Now’s the Time to Live the Dream Life

Brandon — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:57:31 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” - Harvey MacKay

“Everything you now do is something you have chosen to do. Some people don’t want to believe that. But if you’re over age twenty-one, your life is what you’re making of it. To change your life, you need to change your priorities.” -John C. Maxwell

Well, we’re two weeks into the New Year 2010. For many people the motivation has started to fade to black. Their new habits are beginning to seem like false hopes, while their old habits are beckoning them back into the shadows and comforts of their former selves.

In another week they’ll be dropping like flies from gyms around the nation…. as Metallica used to scream “Sad but true.”

However, just because the mass majority of people are lacking the strength of mind, the will, the shear determination and perserverance to make it the 21-30 days it takes to form a new habit… doesn’t mean we do. No, not me and certainly not YOU!

We’re willing, both you and I, to wade through the swamp that is seperating us from the dream life… the life they would live if only they had the stones to. Yet, for us…. failure is no longer an option. To us… failure doesn’t exist. It’s simply an illusion.

I can’t speak for you, but I’m tired of illusions. I desire the truth. And if not THE truth… then at least MY truth.

After all this a fairly subjective world we live in. Everybody is living in their own reality. They see the world filtered through their own eyes and minds, their own thoughts, feelings, and their own perceptions of the world.

Thus, how many of us are trapped living in a life and reality that is on some level an illusion? Maybe we’re not seeing clearly enough. Are we wasting our time and our lives focusing on the wrong things? Maybe “things” that may not even matter in the end?

It’s important for us to see the BIG picture, beyond the egoic fallacies of our own creation and get to the HEART of reality as quickly as possible. In other words, the Essence of our Life.

In reality I believe fear, doubt, and failure are illusions. Tests that we must overcome to live the life of our dreams. Fear, doubt, and failure are evolutionary mechanisms designed to test the heart of our character. To see what we’re made of. To be radically honest, I know I’ve been held back by these illusions in the past and in some ways still am. Like you I’m working to overcome them.

If we give into these scary illusions and allow them to overcome us, then we’re not only giving up on ourselves, our families, and our friends, but on the dream life we REALLY wanted to live. We forsake the achievement of our desires and goals for the safety of our own cave of comfort and security. The fierce snarl of fear… the bite of doubt… the sharp pain of failure… scares us back into the cave of mediocrity.

If we’re not careful. We’ll die in that cave. Scared and alone. Too afraid to really live. It’s as William Wallace says in the movie Braveheart ”Every man dies, not every man really lives.”

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

The other day I stumbled upon an article written by Bronnie Ware, who is a writer, singer/songwriter and speaker from Australia.

The article was titled “Regrets of the Dying” and was based off of her experience of working in palliative care. Basically her patients were people who were dying and forced to come to terms with their own mortality.

Here is a condensed version of that article (you can read the full article by clicking the link above):

Start of Article—————–

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

End of Article—————–

I guess in the end, there’s not really much to add to this post.

As we enter the third week of the new year, freshly embarking on the journey to change and transform our lives, we are going to encounter resistance. We now realize that this resistance will come in the form of fear, doubt, and failure.

As our old patterns beckon for us to give up on these “stupid goals and resolutions” and return back to our old ways let us imagine the time of our death. Just for a moment imagine yourself dying and contemplating the life you have lived.

Did you REALLY LIVE while you were on this planet?

Did you DO all the things you desired and wanted to do in your heart?

Did you make the most of each day you were alive?

Did you build healthy, positive relationships with those in your life?

Did you ALLOW yourself to be happy and embrace life?

Or did you get caught up in the illusion of fear, doubt, and failure?

Do YOU have any regrets that you will have to take to the grave?

Consider this BEFORE you give up on your goals and resolutions this year. Decide NOW to make 2010 the best year of your life.

Live it up, while time is still on your side!

Brandon Cook

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About the Author:

Brandon Cook is author of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach hardgainers how to build muscle fast using the laws and scientific principles of body transformation.

HargainerMuscleBuilding.com features a free email class covering the basic principles of training naturally, eating a nutritious, muscle-building diet, and understanding the truth about supplements. The website is filled with free articles, videos, and the programs you need to create your ideal body.
Please visit us at http://hardgainermusclebuilding.com

How to Gain Muscle Mass in 2010

Brandon — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:48:03 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith. There’s really an attitude to winning. You have to see yourself winning before you win.”
-Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.”
-Bruce Lee

The New Year is RISING and my plan for how to gain muscle mass in 2010 is already underway…. I’ve made up my mind to DO THIS and to increase accountability I’m documenting the whole thing on my body transformation page. Stop by and leave me a few words of encouragement and support.

The pressure’s on and I can already tell a BIG difference in my approach to making a transformation this year just knowing that people are watching. I’m fully commited.

That being said I believe there are 4 Pillars you must study and master if you want to learn how to gain muscle mass:

1. Proper Mindset: You have to fully believe in yourself 100%. Drop any fear and doubt as soon as it arises and eliminate any negative self talk. Focus on your abilty to succeed and KNOW that your success is inevitable.

• Practice meditation and learn to focus your mind on the present moment. This is your only true point of power.

• Use positive self-talk and affirmations with strong positive emotions to train your mind to support your efforts.

• Visualize the achievement of your goals right before going to bed. How does it feel to be living the life of your dreams?

• Read books, listen to audio programs, watch educational programs. Continue to learn, grow and evolve. Never stop this.

• Be confident, optimistic, disciplined, persistent, grateful, and enthusiastic in your approach to achieving your goals.

• Be a real man (or woman) and take 100% responsiblity for how your life turns out. You become what YOU believe.

2. Optimal Training: If you don’t know the proper training methods to break your plateaus you MUST educate yourself by absorbing all you can from guys like Vince DelMonte, Jason Ferruggia, Sean Nalewanyj, Jeff Anderson, Nick Nilsson and other competent coaches.

• Use compound exercises like Squats, Dead Lifts, Military Press, Pull-ups, Dips, Chin-ups, Push-Ups, Rows, Planks, etc.

• Do a couple warm-up sets gradually increasing the weight and then do 1-2 working sets per exercise.

• Stay within the 5-8 rep range and work to do another rep or add weight to the bar each week.

• Keep your training short and intense. No more than 45 minutes after doing a 15-20 minute dynamic warm-up.

• Do three workouts per week while allowing a day of rest and recovery between each training session.

• Lift the weight explosively while controlling the lowering portion of the lift. Rest 60-120 seconds between sets.

• Here’s your first workout: Squats, Military Press, Pull-ups. Now get going!

3. Quality Nutrition: You are what you eat. You can’t build your best body now, unless you are eating the best foods that will nourish, strengthen and rebuild it. Just like you can’t build your dream house out of scrap materials… your body is the same way.

• Know where you food comes from and how it got to your plate. Just because it looks like food or says “All Natural” doesn’t mean that it actually is.

• Eat the highest quality food you can afford. There IS a difference! If you got the money go for organic fruits and vegetables, free range, grass fed beef and chicken, cage-free, organic, omega 3 eggs, wild caught fish like salmon.

• Eat 5-6 meals a day. Eat every three to four hours.

• Make breakfast and your post-workout meals the biggest meals of the day. Eat most of your carbohydrates around these meals. Eat mostly protein, fats and vegetables during the other meals.

• Eat like a cave man: fruits, vegetables, lean meats like beef, chicken, fish, whole eggs, nuts and seeds, some grains like brown rice, quinoia, oatmeal.

• Master your peri-workout nutrition. Consume liquid carbs + protein before, during, and after your intense weight training sessions.

• Use time-tested supplements like creatine, fish oils, multivitamin, protein powder, branch chained amino acids.

• Eat enough food to support your muscle growth. You must be in a caloric surplus by 500 calories or so.

4. Rest and Recovery: This is where the magic happens… that’s right… in the bedroom. Sleep is when the muscles are repairing themselves and actually growing. Neglect this and you are doomed to be scrawny.

• Do everything in your power to get 7-9 hours of sleep or more each night. This is vital to your success.

• If possible take a power nap during the day or after training to speed recovery

• Buy a foam roller and tennis ball and use these tools to massage your body and improve your muscle tissue quality.

• Pay to get a massage, use a hot tub, sauna and/or soak in a hot bath.

• Use ice packs to sooth sore muscles and joints or heal from injuries. Use a heating pad on sore muscles only. No heat on injuries with swelling and inflammation. Ice is the miracle healer. Use it.

• Practice Tai Chi, Meditation, or Yoga to relax and circulate healing energy (chi.)

• Stretch your muscles on recovery days. You should be stretching at least as much as you are lifting to prevent tightness and injuries.

If you’re not growing or achieving your goals… the problem is within one of these four pillars. Make sure you understand and are following these tips on how to gain muscle mass. When you have the four pillars in place and they will support your progress and growth in 2010. You can dooooo it!

Brandon

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About the Author:

Brandon Cook is creator of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach hardgainers how to build muscle fast using the laws and scientific principles of body transformation.

Transformation Update: New Page to Track this

Brandon — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:00:02 +0000

By Brandon Cook

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

If you are following along on the Becoming of a Warrior Transformation I decided to move all of the posts to their own page… I didn’t give up already… IN FACT… I’m going strong!

We just decided this would be best featured in its own section so that the blog can continue to provide you with quality information.

You can follow along here ==> http://hardgainermusclebuilding.com/blog/body-transformation/

Please stop by and drop me a comment NOW! I need your support.

Thanks,

Brandon

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About the Author:

Not-So-Skinny Vinny Turns 30… Happy Birthday, Big Guy!

Brandon — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:08:37 +0000

“If you focus on being successful you will be and you are already one step closer to becoming the person you really want to be.” –Vince Delmonte

“Tomorrow does not exist. It is not promised and it is not guaranteed. Tomorrow only exists in the minds of dreamers and procrastinators.” –Vince Delmonte

That’s right, Vince Delmonte just turned “The Dirty Thirty” as he likes to call it. To celebrate it he’s “getting wild and crazy” and having a Four Day Blow Out sale on his 9 disc DVD series. Although, I’m a little late getting this posted, so it’s more like a Three Day Blow Out Sale!

I’m not here to try to sell you on it, this deal sells itself. I’m only a messenger and a satisfied customer who owns and uses Vince’s products. I’m also here to motivate you to get off the fence and take charge of your life once and for all.

If you’ve been thinking about getting any one of Vince’s programs for sometime… let me tell you… this is the deal you’ve been waiting for.

Why wait any longer? This can be the best year of your life… but only if YOU decide to make it so!

With this deal not only do you get Vince’s 9 DVD’s with over 3 years of workouts, but you also get all of his other products for FREE as a bonus. ALL OF HIS PRODUCTS!!!

As if that wasn’t a cool enough deal in itself, Vince talked several other top physique coaches to throw in their best material as additional bonuses. I’m talking guys like Craiq Ballantyne, Nick Nilsson, Lee Hayward, Joel Marion, Jon Benson and female nutritionist Isabel De Los Rios.

There are only 500 397 of these bad boys (I’m a day late getting this out) and they will sell out fast just like last time! All of these special birthday bonuses WILL disappear on Friday at Midnight.

So, please if you want to transform your body and take your physique to a whole ‘nuther level… Vince is your man… ACT NOW!

I know, I know…. That’s exactly what you would expect me to say! I know you’re not dumb… if you were you wouldn’t be on this website! Just know that I’m coming from the heart here.

Honestly, I don’t agree with every thing Vince does or says. There’s certain exercises he uses that I don’t particularly recommend or use.

In fact, I’m even a little bit jealous of Vince for having such a hot girlfriend like Flavia! Only kidding… Vince deserves everything he has gotten. He definitely earned it!

