Kings, tyrants and men

Swimming

As Socrates said- “every man must reach the peak of his form”. Of course, at the age of 13 or 14, you may feel that it is enough to eat right and at the age of 17, you will grow into a tall, handsome young man with an athletic figure. In fact, this is not the case. In order to grow into a beautiful tall athletic person, you need to play sports. If you have never been involved in Olympic sports, then I suggest you start with swimming. Swimming will not only strengthen your muscles and make your heart strong, but it will also help you grow. It does not matter what results you achieve in swimming. Whether or not they will take you to the high school swim team. The important thing is that swimming will help you accept and rethink your growing up much faster. Tired after a workout, you will sleep better at night, which means that your nervous system will be strong and you will be resistant to stressful situations. Of course, it is very important that you have a good, positive coach. If you feel that the coach is somehow negatively affecting you, then it is better to give up training and frankly explain to your parents why you do not want to go to training. From communicating with some people, negative people do much more harm than good. A good male coach is usually over forty years old, wise and calm. If coach is a woman the younger she is, the more empathetic she is, the better job she does as a coach. Do not neglect the opportunity to warm up in the sauna; the cold water in the pool makes it difficult for nerve signals to pass through the nervous system. Evaporate the excess cold water that your body takes in before you leave the pool, especially if it is cold outside. A cold or flu interferes with your growth and muscle gain, and every day in your teens is worth its weight in gold, because we do not grow beyond the age of 25.

Usually, a coach becomes good after he makes many mistakes. Very few people are able to become coaches at young age. I have only ever seen three people in my life who were younger than I was, but they were such good coaches that I respected their words. A good coach is not necessarily a good leader. It is not necessarily that you want to follow your coach to attack the enemy. It is enough if he knows his material and conveys his experience well.

Wrestling

After you practice swimming for at least one year (I believe you should practice swimming for at least one year from the age of 13 to 14), I advise you to practice freestyle wrestling for at least one year. Freestyle wrestling gives you incredible strength and endurance. None of the athletes, neither track and field athletes, nor swimmers, nor karate practitioners have the same strength that wrestlers have. In addition to strength, during training and after training during sleep, new neural networks formed in your brain in the areas responsible for coordination of movements and orientation in space. Since these neural networks and the physical power formed during your teenage years, according to the law of memory, these skills will remain with you for almost the rest of your life. If you start wrestling after the age of 18 and then stop training, the acquired skills will be quickly erased from your nervous system. This is the advantage of playing sports as a teenager. Our coach would built us up before every training session and tell us: I want three things from you:

1) Eat well

2) Sleep well

3) Control yourself

After that, he explained to us what each of these three things meant.

Eat well.

Eat well meant eat a lot and watch what you eat.

Eat more meat, fried boiled, steamed, delicious and healthy. Meat is good. Eat more beans, rice, peas, and beans. Eat more vegetables. Eat more fruit. Eat more fish and mushrooms. Eat the healthy foods you need to build your body. Do not eat or drink anything like soda, which is very high in sugar and causes kidney stones.

After his words, I would eat one piece of bread for lunch and dinner, and drank only water with my meals. The only time I consumed sugar was when I had a cup of tea before going to bed. If you do not have enough money for a good meat diet, I want to give you some advice that I heard from my brothers, but did not think much of it. I later heard this advice from bodybuilding athletes. They advised me to drink milk every day. Moreover, bodybuilders advised to dilute powdered milk in milk. I do not know if this is right thing to do and whether it worth following this advice. In fact, to maintain good physical condition of a person, excessive meat consumption is not necessary. Nutritionists advise you to consume daily protein in grams. For example, if you weigh 80 kg, you should eat about 80 grams of protein a day, which is one third of a steak with rice. If you weigh 160 pounds, you should eat about 2 ounces of protein a day. There are wrestlers in India who do not eat meat or even eggs for religious reasons. Yet, consuming cow’s milk they remain in excellent physical shape.

Of course, your height is largely determined by your parents and your genes. However, think about this: a hundred years ago, the average height in the Netherlands was 168 cm, and today, because they eat healthy in childhood and in adolescence, their average height is above 180 cm.

Sleep well.

Sleep well means sleep a lot. You can live 7 days without water, however without sleep you will die on the third day.

The phone brings a lot of different extraneous thoughts and ideas. Blue light from the screen wakes up our brain and causes it to produce special hormones that destroy drowsiness. Disconnect from the outside world before going to bed, do not take anything with you to bed that can disturb your peace of mind.

