Posts Tagged ‘muscle building’

What up kids!

Just took a huge step forward in getting things ready for the grand opening of The Forged Athlete’s location!

I’m so freaking excited right now I don’t know what to do!

I was so excited that after I got home from getting a bunch of our new equipment (from craigslist, I tell you more in a sec) that I just had to use it.

Here’s the workout I did:

1A) 50 db snatches per arm (do sets of 6-8)   I used a 70 until I got to rep 32, then did 80 to finish it out

1B) 50 Sandbag Shouldered Squats  – I used the heaviest sandbag I got, prob loaded with 110 lbs

1C) Mixed Grip Pulls x max – did rope pull ups, wide grip, and finished with close grip w/ the rope

2C) Mixed Push Ups – did decline, neutral grip off of db’s, then finished w/ close grip off a kettlebell

That was a brutal workout to say the least!  But I has so much freaking energy it pushed me to my limits!

So, about craigslist – it’s a f-ing GOLDMINE kids!

I just snagged a bunch of equipment  (dirt cheap!!!) for our gym and I gotta tell ya, its almost go time!!!

Once those garage doors open to The Forged Athlete’s new facility, it’s going down!

This is what I got – Check it out:

• Got over 600lbs of Olympic plates
• Hex db’s from 5lbs up to 80lbs
• Roman chair
• Db rack
• trap bar
• olympic bar
• Rubber flooring to drop kb’s and db’d on

Kids, there going be some sweat, blood, and tears produced from these pieces of equipment I just picked up NO DOUBT!

We’re taking Omaha by storm!

I hope your ready to crush it!

Check the video out:

rolling heavy – forged style

Virginia Beach dudes are gonna be getting strong as F***!!!

Our boy and fellow underground strength coach Matt Wichlinski, who is probably one the top 3 strongest dudes I’ve met in my time, is opening his own underground gym, “The Strength Shop”, in Virginia Beach. VA.

This guy is a beast!  I watched him snatch this antique dumbbell that weighed well over 140 lbs over his head with ease.  Freaking horse!

I just wanted to shout out to this guy!  He’s a good all around human being and anyone that’s as passionate about getting strong , coaching, training, and messing around with the iron as much as we are is always someone we will respect.

Congrats Matt and good luck in your strength endeavors!

Check out the unveiling of Matt’s sick gym below

the strength shop

4^th of July blast off

Check this one out guys!

I went home to the big wonderful Wyo over the 4^th and had myself a workout. It would be good to know how many dudes also worked out over the 4^th.

Yes I was on vacation, but man the workout was defiantly something I needed. I put together a few exercises out on my ranch for ya. It just goes to show how creative you can be and still get your butt kicked. In the vid you’ll see me put together a push press exercise for 5 reps and carry.

My upper back and arms were on fire. I also mixed in some push ups and band extensions for reps. I was also able to get my hands on a metal pipe I found and rock out some snatches for reps.

Have fun watching the vid and let me know what you guys think. Stay forged strong.

 

 

 

Blast off workout

 

1a) Stone push press 5×5 Added stone carry for distance

1b) pull aparts 5×25

 

2a) Pipe snatches 5×5

2b) band face pulls 5×15

 

3a) close handed pushups

3b) band tricep push downs

 Finished with a heavy stone roll in sand (burn!)

Check to video highlights – Strength Trip In Wyo

Hey Yo,

We just had a heck of a day out at the park!

We had our 1^st bodyweight strength training seminar for some of our athletes.

We had some kids come out and show us what they got in their tanks. 

A few of em happened to get “the baseline flu” which is to be expected.  Nothing wrong with that at all.  It happens to the best of us!  What makes these guys strong is I know they will stick with it!

Training with The Forged Athlete isn’t the easiest while it’s not your typical style training.

It’s totally different from what a lot of young athletes are used to.

Most athletes are used to slow paced, low intensity, non sport specific type training.  Types of training that will NOT help them to become a better overall athlete or stronger individual in general.

Our training is different.   It’s fast paced and highly intense.  The biggest factor of it all is it gets  YOU RESULTS!

Go ahead and watch the video of some of these guys going through some of the different exercises and drills.  See how they did!

Forged Bodyweight Training

Just a heads up ==è WE will be having another FR.EE bodyweight strength training seminar Saturday July 18^th at 9:00am!  Let us know if YOU are interested! 

