“The more ‘ready’ the person is to respond to stimulus, the more satisfaction he finds in the response, and the more ‘unready’ he is, the more annoying he finds it to be forced to act.”

Bruce Lee

Some people stop at the first quit-signal their body gives them. Sure, there is something to be said for restraint. But, there are also times when you need to push beyond the point where you are comfortable.

As Bruce Lee alludes to in the quote above, it is a state of mind. Be ready when your body tells you to quit and push on at least some of the time.

I’m not talking about training yourself into the ground. I’m saying that you can’t stop just because you’re starting to get uncomfortable. If you learn to go beyond your comfort zone, and embrace it, you’ll make faster progress and develop the mental quality of willpower.

You can motivate yourself by asking the question: “Is this all I’ve got?” Maybe habit has cornered you into thinking you’ve reached your limit. But most humans come nowhere near their limit.

A great exercise to try this with is the push up. Do push ups until your body gives you the “that’s enough” signal. Then do more. While you’re doing more, generate emotion by imagining other scenarios in your life where you could push a little more to get better results.

If you want to decrease the amount of time it takes to work out, become acquainted with the pull up bar.

The pull up simultaneously develops your gripping muscles, your forearms, your biceps, your lats, your shoulders, and your coolness. Telling your office cohorts you can do a pull up is practically guaranteed to receive a few minutes of admiration.

It’s been years since I’ve been able to do pull ups because I reluctantly avoided those gimicky-looking door frame pull up bars. Let me tell you, the Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar is the real deal. It fits securely on the door frame and I can set it up in a few seconds and do some pull ups.

It feels solid when I put my weight on it, but it’s not for those who weigh over 300 pounds. But as far as pull ups go, most people who weigh 300 pounds aren’t doing pulls ups. Don’t try doing kipping pull ups on it, either. You need to be slow and controlled to avoid making the bar jump.

The pull up is a good measure of overall upper body strength. Because it uses so many muscles, you can replace a lot of different exercise with the pull up. Use different grips to emphasize different muscles and to eliminate boredom with the exercise.

If you can’t do pull ups, have someone help you with the pulling part and then lower yourself slowly. If you’re diligent with this, you’ll get to the point where you can do a pull up. You can also bend your knees and place your feet on a chair. Flex your legs to provide assistance with the pull up. Try to accomplish the lowering portion without giving yourself any assistance.

Or maybe you just need to lose some weight.

One fun way to work pull ups is by doing a ladder. You do one rep, then rest the amount of time it would take you to do one rep. Then do two reps, resting the amount of time it would take you to do two reps and then do three. Continue progressing like this, but stop short of failure. Exercise is about success, not failure, so avoid failing to perform a repetition. Leave a rep in the bank.

If you want to have a Pro Fit Iron Gym pull up bar delivered to your home, go here.

I know some people who like to watch TV or otherwise distract themselves with just about everything they do. They go through the motions, but they are not applying consciousness to the effort at hand.

Exercising like that will not develop the deep skill. But what I’m going to talk about, movement-based training, will. Take a movement like the military press (pressing a weight from shoulder to overhead) and concentrate just on the movement. You will learn some things that go well beyond the description of moving a weight from shoulder height to an overhead position.

You can consider your arm position, you can consider your foot position, your chest position, how tightly you hold the weight… You can find the optimal position for your body to press a weight overhead. Your press will evolve over time and you may discover the most efficient way to press a weight for your particular body type. No one can tell you this, it is learned over years—that’s the deep skill.

You may be wondering, who cares? Well, the press works a lot of muscles, so by training the movement, and becoming more efficient at it, you’re learning how to contract more and more of your muscles. Then you start contracting those really small muscles and get that defined look that is all the rage according to all the cover models I’ve been seeing.

You’ll look better. You also avoid that “what exercise should I do?” question. You’ll do the press, dammit, and you’ll like it. The single arm press is one of the coolest exercises you can do. Who doesn’t want defined shoulders and arms?

I’m a minimalist. I don’t see the point in wasting time and effort in exercising. I have a specific purpose. I want to maintain a reasonable degree of strength and I like my muscles to look defined and healthy. It helps to look the part when you talk fitness and exercise.

I also like the idea that I’m given a body that I can figure out how to use more effectively. I like the idea of moving more weight while using less energy. I think that makes sense. Learning my body deeply.

The deeper I learn my body, the less I need to stimulate those muscles to maintain my edge. I think very hard about how lazy I can possibly be.

