Yesterday, I wrote about ole Farmer Burns and the secrets of physical culture he revealed in his 1914 by-mail course.

Burns came before Charles Atlas in the physical culture industry. At the time, people understood that you cannot become a great wrestler or boxer or fighter of any sort, without great conditioning methods.

Burns wasn’t a bodybuilder – but he knew how to get the job done in a functional way, and that’s what matters.

I learned a ton about strength, health and fitness from Farmer Burns course. I studied it in earnest.

How on earth did Burns, for example, hang himself and not get injured, much less put himself six feet under?

Well, the Farmer doesn’t reveal the secret to his hanging stunt in the course, but when it comes to flattening your stomach and giving yourself washboard abs, he most definitely does.

After I began practicing the exercises the ole Farmer taught for flattening your midsection and increasing speed and power in your hands, it was only a matter of days before people noticed that I looked and moved differently.

And that’s when I began to realize I must do my part to make this course available to people throughout the world. Why? Because the exercises are simple yet profound. And because you don’t need much room to move, they can be taken with you anywhere.

The exercises don’t require a gym or an investment in fitness machines, gizmos or gadgets. In fact, once you have the exercises in mind, they are with you for life. No one can ever take them away from you.

And the most important exercise in the course can be done in the shower, while sitting in a chair or while waiting at a traffic light. You can do it while lying in bed or as you stand in line in a store. You can do it while cooking or talking on the phone.

It’s truly amazing when you think of the versatility of an exercise that focuses on how you breathe and tighten specific muscle groups.

It feels almost miraculous when you consider the positive effects, not only on your waistline, but on your digestion. Years ago I referred to these breathing exercises as a type of “cosmic fiber” and I still use that term today.

You can begin doing these exercises immediately when you leaf through Farmer Burnsclassic Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture.

With your order we will also send you an autographed copy of “yours truly” on the cover of an MMA magazine.

Let’s Go…

Matt Furey

P.S. For those of you interested in grappling or olde-time catch wrestling, consider getting the full blown Farmer Burns video course

The ole Iowa Farmer had a secret. He taught it in a by-mail course way back in 1914; a course that appeared to be mostly about wrestling.

Yet, much of the course was about strength, conditioning and agility, what they called “physical culture” back then.

I learned a ton about strength, health and fitness from this course. I studied the course in earnest.

I began practicing the exercises the ole Farmer taught for flattening your midsection and increasing speed and power in your hands. Within a matter of days people noticed that I looked and moved differently.

That’s when I began to realize I must do my part to make this course available to people throughout the world. Why? Because the exercises are simple yet profound. And because you don’t need much room to move, they can be taken with you anywhere.

The exercises don’t require a gym or an investment in fitness machines, gizmos or gadgets. In fact, once you have the exercises in mind, they are with you for life. No one can ever take them away from you.

And the most important exercise in the course can be done in the shower, while sitting in a chair or while waiting at a traffic light. You can do it while lying in bed or as you stand in line in a store. You can do it while cooking or talking on the phone.

It’s truly amazing when you think of the versatility of an exercise that focuses on how you breathe and tighten specific muscle groups.

It feels almost miraculous when you consider the positive effects, not only on your waistline, but on your digestion. Years ago I referred to these breathing exercises as a type of “cosmic fiber” and I still use that term today.

You can begin doing these exercises immediately when you leaf through Farmer Burns classic Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture.

With your order we will also send you an autographed copy of “yours truly” on the cover of an MMA magazine.

Let’s Go…

Matt Furey

P.S. For those of you interested in grappling or olde-time catch wrestling, consider getting the full blown Farmer Burns video course 

“When you train to failure, you leave the gym a failure.” – Bill Pearl, 4X Mr. Universe

’twas 34 years ago. I was visiting my friend, Bill Pearl, at his home in Oregon. We got up early each morning to train. Real early. 4 AM.

During the workout I noted that Bill NEVER did a single set to failure.

At the time, the notion of training until you have nothing left was commonplace. In fact, it still is, even though, for the most part, it is ridiculously unnecessary and counterproductive.

I asked Bill why none of the sets we were doing were going to failure. And that’s when he told me that when you train to failure you leave the gym a failure.

Compare training to failure to the idea of training to success; to always making sure you end on a positive note.

If you’re practicing free throws, you want to end the practice with a swoosh. If you’re practicing putting, you want to end with a ball that you just sunk. If you’re practicing kicks and punches, you want to end your workout with a blow that makes the bag snap and crack.

