At The Forged Athlete Gym in Omaha NE, we’re all about unconventional means to increasing performance and athletic ability!

Try some of these power combos!

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is just part 1!

Stay tuned for more power combos for improved athletic performance and physique enhancement!

Live Aggressive and Get Strong!

Travis

PS -  Are you a SERIOUS athlete or just someone wanting living in Omaha NE wanting to BUILD STRENGTH, LEAN DENSE MUSCLE, and improve overall PERFORMANCE???

Sign Up below and find out how you can get a FREE Trial and join our gym

Not everyone can be the fastest, strongest, or most genetically gifted.

There are the athletes that are just born to be athletes and the ones that weren’t born to be athletes.

For the born athlete, things come easy to them.  They develope faster than others and are naturally able to do amazing things.  That makes up only a small percentage of the athletes that play sports.

The athlete I want to talk about is the one that wasn’t born with the talent.

This athlete is never the fastest, quickest, or strongest.  This athlete is the one that works harder than any other athlete around. This athlete is determined, filled with hard work ethics and grit.  This athlete is the one that makes himself be among the fastest, quickest, and strongest athletes out on the field.  This athlete does it with guts, determination, hard work, and a mentality of never giving up until the job is done.

These are the types of athletes we have and want in our gym, The Forged Athlete.

We will not accept an athlete that isn’t willing to work hard.  That is the only way to gain membership at The Forged Athlete – Hard work, dedication, and a strong work ethic.

If you want to become amonng the fastest, quickest, and strongest athletes around, you have to work for it!

No other way about it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Buckle down and get to working hard!

Good things will come!

Get Forged Strong!

Travis

PS – Make sure if you do live in the Omaha area and you want to commit to working hard, you call us up 402-984-0791 and come in for a trial session.

See what it’s like to train hard and earn your results!

So in part one I broke down exactly why sprinting is something you must have apart of your training program in order to be faster, more power, strong, and athletic.

There’s no other way around it!  Humans were made to run!

Think about it.  In the caveman days if you couldn’t run, you were dinner for a dinosaur or saber tooth.  I bet cavemen were fast as hell!

It was all about SURVIVAL.  Today, not so much.

Now in the athletic world, if you want to be at the top of the crop, you’ve got to sprint!

You already know this is you read PART 1.

So lets talk about different ways you can add sprinting into your training program.

I’m sure some of you reading this are thinking,

“I don’t need to sprint, all I need to do is lift hard and I’ll get the gains I want….”

You’re dead wrong bruddah or sista…  You need to add sprints in where they fit in!  I show you how.

So here’s 5 ways you can add sprints into your program:

1)      Add sprint into your warm up.  On days I’m crunched for time, I’ll always add in 3-5  sprints at the end of my warm up.  This is especially good on lower body days because it get you loosened up and ready to roll as well as lights up your nervous system so you’ll actually lift heavier weight!  If you add sprints into your warm up, just go 20-40 yards tops no more.  You’re warming up not trying to fatigue your body.

2)      Throw sprints right into your workout.  You ever hear about doing some front squats then immediately dropping the bar and hitting a 50-100m sprint??  Well it works!  Especially if you’re trying to build power and strength!  Try it sometime!  Or you could simply hit some heavy squats and then do sprints in the middle of your workout to get em in.  Either way works.

3)      Throw sprints in at the end of your workout.  This is probably the simplest way but the toughest.  It’s the toughest because most people, if you’re like me, are freaking beat after they train and don’t even want to think about doing sprints after a workout.  Give it a try sometime.  I recommend doing this after a upper body day for the most part.  ALSO – if you’re training to get faster, I always recommend doing sprint BEFORE your workout so you make sure you’re training full speed.  More on this coming in Part 3.

4)      Sprint separately from your workouts.  I had to do this in college because our college workouts were so damn long you couldn’t get sprints in otherwise the workouts would be 3 hours long!  What I used to do was give myself 4-5 hours rest from my training workout and do sprints.  Usually I would run early in the morning most of the time when I was super fresh but sometimes it was fun hit it up at night.  You can choose what’s best for you.

5)      Sprint on your off days.  This last tactic is for athletes and people that are truly training to increase speed and power.  Training on your off day with sprints lets you be 110% focused on just sprinting.  Instead of worrying about your training session or being a little fatigued from your training session, you can just zero in on running fast.  This is a great tactic and works amazing IF you have the time.  I know most people don’t have the extra time but if you do, I would recommend trying to throw sprints in on your off days.  Sprinting can serve as a good recovery workout sometimes as well after a heavy legs day.

