Indigenous Ability

There was an astonishingly creative panoply of drills to build punching power, balance, precision, finesse and overall form. These drills can be found spread throughout early boxing training, in singular pockets of rural approaches to fighting and are rife and rampant in the rough n tumble tradition where power was a premium. In our newest Black Box Instructional Product , we present 20 of these drills under the rubric “ Doubleday Drills ” in honor of Civil War veteran and purported “Father of American Baseball” Abner Doubleday as so many of these drills are rooted in hard-smackin’ they remind me of teeing off with a good old fashioned hickory bat. We’ll provide more history on these another day, but for now I believe it suffices to say that getting started on 20 Drills to hit harder and meaner is the key thing—less readin’, more doin’! Many of these drills train attributes that are now illegal, making them ideal for street/self-defense use. I am 100% confident that the hisot...

  60-Years-Old in 24 Days Sub 30-minute conditioning sessions 5 days per week All using Old School Principles. I’ll admit the details gotta be followed to a Strict T, but that’s where the devil lies-- in the details. 6-Blocks of Conditioning over a 6-Month Training Cycle In other words, 6-Months to a Makeover of You if You Choose—Man or Woman The 6-Blocks Build with Emergentism and the Final Phase Interlocks and Provides the Capstone for a Lifetime of Sustainable Time-Respecting Conditioning. ·         Strength ·         Stamina ·         Aesthetics ·         Mobility/Flexibility ·         Explosiveness ·         Resilience ·         Agility Overarching Principles for ALL Blocks ·      ...

  [From the upcoming book Unleaded Conditioning: Old School Principles for the Modern Warrior.] I highly recommend consuming the 2 prior pieces in this series. Were They Tougher in the Old Days? Work Rate And… Were They Tougher in the Old Days, Part 2: The Common Man & Woman For a podcast version. In Summary… In Part 1, we examined the difference between work rate of combat athletes “Then” and “Now. In Part 2, we examined the differences between caloric intake and weight/obesity of the general population then and now—that is, non-athletes and wound up discovering that more often than not these folks ate far more of the “wrong” things than we do and were still significantly leaner. I CAN NOT stress enough, have a look at those two articles in tandem with this one so we can seat the whole perspective and not be swayed [or unswayed] by an argument half-presented. 10,000 Steps Today many tout the efficacy of 10,000 steps per day as a general indicator of healt...

  Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life The Black Box Store https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/ The Indigenous Ability Blog https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/ The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fTpfVp2wi232k4y5EakVv ...

  Photo #1 • The Texas Proverb adorns my Library Wall. • It reminds me that I adore and revere books/thought/study but… • The cowardly way is to leave the information on the page. • It urges to consume as one a nutritious meal and then to use that fuel and put into practice what one has read. • To test it, amend it, toss faulty work, poor scholarship, bad info and to actively make trivia on the page my own fact. • Then…do it all over again. Photo #2 • The Vale Alliance is a loose confederation of Brotherhood among The Black Box Brethren. • It centers around how many a Roman closed a letter with the phrase “Vale!” • Which translate to “Be Strong! Be Worthy!” • When I first encountered it I was struck by how pale most of our sign-offs are now—Bye, Take it easy, Later. • Here we have an exhortation to Be Strong of Mind, Strong of Body, Strong of Character. • But… • With the Vale sentiment, Strength is not enough. • You must be Worthy. • One can be stron...

  “ Man is the first weapon of battle .”—Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies [1870] “ Most wanna be “hard men” put more time into bright and shiny gear—guns, knives, doodads than they ever have into the meat and bones holding up the toys in their pretend warrior photo .”—Comment in Conversation from a Real-World Operator Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous Old Man Math Photo: Taken 7:48 this morning post Unleaded Whole Hog Conditioning Block 3 Training Day. Age: 59 [60 in 45 days.] Training Time: 27:20. Last Night’s Supper: Steak, eggs and bacon at a Cracker Barrel came home to eat an industrial size bowl of popcorn while partaking of a Charles Bronson flick. [ Red Sun.] Deeper Math on Block 3 and How It Grows on Blocks 1 & 2 for those already on the Unleaded 6-Month Transformation Journey BLOCK 2 AIMS ·         Develop the Posterior Chain in all angles and variations using the natural pulling arcs of the targeted musculature. · ...

  I turn 60 in 53 days.   I’ve been training in Western Martial Arts for 48 years. For 44 of those years, I trained with what I thought was the ideal—everything from scads and scads of Hindu Squats, Dands, Dive-Bombers, Pull-Ups, box jumps, tire-flipping, sprints, miles of roadwork, skipping-rope, shadow-boxing, Olympic lifting, the whole nine yards. By 2018-2019 I had compiled a treasure-trove of counter-intuitive old school physical culturist information, not from the usual manual re-prints but from actual correspondence, yellowing fighter interviews, etc. So much of this information struck me as archaic and likely out-and-out wrong. Afterall, so much of it was diametrically opposed to what we know as gospel truth today. And then the obvious elephant in the room rared it’s trunk and asked, “ Old Man, you obviously revere and resurrect these old school combat ways, enough so you put them to the test in the gym day-in day-out and find them not only up to snuff, b...

  The one training partner you can always rely upon is Y-O-U. Each time you take a headcount of who’s available to hit it and get it, well, there you are. We would all agree that group dynamics are mighty useful for anything from tennis-doubles to wrestling practice. But we would also likely agree that many a tennis champion past, present, and future has a ready repertoire of solo drills within his or her grasp that allow them to continually hone their game. The handball player has wall-return practice, the range-bereft shooter has dozens upon dozens of dry-fire drills, the striker has everything from bags to mirrors to, well, his own shadow. Solo or not the player, shooter or combatant that  REQUIRES  the presence of others to sharpen the saw is at a deficit in comparison with the individual who will train  with and/or without  good fellows to share time with. The auto-didact who sees no training partner as no true loss is fertile with creative idea...