22 years ago, when I dove deeply into bodyweight conditioning, one of the many aspects I loved was the fact that you didn’t have to train to failure to get first-class results. Additionally, you get stronger by hitting muscles and tendons in ways that cannot be reached with weights. And you don’t suffer nearly as many injuries.

In Combat Conditioning, my international best-seller, as well as the advanced course, Gama Fitness, I tell the reader to “do as many as you can.” This implies that you end the set on a positive note. You’ve done as many as you CAN – not so many that you fail.

Over the years I have orally revised my words, telling those whom I coach to find your comfort zone and expand it naturally, by doing reps and sets in numbers that do NOT cause any type of fear response in your brain and nervous system.

This means, if you’re running sprints, you do NOT sprint as hard as you can, over and over and over again. You test yourself with a maximum sprint here and there, but not every sprint of every workout is even close to 100 percent.

With Hindu pushups and squats, you learn to build up to hundreds of reps, if you so choose, by doing sets that appear too easy to move the needle.

End your workout with a feeling of “can do” rather than “can’t do.” Finish with the feeling that you saved something for tomorrow instead of the idea that you have nothing left.

I realize what I’m telling you may appear to be a somewhat lily-livered weak approach to fitness, but test it out if you don’t believe me. I’m betting you’ll discover that el Furecat is spot on once again. I’ve coached people who’ve gone from a maximum of 25 pushups to well over 100, with ease, without training to failure. I’ve coached people whose thighs were blowing up at 40 reps, yet now they can do 500 repetitions without stopping. At the 500th repetition, they are still succeeding.

That’s the way to play this game, my friend. Play it to succeed, not to fail. Your brain and body will reward you for doing so.

Kick ass – take names.

Matt Furey

P.S. People hate it went I say this, but show me a monstrous weight-trained athlete out on the ball field, and I’ll show you an athlete who is frequently injured. Check out how often Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are injured and compare it to someone such as Ichiro Suzuki (now retired), as a point of reference. This is one concrete example of why bodyweight exercises are supreme. Combat Conditioning may not give you a 58″ chest and 22″ arms, but it’ll give you functional strength, athleticism, grace, speed, flexibility and power that boggles the minds of those who see you in action.

Over the past several years, an anti-sitting movement has taken shape all over this fruity plain. We’ve been told that sitting is “worse than smoking.”

Being a contrarian, I wondered how much truth was contained in the idea of sitting being bad for you. After all, my Dad lived to be 97+ years of age and was still able to walk, even when he didn’t have much time left on the clock. And he sat all day long.

How much time did my Dad spend sitting each day? I would estimate that he sat for 12-14 hours per day, on average. That’s a lot of hours on your rumpus, don’t you think?

My Dad never had a standing desk, nor did he spend inordinate amounts of time on his feet. So you can chalk the whole thing up to genes, or you can at least entertain the idea that sitting ain’t nearly as bad for you as we’re being told.

Which led to me thinking, what if there’s a compromise involved here? What if there’s a way to get super fit even if you sit for many hours each day.

And doggone it, there is a way. In fact, I’ve figured out more than one way to do it.

My most popular way, to date, is what you’ll find in Combat Conditioning.

An upgrade from the above-named best-seller is Gama Fitness, a program that will get you fit from head-to-toe no matter how much time you spend sitting.

Yessir.

You can buy into the narrative and the fear that sitting is the worst thing you can do for your health, or you can imitate animals in the wild, who get their daily exercise in by hunting and stalking prey, followed by long periods of sitting and lying around.

Getting fit is not about constant movement all day long. It’s about incremental slices of life that bring forth grand results.

Kick ass – take names.

Matt Furey

Here’s the situation:

People all over the world don’t bend their knees and straight their legs much. Most people don’t sit in a squat to relieve their bowels and cannot imagine doing so. And this alone gets the ball/bowels rolling in the wrong direction.

If you cannot easily squat and lift something that is light off the ground, you’re headed for trouble. If you dare not clean up a mess on the floor from a deep bent-knee position, then you better be doing something to fix this weakness, otherwise you’ll become one of those who wonders why you hurt your back picking a paperclip off the floor. 

It’s tragic and true. When you stop squatting, your legs deteriorate. You lose strength and flexibility and the skill to easily do simple tasks. 

Last week I put up a photo on social media of myself sitting in a squat with my hands around the culm of a giant bamboo I’m growing in my yard. Someone asked, “Who rakes the leaves?” I replied that no one rakes the leaves. I pick them up by hand, one squat at a time. 

