The Will to Win Trumps Everything
A few years back I read an amazing article on the fitness regimen of Harry Houdini.
He’s known mostly for his magic tricks and death-defying escapes from the most precarious of situations, like being chained up in a box and dunked under freezing cold water.
In a word, the guy was a lunatic.
He was also absolutely crazy about his fitness regimen, and some of the feats he could do were extraordinary.
For example, he was a proponent and practitioner of muscle control — an old-school type of training that involved nothing but isometric muscle contractions — and had such control over the muscles of his hand that he could pick up quarters and dimes with his flat palms. Flat palms!
He was also a world-class boxer who beat the tar out of the guy who would later become the world welterweight champion.
He practiced jiu jitsu at a time when practically no one had even heard of it.
He was an avid practitioner of gymnastics, was doing breathing exercises and cold baths before Wim Hof was even born, had a set of abs so strong that volunteers from the audience would come up to punch him and end up with bruised and banged-up knuckles, and was so all-around looney toons, batcrap nuts about being the best at what he did that he trained practically constantly.
Harry Houdini didn’t win just out of sheer will, and certainly not out of blind luck. He won because he always knew more ways to win, and he would use whatever it took to get ahead.
The takeaway here shouldn’t be that you have to train around the clock, barely sleep, and get chained up every which way but loose to get ahead and prove your strength. It also shouldn’t be that “winning” justifies any toll on your body or relationships or whatever.
The takeaway SHOULD be that the will to win at whatever goals you may have trumps stupid stuff like not having the “right” equipment, being a little tired, being busy, etc. Literally every one of these is more of a mental block than a physical one. Learn to work around these things and you’ll be amazed at how little you actually need in terms of time, energy, and equipment and STILL make mad progress.
The will to win comes from inside you. The way to win comes from knowledge of a few principles and their applications over a wide array of situations — not a fully-loaded gym and perfectly clear schedule. If that’s what you’re waiting for, just quit now and take up knitting.
One of the things I love about kettlebells and bodyweight training is the endless number of things you can do to pave your way forward to win big in your strength, stamina, and all-around physical development to become a more bad@$$ human. All you need to know is how to take advantage of the obstacles in your way, turn them into your stepping stones, and move boldly forward. Anyone can do it — you just have to love yourself enough to see that you’re worth it, cast off the ignorant aspirations of others who want to see you as being a mirror image of them, and blaze your own trail.
It’s not easy, but every focused training session, every ounce of effort, every drop of sweat — it’s all worth it.
On that note, if you like training that:
- Gives you more strength than it takes from you
- Improves your stamina and resilience simultaneously
- Powers-up every nook, cranny, crevice, and corner of your Soft Machine
Then you just might like my 9-Minute Kettlebell and Bodyweight Challenge.
It’s a challenge designed to be done alongside your regular workouts (NOT instead of them) that uses super simple, full-body movements that can be learned in mere minutes — moves like crawling, kettlebell carries, and more — and is designed to help tap into some of your body’s little known reflexes and inner storehouses of power, so you can expand your brute strength, build cyborg stamina, and forge unbreakable physical and mental resilience.
Even cooler:
Each session will leave you feeling like you’ve made gains — NOT like you’ve been drained.
Plus, the workouts are built to be done daily without sucking up tons of time or energy, so you can take on the rest of each day with a new surge of power and confidence.
Many people find that these moves help amplify their strength in their favorite kettlebell and bodyweight moves while also crafting a lean, hard, and functional physique.
Example:
· Lewis from Singapore nailed his first 1-arm pushup after doing a bodyweight drill called ‘Dead Bugs’ (which is also covered in the Challenge)
· Busy mom Lina from Sweden used crawling to not only improve her full-body strength and resilience, but also shredded so much body flab that she could see her abs for the first time in ages
· Barak from Israel saw his pullups go from 6 reps to 8 reps just by doing daily kettlebell carries
And best of all, it’s free.
How free?
I’m talkin’ freer than the 4th of July, my friend.
Get thee thine own copy here => www.9MinuteChallenge.com
Have fun and happy training!
Aleks Salkin