The reality is you cannot argue with Vince’s results. They speak for themselves. Just take a look at Vince below from his most recent photo shoot while on vacation in Punta Cana:

Do you see what I mean? Here’s a guy who used to be known as Skinny Vinny and weigh 150lbs, now he’s a super lean 197lbs of PURE MUSCLE. This guy’s my freakin’ hero! Seriously, this is the exact type of transformation journey I am embarking on right now.

I paid with my own good money to get Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program. I paid with my own good money to get Vince’s Six Pack Program. I wanted to know what Vince knows and how he achieved these spectacular results in six months.

It pisses me off that YOU can get these programs for FREE just by ordering his DVD set.

Click Here to Have Vince Delmonte as Your Personal Trainer

It’s all good though! I would willingly pay for those programs again in a heartbeat. They have been worth every penny. It’s funny, and a lil ironic that I was able to get his DVD program for free this past October at the Fitness Info Summit. I won it in a drawing and Vince personally handed it to me. So, I guess it worked out in the end.

In fact, I used Vince’s nutritional advice straight out of his Six Pack program to get lean this past summer. You can see my pic here if you haven’t already.

Need a Program that will Have You Huge and Ripped By Summer 2010?

Look, it all boils down to this: I’m not here to twist your arm or “convince” you to buy this program. You are either going to make a body transformation…. Or you’re not.

The reality is most of the people reading this will not take action and thus, will not make a transformation. They’re too scared to take a chance, to risk something, to put them selves out there for fear of being embarrassed, scammed, mislead, ripped off, or fooled.

That’s fine… I get that. Nobody wants to go through that.

However, it’s a hard, cold fact that to get what you never gotten in life, you have to do what you’ve never done. Sometimes that means taking a chance, learning something new, opening your mind, buying a product, making a decision to change.

I personally own these products. I’ve met Vince in person (he’s a real guy), I own the DVD set. I can personally vouch for Vince and his products. He will blow you away and he always OVERDELIVERS!

If you want to make a body transformation by summer 2010 you have to have a solid training plan. You have to have a top notch nutrition strategy. You have to know what you’re doing. Do you?

No one achieves results like Vince has gotten without being a smart cookie, unless they’re genetic freaks or taking steroids. He can show you exactly what you need to do to achieve results naturally if you’re willing to believe in him and in yourself.

This is a special deal for Vince’s 30th Birthday Bash. He will not be turning thirty again.

If you’re looking for a great Christmas Gift for someone, or even yourself… this is it. It will be delivered before Christmas and you’ll be getting it for $50 off the regular price.

Last April Vince SOLD OUT 500 units at a price of $247 within a few days… you have the opportunity to get the whole shebang for $197. This will sell out. This is the Truth not Hype. Once the 500 397 units are gone… that’s it.

The only question you really need to ask yourself is:

“What do I want to look like by Summer 2010?”

Go check out the video of Vince and Flavia…
if this is your answer ==> “I want to look like Vince!”

You can do this!

Brandon

——————————————————
About the Author:

W2WUHC666AK5

Body Transformation Part III: A Gateway into the Future

Brandon — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:12:50 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” -Bruce Lee

History has a strange way of repeating itself and so I find myself in a similar situation today that I’ve faced in the past. I’ve come a long way since those early days, but I’m still not living the life I imagined for myself. Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m living a great life and am very grateful. It’s just that I know there is more for me to do, experience, and fulfill in this lifetime than the level at which I’m currently living. Can you relate?

I’m standing at the cross roads again. I’m not here to make a deal with the devil, but rather to choose a path.

Now, I can walk the path that so many of us follow, which I will call the path of the sleepwalker. This is an unconscious path. A path of mediocrity, of blindly following the herd, of giving in to doubt or fear, and succombing to a life that is not the one truly desired, but rather the one often settled for.

Or I can choose another path, which I will call the conscious path or the path of the awakened. This is the path of the warrior, of being your own man or woman and living consciously, of kicking fear and doubt in the face and embracing courage and confidence. This is the path of self-evolution, of following your heart, speaking your truth, and living the life you’ve imagined for yourself.

Truth be told, I’ve started down the path of the awakened several times, but I’ve often fallen asleep on the quest and in doing so, failed to fully commit to the journey.

When you lose consciousness in this manner you will typically lose your way, hopefully only temporarily. At some point, you’ll suddenly be startled awake, only to realize that you have wandered off the path and are now lost in the woods. At this point you can either give up or decide to get back on the path.

I can no longer meander aimlessly in the woods. I must choose a path and consciously follow it to where it leads. There’s really not much of a choice to be made for me, but rather the commitment and the courage to walk down this path least followed.

I’ve already chosen the path of the Awakened Warrior (or rather it chose me.) This is about living it…

However, the path of the warrior is not the easiest path. That’s for sure. It’s fraught with difficulty, rough terrain, and obstacles the average sleepwalker is too afraid to encounter. Afterall, that is why it is the path least followed.

So, before I set out upon this path I must go through training. No one becomes a warrior without first going through a training period. It would be foolish to embark upon this journey without first arming my self both physically and mentally. Honestly, the training often is the path and so this is where I must begin.

Morhei Ueshiba (the founder of Aikido) states, “The Way of a Warrior cannot be encompassed by words or in letters: Grasp the essence and move on toward realization! The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.”

He then goes on to explain that “Iron is full of impurites that weaken it; through forging, it becomes steel and is transformed into a razor-sharp sword. Human beings develop in the same fashion.”

In this way, my training will be structured and designed to strengthen and transform the body, awaken and enlighten the mind, and cultivate the power of the spirit. I will be documenting the entire training process here on this blog. In fact, this is what this whole post is about.

The Becoming of a Warrior: A Pathway to Transformation

Well, that’s what I’m officially calling this body transformation. If you haven’t noticed yet, I like to make things a little more dramatic. Meaning, instead of calling this “Brandon Cook’s transformation story”… BORiiiiiing! I’d rather call it: “The Becoming of a Warrior.”

Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it? If you must, blame it on my creative side. However, my intention IS to become a warrior, so it seems like a fitting title.

It’s possible that my interpretation of a warrior may be slightly different from yours. To me a warrior is not just a soldier who fights in battles, but also has the potential to evolve into something more. Let’s look at some definitions from dictionary.com:

Warrior -noun

1.One who is engaged in or experienced in battle; soldier.
2.One who shows or has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics or athletics.
3.One who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause, or conflict.

So, by these defintions a warrior could be a soldier, a politician, an athlete, or even an activist for a certain cause. More generally, any person showing great vigor, strength or courage while involved in an activity, or in the resolution of some type of conflict could be considered a warrior.

As you may know, I’ve chosen to call this blog The Awakened Warrior. This is my ideal of the warrior. In a real sense this is synonymous with an enlightened or spiritual warrior, one whose training, battles, and life experiences has led him or her to a higher level of consciousness or understanding of the world.

Thus, as the warrior awakens to a heightened perception and understanding of himself and his ultimate reality he transcends the state of mere warrior and becomes the warrior-sage.

According to Carl Jung, an archetype is an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic image that is derived from the past collective experience of humanity and is present in the unconscious of the individual.

The warrior is just one of many common archetypes. Others are the teacher, the clown, the bully, the redeemer, the sage, the lover, the hero, the villian, the goddess, or one of many others.

The Awakened Warrior is the blending of two archetypes. The warrior and the sage (an extremely wise person.) This individual has the heart, strength, courage, and power of the warrior, alongside the wisdom, discernment, and experience of the sage.

So, this is what I mean when I refer to a warrior or an awakened warrior. Both Bruce Lee and Morihei Ueshiba serve as great examples of awakened warriors.

Morihei Ueshiba was the founder of the popular Japanese Martial Art Aikido. After mastering the classical styles of Judo, Kendo, and Jujitsu he created Aikido in correlation with his spiritual philosophy. Aikido is the art of non-resistance and utilizes this principle to turn the attackers own force and momentum against him. Using throws, joint locks, and pins to subdue an attacker in a nonviolent way. Morihei developed Aikido as a way to cultivate peace and harmony in the world. He is reknowned as one of the greatest martial artists of all time.

Bruce Lee… okay, well I’m sure you know who Bruce Lee is!!! Yet, you may not realize that Bruce Lee was much more than an actor, he was a martial artist, a philosopher, film director, screen writer, student of Wing Chun and founder of Jeet Kune Do. He is considered by many as the most influential martial artist of the 20th century, and a cultural icon. Bruce Lee was also an ectomorph who weighed only 135-145 lbs. So he also serves as a great example for many hardgainers.

The more I study and learn about them, the more I admire these warriors and how they lived their lives.

With this ideal of the warrior in mind, my training will naturally follow this path. I will be focusing on strength and conditioning training while blending it with martial arts, meditation and a mind/body techniques. Here’s a few examples where my training philosophy differs from your typical bodybuilder, athlete or strength coach:

• I have added daily Zen meditation, affirmations, journaling, and visualization to tap into the subconscious mind and overcome any limiting beliefs.
• I have blended elements and ideas from Aikido, Tai Chi, and other martial arts to develop the inner and outer warrior.
• For the mind I include science, philosophy and spirituality, as well as, other topics through a process of continual reading, learning and growth.
• To build, strengthen, and transform the body I incorporate various forms of calisthenics (bodyweight training), and strength training (weight lifting).
• In addition, I will use various conditioning and cardiovascular training to further develop the heart, lungs, and musculoskeletal system.

As you can see, this is more than just a regular work out. This is a total training program designed to unleash the power of your body, mind, and spirit.

It is my intention to integrate these various methods into a unified system that one can use to transform their body and their life. I believe that engaging in this rigorous type of training, while adopting a healthy, nutritious diet will allow one to forge the body into steel, as Morihei described above. In addition, the softer mental and spiritual disciplines encourage mindfulness amd focus, as well as, foster wisdom, enlightenment and the ability to cultivate Chi (also known as Qi, Ki, Prana, or Life Force.)

Now, I haven’t perfected this training sytem as of yet. It is only in it’s early stages and merely an idea and personal training philosophy that I’ve been working with over the years. As I’ve studied and practiced some of these various methods, teachings, and systems mentioned, I’ve incorporated their ideas into my life and training.

I aim to put it altogether and test the idea out on myself over the next six months. I will document the results in real time on the website for you to follow along or participate. That’s right, participate!

I invite and encourage you to apply the training methods I outline over the next six months. This of course is a personal choice, but it would be awesome to have you traveling alongside me on this journey. I will be revealing everything that I’m doing and explaining it here. So it will be easy to follow along, see what I’m eating, how I’m training, progressing, and how you too can participate in the Becoming of a Warrior Transformation.

Plus, after you make a successful transformation we’d love to feature you on the website, with your permission of course.

What you can expect over the next six months

My official start date will be December 1st 2009 and will cover the next six months through the end of May 2010. Why not just wait to New Years? My answer to that is… why wait?

These first six months will be the portion in which I am building a foundation and focusing on size and strength. After that and as summer approaches, I will adopt a conditioning phase to burn off any unwanted bodyfat and take it to the next level.

That’s my plan anyway. Things may change slightly along the way, but we will take it as it comes.

If you wish to follow the program you can start at that time, wait until the new year, or anytime you wish for that matter. The choice is up to you. If you plan on participating, I’d love to hear from you.

As I go through the process I will tell you what I’m doing and lay out the program. I plan on posting daily (or as often as I can), as well as, providing weekly status updates.

In my daily posts I will be covering what I’m doing each day, my nutrition, training, and recovery methods.

My weekly posts will be progress updates tracking my weight, lean muscle gains, bodyfat, and measurements and will include a progress picture.

In addition I’ll be posting informative topics like I have been doing in the past. These will include more information on the four pillars of rapid body transformation as previously discussed. Topics like proper mindset, optimal training, nutrition, and recovery methods.

We will continue to add articles to the website and I will be referencing certain articles in my posts so that you may further your understanding and training knowledge.

I would also like to start shooting some videos and plan on filming the training routines so you can see them in action.

My ultimate physique goal is to look like Frank Zane, in the picture at the beginning of this post.