There are days when hundreds of leaves are on the ground around the bamboo trees. It would be easy to grab a rake to reel them in. But the leaves give me an opportunity to get my daily squats in while staying in touch with nature. 

Sometimes I am in a squat for a few minutes as I twist and turn and duckwalk to latch onto leaves. Then I bounce off the ground, toss the leaves I have into the pit and go back to work. It’s a primitive way to get the job done, but the alternative doesn’t give me legs that kick ass and take names at any age.

There’s an old saying: “Use it or lose it.” When it comes to bending your knees and squatting, this is most definitely spot on. 

If you get started immediately, if you get started before you reach the point of no return, you increase your chances of being able to squat with full mobility and strength for the rest of your life – or damn close. But if you ignore bodyweight squats, then all bets are off. 

You’ll find many squatting options in Combat Conditioning, as well as my advanced program, Gama Fitness.

And for those who are truly “game,” there is even more variety for members of my elite inner circle. 

Come get some. Then come get some more. 

Best,

Matt Furey

P.S. Want to learn how it’s possible to advance your career writing simple emails such as the one you just read, then go to knockoutmarketing.com and see what I’m rapping about. 

One of the first things your brain and body needs each day is a way to get loose.

When your body is loose and limber, your mind is sharp. Lengthen your body and your mind expands along with it.

After you move your joints in a stimulating way, energy increases and negative feelings dissipate.

On the other hand, when you walk out your front door each day and you haven’t done anything to wake up your brain-body, other than get dressed and take a shower, you’re operating at a major disadvantage. And this needn’t happen, especially when it’s relatively easy to get your blood flowing, your muscles vibrating and your brain stoked.

All forms of exercise help to awaken and energize the brain – but there are some exercises that are FAR better than others.

Whenever I put out a new course, you can be assured that it is primo when it comes to brain-body training.

Primate Power, for example, is huge for the brain, but not just because your mind has a mental image of becoming gorilla strong. The biggest benefit is how your hands are strengthened – and the strength and nimbleness of your hands has a direct correlation with overall body power, including brain power. In fact, your hands have more nerve endings connected to your brain than any other area of the body.

On top of that, when you train your hands, you increase IGF-1 or insulin-like growth factor, the hormone that keeps you young. You also increase uptake of dopamine and serotonin, two important neurotransmitters.

Primate Power teaches you a super-simple yet genius way to strengthen your brain and body with your hands. I still use this method on a regular basis to keep my hands mentally fit and I don’t see any reason to ever stop.

One more key point about Primate Power. The exercises in the course help eliminate most types of shoulder pain. True.

Many people who’ve been troubled by shoulder pain do the exercises in the course and they become pain free.

There are many other benefits, but that’s enough for now.

KATN.

Matt Furey

You ever hear about the first thing that fit people supposedly lose? 

We’re told that it’s not their speed or muscular strength. It’s not their power. 

It’s their flexibility. 

Supposedly. 

Is this the unmitigated truth? 

I say it depends upon the person. 

Some people haven’t enjoyed a day of decent flexibility since they began sitting in classrooms, and that’s a pity. Others had flexibility earlier in life, then lost it through neglect or from injuries that never healed properly. 

Contrary to popular expectations, I haven’t lost flexibility over the years. In fact, I continue to improve. 

There’s are reasons that my flexibility continues to improve. First, I continue to engage in activities that keep my body loose. Second, I avoid activities that tighten and shorten the muscles and tendons of the body. Third, I continue to work on my flexibility with the exercises highlighted in Combat Stretching. 

Recently, just as I explained in the advertisement I wrote for this program many moons ago, someone else challenged me to prove I could do the splits. I got down on the ground and did them for the guy, then I knocked him loopy by doing a few other stretches he ass-umed I couldn’t do. 

I taught the guy to never underestimate the flexibility of el Furecat.

I told the guy, “Just because your muscles are tense and tight doesn’t mean mine need to be.” 

Here’s the bottom line: If you do a little something each day to keep yourself mobile, agile and flexible – you’ll have fun shocking those as you make what you do look so freakin easy.

Yes.

’tis the truth. 

KATN.

Matt Furey

P.S. 10 more copies of Combat Conditioning remain. 

A man wrote me yesterday to ask for a bit of guidance on his Hindu squats. He’s 65 and his hamstrings tighten up when he tries to go as low as I am doing in my Combat Conditioning book and DVDs.