I would like to add that- if possible, try to fall asleep early. If you can form the habit of getting up at 5 am in the morning, after you grow up, you will be grateful to yourself. Because after you get home from work and then eat dinner, you are not able to do anything. That is why if one of your parents just asks you how you are doing, you should be grateful they do not neglect you after long working hours. Because earning a piece of bread is not so easy. In addition, if you get up at 5 am in the morning, then you will have 2 hours to devote to yourself. Take a walk in the park, read a book, plan your day, and water flowers in the garden, get ready for work and so on.

Control yourself.

Without this item, good food and good sleep do not work. All the useful microelements, minerals, proteins, vitamins that should be involved in the construction of your body, needed in order for you to become taller, wider in the shoulders, stronger, faster, more agile and smarter will be washed down the drain.

From these words of our coach, we understood that he was talking about masturbation. When you masturbate, your body understands that the most useful minerals, vitamins, and proteins should be given to your offspring. All this useful elements go to your semen. Of course, you cannot completely stop masturbating. But the less you do it, the taller you will be, the faster you will gain muscle mass, the better your nervous system will develop both in the brain and throughout the body. The nervous system is built into your entire body and is not only responsible for your intelligence, but also for your reflexes, speed and strength. Do not waste your building materials.

If you decide to masturbate as little as possible, then try not to think about what excites you, especially to look at undressed girls or communicate with them.

How we trained

Our training sessions usually consisted of 6-10 minutes of warm-up, during which we stretched our joints, ran to raise the pulse, tumbled on the carpet, stretching our back, neck, shoulders standing on the bridge. After that, we worked in high stand for about 20 minutes, starting with takedowns, each of the partners 10 times on each leg. We practiced a few more leg moves, such as a back pass or a windmill, and then moved on to work in par terre. We also worked in par terre for about 30 minutes. The most basic work in par terre was working on the roll. Our coach explained this by saying that - the athlete gains the greatest strength while working in par terre.

Warm-up 10 minutes

High stand wrestling 20 minutes - takedowns, windmill, back passes, other techniques

Wrestling on the ground floor for 30 minutes - coasting, other techniques

After that, we rested for about five minutes, after which the strength part of the workout began. During the strength part of the workout, we climbed the rope “without legs”, jumped from a place in height, pumped the abdominal muscles, lifted weights, and pulled the barbell off the ground. Almost never did we work on the chest muscles with weights. They were mostly just push-ups. We repeated each set 4 times. In this mode of operation, I quickly became strong.

Climbing rope without legs -1 climb

Squats with kettlebells - 16 kg (32 lbs.), 20 times

Lifting kettlebells over head -16 kg (32 lbs.), 20 times, with different hands

Pulling barbell from ground under bench - 50 kg (100 lbs), 10 times

Abdominal muscles/ push-ups -30 times

Usually, after 2 months of wrestling training, there comes a time when you want to take a break, and it seems that you cannot make more progress. Apathy sets in. In fact, this is a signal that you need some changes. For example, you need to increase the weight and instead of 16 kg (32 lbs.) kettlebells, switch to a heavier 24 kg (48lbs.) kettlebells, instead of 50 kg (100 lbs.), increase the weight to 60 kg (120 lbs.), and so on.

At this point, I advise you not to quit training, but to overcome yourself. Because a month after you quit training, you will want to go back to the gym again to feel the strength, power and agility of your body.

Physical training

Maybe in times of apathy, you should do what we did during the summer holidays. Now I will describe a program that helped me gain 8 kg (16 lbs.) of muscle in 2 months. Usually our gym played football during the summer holidays and did a little warm-up. I lost weight after a long illness and did not know how to regain my previous condition. The massage therapist in our club, a former Greco-Roman wrestler, was quite a big person with a lot of muscles, so I asked him for advice. He advised me to exercise every day instead of 3 times a week and divide the load into muscle groups depending on joint tension exercises or joint compression exercises to avoid injury. For example, if you hang on the crossbar, your elbow ligaments stretch, and if you push the barbell from your chest, the cartilage in your elbows compress. Therefore, it is better to separate such exercises and do them on different days so as not to injure the ligaments and cartilage. I did just that.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday

1. I was climbing a rope and stretching my ligaments - 1 climb

2. Then I pumped my abs - 60 times

3. After the abs, I lay down on the bench with my stomach down and pulled the barbell, which was lying under the bench from the ground up -again stretched the ligaments-60 kg, 10 times

4. After that, I did squats with kettlebells -24 kg, 10 times

5. I pulled 24 kg kettlebells from the ground instead of a barbell lying on a bench on my stomach - stretched my ligaments again-10 times

I rested for about 5-10 minutes and then repeated these five exercises again.

