The Naked Warrior: Master the Secrets of the super-Strong--Using Bodyweight Exercises Only

Whenever you exert yourself, always start tensing in your lower abdomen. Then send that tension outward to be amplified by the tension of the muscles closer and closer to the periphery. Visualize how you are sending the pressure built up by the modified reverse breath along from your torso to your limbs,

Oriental martial arts masters generally believe that you are at your strongest when you have expelled half of the air from your lungs. Russian research has found 75 percent to be ideal for strength.

In a landmark slap to the Western gym beliefs, the exhalation group showed the lowest scores! The “inhalers” did better and the breath holders kicked everyone’s butt.

Rotation, or spiral tension, increases the stability and power of almost any action.

You won’t get very far with knee or elbow extension alone. Most power is generated closer to the core: the glutes in the pistol, the lats and pecs in the pushup.

The downward pressure exerted by your diaphragm is essential for upping the IAP. Recall that when you “breathe into your stomach,” the dome shaped muscle bears down and compresses your viscera. Breathing into your chest would pressurize your thoracic cavity and leave your abdomen weak; this does more to raise your blood pressure than your strength.

Instead of going down by yielding to the gravity, actively pull yourself down while still staying braced and tight. In the pushup, pull with your lats and other back muscles; don’t forget the inside-out corkscrew on the way down. In the squat, pull with your hip flexors, the muscles on the tops of your thighs whose job it is to jackknife your body.

Make the biceps and the triceps retreat into the deltoids. It is the same “rolling up of the shades” that you did with your thigh muscles. Your forearms. “Gather up” your forearm muscles by your elbows, pull up your forearm bones into the elbows.

they eliminate the helpful bounce, dead starts greatly challenge the muscles and strengthen them for normal pushups and the like. So, be sure to include plenty of dead starts in your regimen, once you are strong enough to do them. To do a one-arm pushup, relax completely while lying down on the floor; then tense up and go. Relax at the bottom of a