That’s a tough goal considering Frank Zane is bad ass, and two-time Mr. Olympia. Yet, as the Bruce Lee quote stated… a goal is not always meant to be reached. Frank definitely had beautiful symetry, proportion, and an overall awesome physique. He was one of only three men to ever beat Arnold. The good news is that Frank has a smaller framed body and is an Ecto-mesomorph. He had smaller wrists (6.5 inches) and ankles (8 inches.) Frank stands at 5.9″ tall and weighed in between 185-195lbs at contest time.

Now, my wrists and ankles are about his size, maybe slightly bigger. I’m also 5′11″ and only weigh 155lbs. So, my goal for this transformation is to gain between 30-50 pounds of muscle and get up my weight up to around 185-205lbs. It’s hard to accurately predict outcome goals of what I will actually gain, so I’m focusing more on performance goals, which are actually under my control.

Gain 30 pounds or lose 20 pounds, or earn a million dollars are examples of outcome goals. These are things we may desire, but in reality it’s hard to predict exactly what you will accomplish with any degree of certainty.

However, when one focuses their efforts more on performance goals or the steps and actions one must take at any given time, you create a greater possiblity of realizing your outcome goals as a mere byproduct

With this reasoning, I will be placing more emphasis on goals like eating six times a day, progressing in my training, getting eight hours of sleep, meditating for at least fifteen minutes a day, etc. By concentrating on these goals I establish an increased likelihood of accomplishing my outcome goals of gaining 30-50lbs.

Keep that in mind when planning out your own goals!

One of the reasons I’m documenting this transformation publicly is also to help hold myself accountable. That’s also one of the reasons this website was created… to increase accountability, in addition to sharing what I have learned.

This way I know people are looking at this, they’re reading it and expecting a transformation. I’ve made it more difficult for my self to back out. If I do, I will not only let myself down, I will let you down and I’m not willing to do that.

You see, I’ve just made failing or giving up more painful for myself. This is a good strategy for you to employ as well. When you make the decision to transform your body and life, announce it to the world. Let the world know you’re serious. Now, it’s all about following through!

I think that about covers it. I’ll be back soon to kick things off. Let the transformation…. BEGIN!

Brandon

——————————————————
About the Author:

Body Transformation Part II: Reflections of the Present Moment

Brandon — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:42:07 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.”
-Robert Collier

“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not frighten them, but to challenge them.”
-Woodrow Wilson

In Body Transformation Part I, we peered through a window into my past to get a better understanding of the challenges and adversity I experienced early on. It was these trials that eventually led me to training, and the desire to transform my body and my life.

We will all face the heaviness of life at some point or another. The question is will we learn to grow, adapt, and overcome it or collapse under its pressure?

It was around the age of eighteen that I began the process of making a body transformation. However, most of my attempts have been only moderately successful at best and downright failures at worst.

Few of us have the wisdom or capacity of succeeding at our first attempts at something. Who knows why?

Maybe we weren’t experienced enough? Maybe we weren’t disciplined enough? Maybe we didn’t focus hard enough? Maybe we just didn’t have a strong enough desire to put forth the required effort? Maybe we didn’t hold ourselves accountable?

I realize that although I may not have achieved my ultimate goal and potential so far, there are many lessons I have learned along the way. Here’s a few of them I’d like to share with you now. Take them for what they’re worth.

Body Transformation 101- The Lessons Learned

As you know, the lessons we learn will often follow the tests and experiences that life throws at us. It will be the same in this article.

As you can see in the picture at the beginning of this article, I started out as a skinny lil guy at 130lbs. Through training I was able to gain thirty pounds of muscle, but then I got careless and fat. After concentrating my efforts on performing a metabolic conditioning phase this past summer, I was able to reduce my body fat levels down to 10%.

I had made several attempts to gain more muscle while at a higher body fat percentage, but noticed that my surplus of calories seemed to be turning consistently to fat rather than muscle. I finally realized that I needed to lose belly fat, focus on getting lean, and doing some corrective exercises to heal my body.

Now I’m lean again, but my ultimate desire has always been to weigh between 185-195. So, that means I’ve still got to gain about thirty to forty pounds.

Lesson Learned # 1: Plan well, do your homework and do it right the first time.

Due to years of not knowing what I was doing I had back problems, muscle imbalances, and a shoulder injury. It was due to these preexisting muscle imbalances and injuries adding up over time that I couldn’t train with enough intensity to convert all of these calories into muscle. I was mainly getting fat and in denial about it. My body fat percentage was a whopping 24% and my waist was closing in on 39 inches.

I wanted to build muscle fast and so badly that I never took the time to set my self up for success when I was younger. Time and time again I would just jump into a mass phase and start piling the weights on without first preparing my body and mind for what was to come. Big mistake. It was like I was banging my head into a wall and kept wondering why my head hurt.

What I didn’t realize then is that lifting weights is really hard on your body, especially the ectomorph body. You must build a solid foundation before trying to build on it.

What I should have done was spent several months using bodyweight exercises only. Using upper body exercises like: Handstand and pike push-ups for your shoulders, push-up variations and dips for your chest and triceps. Then pull-ups, chin-ups, inverted rows, and rope chins for your lats, mid-back, and biceps.

For lower body exercises I could have selected from: Rear foot elevated split squats, step-ups, lunges, and unilateral (single-leg) squats for my quads. Then hit my hamstrings and glutes with unilateral deadlifts, single stiff leg deadlifts, hip thrusts, and glute bridge variations.

To finish off a full body workout I could work my core by using ab wheel rollouts, or stability ball jack knives, stability ball pikes, front and side planks, or even knee raises. Then to strengthen my neck a stability ball wrestler’s bridge, or front and side neck bridges would have worked great.

I now know that many coaches like Vince Delmonte, Alwyn Cosgrove and others believe that you have no business applying an external load (lifting weights) unless you can handle your bodyweight first. You should be able to do 30-40 push-ups easily, 20 dips, 10-15 chin-ups and hold a plank for at least 3 minutes before ever touching a weight.

Starting off with bodyweight exercises like those listed above will develop a solid foundation that will strengthen the entire body.

Using bodyweight exercises helps to condition the body, strengthen the muscles, joints, ligaments, stabilizer muscles and teach the body to move in a functional and integrated way. This enables you to handle heavier weights more safely and with less chances of injury once you do apply external loading.

Lesson Learned # 2: You must earn the right to lift weights by first lifting your bodyweight.

If you just start lifting heavy, balls to the wall, letting your ego run the show you’re going to get hurt. Lots of young guys don’t think about this when starting out (I never did), but a lot of athlete’s, bodybuilders, and power lifters get pretty banged up and end up with a host of injuries to their backs, shoulders, knees, etc. Many are forced to get surgeries, retire early and end up with severe pain in their joints and bodies as they age.

Lots of people fail to understand this and they’re all hardcore about lifting heavy weights at all costs. That’s cool and all, but one of my goals (besides getting bigger, faster, and stronger) is to also be healthy and live an active life, well into old age. Call me crazy, but I want the best of both worlds!

Now part of all that is just the price you pay for being a warrior. Injuries happen and are a part of the game. We shouldn’t live in fear of injury. If you lift weights or play sports expect to experience an injury at some point. That’s just reality.

My whole point is that a lot of injuries can be prevented all together by training smart, dropping the ego, and learning to listen to what your body is telling you.

If you’re listening, your body will tell you what you need to know and do 99% of the time. Yet, our bodies speak a very subtle, almost intuitive language. If we aren’t in tune with our body we will not heed its message and instead we’ll end up listening to our ego. The ego usually gives you bad advice!

Lesson Learned # 3: Drop the ego and listen to the wisdom of your body.

You can see the result of not listening to my body by checking out the middle picture above.

A funny thing about this screw up is that I thought I was only 12-15% body fat at this point because I had my body fat scale set to “Athlete” mode instead of “Normal.” When I switched it to the proper setting it shot through the roof.

I guess I was just happy to finally see the scale moving in an upward trend for a change, so I overlooked the fact that I could no longer see my feet! I’m exaggerating a little bit there.

Anyway, I can laugh about it now because I trained like a warrior this past summer doing complexes, bodyweight and core circuit training, heavy bag drills, trail running, and carries.

I burned off what was left of my gut, and strengthened my core and weak points. In addition to that I had been rehabbing my injuries over the past year or so and have also healed my back and shoulder injuries about 95%. I’m still working on correcting my posture though, but I’m seeing improvements.

My waist measures 32 inches and the scale now reads 155 lbs at 10%. Yes, that’s on the “normal” setting!

Lesson Learned # 4: The scale is a valuable tool, but the mirror doesn’t lie.

There’s so much information out there on how to make a successful body transformation that it’s hard to know who to believe or where to place your trust. Most of it is terrible misinformation and even harmful to your long term health.

It’s very easy to get confused, especially as a hardgainer or ectomorph seeking to build muscle. I know because I’ve been that ectomorph. I’ve literally spent years weeding through all of the differing and opposing views. The problem is everybody has a different view!

One important thing I’ve realized is that there are many different paths up the mountain. Each path has its own difficulties and challenges and it’s own positives and negatives. It’s easy to get lost when we walk around aimlessly, trying to find our own way to the top.

The wise traveler seeks out a knowledgeable and experienced guide (or several) that has already reached the summit and asks him or her to lead the way. Personally, I like to learn from many different sources and approaches.

So after years of frustration, I decided to learn the principles of body transformation once and for all. I bought tons of programs, ebooks, and courses on how to build muscle as a skinny guy. Many of the better ones are featured on this very site. I love the internet!

I’ve been reading, learning, and searching for the principles that each program has in common. Only the details change from program to program, but I noticed that the underlying principles always remained the same. Once you know the principles you know what truly works.

Lesson Learned # 5: Learn the principles from those who have walked the path before you.

One thing I am is persistent. I refuse to quit. I refuse to give up. I know that I can succeed as long as I can keep going forward and apply what I learn from each mistake and failure I experience.

It may take some of us longer to reach our goals, but each of us is unique and has a different set of problems and difficulties to work through and overcome.

One thing to recognize is that only a fool keeps repeating his mistakes over and over. A smart man or woman will learn from his or her mistakes and make insightful changes. However, a true wise person will learn from other’s mistakes and make the most rapid progress in life.

For many years, I was a fool, repeating the same mistakes over and over. I think most people would have given up by now, but not me. I’m stubborn that way. I don’t think I can yet claim to be a wise man, but I’m definitely learning from my mistakes and the mistakes of others. Are you?

I want you to know that it’s okay to make mistakes, we all do. Mistakes and failure are a part of the learning process of life. Failure is simply put, an illusion. Never let it be anything more than that. Never be afraid to fail. The reality is that the most successful people in the world are often those who have failed the most.

If you want something bad enough, never give up. Keep going until you succeed.

Lesson Learned # 6: You never truly fail, you only quit trying.

Thanks to the many experts and coaches featured on this website, I can safely say I know more about body transformation than 90% of the people in the world. Yet, knowing is only half the battle, as G.I. Joe taught me as a child.

I’m not saying that I’m an expert and that I know it all (far from it), but I KNOW what I need to do. Now I just need to DO IT. I realize now that the missing ingredient for me has always been APPLICATION.

Did you get that? That right there is the key to success in life: The Application of Knowledge.

Why oh why didn’t G.I. Joe tell me about the other half of the battle? :)

It’s like Vince said in his No Nonsense Muscle Building Book, and I’m paraphrasing here: “I KNOW are the two most harmful words in the English language. You do not know until YOU DO.”

It’s easy to understand the principles behind a concept. Grasping the principles is a very important component, but the MOST important thing is being able to put those principles into ACTION.

That my friend is also the biggest challenge of transforming your body and your life!

We are creatures of habit and our habits become so ingrained in us that summoning the effort, desire, will, and energy to change them is more than most people can bear. However, if you truly want to make a transformation in this lifetime, you must find it within yourself to apply all that you are learning.

