Saturday, 10 March 2012 05:27

Train like an ape

This morning, I was reading up on ape strength. It's incredible just how strong our simian friends are - a 165 lb chimp, for instance, has been known to register a pull of a mind-boggling 847 lbs - and that only with his right hand!

That's right - 847 lbs! A 90lb chimp can wrestle THREE full grown men to the ground within minutes - and toss them up into the air while doing so. Now if that isn't some real strength, I don't know what is.

And in addition to being STRONG, our simian friends are also fantastic acrobats. I've been to the Himalayas in India, and have seen monkeys perform acrboatic feats on ropes (or electric wires) hung up at precarious heights - and do so without an apparent care in the world. You know a monkey's strong, but you know it's flexible when it does somersaults on a thin electric wire hanging about a 100 plus feet in the air - and that with a baby gripping on to it's underside!

Well, so what this has to do with you?

Well, nothing really - nothing unless YOU too would like to develop the kind of strength these primates posess. If this doesn't interest you, you can stop reading right here - but if this is your thing, then read right on.

Apes and monkeys get as strong as they are by working with their own bodyweight in the wild. Most of their lives are spent swinging and hanging from trees, and they do this for survival - not "fun", or not "to train". A baby monkey starts life off by grabbing on to Mom's underbelly and staying that way for hours on end - and a baby monkey likely has a grip stronger than two or three adult men combined. 

And while we humans can't ever get AS strong as our simian friends, we can certainly work up to levels of grip and pulling strength that most folks would find impossible to achieve. And the way to do that is to, quite literally, train like an ape.

This doesn't necessarily means tons of pull-ups and chin-ups, though those DO help, and ARE a fantastic starting point. But training like a monkey goes way, way beyond that. Truly training like a monkey makes pull-ups and chin-ups look EASY, and I'm not kidding you on that one.

I did a lot of this type of training this morning - and had a fantastic workout. One of the things I did was to "walk" the monkey bars - only I didn't do it the normal way - I held on to the side of the apparatus and "walked" my hands up and down the entire supporting bar. Try that one on for strength, and let me know how your forearms feel after that!

And that's just ONE of the exercises I did. There are so many of them that I don't even list them all in Fast and Furious Fitness - mostly because most of them are too advanced.

I may put out a course on advanced pulling exercises in the future, but for now, know that training like a monkey is one of the best things you can do for your overall strength. You'll develop a ferocious grip without even thinking about it - and you'll build massive amounts of upper body power within a very short period of time. And you'll develop a core that feels as if it's made of steel - and has the strength and flexibility to match.

"Walking" the monkey bars will likely be too tough for most folks, but know that pull-ups and chin-ups are a great place to start. The pull-up alone with work your entire upper body in the ground - some folks do NOTHING but pull-ups in their workouts, and get great, great results.

Once you get better at doing them you can try some new things - but that will likely take a while. I talk about pull-ups and assorted variations in Fast and Furious Fitness - believe me now and listen to me later, these exercises alone are more than what most folk manage to master during an entire life of working out.

Grab your copy NOW, and get started on the way to ape-like levels of power.

Best regards,

Rahul

PS: If you have kids, these exercises are some of the BEST things they can do for their overall health and development. More importantly, they're fun - so doing them ain't gonna be a chore for them. Get them started as early as you can!