• Weight loss - Kettlebell training is intense, when done correctly. Work up to five minutes of snatches, doing as many reps as you can, and you’ll kick your metabolism into gear, lose weight, gain strength, and improve your wind. That means, next time you’re chasing your boss done in the office, you’ll catch him.
• Develop several attributes at once - People are in the habit of separating their training – cardio, strength, flexibility – all kept separate. Combine them for more effectiveness. Kettlebell windmills improve your shoulder and hamstring flexibility while improving strength in the same areas. Snatches give you better cardio than 30 minutes on the treadmill ever will—and they strengthen your back, hamstrings, shoulders, biceps, forearms, neck, and hands.
• Have a handheld gym – You can take your kettlebell anywhere. If you want to work out at a park and get some sun at the same time, now you can! Try that with your barbell or your treadmill.
• Develop strength where it counts – Kettlebells work the entire backside of the body. This is the area most neglected by nearly everyone. People like to train the front of the body because that is what people see. But the back of the body is the foundation for your power and strength. I’m not saying you have to have bulging muscles, but more strength and power in the back of your body means you can move your couch without worrying about being laid up for a week and having to see the chiropractor.
• Forget about isolation, try integration – Kettlebells don’t isolate your muscles—they integrate them. Instead of doing three different shoulder exercises and several different tricep exercises, do the kettlebell military press. It helps to engage more muscles than a regular dumbbell.
• Develop hand strength – Hand strength is important for so many reasons. One, you’ll be able to get those jars open more easily. Two, you won’t give weak handshakes. Three, strong hands make you stronger all over. I’m not saying you have to have strong hands for some vainglorious attempt at manhood, but that it’s far preferable to having weak hands and traditional exercises barely scratch the surface of hand strength.
• Exercise in less time – Kettlebells help you move seamlessly between exercises that work several different muscles and several different aspects of fitness at once. The result is you get in shape faster.

Imagine working out with a drill instructor in your living room. Do you think it would motivate you?

I bet it would. Not only would your body firm up and feel better, but you’d perform better mentally as well. Let’s get into the specifics.

Chris Caracci produced four exercise tapes:

• Navy Seal Workout Challenge (Beginner, ~1 hr 20 min)
• Burnout PT Challenge (Intermediate, ~1 hr 20 min)
• Industrial Strength PT (Intermediate, compressed ~45 minutes)
• Deathwish PT (Advanced, ~1hr 20 min)

Each tape is filmed at a different location. Why? To show you that you can exercise wherever you are. You don’t need special equipment, fancy clothing, or to use anything other than your body and maybe a pull up bar.

Caracci uses bodyweight exercises followed with stretches that target the muscle that was just worked. He challenges your discipline by telling you to control your body—you follow his cadence, if he stops, you stop. When the exercise is over, rather than slumping your shoulders, you’ll stand straight until he tells you to “shake it off”.

You’ll want to push yourself to keep up with Caracci, and you’ll progress quickly.

You’ll do:

• Push ups (several varieties)
• Pull ups
• Leg raises (and 5-6 other ab exercises)
• Mountain jumpers (a leg exercise where you’re on all fours and jump one foot forward as the other goes backward)
• Stretches

If you put 4-6 weeks into any of the tapes you’ll come out more flexible, stronger, mentally tough, and more flexible. Caracci has a strange sense of humor that livens up the tapes and you’ll appreciate this is your body doesn’t want to go on but your mind (and Caracci) compels you to go on, regardless.

And that’s the real benefit. Aside from training, getting stronger, feeling better, looking better, you’ll learn that your mind controls your body—your body does not control your mind. And that means when things get difficult in life, you’ll have the intestinal fortitude to proceed because of the training you did with the Caracci tapes.

I give these tapes my strongest endorsement, not just for police types, but for your average office worker looking to make a difference in the world.

I’m on this Chris Caracci Navy Seal Workout kick. Thing is, I remember when I was doing that workout how much it influenced my mental toughness and discipline.

I was doing Chris Caracci’s workout when I had a factory job and had to get up at 3:50 AM. When the alarm went off, a voice inside would say, “Get up.” And it was that simple—I did.

There’s a lot of push ups in Caracci’s tapes and for a good reason—they work. Not only do they work, but they are free. See, for some people, they feel better just purchasing something that gives them the illusion of making progress. Maybe that’s why the push up isn’t as popular these days and people resort to machines.

Check out this youtube of different push up varieties. Hopefully it will give you some ideas and maybe even some inspiration to give the tried and true push up a run for its money.