If I were working with this man in person, I would first ask to see him do the squats slowly. Regardless of how deep he can go and how tight his hamstrings are, show me your slowest version of the exercise. If you cannot bend your legs and come up slowly, you lack motor control, and this leads to tightness in the muscles.

So let’s slow this train down and see what happens.

Move slowly, get smooth and an increase in range of motion will be a natural byproduct; so will speed.

As you begin exercising, recall the saying, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

In the morning, when you first get out of bed, the time for moving quickly and pushing for a maximum range of motion has not yet arrived. You are far better off beginning with micro movements. Instead of doing a bunch of repetitions, do partial reps. Instead of moving quickly, challenge yourself to go slower… and slower.

Once your body is sufficiently warmed up and your movements are “second-nature,” speed and flexibility will occur without effort or strain. If you push yourself before all systems are GO, you may get away with it for awhile, but eventually pain and injury will come for a visit.

Start slowly – and soon you’ll surprise yourself with your newly acquired speed.

Kick ass – take names.

Matt Furey

By the way: We’re down to our final stack of autographed Combat Conditioning books. Make sure you get one before they are completely gone. An autographed copy of Grappling from 2002, when I was on the cover, comes with each order as well. YES!!!

The best exercises you can do to kick your buttocks into shape is…?

You might think I’m going to say squats.

I’m not.

Squats can kick your butt – and work it, too, but the unsung hero of the derrière is none other than bridging. That’s correct. When you bridge you work your entire back chain, which some people refer to as your posterior chain.

Depending upon which type of bridge you are doing, you are working almost everything from your toes on up.

The gymnastic bridge, for example, works much more than the glutes, spinal erectors, shoulders and arms. It also hits your feet, calves, hamstrings, hips, hands and abdominals.

In addition to the muscles and body parts mentioned above, bridging also strengthens the tendons and fascia throughout the body and helps improve the functioning of your internal organs. Not only that, because your body is inverted, bridging also improves the functioning of your brain.

The brain is not only stimulated from the increased blood flow while bridging, it also benefits because bridging is a new exercise for most people. Any exercise you engage in that is new and has a learning curve, causes your brain to increase the production of neurons (neurogenesis).

In Combat Conditioning and Combat Stretching, I teach a variety of bridging exercises that I believe are brain-and-buttocks builders. And regardless of which back bridge you choose to do, even when you’re not good at it yet, your brain and your buttocks benefit in a big way.

In the beginning, you can do the exercises I teach in my books and DVDs while using a ball of some sort. The typical Swiss style ball will do. Overtime, you can graduate from the ball, or you can choose to use one indefinitely. Either way, the benefits are still huge.

Your buttocks get stronger, tighter and firmer as your brain gets sharper, smarter and savvier.

True, there is a much stronger connection between the brain and the buttocks than most people realize. And when you bridge, you begin to tap into that connection.

This means, next time someone tells you that you’re “sitting on your brains,” smile with that all-knowing expression and say, “Of course.”

Be the one who bridged his/her way to smarter, harder buttocks.

Make the connection.

Grab your copy of Combat Conditioning and/or Combat Stretching NOW, and experience the brain-body benefits.

Matt Furey

It’s never a good idea to bang your head against the wall in the hopes of improving brain functions. Yet, figuratively speaking, some people insist on doing so.

And when you do your best to help them out of their self-imposed trap, they get upset with you. Better to leave ’em alone.

Pain is a great teacher, I’ve found. When you get hurt, you have time to re-evaluate what you were doing. You can ask yourself if there IS a better way. You can deliberate upon the idea that perhaps you were sold a pile of bull puke about weight training reducing injuries. It doesn’t. When you shorten and tighten muscles, you increase the likelihood of injury.

It’s a tough pill for many to swallow.

But the cure is better than the illness. The cure is bodyweight exercises, such as those I teach in Combat Conditioning.

Hopefully, you don’t get too old before you get smarter about how you train.

The exercises in Combat Conditioning lengthen and strengthen while giving you functional athletic ability.

The same goes for what is revealed in the other courses I champion, namely: Gama Fitness, Primate Power and Healing Isometrics.

Animalistic-style strength can be yours by following the methods taught in any or all of these courses.

Long-time Furey Faithful have them all, and they’re all the better because of it.

How about you?

Time to get out of pain. Time to lengthen and strengthen.

Too soon old, even later smart is not a good motto to live by.

Get stronger and smarter sooner, rather than later.

Kick butt – take names.

Matt Furey