Well, there you have it!  5 ways you can throw sprinting into your program.  Now you have little to no excuses unless you’re just going to puss out on doing them.  Then it doesn’t matter, you are just a pussy…

In part 3, I will get into the details about all the different type of sprint workouts there are for you to do.

There’s different ways to implement sprinting into your program for different reasons.

For example, if you’re trying to get faster and going for pure speed, there’s a specific way to train with sprints just like there’s a specific way to train using sprints for fat loss.

So be ready for part 3 coming soon!

In the meantime, get out there and run your ass off!  You’re survival may depend on it…

Get Forged Strong!

Travis

PS – Keep the comments coming people!    I want to know what YOU want so WE can help you!

Lets talk about running fast!

Here’s part 1 of the 3 part series I will be writing ALL ABOUT SPRINTING.

Part 2 and 3 will cover the meat and potatoes of sprinting while this first part is going to cover the benefits of sprinting and why, you as an athletic or human being for that matter should be doing it and doing it often.

When it comes to sprinting, I like to think Joe and myself know our fair share.

Joe having an extensive background running track with blazing times in the 100m and 200m and myself testing out in the 40 yard dash in the 4.3 range back in my prime, we know how to train to get fast!

We still have a HUGE passion for sprinting.

WHY?

Because sprinting keeps you strong, fast, athletic, and coordinated not to mention tons of other things.

The only problem is, not too many people or athletes for that matter actually get out and sprint enough.

Sprinting should be apart of ALL athletes workout regiments

Here’s just a few things sprinting can do for you as an athlete:

• Increases Speed
• Increases Overall Relative Body Weight Strength
• Increases Power and Force Production
• Keep the Nervous System Sharp
• Helps Decrease Body Fat Composition (If eating right)
• IMPROVES YOUR ATHLETICISM

These are just a handful of the benefits you’ll receive from sprinting.

I hope that after you read this you will get out and start sprinting a bit.

There’s a ton of different ways you can approach and program in sprinting into your workout plan.

Just make sure you’re adding it in for now anywhere possible!

New part I will discuss how to program sprinting into your workout plan for a multitude of different effects such as fat loss, speed, power, and flat out getting faster.

Until then,

Get Forged Strong!

Travis

PS – For ALL you local athletes in Omaha – make sure you mark your date for June 12th!  The Forged Athlete Combine Challenge is going down!  More details coming!

PPS – As always, make sure you’re writing in or commenting on the blog.  We’ve been getting some good questions so keep em coming!

The sandbag – simply BRUTAL!

Take a sandbag and make a complex outta it = Even More BRUTAL!!

There’s nothing easy about em!

Especially when you’re doing a heavy set complex like sandbag cleans straight into sandbag lunges.

Two great moves to increase power and strength for football players and wrestlers.

The sandbag in general does a multitude of different things that are great for increasing sports performance in Football and Wrestling sports.

1)      Sandbag training builds mental toughness – sandbag are unpredictable sometimes and when the weight shifts, one must wrestle around with the bag ans stay with the lift which a lot of the times makes a set longer and harder to get through so being mentally tough helps get through that

2)      Sandbag training engages the whole body – in sports you use your whole body, with sandbags you do the same – nuff said

3)      Sandbag training builds vice grip like hands – grabbing, ripping, and pulling heavy sandbags off the ground will really tax your hands in the long run which in turn will help increase your grip strength and conditioning.  Two key things to have in wrestling and football.

4)      Sandbags are tough!  Just look at an old dirty sandbag – nothing nice about it!  Working with it will get YOU tough!  The tougher you are, the better!  Trust me!

The sandbag complex I’m talking about from above is the sandbag power clean to lunge.  These are two great moves to use to help increase power and strength for football and wrestling sports.

Both football and wrestling require the athlete to be explosive and strong.  That is if you want to win…

Ripping a heavy sandbag off the floor with the power clean is a great power builder, while the sandbag lunge is great for building up strength in the legs.

Both exercise have carry over to both strength and power which in turn have an impact on SPEED!

Everyone wants to be fast!  If you wanna be fast you’ve got to get stronger and more explosive!

This heavy sandbag complex will do just that!

Check out the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now go find yourself a nice heavy sandbag to toss around and give this exercise complex a try!

Until next time,

Get Forged Strong!

Travis

PS – If you’re wanted to see all of our personal workouts straight up, go to our personal blog links below:

Travis – www.forgedstrength.wordpress.com

Joe – www.jchizek.wordpress.com

It’s day 2 Operation: Get Jacked!  I’m coming back stronger than ever with a good muscle building workout.

