending nails for the sake of bending nails, you might want to try it out for the strength you’ll build in your hands, wrists, and whole body.

There’s also a video in the article showing me bending a 60D nail.

I had to take a couple months off of bending because of some elbow troubles but I got back into it in the past two weeks. Unfortunately right now the 60D nails are still tough for me. The video shows my forth and last bend in the workout. The funny thing is this was my best bend.

So go check out the article to learn how to bend steel with your hands.

In strength,
Logan Christopher