Contact US at theforgedathlete@gmail.com

What up all,

I just finished a hellish workout!

My bro Joe was out of town on vaca visiting the fam (got some good footage of this coming soon ) so I did a quick, fast to the point workout.

It was 15 straight mins of work, but I survived. I made the stop watch be the one to push me. Sometimes, if you workout on your own, you don’t get pushed like you do with a partner. In this case, I used time as a motivater.

I wanted to work my power endurace. This is great for athletes that participate in sports such as wrestling, mma, football, boxing, soccer, and short to mid sprinting athletes.

Power is good to have as we all should know. However, when your sport requires you to have short burst of power over and over and over again, you need to have power endurace. That’s what I worked on in this workout boys and girls.

Check it:

1 15 min round of:

1A)115# sandbag cleans x 5
1B) Bbodyweight pull up x 5
1C) 50 yard sprint x 1
jog back and repeat as many times as possible!

it was fun to say the least! Here’s part 1 of the video-

15 min workout part 1

I remember I used to run a 4.38 40 and have a 38 inch vert.  Ok numbers for todays elite level athlete.

That was back in the playing days and years ago when I was in “combine” shape.  The way I got there?  Well genetics played a small role I’d have to say.  What really got me there was by doing everything explosively. 

If you want explosive speed, you have to train that way.  Yes absolute strength is great to have, but if you’re not explosive, you’re strength and overall speed isn’t as dangerous.  It’s the fast, quick, explosive burst of power that’s the true game changer.  Speed is just a plus when you’re explosive.     

Nothing can out do having explosive speed capabilities.  If you’re the most explosive player on the field, people are going to know.  It will be very apparent you is the fastest and most explosive.

Now we know we want explosive speed, but how do we get it?  Well, like I had mentioned above, I focused on doing everything as explosive as I could.  Whether it was pressing a weight over head or pulling a weight off the floor, I did it with as much explosion as possible. 

I love the Olympic lifts with a passion.  I’ve spent many years trying to perfect my form to get more explosion from these lifts.  While knowing how to do these lifts is great, for a beginner, learning and perfecting the form can take years.  If you need explosive speed now, you need to focus on other explosive activities, such as plyometrics.

Nothing will ever out do bodyweight plyometrics.  Jumping, skipping, bounding, single leg hops, and yes – lots of jump roping to name a few.  These help create raw explosiveness, speed  and just great overall athleticism.  Different jumps NEED to become a staple in your program ASAP! 

I always recommend doing these types of activities at the start of your workouts when you’re the freshest.  If you try to perform plyometric while you’re tired, you won’t be putting out maximum effort, so you will be training at subpar performances.  This will not get you more explosive, it will help gain work capacity, but not raw explosion. 

Just a few examples of what I used to do for plyometrics, at every workout, especially my lower body days, I would start the workouts by doing skips for height and skips for distance for sets 4 of 40 yards.  I also had access to a long jumping pit that was filled with sand.  I would do sets of 5-8 explosive squat jumps out of the sand before legs days as well.  This really increased my vertical jump and explosiveness due to the fact I was jumping out of sand.  Anytime you jump out of a soft surface, you’ll help increase your explosiveness. 

These are just a few examples of how I used to train and how I still train.  I think plyos are fun, that’s why I still do them.  When you have explosiveness, you just don’t ever want to lose it.  That’s why I train like an athlete still.  Once an athlete, always an athlete.

Enjoy this video of an example of some explosiveness.  Crazy shit!

jump out of pool

Stay Forged Strong!

Man I’m motivated as crazy to write this for you guys tonight. It’s a Tuesday night about 10:40 pm. By the time you read this it will probably be Wed or maybe Thurs. Anyway time to get down to business. This post is about being around like minded people who are positive and believe in what you do.

I just talked with a local Omaha dude that is strictly someone you would not want to meet in a dark alley. We’ll just call him TV. I did not ask him if I could use his name so I will not out of respect. I talked to this guy about my vision and what I want to do with athletes and especially youth athletes. This is where we need the most work in my opinion. Youth training.

Anyway he shared some things he wanted to do with athletes and wanting to help them be the best they can be. I was eye to eye with him on this one. I had so much passion flowing through me that I almost started a second workout for the day. I held back though.