Lesson Learned # 7: Knowledge isn’t power, until it is has been applied.

We live in a cause and effect universe. If you understand the cause of something you can determine the effect or results you’ll get.

The formula looks like this:
Beliefs >>> Thoughts >>> Feelings >>> Actions >>> Experience

Many people “believe” that the external world is the overiding influence on our lives. In other words, they “believe” that their circumstances are creating the way they feel. The reason someone is (feeling) sad, is because X (experience) happened to them. It seems logical, but is it really true?

What scientists are now discovering is that it is our internal world, the world of our beliefs that are actually the initial and overiding cause of what we experience. In other words, what we “believe”, “think”, and “feel” determine how we act and thus how we experience life. (see the formula above)

So, knowing this the question we need to ask ourselves is… Do I have the right beliefs?

It was my lack of belief in my own abilities that allowed me to give in to fear and doubt for many years. This cycle had repeated itself many times over and the truth is that I could have achieved a lot of my goals by now if I had eradicated these limiting beliefs.

It was these limiting beliefs that were secretly sabotaging my efforts in the gym.

I had the belief that I was a hardgainer. I had the belief that I truly didn’t deserve to succeed. I had the belief that no matter what I did I still couldn’t gain muscle. I had the belief that my injuries were holding me back. I had the belief that my genetics where to blame.

These were beliefs that were circulating underneath my conscious thoughts. It wasn’t until I started eliminating these negative beliefs that I started making progress in all areas of my life.

Lesson Learned # 8: Your beliefs are the ultimate determinant of your results.

Many people would have you believe that your life is preordained or predestined and there’s nothing you can do to change your destiny. Others would have you believe that your life is simply a matter of chance or luck. Well, neither of these is accurate, but if you “believe” them then they will be true for you. That’s how powerful belief is!

What I’m here to tell you is that the outcome of your life is a result of what YOU believe to be true for you and what you know or feel deep in your heart.

If you have a very strong dream, then you should follow it. Make it happen. Realize that you are 100% responsible for how your life turns out. It’s up to you and only you.

Realize that no one is going to come along and save you. You must save yourself. You are responsible for every single thing that you experience in life. That’s right… the good, the bad, and the ugly.

When I think back over the last fourteen years of working out, many of the worst experiences in my life (the failures, the injuries, etc.) have turned out to be my greatest gifts and teachers. I know that I am responsible for everything that I had to go through. I brought these experiences on myself, so that I could learn from them.

The secret that I didn’t recognize then is that in every moment of adversity there lays a hidden opportunity.

It is through struggle that we grow stronger. It is through overcoming resistance that the muscle grows larger. It is through the pain of sadness that we learn the pleasure of joy.

You are the creator of your world. Now take responsibility for making it what you want it to be. Choose wisely!

Lesson Learned # 9: You must take 100% responsibility for everything that happens to you.

For many years I was stuck in my ways. I only cared about myself and what I wanted. I thought I knew it all and had this whole thing called “life” figured out. I had closed my mind and wasn’t willing to really listen to other people’s views, opinions or advice.

I wasn’t willing to learn, grow, and change. I wasn’t learning the lessons life was trying to teach me and so round and round I went. Ever wondered why you keep experiencing similar frustrations over and over again in your life? It’s because the lessons we need to learn will keep repeating themselves until we finally decide to learn them.

The sooner you learn the lessons, the sooner you will meet with success in whatever you do. Our survival is based on this. It is how human evolution works.

Speaking of evolution, many times you’ll often hear “Only the strong survive.” In other circles you’ll hear “Brains over brawn.” So, which is it? Which characteristic ensures a species survival up the evolutionary ladder, strength or intelligence?

Here’s the answer by the man himself, Charles Darwin:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

In the end it is those who are willing to learn, grow, and change who will be able to adapt to anything life throws at them. This is both the secret to our evolution and the key to making a successful body and life transformation.

Lesson Learned # 10: Keep an open mind, learn, grow and always embrace change.

These are several of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the last fourteen years. If you’re smart you’ll take them to heart. If not, you’ll probably have to learn them the hard way like I did, that is if you haven’t already. And that’s okay too. Sometimes experience is our best teacher. It may take twice as long, but the lessons seem to stick that way.

Brandon

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About the Author:

Body Transformation Part I: A Window Into My Past

Brandon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:35:59 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.”
–Tony Robbins

“Study the past, if you would divine the future.”
–Confucius

First of all, I would like to thank all of you who have been following along on the blog and who have signed up for The Way to Mass E-class. Cory and I have been working hard to provide you with quality information from our own experiences, as well as, from the experiences of some of the top physique transformation coaches in the world.

In our effort to do JUST THAT we’ve decided to make some changes in our approach. I’m going to be making some changes to the blog (for starters) that I think will be an improvement over the way I’ve been posting.

I’m fairly new to blogging (this is my first blog!) So at first I was approaching this in a linear fashion almost like writing a book. My plan was to talk about mindset, then training, then nutrition, then recovery. However, I don’t think that’s the best plan and use of this amazing resource.

I have a lot to teach from each aspect of the Four Pillars of Rapid Body Transformation and to keep from rambling on one topic too long, I’m going to be covering all four pillars simultaneously. One week I may pick mindset, another week may be training, then nutrition, and you get the idea.

I’m also going to personally show you how to apply all of this information by doing another body transformation over the next six months (in real time) and posting the progress right here on this blog from week to week. You can follow along with me or even start your own transformation using the tips and principles revealed.

I will talk more about this in the coming posts. Before I get into all of the details of things to come, I want to give you a little look into my past.

My Past Attempts at Body Transformation

I started out like many of you guys. I was a true hardgainer with ectomorph genetics. When I was eighteen years old I weighed 130lbs at about 8-9% body fat. I stood at 5′11” tall and still do.

I trained for a couple years making very little progress following the typical bodybuilder approach to training. I had some beginner’s gains, but nothing to get too excited about. I had Arnold’s book, used the muscle magazines, spent hundreds of dollars on supplements (probably more like thousands), and trained my butt off six days a week.

At that time there was no hardgainers that I was aware of who had overcame their scrawny genetics. I didn’t even understand that as an ectomorph I needed to train in a different manner than what I was doing. I thought who better than Arnold to show me the way to mass!

With no coach or knowledge of the proper training methods for my ectomorph body type I was left frustrated. Yet, I was determined to transform my body, so I pressed on… literally.

About a year into training I hurt my lower back doing bent-over rows (Arnold style) with more weight than I could handle. I was couch bound for about a week before I recovered. It started to dawn on me that I just couldn’t train like Arnie!

I must have really tweaked something because I experienced severely painful muscle spasms and problems with my back off on and for several years after that. Let me tell you something…. you do NOT want back pain. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. It’s very crippling and debilitating.

Back Pain Sucks!

In retrospect, I was sort of clueless because I didn’t understand that I needed to back off once in a while. All the magazines I read kept telling me “you gotta train heavy, train to failure, no pain no gain.” While there is some truth to that, I never remember reading anything about taking “deload weeks” and backing off every so often to let your muscles, joints, and ligaments recover.

Well, turns out I was reading the wrong stuff, but then again many people are.

I guess that’s where having a knowledgeable coach comes into play. Yet, I wasn’t an athlete or anything. I wasn’t training for any sports. I didn’t have anyone guiding me or helping me. I just wanted to gain some muscle and improve my physique. I knew what to do… I mean how hard could it be?

Little did I know my “know-it-all” attitude was a part of the whole problem…

I thought I knew what I was doing form wise, and training wise, but in actuality there was a lot I didn’t know. In fact, like most teenagers, I didn’t know squat! No offense, if you’re a teenager.

Here’s some further insight into my muscle-building dilemma. You see I was also big into partying as well. I sang and played guitar and dreamed of being a rock star. So, I did all of the typical rock star stuff minus all the money and girls.

That basically means staying up late, partying, lots of drinking, smoking, drugs, fighting and all that crazy, catabolic (muscle destroying) stuff… oh yeah, and making music too!

My lifestyle was anything but healthy back in those days, but hey I was lifting weights, so I was bound to get huge, right?

Wrrraaaawwwng!

Yet, everything happens for a reason though. You see it was my crazy lifestyle that would eventually lead me to a love and dedication to training, health, nutrition, and continual learning. Little did I know it would even lead to a spiritual awakening.

It’s in this strange way that our greatest pain and suffering can lead us to a greater understanding of life and to the happiness and fulfillment that we all long for.

That being said, one day I woke up dehydrated, hung over with alcohol poisoning, dry heaving, unsure of how I even got home. As bits and pieces of last night flashed through my aching head, I suddenly realized it must have been a bad, bad night.

Take note that this wasn’t too far off from my usual weekend routine back then. I had many close calls and went through a bunch of alcohol induced complications in my late teen years caused by excessive binge drinking.

Drinking was like an escape for me and as strange as it sounds, it was one thing that I was good at. I even had a cool nick-name “The Vodka King.” I built up a huge tolerance and could drink a lot. I even took pride in being able to outdrink other people, I guess I thought it proved that I was more of a man or something.

In fact, many nights I sat around playing drinking games in an effort to make the other guys puke. Most of the time I would win, but when I think about it winning came at a high price. I usually paid for it the rest of the weekend.

I spent many crazy nights doing wild, stupid and crazy things, like car surfing for example. Sounds like fun, until you fall off and land on your head. One night I even passed out in a ditch.

Yet this morning I wasn’t bleeding out of my head or anything… but I knew something was different. I felt like I had died or at the least should have died.

I remember looking in the mirror that morning, trembling and shaking. I was pale, extremely skinny and I felt like death. It was in that moment that I realized I had to make some serious changes or I was going to literally end up drinking myself to death. I mean did I really want to go out like a rock star before even becoming one?

In fact, here’s a picture of me from around that time. I looked something like this that morning, but probably worse (if that’s possible):

It wasn’t until I talked to some of my friends the next day that I found out how bad it really was. My brother told me I didn’t even recognize him and that I tried to punch in him the face. One of my friends told me I had almost died of asphyxiation (suffocation from choking on your own vomit- think Jimmy Hendrix.)

There’s a lot more that went down, yet we’ll save the details of this story for the movie! Honestly, I can’t even remember all of the details.

Luckily for me, my friend was still awake playing video games that night and was able to turn me over, clear out my passage way and literally save my life.

“Thanks Bro, by the way, sorry I threw up in your face!”

Yes, that’s how I rewarded him… I threw up in his face. That’s right ladies and gentlemen I was a class act back then, a real stand-up guy.

My point in mentioning this was only so you could get a better glimpse of where I was both physically, mentally, and spiritually at that time and the huge hurdles I would have to clear along the way. This was a rock bottom moment in my life and many moons ago! So, lets move on…

It was that day, that I decided to change my life and start working out more seriously. I can honestly say that lifting weights saved my life. It was the catalyst that allowed me to make the changes I needed to make in my life and start the shift away from abusing alcohol, drugs, and an unhealthy lifestyle.

To make a really long story a little bit shorter, let me just say that I eventually went on to gain thirty pounds of muscle and escape the downward spiral of death that was sucking me under. I wish I could say it was a rapid transformation, but self-evolution can be a slow process sometimes.

However, if one is intelligent and keenly aware they can learn to speed up the evolutionary process and overcome any situation or set of circumstances that may be keeping him or her down.

The biggest things holding me back were my negative mindset and outlook on life and the contradictory lifestyle habits that I developed. Neither of these things are easy to change and more often than not may follow you detrimentally throughout your life.

I’ve had to learn a lot of life lessons the hard way and the struggle has definitely made me a stronger person.

I have no regrets about the past. Sure, I would do things a little differently if given the opportunity, but the past made me who I am today. If I were to change anything, who knows if I would be the same person I am today. I’m just grateful I survived and I hope to share what I’ve learned with you here so that you can learn from my mistakes and achieve your own goals in record time.

