Pillar II : Strength
The cornerstone for a great quality of life is to build muscles & yes as much as possible for both male & females.
But why build muscles if I can do other things well ?
The most common question ever & not just this but statements like
- I don’t wanna look bulky !
- I have good endurance in swim/run/cycle, I don’t need muscles !
- No one likes a muscular girl ! (most prominent among females)
- I walk & stretch everyday, hence I am very fit & don’t need anything else !
Building muscles is not about any of these at all & honestly even attaining a good / strong physique is not an easy task either. It takes years of dedication & consistency to build a strong set of muscles.
It’s all about having a great quality of life. Muscles are cornerstone of how your body moves & they are one which helps you to do literally every single chore you can think of in your life. Having strong set of muscles will make doing lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling things way too simpler & easier and not only that they also helps to regulate your body fat, your insulin resistance, your digestion, your breathing, mobility and tons of other things along the way.
As your grow older, it is literally the difference between life & death. Living a life where you can do anything or being weak enough to do nothing !
Life Time Training & Recovery
How to start building strength ?
When we talk about having strength, most people think only about just going to gym & lifting weights, but building strength is way more than that. Yes muscles are trained in gym quite efficiently but that doesn’t mean its the only way. Your own body weight is the best resistance you can have & trust me that it is the best of strength training out there.
Calisthenics
Using your own body weight to perform a variety of complex movements & static poses that involves multiple muscle groups at the same time. Many of the movements are essentially full body exercises on their own.
Calisthenics is both simple & the most difficult thing at the same time. Even though it sounds simple but handling your own weight is the toughest strength training discipline out there.
The simplest exercises you can literally do at home are pushups, pull-ups & squats. These 3 exercises alone will hit most of the muscle groups to perform a full body workout. And trust me that most people can’t even do these properly at all ! Your entry level to the world of strength should always start with these 3 exercises & pullups being one of the toughest for even seasonal gym rats. If you can hit one clean pullup, bravo 🙌, you have done something that majority of the people can’t even think of & 10 clean pullups is a gold standard 🏅
And once you start mastering the basics, calisthenics has so much more to offer. Even most of the athletes and strong builders can’t perform any of these infact. It takes 1000s of trys repeatedly, failing in each of them, but having the willpower to keep the persistence for months or even years to perform these following holds.
- Handstands
- Muscle Ups
- Front Level
- V-Sit
- Pistol Squat
- & many many more
Plyometrics
Having an explosive power in your muscles which can help in other activities like running, lifting, parkour etc
Plyometrics is generally not a solo discipline on its own but rather performed as part of building a very good/explosive power which is helpful in other disciplines.
Generally it is performed by athletes in various sports like track & field, long distance running, football (both european & american) etc. Very simple example of plyometric is box jumps (where you jump on top of a box). Plyometrics is a form of exercise/s that helps an individual to increase their strength, power, speed & agility.
Some of the common exercises are :
- Skipping
- Squat Jumps
- Depth Jumps
- Burpees
- Hurdles
- Sprint
- & many others
Matthew Solan
Parkour
If you have the will & dare to do this, then nothing can be more engaging, exciting, challenging & fun thing ever to do in your life.
One of the toughest disciple to master is parkour. It requires a lot of skill, muscle power, daring mindset, never-give-up attitude & is also one of the most critical life skill to have. It helps to get of the toughest situation imaginable like navigating urban landscape as a video-game, jumping from a 2 story building or infact climbing one in the first place !
Checkout more in this video, how thrilling & exciting Parkour really is (if you are ready to break few bones along the way 😅)
The Good Old GYM
Don’t get me wrong but gym has its own place. Even people who do callisthenics or parkour still do a lot of good old resistance training in the gym. It gives you a variety of different machines, weights & most important the people with same mindset as you. You start isolating and training specific muscle groups more effectively & efficiently that is generally not achieved via other means alone.
For many people, GYM is their safe & sacred place which helps them transform from nothing to something. It’s also a place where you can perform nearly all of the other disciplines as well including endurance, mobility, calisthenics, plyometrics & a small chunk of parkour exercises as well.
So yeah get a good gym membership to transform your life & build that strength that you always imagined / desired and have the utmost best quality of life ever !
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Saksham Khurana
Saksham Khurana
Saksham Khurana
