New MaxBells Body Weight Training Certification

Training with your own body weight as the primary source of resistance is quickly re-emerging as a popular training modality. And why not? It's simple and effective, allowing complete autonomy. When you have a thorough understanding of body weight exercise, you'll get phenomenal result-producing workouts anytime and anyplace.

Body weight regimens have been around since...well, the beginning of time and there's no disputing the results. For examples, look at the classic physiques of the ancient Greek warriors right up to the modern Navy SEAL, Army Ranger and U.S. Marine.

Certainly, more people would practice body weight exercises, but in our machine-dependent age people have become confused with the variety of available exercise devices and intimidated by the concept of their mere body as resistance. The modern health club has done a grave disservice to its patrons by over emphasizing weight-machine-type apparatus. People simply don't know how to use their own bodies in an effective, progressive, safe manner--and this goes for most modern-day instructors as well. The typical gym instructor in a chain fitness facility or corporate gym is either too lazy or incompetent to teach people proper technique, alignment and form. Most instructors came through exercise science, exercise physiology or kinesiology curricula which teach little or nothing in the way of practical, down-in-the-trenches workout know-how. Sadly, instructors who do use body weight conditioning exercises generally produce a high level of client injury.

It's not always the instructors fault, they haven't been educated. Many would like to incorporate body weight exercises but find teaching exercises such as the handstand, hanging leg raise, or dip too daunting since their clients are usually too weak or otherwise de-conditioned to endeavor these seemingly simple movements. Those instructors who try can end up with dismal results or worse: injured clients. No one ever showed these instructors these crucial elements:

1. Proper progression sequences
   
2. Joint alignment
   
3. Core engagement
   
4. How to prevent spinal collapse
   
5. How to utilize irradiation technique
   
6. Hip, knee, ankle and foot alignment
   
7. Proper use of the upper back and lats in protecting the shoulders.

The horrors I've witnessed in the gyms of my far and recent past still haunt me to this day! People performing body weight exercises in the most appalling form imaginable! Necks a-craning; collapsed scapulae and upper backs a-straining; grievous internally-rotated shoulders; oh-so-misaligned wrists, knees a-knockin'; ankles a-rollin'...

One scene in particular still wakes me in the night: a hyper-perky female teen-trainer chirping away before a group of middle-aged, overweight women clients, two of whom are borderline obese, whom this trainer oversees performing advanced, plyometric box jumps. It was obvious to anyone both women were struggling with a form they'd not yet been strengthened enough to carry out.

Now, the box jump is a perfectly useful exercise for athletes with strong feet, ankles and knees, but these sedentary office worker trainees were in no way ready for it. As their form ever-deteriorated into greater misalignment, I watched the pain and discouragement sketch across their faces--and this scenario is typical of what you might see in any-gym, in any town, across this country. Had our young trainer been schooled in the correct process, she'd have been able to graduate her clients through more appropriate movements until they'd built strength enough to master the box jump. That same day I asked those two women, "How do your knees feel?" and both replied they were in pain, their knees hurting from their workout session. A poor fitness value, indeed.

I've spent more than 36 years in the exercise field, mastering my trade, and making a specialty of body weight conditioning exercise. I've drawn from martial arts, yoga, Pilates, the Hèbert method, dance, Eastern European gymnastics and Middle Eastern wrestling conditioning.

I've learned at the feet of great exercise masters--because these things need to be learned. People don't just walk into the gym knowing this stuff--even experienced trainers--it takes patience and dedication.

I've put together a systematized approach, empowering you to administer conditioning programs based on body weight resistance to even the most de-conditioned people, the feeble or infirm...but that's not all: at the other end of the fitness spectrum my advanced routines have been used by world-class, elite athletes. There is no fencing around the endless landscape of the body! I have empathy, I know it's easy for an average trainer to become discouraged and continue plopping people on machines, but far nobler to broaden your knowledge base in order to coach such de-conditioned people into acquiring a mastery over their own bodies, thus weaning them off fitness machinery.

I assure anyone taking my body weight certification: Even if you're already expert in body weight exercise, you'll come away with fresh, exciting ideas in teaching progressions, technique and routines.

I've dedicated most of my lifetime in developing my exercise system and I invite anyone to join me at Maxercise, Saturday 20 July for the inaugural Body Weight Training Certification Course. I stand behind my work and offer a 100% money back guarantee to anyone who looks me in the eye and says they didn't get their money's worth.

I look forward to seeing you all there. Right now I've gotta go...do some handstands. Thanks for reading!

In Strength & Health,

Steve

P.S. Big surprise tba at the Gladiator Strength Seminar--if you were fortunate enough to get in, you're going to experience something akin to...ecstasy??? Remember, it's unbecoming for a warrior to display smugness, so try to keep it cool...

If you missed out on registering, there is a wait list or possible space at the door. Click here.