Learn From the Past and then Let it Go

I encourage you to take a look at your own life. What has the past taught you? What mistakes were turning points in your own life? Finally, what lessons do you think YOU still have to learn?

Our pasts (if we let them) can follow us forever and have either a positive or negative effect on our present moment reality. The truth is the past is only a memory that has been stored within our subconscious mind.

Even though the past is over and done with, the experiences we have gone through have deeply affected every aspect of our lives for better or worse. Our pasts have shaped our personalities, our relationships, and even how we handle our lives in the present.

The most important thing for us to realize is this: the past has no control over our lives, except the control we allow it to have.

Once we become aware of this fact and take full responsibility for our own lives we become the true creators of our own future. The past may have made you who you are today, but it’s up to you whether you stay that way or not.

If you want to transform your body or your life just know that you have the full capacity to do so. The past is just a trail you leave behind, it’s like the wake of a boat, or your foot prints in the sand. It’s not who you are, it’s only who you were and where you have been.

Nothing more and nothing less.

In any given moment we can choose to learn from our past and decide to let it go. If we don’t let the past go then it can become a huge burden to our present lives. If we allow this to happen, then we let our past determine our future as well.

The past is but a memory and the future is but a dream… the present moment is our only true point of power.

It’s vitally important to remember the illusory nature of time. The past and future can seem so very real, but our lives are really just a series of present moments, one after the next. Thus, the key to transforming your body is to harness the power of each moment as it is happening.

As the spiritual teachers remind us: Be Here Now.

It may seem like common sense or even overly simplistic advice, but it is a very powerful truth that many of us do not practice at all.

In fact, many of us are trying to escape the present moment. We want to get to the future where our lives will be all that we’ve imagined and all of our dreams will have come true.

Yet this future never comes, because when the future does come it does so as the present moment. In order to create the future we desire we must harness the power of now, the only true moment there is. To squander this moment is to throw away our future.

Hope this makes sense to you.

This wraps up a brief look into my body transformation past. In a couple of days I’m going to post a deeper look into my present situation and share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the past fourteen years of my life.

I believe these lessons will give you a good idea of what it takes to make a successful body transformation and help you avoid some of the mistakes I experienced.

Brandon

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About the Author:

Brandon Cook is creator of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach people with the ectomorph body type the laws and scientific principles for building a classic, muscular and functional physique.

The #1 Tip to Transforming Your Body and Life… RIGHT NOW!!!

Brandon — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:33:11 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“Learning is a behavior change- if your behavior doesn’t change- you did not learn.” -Bedros Keuilian

“Courage is the ability to act on limited knowledge.”
-Bedros Keuilian (In charge of a fitness marketing website)

Wow! What a great trip to Orlando, Florida this week. I’m still buzzing and high from being surrounded with so many like-minded and successful personal trainers and entreprenuers.

Before I give you the #1 tip I learned, let me tell you about this weekend.

On Thursday Cory and I headed down to Florida along with our Father to attend the Fitness Info Summit. This was a seminar hosted by Bedros Keuilian on how to succeed in fitness, business, and life and how to become a succesful Infoprenuer (information+entreprenuer.)

Three hundred personal trainers from around the world came to absorb the energy and wisdom of Bedros Keuilian and his panel of top six-and seven figure Fitness Professionals. Guys like Vince Delmonte, Craig Ballantyne, Steve Hochman, and Chris McCombs.

These guys DEFINITELY know their stuff and were very generous and humble guys!

Bedros was constantly throwing out plastic eggs filled with money into the audience and everybody was going crazy to get some. One guy jumped off of a chair, almost knocked over the table and landed on me… I literally had to keep him from hitting the floor!

I lost count of how much money he was throwing out to us! He was also giving away tons of t-shirts.

Steve Hochman gave away one full year of mindset coaching (valued at over $5K) to the first action taker who bomb-rushed the stage and grabbed the certificate. The whole panel of experts and crowd was just feeding off of the great energy there.

Cory and I also got to meet one of featured experts on Hardgainer Muscle Building, Vince Delmonte. Vince, as you probably know is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building, which is the highly successful training program specifically designed for Hardgainers.

Cory, Vince, and Brandon

Vince was giving away one of his $130 8 Disc DVD training packages. This is the only product of Vince’s that I haven’t personally purchased.

I have a great story about this… right before Vince drew from hundreds of business cards to determine the winner… I used my visualization technique, which I’ll soon cover in Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind series.

I simply visualized in my mind that Vince would call my name, I imagined how awesome it would feel to win it, then I saw myself walking up there to get it and thanking Vince.

Seconds later, Vince dug a card out and called out my name! I’m telling you this S#!! works… it’s a NO BS Science! After I got the DVD’s, I sat down and told Cory. He said he was visualizing that I would win as well, since he didn’t put his business card in the bowl. I can only conclude that this amplified the effect and guaranteed me the winning spot!

Okay, What’s This Got to Do With YOU?

Well, we came out of there with so much info that it’s going to take a few days to go through it and absorb it. However, here are a couple tips I would specifically like to share with you. These mindset tips will totally change your life and help you transform yourself into the ideal person you know you can be… if YOU APPLY THEM.

The #1 Tip to Transforming Your Body and Life: Control Your Inner and Outer Environment

Bedros asked the audience “Do you know why people fail?”

He then said there are two reasons:

1. The thoughts that occupy your mind
2. The people you surround yourself with

Let’s look at the first one:

I’ve been hammering away on this mindset thing (for good reason) and really pushing you to take this to heart. If you are not thinking the right way, or the right thoughts that will empower you, inspire you, and literally build yourself up… you won’t take the right actions that will lead you to the results you desire.

Our thoughts lead us to feel a certain way. Our feelings lead us to ACT a certain way. It’s your thoughts and beliefs that will literally drive you into action or inaction, depending on the type and quality of the thoughts and beliefs you entertain.

For example, my belief in myself and my own success caused me to act and purchase a ticket to this seminar. It led Cory and I to drive to Florida to spend the day networking with these guys and find out what we can learn from them and how to emulate them.

My thoughts lead me into the gym every day, lead me to better nutritional choices, drive me to meditate, train, read, learn, grow, post these blogs, and empower me to share ALL that I know with all of you.

Without the right thoughts and beliefs, I would have never even bothered. I wouldn’t have the desire or the strong reasons WHY I intend to succeed and help others succeed… I wouldn’t be willing to put forth the effort it takes.

Control your inner environment by selecting your thoughts carefully. Examine your beliefs and ask yourself what beliefs are working, which ones empower me, which ones should I keep. Then write down all the beliefs that holding you back, that are disempowering you, and keeping you from achieving your true potential.

After you’ve decided which ones to keep and which ones to discard, look over the list once again. Specifically look at the disempowering beliefs. Cross them out and change those beliefs into empowering ones.

For example if you wrote one of your beliefs as: I don’t know how to train properly and don’t fully understand the nutrition principles. Change that to “I am learning how to train properly. I seek out the principles of healthy, muscle-building nutrition.”

Look over these new empowering beliefs often.

Control Your Outer Environment

You become like the people you surround yourself with the most. Take a look at the five people you are around the most. Now, realize that you will become the average of these five people. Does that excite you?… scare you?… empower you?… or make you want to cry?

It’s true… the people you invite into your life will have a tremendous impact on you, whether you realize this or not. You have got to surround yourself with people that inspire you to embetter yourself.

Attend a seminar, event, or workshop on something your interested in

Go out and make friends with people that have done, or are doing the things that you would like to do. Seek out people that know more than you, that have walked the path before you and can encourage you to succeed.

One theme that all of the experts at the Fitness Info Summit echoed was that they used to be like all of us. They found success by incorporating these principles into their lives and they consistently reminded us that we could do the same.

Yet, all of them insisted that we take action NOW! As Vince said at the event, “You need to get a degree in G.S.D (Getting $h!! Done.)

The good news is you have TOTAL control over your inner and outer environments. You can choose or change the thoughts that are going through your head every day. You can choose or change the people you spend the most time with. These factors are under your control and influence.

Choose your beliefs and friends wisely… Start right now, for they WILL determine who you become!

Brandon

——————————————————
About the Author:

Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind- Part III

Brandon — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:13:03 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“Your mind is your instrument. Learn to be its master and not its slave. Meditation is the gateway, through which you arrive to the world of freedom.” - Remez Sasson

“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.” – Buddha

In Part I of this series we began our exploration of the subconscious mind and took a brief look into what neuroscientists are learning about the ultimate potential of the human mind.

In Part II, we examined how our beliefs are impressed upon the subconscious and how they can affect who and what we ultimately become.

In this third installment, we are going to clarify how the subconscious mind can help us achieve our physique goals and learn how we can use meditation to access the gateway into the subconscious mind.

Why Should I Bother With the Whole Subconscious Mind Thing?

In the last part of this series I’ll reveal the techniques by which you may reprogram your subconscious mind for success and completely destroy any limiting beliefs you may have picked up over the years. Yet, before I tell you HOW I would like to briefly discuss WHY from a bodybuilding or physique transformation view point.

When you understand the WHY’s you’re more likely to take action on the HOW’s.

First of all, we just learned that the subconscious mind is largely responsible for all of your conditioned behaviors, habits, and personality.

It is also important to realize that transforming your body takes a great amount of:

• Discipline to commit to intense training and a healthy nutrition regimen

• Determination to achieve and to do what’s required to achieve your goals

• Persistence to continue this pursuit from day to day, week to week, and month to month

• Courage to face the challenges and pain of lifting heavy weights

• Faith or belief in yourself and your ability to make this dream a reality

• Sacrifice and your willingness to delay instant gratification for your long term fulfillment

• Desire and the intense passion to transform your body and your life for the better

• Motivation to do what needs to be done despite how you feel at the time

Now ask yourself the following questions:

1.Do you possess all of these qualities?

2.Are these qualities fully developed in you or could you use a little more discipline, a little more motivation, and a dash of courage?

3.How would your body and life be different if these qualities were fully developed in you?

4.Are there any negative qualities, habits, or beliefs that you possess that may interfere with your goal to transform your body and life?

5.If there was a technique that you could use to instill positive qualities into your mind and release the negative qualities from your mind… are YOU willing to incorporate this technique into your daily routine?

Seriously think about this for a moment and then move on to the next reason.

Secondly, and just as importantly, we also learned that the subconscious mind is responsible for handling all of the autonomic functions of the body; like breathing, heart beat, digestion, immune system. This also includes:

• Hormone secretion (think Testosterone, Growth Hormone, Cortisol and Insulin.)

• Cellular activity (think hypertrophy or growth of muscle cells and the shrinking of fat cells.)

Now ask yourself the following questions:

1.What if it was possible to slightly influence your subconscious mind to release more testosterone or growth hormone and to produce less cortisol (a muscle eating hormone)?

2.How could this help your body to achieve the goals you’ve set?

3.What if it was possible to use your mind to influence your body to increase hypertrophy and muscle growth or to burn fat or to recover quicker?

4.Are you beginning to see the possibilities here?

I know this may sound impossible or far fetched, but is it really? We’ve all heard of meditation, correct?

There have been more than 600 scientific studies, which have been published in over 100 leading scientific journals concerning the IMMENSE BENEFITS of Meditation.

Here are just a few interesting findings that relate to our discussion here:

• Brain scans show that meditation shifts activity in the prefrontal cortex (behind the forehead) from the right hemisphere to the left. People who have a negative disposition tend to be right-prefrontal oriented; left-prefrontals have more enthusiasm, more interests, relax more, and tend to be happier.

• Promotes Deep rest- as measured by decreased metabolic rate, lower heart rate, and reduced work load of the heart.

• Lowered levels of cortisol and lactate- two chemicals associated with stress and thus muscle tissue breakdown.

• Reduction of free radicals- unstable oxygen molecules that can cause tissue damage.

