Hi all,

Well I wanted to talk about something that more probably than not will offend some....so what else is new I guess

General society may think that we that there is nothing that we can learn from people that are in prison.  Well I tend to disagree.

Granted they have made mistakes in their lives and they do have to pay for their crimes / mistakes.  However, one thing I prersonally am learning from prisoners is that they have a great knowledge in buidling the body to be extremely strong and powerful.  Infact I would say that majority of prisoners are more stronger than any of the pussy, jacked up steroid taking bodybuilders that you will see in any of the current pussy commercial gyms. And not only are they way more stronger and powerful than most people on the "outside" they achieve this without any gyms or real weight equipment......they do this by using their own bodyweight.

Let's have a look at why and how they do this

WHY

well in prison your survival really does depend on how strong and powerful you are.  If you are weak you will not survive in prison.  Respect is given to those who have proven that they are the guys who are as strong and powerful as all hell.

HOW

Well as you would imagine, prisons don't have the best gym equipment around....in fact most prisons have little or none weight equipment and if they do then they are extremely old.  So how do these guys become insanely strong?  How do they have physiques that would be the envy of any try hard wussy commercial gym goer? How do they posses the strength that would put any jacked up steroid abusing bodybuilder to shame?

Well easy, they use their bodies!  What is the point of being able to do a bench press of over 200kg if you can't even pull your own body weight? 

Lets just quickly define (well in my opinion) what being strong is.  Being strong is not about having the biggest muscles of anyone else.  It is not bragging rights of how much you can bench press or bicep curl, it is about how quickly and effortlessly you can move, pull, squat, throw, run etc your own body weight.

So prisoners use their own body to get strong by doing routines of push ups, pull ups,square, handstands, ab work, flexibility and so on.   You may ask what do they do when they can do push ups all day or the same with pull ups?  Well they use only one arm to do their push ups or pull ups or only squat on one leg or even more impressive they use their fellow prisoners as weights they can lift. 

It really sadens me to think that people are so nieave that they think that they can not learn from these pepole in the way of fitness and strength.  Today there are to many "pretty boys" jacking themselves up on steroids to think that they are getting strong.  In fact they are making themselves weaker with every workout they do....why?  Because they never use their one body weight.  They use machines or benches or weight belts or any other piece of crap that the bodybuilding world tells them that they need to use.  

So what happens they never work the body to build itself to be able to support the stupidly heavy weights that they try to lift.  They destroy their ligaments, cartilage, supporting muscles and end up down the track leading a life that is full of pain and weakness!

Not so with these prisoners, their bodies are being used the way that man was designed to move, and hence they make EVERY PART of the body strong.  These guys will well into their 70's and still be stronger than any of your 20 something steroid abusing body builders.

Still not convinced?  Ok last example.  Take a look at the body of a professional male gymnast...especially one who specialises on the rings.  Their bodies are extremely impressive.  They have arms the size of people's legs, and yet they achieve this by using their own body weight and no weight programs what so ever!

So if you want to get super strong, then take your ego out and start hitting bodyweight routines. 

Hey, if you ever come across anyone who has been in prison, and has a very impressive physique and a lot of strength, the most valuable thing you could do is to pick their brains on how they trained on the "inside".  Heck I would happily pay for this type of information.....that is how much I value it!

Ok that's enough from me, until next time

Train hard but train smart.

Joe