These days I did not do any exercises for compressing cartilage in my elbows.

Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday:

1. Barbell benchpress for the chest- that is, I squeezed the cartilage in my elbows-60 kg, 10 times

2. I pumped my abs 60 times

3. Kettlebells bench press for the chest -again the cartilage were compressed- 24 kg, 10 times

4. Did squats and jumps on the explosion -10 times

5. I pushed weights up over my head-24 kg, 20 times, with different hands

6. Lifting a kettlebell from behind my head - working on the triceps - 16 kg, 10 times

I rested for 5-10 minutes and repeated these exercises again.

All exercises these days were aimed at compressing the cartilage without stretching ligaments. In fact, in such a safe mode from injuries, I could lift weights forever. If I mixed at least one exercise, and did a cartilage compression exercise together with a ligament stretching exercise, I would be injured. Injuries take a lot of mental strength, when you are in pain and uncomfortable, you lose the desire to do any sports.

After two months of such a program, good sleep, good food, and good self-control, I gained 8 kg and raised my weight from 64 to 72 kg (from 141 lbs. to 158 lbs.), which means I increased my weight by more than 10 percent. Weight and muscle size do not really guarantee much strength, but subjectively I felt like I was a very strong person. I want to warn you that this progress has affected my mental state as well. I became extremely confident in myself and felt like I was a superman who could solve any problem. In fact, this was certainly not the case. I could easily fall into this pride trap.

I know and have heard of athletes who cannot handle the gift of great strength. Great power does not spoil a person; it shows who you really are. I know a young man, a brilliant athlete, a student in law school, a talented Greco-Roman wrestler, who went to prison because of his actions. One day he suddenly disappeared from the audience and I did not see him for several years. I met him 2 or 3 years later, at one of the festivals in the city. It turned out that one of the girls took advantage of his naivety, set him off like a dog with another young man. During the trial, this girl said that she did not ask him to stand up for her and he was sent to jail. If this athlete had listened to his mind instead of his heart, he could have avoided prison.

Boxing

I believe that a young man’s physical education cannot be complete without boxing. If possible, make sure to spend at least one year of your youth practicing boxing. In fact it is even better to practice Muay Thai. Of course, you should take a closer look at the coach. My first trainer put me up against an experienced amateur boxer on the first day of training. After 20 seconds, I was sitting on the floor with a concussion, and I was dizzy for another week. Boxing is a very dangerous sport, the benefits of training are questionable, and with a bad coach, you risk losing much more than a week of dizziness. In addition, boxing is a difficult sport to perform, and athletes are not easily trained in boxing. When I was a teenager, I used to ask all my elder brothers to teach me how to punch. None of them could not explain me how to punch properly. Many years later, I saw one coach’s explanations on the Internet and even through the Internet understood how to punch properly a sandbag. That is what a good coach means. A good trainer is worth his weight in gold.

My boxing training sessions were designed for old men; I started boxing in a prime age. Maybe they will be funny for someone, but I will tell you how I learned to punch. I bought myself a small dumbbell weighing only 1 kg, which is 2 pounds. I came to the stadium in the evening after work. With these dumbbells in my hands, I started jogging.

1. Dumbbell jogging-1600 meters

2. 1 -2 (left jab – right cross), with dumbbells - 50 meters forward.

3. Left and right hooks with dumbbells at a forward step, front stand-50 meters.

4. Left and right hooks with dumbbells steping backwards, front stand-50 meters, back.

5. 1- 2 (jab-cross) cross with dumbbells -50 meters, stepping right side.

6. 1-2 (jab –cross) with dumbbells - 50 meters, stepping left side.

7. Three punch combination with dumbbells (left jab, right cross, left hook on the jump) -60 seconds, on the spot, forward, backward.

After that, I rested for a while and then repeated all these exercises again.

Of course, I did planks, trained the abdominal muscles, did dumbbell swings to strengthen my shoulders, worked with a rubber band tourniquet on the correct transfer of mass from one leg to the other... but basically, these seven exercises taught my body, entered into my neural network, how to punch correctly.

If you are planning to train on sand bag, you should definitely add push-ups on your fists and fingers to your exercises. Because a weak hand will bend during the stroke. A weak hand will not transfer all the energy of your blow, and perhaps it will simply break. In addition to push-ups, I will recommend two exercises that made my arm feel like stone. First, wear wool gloves and lift the digging bar (or barbell) vertically as if you are about to break ice with it on the road in winter. Your task is simple

1. Lift the digging bar and

2. release the digging bar, that is, unclench your hands so that it slides down to the ground.