• Meditation increases circulation in beginning meditators by 30% and in experienced meditators by as much as 65% and therefore improving nutrient flow to the muscles.

“The mind leads the body. Where the mind leads, the body will follow.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that all of a sudden you’ll see steroid-like gains if you start meditating.

What I’m suggesting is that if you could stimulate your body even in the slightest to keep testosterone and growth hormone levels high, cortisol levels low, and hypertrophy and healing happening within the muscle cells… then baby… you’re doing something amazing!

Remember, as an ectomorph your genetics are not stacked in your favor.

1.Your body doesn’t synthesize protein as well as it could.

2.Your body doesn’t produce as much testosterone as it should.

3.Your body doesn’t release as much growth hormone as you need.

4.Your body doesn’t have the greatest neuromuscular communication.

5.Your body doesn’t recover as quickly as other body types.

In other words, you need to be doing everything you “naturally” can just to bring your scrawny butt up to a level playing field with the big boys. Capiche?

If meditating can help make you relax, which can lower your cortisol levels (a muscle eating hormone), reduce free radicals, and improve blood circulation to your muscles and thus supplying more vital nutrients in helping them to grow… why wouldn’t you incorporate that into your training?

We’re not even talking about ALL the other scientific benefits of meditation here… or even the mental or spiritual benefits!

If you haven’t been practicing meditation, then consider this your wake up call!

I don’t call this the Awakened Warrior Blog for nothing!

The subconscious mind plays a powerful role in the functionality and sustainability of your body. The experiences that have been impressed upon your subconscious mind have shaped your life, beliefs, behavior, and your personality… these experiences have made you who you are.

This is how your past can have an influential effect on your present and hence your future as well.

The more you understand about life, consciousness, and the mind/body/spirit connection, the more you can learn how to harness their power for your own gain, growth, success and personal development. This includes your quest to transform your physique!

Since I started talking about meditation, I might as well continue discussing it here. Let’s look at how we can use meditation to help relax and heal the body (from stress, training, and everday life.)

It’s a great way to clear the mind from unnecessary thought, and open the gateway into the subconscious mind.

Using Meditation to Access the Subconscious

I have harped on the fact that our thoughts create our reality and directly influence our experience of life many times now. I do so mainly because it is such an important insight to grasp for body and life transformation.

Yet, in many cases we may understand the concept intellectually but fail to truly seize the wisdom and application of the notion.

Likewise, one may fully understand the concepts of how to gain muscle mass, but if we fail to apply what we know, then there will be no biological change.

Thus, knowing that your thoughts create your reality is of little use to you, unless you take full control of your mind and think the thoughts that will lead you to action and therefore your desires.

When what you KNOW and what you DO become congruent with each other, then you will have more than knowledge… you will have WISDOM!

It has been estimated that the average person thinks over 60,000 thoughts in a day and a lot of those thoughts are old, repetitive thoughts that they have been thinking for quite some time.

How many people do you believe are truly conscious of all of these thoughts that they are thinking?

How many people do you believe have consciously chosen the majority of thoughts that enter their mind?

Many people have expressed a problem with not being able to stop thinking. They have problems concentrating and staying focused. They lie awake at night, thoughts pouring through their heads… worries, fears, tasks needing done, anticipation of things to come, you get the idea.

They have lost control of their mind. Their mind is now controlling them. So, many people turn to the latest drug they see on television and search for the solution in a pill.

“The biggest disease of the mind is over-thinking… Thinking too much is like eating too much. The heaviness makes it impossible to remain light and flexible.”

Are you in control of your mind? Remember, the mind is nothing but a tool for us to use. We should be the ones in control of it, harnessing its power for realizing our intended purposes.

Yet a large portion of humanity has become slaves to their mind. The mind uses them, wears them down, wears them out.

In fact, the sad reality is that most people are so enslaved by their minds that they think the mind is who they are. They are completely identified with it, with their thoughts and their beliefs.

They have become like sleepwalkers, lost in the illusion of the dream.

Yet this is the natural process of our evolution. You must first be asleep… in order to awaken! When we’re born into this body we were born into an illusion and many of us have not reached the level of consciousness where we see this illusion for what it is.

You are not your thoughts and beliefs! They are simply passing forms of energy like the weather or the clouds.

Likewise you are not your mind or brain. These too are passing forms of energy. Even your body will break down and one day dissolve back into the earth from which it came.

You are the essence of which is beyond all forms. What you are is the consciousness in which these things may exist. You are the field of awareness in which these thoughts may transpire, but you are not the thoughts.

Thoughts are simply recycled information and likewise your body is recycled earth. Thoughts, like your brain and mind, are simply tools of creation.

This is where meditation can be employed. You can use meditation to take back control of your mind, to clear the mind of uncontrollable thoughts and still the water, so to speak.

Meditation can also be used to access the subconscious and tap into the deeper wisdom that lies beyond the realm of our conscious mind.

By making use of meditation and integrating it into our daily routine we can effectively reduce the number of thoughts we are thinking each day by stilling the mind.

This then opens us up to a whole new world that is free from the often negative and repetitive thoughts that before cluttered our consciousness and muddled our perception of reality.

By eliminating these unnecessary and excessive thought patterns we also improve the efficacy of the other techniques we will utilize for influencing and harnessing the power our subconscious mind.

When one is thinking considerably less random, and monotonous thoughts, the thoughts that they have consciously chosen to think will have more of an impact on transforming their reality.

Meditation is a simple practice. However, just because it is simple does not mean it is easy.

Your mind will try everything in its power to distract you, to convince you that this is a waste of time, to lure you back into the unconscious thought patterns that are keeping you trapped and enslaved by it.

It will yell, scream, and plead with you to abandon this stupid meditation practice:

“Why waste your time just sitting here, when you could be doing something?” it will rationalize.

In most people’s cases it will win, but for the few that continue to push onward… their lives will never be the same.

At first, you may not notice much difference, but after some time and dedication to the discipline (not as long as you think) you will notice a new quality to your consciousness.

You will have greater focus, clarity, peacefulness, and insightfulness arising within your everyday experience.

This ability to become fully present is what is referred to as mindfulness in Zen and you will begin to have a deeper understanding of your true nature. You will begin seeing things, not as you think they are, but as they really are- beyond the filter of your thoughts, beliefs, personal opinions and biases.

In a world that was once dead to you, there will be breathed a fresh breath of life. In this moment, you will awaken and you will never be a sleepwalker again.

Does that sound crazy? If so don’t worry… it will all make sense one day!

The Purest Form of Meditation

We will be using meditation to prepare, relax, and heal the body and the mind from our physical training, as well as, to further develop the proper mindset. Meditation is also being included to prime our subconscious mind for the use and application of our other subconscious reprogramming techniques.

Meditation works well in unison with the other techniques like creative visualization and affirmations. It also helps to put you in the proper brain wave frequency (alpha state) that is most conducive to these subconscious programming methods.

It is important to note though, that meditation is quite effective on its own for body and life transformation. When used with the other techniques we will cover in this series I believe that they have a synergistic effect on each other.

There are many different techniques on how to meditate and many are effective, however I prefer to use the ancient Zen Buddhist form of meditation.

I believe this is the purest form of meditation and is in alignment with the whole point of meditation to begin with, which is to clear the mind of thought while becoming highly alert and aware.

Most of the other meditation techniques are simply devices used to help one get to the point of pure meditation.

The practice is rather simple. Find a comfortably place to sit, kneel, or lie down (I prefer kneeling in Seiza, a Japanese sitting posture where your butt rests on your calves/ankles.) You may close your eyes or leave them open.

Maintain an erect and upright posture, if sitting or kneeling.

Then simply breathe, focusing on your breath. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathe deeply into your abdomen and observe or notice the rise and fall of your belly. Breathe deeply, but naturally.

Clear your mind and just focus on being there fully. Concentrate on your breathing. Listen intently. No need to label what you hear, just notice it. You may look with your eyes, but again do not label anything. Just be an observer. Be still. Be silent. Just be.

Embracing this stillness and clearing the mind of all thought will help develop a calm, relaxed presence that will benefit you in all aspects of your life.

This mindfulness is the power to be intensely present at whatever it is you are doing or whatever situation may arise. To be one with the moment… this is Zen, or in other words to be fully conscious.

If a thought arises, and they will, do not grasp or cling to them. Just let them go. If you suddenly notice that you’re thinking, immediately stop and return to focusing on your breathing.

Continue meditating in this way for as long as wish. Start with 5 minutes twice a day. Raise it to 10, 15, or even 30+ minutes twice a day. The choice is yours really. I have found it beneficial with as little as 5 minutes a couple times a day. Start wherever you can.

Eventually the goal is to remain in this heightened mind state as you go throughout your day.

Give this practice some time and let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Meditation can really benefit your life and your training if taken seriously. Whenever I have practiced the martial arts, meditation was always a part of the training and definitely helps you to get in the zone. Your workouts will become more effective.

Many times I will meditate after a good workout, the sweat pouring out of my body as I sit in silent meditation, resting in the moment and triggering the healing process to begin.

One you get the hang of it, try adding moving meditation. I like to walk my dogs, clear my mind and become fully present. I focus on all of my senses, looking deeply into the trees, the clouds, sky, and grass.

I open my ears to any sounds, the birds, insects, wind, footsteps, distant cars on the highway, a train passing, and dogs barking.

I don’t listen and go “oh there’s a dog barking”, rather I just listen… I just hear the bark. The idea is simply to experience the moment fully without judging it, labeling it, or otherwise interpreting it in anyway.

Meditation is the first technique to harnessing the power of your subconscious mind and priming it for the other techniques to follow. Put it into practice immediately and you will find that the transformation has begun.

Next I will cover six characteristics of the subconscious mind that will allow us to communicate successfully with our subconscious and impress our desires, goals, and intentions upon it more effectively.

Knowing the ways in which the subconscious operates will improve the efficacy of the programming methods I will reveal in the final part of this series.

…to be continued!

Brandon Cook

——————————————————
About the Author:

© 2009 Hardgainer Muscle Building. All rights in all media reserved. You may reprint this article so long as the article and author bio are reprinted intact and all links are made live. This article may never be sold individually or as part of a package

The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of: Nick Nilsson’s Arm Program

Brandon — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:02:19 +0000

The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of

Review

So what’s the first thing you think of when you think of “arm training” – if you’re like a lot of trainers, you immediately think barbell curls and pushdowns. Or dumbell curls and dips, etc. The “standard” exercises, right?

Well, it’s time to think outside the box! Or as Nick Nilsson (the author of “The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of”) puts it…time to make a NEW box and think outside of THAT one!

“The Best Arm Exercises” is a very interesting book…68 unique exercises for the bicep, triceps and forearms ONLY. This thing has NO fluff – it’s just packed with training information.

So Why a book on JUST Arms?

That’s the first question Nick adressed. After all, the trend right now is more towards functional and “total body” styles of training. Direct and/or isolated arm work seems to take a back seat to that type of approach these days.

Basically, is this just for fun or just fluff training?

So here’s his reasoning as to why direct arm training should be done….

1. Direct Arm Training Can be Useful as Assistance Work for the “Big” Exercises

Let’s say your bench press has been stuck in a plateau because you have trouble fully locking the bar out at the top. That top range of motion is a primarily triceps. By directly working the triceps with effective “assistance” exercises, you can immediately see results that carry over to your big movements.

Obviously, any pressing movement is going to have a substantial tricep component. What about biceps? Bicep strength plays an important role in rowing and pulling exercises, like chin-ups, bent-over rows…even deadlifts.

Remember…your body is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

If you’re doing a bench press and your triceps are relatively weaker than your chest, it’s going to LIMIT the amount of weight you can push. By directly strengthening your weak links, you can improve your total strength in the big lifts.

Same for an exercise like chin-ups. Your back may be strong, but if your bicep (or even forearm!) strength limits your training, you’ll never maximize your performance in that exercise.

A targeted application of direct arm training can really make a big difference in your lifting.