Guys this stuff is for real! Get around people who want to be winners, that share the same passions as you, that wanna go further, and most importantly, think like you.

It will change your whole prospective on what you can do next. It could possibly change your whole life!

This is part of the process that I am going through to find a true niche for myself. It’s awesome because the good lord must be watching out for me on this one. I keep running into people that have so much to offer. Whne people help each other, just sit by and watch what happens.

So stay positive and feed off that good energy and use it to your advantage. If it were not for that conversation I would not be writing this to you. Stay away from the negative and close to the positive.

Stay forged strong!

So, you want to know how to build up endurance, massive strength, and crazy power all from one piece of equipment? The prowler is what you need. Hands down one of the best pieces of strength equipment available! would have invested in an “actual” real prowler but they are not cheap! My pops is handy with welding and works well with steal and metal, so I went the cheap route and had my dad weld me up a few “homemade” prowlers.

These two sleds are mean! They demand respect! You can’t just come off of the street and push these bad boys around. No Way! I need to be completely honest, I’ve done sled work before– pushing, pulling, and sprinting, but never have I actually done work with a prowler before but It is what it says it is… Its WORK!!!Prowlers will crush you! Joe and I decided to call our boys the“power tanks”. These babies are going to be crushing athletes leftand right! Just another weapon in our arsenal to get athletes andinsane fitness enthusiast into the best shape of their lives! I can’twait to break these bad boys in some more!

Joe and I decided to get a little crazy and do a superset with thetanks. We started out with some power rows and pulled those babies for about 60 feet or so, then just pushed the tankback to end the set. We loaded the front of the tank with a 70lb sandbag to add a little “flair”. BRUTAL!!! That’s all Ihave to say about that!Stay tuned for more “power tank” action in the future! In the mean time, Stay Forged Strong!!! -Trainer Trav

Over the weekend big Trav and I decided to go out in the nice weather and crush a few exercises for some needed recovery. Our workouts were to the point and aggressive, but not too intense to where we were falling down over our knees and puking our guts out. That’s not what we were trying to do. As an athlete make sure you guys are paying attention to what you body is trying to tell you. If something hurts or your tired it’s a really good idea to hold back on the hard core and give yourself some rest. By doing this your next workouts for the following week will be awesome. Remember this guys, we’re not trying to break our selves down by doing too much. More is not always better.  Yea you want to break your muscles down, but you also want them to repair and grow. Too much intensity in workouts will lead to over training and eventually exhaustion. For any athlete this is not good, especially if we are trying to build tanks for men. A good light workout consisting of jump ropes, bands, and your own body weight is good for keeping your mind on the right track.

Below I’ll be posting a vid on what I’m talking about. If you bad asses have any questions on this stuff drop us a comment our two and we will be sure to get back with ya. Oh yea and remember after your workouts  get some proper fuel for recovery. Anything with carbs and protein will be good to get you recovered. I will go into the specifics of this later. If this is done properly you will be ready to break records and see big time results.

Joe is right on the money, too much will do you in, not get you better.  I once read somewhere that its a matter of 1% intense training and workouts with 99% recovery = 100% RESULTS!  Trust me on this one, recovery, all though sometimes you feel you don’t need it, is absolutely critical!  No doubt about it!  When I was in high school I always thought “more was better”.  Boy was I wrong.  I got strong over the years but I wish I could go back with what I know now about how important rest and recovery days are and I would’ve seen some crazier results for sure! 

During the summer I was lifting 5 days a week and doing plyos 4 days per week and also adding sprint and agility work to boot!  Then add in the construction job I did with my pops during the day, I had way too much work and too little recovery.  I’m surprised I never got hurt.  I guess its the crazy freak genetics I have  

The point Joe and I are trying to make is to make sure your getting rest and recovery days in.  These days are critical and are a must.  Light calisthenics, work with the mini band, and foam rolling are the best tools I use for recovery days.   So remember, if your coming off of a crazy heavy or intense training day and your sore and your body is tired, give it a rest.  Listen to your body.  If your feeling strong push your limits!  If your feeling tired and weak, let yourself rest.  That’s what gets you strong!  So let your body recover and you’ll see it grow and get strong as all heck!  I promise.  If you have any cool and unique rest and recovery day ideas, share em.  We would like to know.   Till next time, stay Forged Strong

Coach T and Coach Joe