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Old School Conditioning Hacks by Mark Hatmaker

  A sojourn into the methods of some of the Old Time Physical Culturists and Combination Fighters reveals many a counter-intuitive approach to conditioning, everything from choosing walking over running for roadwork to an almost dogmatic approach of using lightweight [seemingly insubstantial weights at that] over heavy lifts. Example : We have an entire cadre of early physical culturists who were lean and in modern parlance “TikTok jacked” with muscular striations to resemble a geological survey map and yet many members of this cadre with jacked and striated quads and glutes never [NEVER] hit a back squat. More than a few considered back squats [particularly heavy ones] the road to ruin. We’ve covered the wisdom of walking vs. running in a multipart series but let’s dig in a bit on this lightweight, and in some cases, no weight paradox. We’ll attack this from the obvious end of the stick and then build towards some less obvious applications. SUPPORTIVE BOLSTER Muscle resp...
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A Case for Heavy Bag Varieties for Boxers/Strikers/Combination Fighters by Mark Hatmaker

 Inefficiencies for Conditioning Progress, Efficiencies for Tactical Progress We’ll be delving into this paradox a good deal in upcoming blog articles and those on the 6-month Unleaded Whole Hog body transformation track will become deeply familiar with the accelerator that this idea is. That opening line is no mere sentence, it is a Key and Vital path to speedy progress. The offered video link is just a wee peek into how we can continually introduce inefficiencies via variety using heavy bags. Stay tuned, this idea is only touched on here but holds HUGE rewards for those who learn to embrace the dichotomy.   For Old School Combat Ways and Livin’ The Black Box Warehouse https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/ The Indigenous Ability Blog https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/ The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker

An "Intra-Muscular" Hack by Mark Hatmaker

 

Unleaded Conditioning Tip #8 [8 of 99] by Mark Hatmaker

[Excerpted from the upcoming Unleaded: Whole Hog-- The Support Manual.] Wanna lose fat with no work? With no formal cardio? While increasing calories? Then gain lean muscle. OK, there is a slight cheat on this Tip, but only slight. Here’s what I mean. The current “Tried & True” formula for losing fat is… ·         Reduce caloric intake. ·         Increase caloric expenditure. ·         Reducing caloric intake, aka, dietary restriction, aka denying the self-waging that never-ending war of the will between you and the fast food burger. ·         The caloric expenditure usually takes the form of aerobic exercise, aka, “cardio.” ·         The more calories burned the better. But… ·         What if I were to tell you the Old Schoolers had ways of increasing ca...

Unleaded Conditioning Tip #13 [13 of 99] by Mark Hatmaker

  [Excerpted from the upcoming Unleaded: Whole Hog-- The Support Manual.] Do It Right or Don’t Do It. This rule has also been phrased as “You can't compensate for piss-poor effort on your sets by doing more sets.” ·         It is NOT the length of a training session that dictates progress, in fact,… ·         If one is drug-free, extended sessions work against your progress. ·         It is NOT necessarily a function of the intensity of the training session [be that intensity defined in form of poundage or High-Intensity Interval Training HIIT], again… ·         If drug-free, focusing on redlining can inhibit, slowdown, and be counter-productive to your goals. ·         The Do It Right Rule asks for intensity of focus, and fulcrum-tweaked “perceived” intensity that allows joints, tendons, and lig...

Unleaded Conditioning Tip #15 [15 of 99] by Mark Hatmaker

  [ Excerpted from the upcoming Unleaded: Whole Hog-- The Support Manual.] Unleaded Conditioning Tip #15 When you want to lose fat, move more, but don't train more. Yeah, I hear ya, sounds like a paradox, or at the very least a Zen Koan that is more intended to confound than impart wisdom. But I assure you the opening statement is truth. A verified scientific fact. One known by the Old School Boxers, Wrestlers, Combination Men, Rough n Tumblers of yore. Little ado was made of “cardio” in 18 th and 19 th century thought and yet we wind up with staggering feats of endurance in treacherous environments with little [if any] “dedicated training.” We see enviably lean and mean physiques in early physical culturists decades before the advent of anabolic “helpers” hell, not even a scoop of creatine in sight. Often the assumption is that these early hellions simply trained harder and longer but…the record does not bear that out. A careful examination of these feats ...