And, of course, you need to use EFFECTIVE exercises for this purpose, otherwise you’re wasting your time.

“The Best Arm Exercises” has some EXTREMELY targeted stuff that certainly fits the bill as big exercise “assistance” exercises.

2. Training Variety

Obviously, a book full of 68 new exercises is going to give you a LOT of variety to choose from. Your body thrives on variety and change…you still DO need to maintain a level of consistency to achieve a training effect, but something as simple as a new exercise or a new way of doing something can really spark results.

Nick actually acknowledges this as well – in his own training, he tells me that it’s about 75% “normal” stuff…squats, deadlifts, bench press, that kind of thing. The other 25% is a rotation of the unique exercises you see presented in his books and on his sites.

You really do HAVE to keep some consistency in order to see results – performing random exercises without regard to adaptation just won’t get you anywhere. When I asked Nick about this specific point as it relates to his book, he said…

“Here’s the approach you have to take with this type of resource – take your time with it and pick out a few exercises you want to try. Use them the next time you train arms and see how they work for you. Generally speaking, if an exercise is going to work for you, you’ll feel it pretty quickly. Stick with the ones you get the biggest effect from then gradually work in OTHER exercises on a rotational basis like a continuous audition process at a soap opera.

As good as these exercises are, I’m quite sure there will be ones that don’t work equally as well for everybody. You have to experiment and find out what works best for YOU. Then work it HARD!”

3. Deloading

Let’s say you’ve been training the “Big 3″ lifts (squat, bench, and deadlift) a LOT and for a LONG time. There comes a time when you need to back off and “deload”, reducing your training volume for recovery purposes. If you keep hammering away at heavy exercises, your body breaks down…muscle, connective tissue and nervous system. That’s when injuries happen.

And this is the perfect time to work in some unique exercises like the ones Nick has in his book – you can use this time to build strength in your weaker muscle groups and really target your weak points.

4. Compound Exercises For The Arms

One of the nice things Nick has done with this book is include plenty of compound exercises for the arms…not hard to find for the triceps in the scope of normal exercises (think of dips, close grip bench press, etc.) but generally a bit tougher to find for biceps…it’s usually all curls.

Several of the exercises are variations of pull-ups or rows that make adjustments in setup and/or execution in order to change the focus from back to biceps. They’re VERY simple to execute and WOW do they really have potential.

The real standout exercise in that department is the Nilsson Curl, which can be best described as a chin-up with your forearms braced against a bar set about a foot lower than the one you’re gripping on.

As Nick explains it, this bracing keeps you from being able to pull your body straight up, which normally engages the lats. By blocking your forearms like this, it forces you to pull yourself up and around in an arc with the elbow as the pivot. This is almost ALL biceps (80 to 90%) with assistance being provided by the lats instead of the other way around.

You can actually SEE this exercise in action as one of the sample exercises on Nick’s site for the book. It’s a very cool exercise and it’s a great twist on a classic exercise to really shift the focus to the biceps and work them with a compound exercise.

5. FUN

Yes, arm training IS fun and SHOULD be fun! The real “meat and potatoes” work is done under the squat bar and at the deadlift, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying training those “mirror” muscles from time to time, too.

A few Things That Could Be Improved About the Book…

When you get this book, you’re obviously getting a book about exercises. But One thing that would be a nice addition would be some targeted sample workouts for working those exercises into a program.

These exercises are so unique, that it might be hard some trainers to figure exactly how to best use these in a program.

Nick actually includes several unannounced bonus gifts for people when they pick up the book that will address this exact thing. He wanted to keep it as a surprise, as a way of saying “thanks” but if it’s the lack of programs really shouldn’t be something that should hold you back from getting this book.

The other thing is that there aren’t that many forearm exercises in the book (5 for the forearms as compared to 33 for the biceps and 30 for the triceps). Nick going to be addressing this in updates to the book as he definitely knows the forearm stuff needs to be built on.

Here’s the thing…

When you get the book, you’ll also get free updates for life, so those forearm exercises are going to be something you’ll be getting soon enough…as if the other 63 exercises aren’t plenty to keep going for a long time anyway!

The last thing to be mentioned is that if you’re limited on equipment, there will be a few exercises that you won’t be able to perform…there are a few that require cable machines (though creative use of training bands/elastics would be a good substitute) and a few that require a power rack.

But even with fairly BASIC equipment like a bench and some free weights, you’ll be able to perform the VAST majority of these exercises just fine. Several of them require no equipment at all or things that can very easily be improvised.

CONCLUSION:

Now, if you’ve seen the exercises that Nick has created before, you’ll know exactly what this book is all about…very cool, very effective exercises that will have everybody in your gym coming up and asking you what the heck you’re doing.

These exercises are very well thought out and have a lot of potential both for improving your arms AND for helping improve your “big” exercises through assistance training.

Plus, the exercises are just plain fun!

Nick Nilsson- "The Mad Scientist"

To learn more about this book and to grab your copy right now:

The Best Arm Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of

Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind- Part II

Brandon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:02:24 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” – Louise L. Hay

“People are anxious to improve their circumstances but unwilling to improve themselves, they therefore remain bound.” - James Allen

In Part I of this series we began our exploration of the subconscous mind and took a brief look into what neuroscientists are learning about the ultimate potential of the human mind. In this second installment, we are going to examine how beliefs are impressed upon the subconscious and how they can effect who and what you become.

The Vulnerability of the Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind plays a powerful part in the development of our perception of reality. Yet it is extremely vulnerable to outside influence. This is specifically true when we are young.

You may have heard before that the first five to six years of a child’s life are the most influential in the development of his or her personality, but have you stopped to question why?

The reason is because it’s at this time that the subconscious mind is highly susceptible and influenced by all that it encounters. It has no base of reasoning to distinguish among truth from illusion, fact from fiction, right from wrong, empowering beliefs from disempowering beliefs.

Since the subconscious lacks the ability to distinguish between a truth and a lie at such a young, impressionable age, it must accept everything that it is told as real and valid.

>>> If you’re told you’re stupid… the subconscious internalizes that.

>>> If you’re told that Santa Claus is real…. You believe that (hope I didn’t spoil it for you!)

>>> If you’re told that there are monsters in you’re closet… I bet you’ll be pretty scared at night!

At least until the subconscious gathers enough evidence to realize these are false or inaccurate beliefs.

Because of its great suggestibility during these early years, your values and beliefs are essentially shaped by your parents or those who are around you the most. In fact, in these early years you become almost a fusion or crossbreed of your mom and dad’s beliefs, attitudes, and values… scary, huh?

The subconscious mind is also extremely impressionable to repetition. The more times it experiences a situation or is told something, the more it accepts it to be true.

For example, if a child is repeatedly told “no, you can’t do that” or “you’re so bad” or anything along those lines, he or she may grow up with low confidence or lack of self-esteem.

Why? Because confidence is one’s internal belief in oneself and one’s powers and abilities, while self-esteem is the belief that you are a good person and deserving of success, happiness, and fulfillment.

The repeated negative statements to the child become their deep-seated core beliefs about themselves. They become ingrained below the level of conscious awareness, hence the term subconscious or unconscious beliefs.

Are you starting to realize how your subconscious mind can have a huge impact on your ability to live a happy and fulfilling life?

Let me give you an example from my own life, and most likely from any ectomorph or hardgainer’s life as well. This example can illustrate further how repetition can impact your unconscious beliefs.

Negative and Limiting Subconscious Beliefs

The subconscious mind’s development is not limited to those first few years. It’s constantly recording everything that you encounter, think, believe, hear, feel, learn, experience and are subjected to throughout your entire life. EVERYTHING!

The first five years are the most influential on the development of your core beliefs and your overall personality.

However, all of your childhood and teenage years also have a considerable impact on your values and beliefs about life, about yourself, your abilities, and your sense of self-deservedness. It is these years that shape your beliefs and determine who you will ultimately become.

Yet, it is wonderful to know that with the right attitude, tools, experience and mindset you can reprogram your subconscious mind and even change or take-on a new more desirable personality.

And that’s a beautiful thing, because some of you peeps are really wacked out!

“The Skinny Me”

Okay, back to my example. Now to most people in America this wouldn’t sound like a problem or negative belief at all! A “lucky bastard” is what most people would probably call you. “Stop whining, you’re so lucky! You get to eat whatever you want.” True, but that doesn’t mean that you should!

Yet in spite of all that, many ectomorphic men and women do find their racing fast metabolism and hardgainer genetics to be just that… a problem. A fat man’s dream is a skinny man’s nightmare. It’s all a matter of perspective.

If you happen to be a skinny guy or gal, think back to when you were growing up. How many times has someone called you skinny or implied that you were? Did you internalize this as a positive or negative thing? Did it make you feel good or bad about yourself? As a young man, I didn’t take it as a good thing.

When I was growing up I was never really involved in school sports or athletics. I was more of the “starving artist” type!

Since I am an ectomorph, I had a naturally high metabolism (like many of you.) On top of that, like most of the people in North America, my nutrition wasn’t optimal. So, yeah I was skinny.

People and peers at school began calling me skinny; telling me I was skinny; claiming that I needed to eat more because I was so thin. Bag of bones…You’ve may have heard this all before, so I won’t go into the excruciating details. So anyway… naturally I had to kick their @$$!!! No, I’m just kidding (fighting is bad kids!)

Needless, to say these repetitive comments influenced my subconscious mind and reinforced the limiting belief that I was a skinny person. So, I became even more self-conscious of being skinny.

I would wear long-sleeved shirts, and pants to hide the fact I was skinny, mainly to avoid people pointing it out. It became a part of my identity, the skinny me. I think this had a negative effect on my level of confidence as well.

Now the reality was that I WAS skinny, but since so many people repetitively pointed that out to me it became deeply engrained in my subconscious mind. Being skinny became a part of my self-image.

So much so, that even at the age of 18, after I began eating tons of food, lifting weights, and doing everything I could to become a bigger, more muscular person… that subconscious belief was still there.

So, even after I gained thirty pounds of muscle I still felt skinny and still thought of myself as skinny.

In reality I had went from skinny to a normal or average weight and wasn’t skinny anymore, but that same “skinny me” belief would stick around to haunt me throughout my twenties… even sabotaging my efforts to go from an average weight to a champion’s physique.

At times it felt impossible to gain any more muscle even though I was training, eating, and believing that I was doing everything I could. I wasn’t. There were certain fundamental principles of life and training that I was missing. When I looked in the mirror I would notice how skinny I still was and believed that it was my genetics that was holding me back.

“Waaaa… I’m a hardgainer!”, as Jason Ferruggia would say.

Instead of looking in the mirror and saying, “Wow, I am becoming stronger and more muscular every single day”, I saw the poor skinny me who could never gain weight no matter what I did. And since that is what I saw and believed… that is what I continued to get.

The Shift in Mindset

Knowing what I know now, I have been working very effectively at removing those old, disempowering beliefs and replacing them with more empowering ones that will allow me to take my body to the next level.

In other words, I have created a new self-image of myself as muscular in my mind and replaced the old “skinny me” version of myself.

In keeping with our hardware/software analogy from Part I, I have reformatted my computer/brain by deleting the old software programs and installing a new and enhanced version…
Brandon 2.0, if you will!

Your mind is a computer after all, and in fact is the most powerful supercomputer on Earth, up to this point. An actual computer or robot may beat you out within the next few decades, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Simply by changing my self-talk, imagining and visualizing the body I desire every day (in the correct manner), I am reprogramming my subconscious mind to accept the new self-image as my new reality.

Since my subconscious mind controls my automatic behavior and impulses, this will cause me to act and think in a way that will eventually lead me to a more muscular body in the real world. Instead of repeating my past mistakes for the next 50 years, I’ll achieve my goals a lot faster.

I want to emphasize that this is FACT… not fiction. Athletes and Olympians have been successfully using visualization to increase their athletic performances for over a few decades now with quite impressive results. Don’t take my word on it, do some investigative research of your own.