Day 1 got me good, I won’t lie!  This program is for real!

I went super heavy and hard on Day 1 but I’m coming back even harder on Day 2 but with less intensity loading wise.  Today’s focus is on volume.  This is more of a bodybuilding style workout for muscle building.

I keep it athletic by adding in a lot of jumps, skips, bear crawls, and hops in the warm up.  I also add tons of jump rope in as well.  Jumping rope is killer and you should definitely go out and invest in a good jump rope.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s Day 2 – Get After It!

1A) 1 Leg Double Unders x 10/L x 4 sets

2A) Scarecrow Rotation to over head press x 8 x 10 min edt

2B) Mixed Grip Pull Ups x 8  x 10 min edt

3A) Lunge Jumps x 10

3B) Resisted Wheel Roll Outs x 12

3C) BW Squats x 10-15

3D) TRX pikes x 12

This was a good post workout from Day 1’s killing.  Again, I’m keeping things super simple for now.  You’re probably wondering where all the exercises are.  Well, you don’t always need that many to get ripped up!  Trust me!

The mixed pull ups and scarecrow rotations EDT set got my upper back burning like a mo fo!  I’ll make sure to get more of that on video next time.  But, my traps, biceps, shoulders, and forearms got rocked out!

The double unders are hard as hell!  I luckily got the best set on video.  I want to work myself up to 25/leg straight without missing.  With those, it’s an intense plyometric so watch the overall volume.  It’s a great movement to get your nervous system jacked up before you get into the core of the workout.   Always try to put explosive movement like this at the beginning of your workouts.

Of course, you don’t always have to follow the rules

Ok kids – keep hitting it hard.  I’m coming back with Day 3 which is strongman day!  You won’t wanna miss it!

Make sure you leave your questions or comments for me.! I love feedback!  It ensures me that I ain’t just writing to no one.

Let me know about your crazy ass and where you hail from!  I know there’s more crazy mo fo’s out there addicted to the iron other than Joe, myself, and a few others I know.

Hit it up!

Get Forged Strong!

Travis

The russian kettlebells.  Joe and I have been getting more and more into these bad boys!

I can honestly say I never touched one until about a year ago.  Kettlebells have been getting more and more addicting as time has gone by.

They are so versatile and give you so many options to work with.  You can train for strength, power, speed, and muscle gain.  You can do circuits,   complexes, and just straight sets.  I’ve been trying it all!

I’ve got a killer kettlebell complex video on here for some serious muscle building strength as well as some crazy gains in endurance as well.

If you haven’t trained with kettlebells yet, Christmas is around the corner, I’d be asking ol’ Santa for one if I was you!

Check out the video of my complex – it tears the core, back, and shoulders up big time!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Until next time,

Get Forged Strong!

I’ve got a killer workout for you guys and gals today!

Since I hit full body on Monday, I’m coming back with an upper body based workout with a full power power exercise at the start to kick it off right.

This one got me good!

There’s some power, strength, and work capacity all thrown into one brutal workout.

I was always taught to keep your power movements at the start of your workout when you are the freshest to get the most out of these.  You want perfect technique and also want your nervous system to be fresh.  So lifts like snatches, cleans, jumps and other movements simialr, try to keep these at the start of your workout.  Of course you can break the rules sometimes

The main thing is, I hate seeing bad form on the cleans and snatches.  Its not good for your gains or your body for that matter.  Of course if your trying to improve work capacity and train for fighting and wrestling, you’ll want to throw that type of stuff in for circuits, but keep the weight a little lower and make sure your technique is spot on perfect.

Avoiding injury is the main concern always, then power, strength, and endurance or whatever you goal is.
Power + Upper Body

So, Here it is:

1A) Hang Cleans 4 x 5-3  Haven’t hit these for a while, worked up to 225 for 4 on the last set

2A) DB power press 4 x 4-8  I tried strict militaery press to start the sets then finished with power press
2B) Bent DB Rown 4 x 4-8

3A) Blast Strap Chain Push Ups 3 x Max  I went for max reps the 1st round, then really focused time under tnesion the 2nd two rounds
3B) KB 2 hand swings 3 x 15

4A) Blast strap face pull + Y row combo 3 x max
4B) Thick Handle DB Farmer Walks 3 x max you will see in the video how these are freaking killer!
4C) Dip Bar Knee Tucks  3 x max

Like I said, this one was a real chip off the old block!  I love IT!

Get Forged Strong!

ps – make sure you get signed up for our next Forged Strength Seminar Sept 18th at 10:30 – You’ll learn tons of our underground strength training techniques to get you “strong like bull!!!!”  HA HA!