Change Your Mind, Change Your Body

This “skinny me” story is just one, simplistic example of a limiting subconscious belief and how to overcome them. It is not just one event or situation that creates and defines your beliefs and values. It’s everything combined.

There may be more than one limiting belief that’s holding you back in some way. It could be your level of confidence, it could be your degree of self-deservedness or self-worth, it could be your identity as a skinny person… or heck it may just be because you don’t know the proper way to train to build muscle naturally!

Most likely, it’s a combination of things.

Yet, this is why I am giving “developing the proper mindset” so much attention at first.

Without the right mindset you can end up wasting years of your time (if you last that long) trying to transform your body and your life, but getting no where fast. Most people just give up when they don’t see any results. I don’t want that to happen to you.

That being said; the most important point of this section is this:

Despite all of your hard work and effort, if you still harbor negative and limiting subconscious beliefs about yourself, you will have a hard time transforming your body and life. You will have a tendency to revert to your old way of thinking and doing things.

You may meet with some success at first, but despite all of your conscious efforts you may find yourself unable to break past a certain barrier or plateau.

You may also experience self-sabotage in the form of engaging in negative habits that limit your success (such as smoking, excessive drinking, skipping workouts, eating like crap, etc.) or other circumstances such as pushing yourself to the point of injury, slacking off, or something similar.

Now most people that already have the proper mindset may still make similar mistakes with their training. However, they quickly learn from them and make the appropriate lifestyle changes.

Once they make these changes they go on to achieve success. The key is that they already had the proper mindset for success. Therefore, they understood exactly what to do to correct their mistakes. It’s that awareness that makes all the difference!

On the other hand, if you have limiting and negative subconscious beliefs like I did, this self-sabotage may become a repetitive, downward cycle that you just can’t seem to break despite all of your hard work and efforts.

This may continue indefinitely, UNTIL you have taken the proper steps to eliminate and/or replace the negative and limiting beliefs that are deeply entrenched within your subconscious mind.

When you lack the proper mindset it can be very challenging to achieve success at anything in life. Luckily for us all, we can always change our minds by reprogramming our subconscious with the proper techniques!

That’s exactly what we’re going to discuss in Part III of Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind.

….to be continued!

Brandon Cook

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About the Author:

Brandon Cook is creator of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach the hardgainer the laws and scientific principles for building a classic, muscular and functional physique.

© 2009, Hardgainer Muscle Building. All rights in all media reserved. You may reprint this article so long as the article and author bio are reprinted intact and all links are made live. This article may never be sold individually or as part of a package

Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind- Part I

Brandon — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:17:37 +0000

By Brandon Cook

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”
– Earl Nightingale

“The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are.”
-Thomas Dreier

The whole point of the First Pillar of Rapid Body Transformation is to develop the proper mindset (from the beginning) that will lead to success quickly and naturally. That way you can learn from other people’s mistakes and realize your goals that much faster.

Now, like many people (even myself in the past,) you may be tempted to skip over all of this mindset nonsense and get straight to the heavy lifting. “It’s all bull$#!! I tell you, hogwash, blah, blah, blah!”

Well I’ve got to tell you that it’s sad that many “average”, everyday people disregard or discredit the true power of the mind and the creative role it plays in the development of one’s life and reality.

I find it disappointing that so many people are closed-minded to the new discoveries that science is yielding in regards to the mind and brain. With the help of new advancements in technology and equipment, neuroscientists have been able to study and research the human brain like never before.

(MRI of the Brain)

In fact, most of what scientists know about the brain and its potential is the result of new research studies conducted over the past fifteen years. We’ve only just begun to unlock the potential of the human mind.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, like many other successful people, realized the true power and potential of the mind years ago and no one can argue with what he’s achieved in his lifetime. Arnold said:

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.”

So if you want to continue to be “average”, then by all means pay no attention to this mind-stuff. This information is not for the average person. Not that there is anything wrong with being average, if that’s your thing… or should I say mindset.

Yet, for those of us who want to live “above the mean”, who want to experience the best that life has to offer… well then… understanding the subconscious mind and how it works is of the utmost importance… especially if you desire to transform your physique.

Why be average and live a mediocre life when you can simply shift your mindset and achieve something great? I mean why settle for something that you DON’T really want, when you could have exactly what you DO want?

Here’s a better question; Do you even know what you really want? Have you ever created an image in your mind of the ideal you… with your ideal body… living your ideal life experience?

Did you know that if you were only to hold on to that image or visualization in your mind, then you could dramatically increase the likelihood of it becoming your reality? It’s true!

If you simply ran through that scenario in your mind twice each day you would be programming your subconscious mind to achieve that vision in reality.

Honestly, I don’t see why some people find this so hard to believe. Do you think Arnold sat around complaining that life isn’t fair. “Aaaahhhh, lifting da veights is just too haaarrrddd! I giv up!”

Or is it more likely that he imagined himself becoming the top bodybuilder and winning the Mr. Olympia contest long before he stepped onto that stage and won it for the first time in 1970?

He was programming his subconscious mind to win because he knew all along that “the mind is the limit.” He knew that if he believed in himself strongly enough then nothing could stop him from achieving his goals. You can do this too! If… you understand how to harness the power of your subconscious mind.

So, by now I’m sure you’ve guessed it… In this three part series of articles we are going to explore the subconscious mind. What is it? How does it work? And most importantly how can we tap into it and harness its power to effectively transform our bodies and our lives?

Dawn of the Subconscious Mind

When we’re born into this world our mind is empty. It has no experiences, no knowledge, no beliefs, no values, and no understanding of the physical reality in which it has manifested.

It is a clear slate and like a dry sponge it immediately begins to absorb all of the liquid in which it is submerged. As babies we can’t even think… we don’t yet have a conscious mind. That develops later. All we can do is experience the world around us.

Think of the subconscious mind (or unconscious mind as it is also referred) as a video recorder or computer that records everything that your senses perceive. The sights, sounds, touch, smells, and tastes of the world. Everything is recorded, even the stuff your conscious mind doesn’t pick up on.

All of this is recorded within the database of the subconscious mind and used as a reference or interface for living and surviving in the world. In other words, the subconscious mind is the storehouse for everything that you’ve experienced in life and what’s stored in there influences your personality, beliefs, and behavior.

Think of your brain as the hardware that allows your subconscious mind to operate. Your subconscious mind acts as the software or program that your brain is using as an operating system.

As you continue to develop and gain more worldy experience, your subconscious mind is forming a program that ultimately becomes you. This program becomes your unique personality, beliefs, and perception of reality. Which is also known as your ego.

By the way, be careful… there’s lots of people running around out there with a faulty operating system. Just try to be nice to them and give them a break here and there.

It’s important to note that this is a self-evolving program. It changes over time… as you learn, grow, and gather more life experiences.

From this gathering of information and experience your brain is able to put together more complex patterns, develop more neural connections and form a deeper understanding of life and reality.

On the other hand if you fail to keep providing your mind with new stimuli and learning experiences your mind will stay at the same level of operation or even begin to decline.

In other words once you stop growing… you’re dying!

Biology of the Subconscious Mind

From a biological perspective, you also have to understand that trillions of things are happing within your body’s cells and organs each and every day… from your breathing, to your heart beat, to your cell replication, to hormone secretion, to the hypertrophy of new muscle cells, to the digestion of food, and on and on and on.

Biologists have understood for some time that trillions of chemical reactions are happening within your cells every day… just so you can be alive on this planet and do whatever it is you love to do.

Now you aren’t consciously controlling these things… they happen automatically and unconsciously. Some thing or some consciousness is making them happen and it isn’t you… thank God, or you’d probably be dead by now!

Could it be that the subconscious mind is controlling these processes? The answer is YES!

Now you smart guys and gals out there may argue that these things are controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and you’d be correct. However, the subconscious mind is believed to be the part of the brain that directly influences the ANS.

According to neuroscientists (aka brain scientists):

•The Subconscious Mind is the most powerful part of your brain and controls over 80% of your brains functions. So in other words, our conscious mind is only using 1/6th of our brains power.
•Your Subconscious Mind is responsible for controlling all of the autonomic processes that take place within your body such as breathing, the beating of your heart, hormone secretion, and all other cellular activity.
•Your subconscious mind is also responsible for your automatic behaviors, impulses, and thought processes. It is these conditioned behaviors that impact your natural reaction to people, situations, your environment and how you interact within it.

If that doesn’t have you intrigued to learn more about it… nothing will. Except if you just happen to realize that maybe this could be the key to your success or failure in anything you choose to do in life! Your mind is either working for you or against you! Ultimately you decide which it will be. Choose wisely.

Using the Conscious to Program the Unconscious

At this point you may be thinking: “Yeah, that’s great and all, but how do you get your mind working for you? So, what if I do have some negative or limiting beliefs, can I get rid of them? Is there a way to directly influence our subconscious minds so that we can develop the proper mindset that leads to success?”

To that I would say, man you sure ask a lot of questions! On the other hand though… asking questions is a very intelligent thing to do. The subconscious mind loves questions because one of its characteristics is of being an innate problem solver. When you ask a question with your conscious mind, the subconscious will reach deep within its reservoir of memories and experiences and even beyond to find the answer. Then typically when you least expect it the answer will pop into your consciousness.

Many scientists and successful inventors have reported this phenomenon when pondering on the answer to some important problem or question that would lead to a major breakthrough. The answers to these questions spontaneously came to them in a flash of sudden insight or sometimes even in a dream.

You may even have experienced it before yourself. Have you ever forgotten the name of a movie, or song and had trouble remembering the answer. Usually later after you’ve given up, the name will just come to you.

So, yes there are ways to access and influence the subconscious mind. Asking questions is one of those ways and yet there are several others which we will discuss as this series unfolds. The key to getting your mind on your side and working for you instead of against you lies in your beliefs.

My research has led me to believe that this is possible, but what I believe is of little importance to effectively alter your subconscious mind. What truly matters IS what you believe and IF you believe it is possible. Now I’m not asking you to believe on mere faith. If you want to, well that’s fine, but I would never ask such a thing.

I‘ve found that it is wise to keep an open mind about your beliefs. Yet I would strongly advise that before you believe anything anyone ever tells you that you always check it against your own internal understanding. If you feel your understanding may be incomplete then put in the time to do the necessary research to help you make more intelligent decisions.

You see, in order to change your reality (ie. transform your body and life), it is important to have an accurate and precise understanding of how your consciousness works. It is your beliefs and worldview that form your perception of reality and it is your subconscious mind that directly influences your perception. What you perceive directly influences your thoughts and feelings, which impacts the actions you take. Are you grasping this?

The ultimate question is whether your perception of reality is empowering or disempowering. In other words, is your worldview allowing you to create the life you want to live or is it keeping you from doing so? I would say that if you are completely content and happy with your life at the deepest core of your being… then you’re probably on the right track. If not your perception may be holding you back in some way.

The amazing thing to become conscious of here is this:

There is not just one reality in the world.
There is only our perception of reality.

So, there are over six billion human perceptions of reality amongst us humans alone. It gets too confusing to include the animals so we’ll just leave their perception out of it.

Your subconscious mind is the operating system for your perception of reality. Your life experiences are responsible for its development. Once you become conscious of this fact, then you are responsible for making sure you get the necessary life experiences. In a way, you become the programmer of your own reality. Just make sure it’s an empowering one. This is how you use the conscious to program the unconscious.

Birth is the dawn of the subconscious mind.
Through your eyes a world is seen anew.
Through your ears, a soft voice is heard for the first time.

Out of your thoughts, beliefs, and experiences…
a unique perception of reality is formed.
Creating the brief moment in time…
that you’ve come to know as your life.

….to be continued!

Brandon Cook

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About the Author:

Brandon Cook is creator of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach the ectomorph the laws and scientific principles for building a classic, muscular and functional physique.