When you pick up the digging bar in wool gloves, the digging bar will slide and you will try to squeeze it tighter. You do not need to force the digging bar into the ground, because when you lift it up, your vertebrae contracts, and when you hit the ground with it your vertebrae stretches. It means you are compressing and then immediately stretching your vertebrae. Which is really dangerous and you can injure your back. Be careful not to injure your back.

The second exercise is to do pull ups with the gloves. You can do only one pull up, but you have to do four sets at least.

If you do boxing on your own, then I would advise you to alternate training for coordination of movements with dumbbells with training on the sand bag.

For example, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday you work with dumbbells on coordination and agility, strengthen your hand with a digging bar and do pull-ups. Therefore, on days like this, you are working with stretch ligaments.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, you do push-ups, work with a tourniquet, and work out power punches on the sand bag. That is, you work on compressing the cartilage.

Your first sparring session will be terrible, because as marines say – under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. Therefore, during the first sparring session, you will forget or fail to do 90% of what you did in training. Therefore, the first sparring session should be gentle and should not disappoint you. Sparring should be routine, sparring should be normal daily work. It is best to explain to your partner that if you get hurt in the first sparring session, you will not get up to spare with them again.

As with wrestling, boxing gives you confidence. Please stay away from anything stupid. Do not get cocky and stay out of fights. You could come up to some thai boxer who will break you, or you could end up in prison. That is not the goal.

Eastern practices

I would like to add that I have seen the effectiveness of some Eastern practices such as yoga, qigong and acupuncture. It is important not only to do sports, but also to pay attention to the flow of your inner energies. You may be an atheist, a Jewish, or a Christian, and you may disagree with some of the yogis ′ views, but they actually know some things that other civilizations don’t. This diversity of knowledge should be appreciated.

I get to know Eastern practitioners late. One night after the training, I was riding in a trolley bus, and an unexpected cold snap in May caught me off guard and blew my trigeminal nerve behind my ear. The ternary nerve is the node through which signals to the facial muscles pass. Two days later, during lunch, the left side of my face stopped working and tea started pouring out of my mouth because my lips would not close. In a panic, I went to the clinic. Doctors prescribed me some drug infusion and vitamin injections, but nothing worked. In addition, the air conditioning at work only made my situation worse. I was already desperate and thought that over time, muscles on the right side of my face will pull part of my face to the right side and disfigure it. Another consequence of such a disease is that from the constant tension of the right half of the face and the constant relaxed state of the muscles on the left half, the right half of the face will suffer from spasms. One of my colleagues suggested that I go to a acupuncture therapist. The acupuncturist was very old Korean man. The first session was very painful and unusual for me. To be honest, I thought that acupuncture was just a fraud and a way to cheat people out of their money. Sometime later on the fifth day of the beginning of acupuncture treatment session, my muscles on my left side started working. It was a miracle. With a lot of tension and pain, but the left side of my face began to feel the touch and my smile no longer looked like an animal’s grin. Therapist, warned me not to drink cold water, not to bathe in cold water, otherwise my illness would spread to the whole body and could reach the heart. Then he said, maybe I will die. Old man advised me to take another course of acupuncture every year, which should help contain my illness. I must say that old man was right. After many years, I drank cold water and I developed heart problems, I got high blood pressure because one ventricle in the heart was pushing blood out well; but the second ventricle was pumping blood into the heart badly. Because of this, I had high blood pressure. Although in Western medicine, acupuncture therapists are not trusted, the old man’s prophecy was right.

The basis of Eastern practices is breath control and meditation. Postures may be different, but breath control is an invariable part of Eastern practices. It is believed that breathing is the rhythm of vital life energy. If you think about it, this is actually the case from the point of view of biology. We breathe in the air so we can burn some of our food in our lungs. Eastern people believe that there are two main energies, the energy of the earth and the energy of the cosmos, which are mixed in our heart, from where our organs feed. Through breath control, they seek to control their energy flows, control their heart, and control their mind. The human body is divided into conventional lines, from bottom to top, which are called meridians. It is believed that energy flows through these meridians. Different poses help you focus your attention on the different meridians that your energy flows through and remove the congestion that has arisen in the way of energy. If there are problems in the human body, then first of all congestion in your meridians is to blame; because of which energy does not flow as it should. For someone who believes in science, cognition, MRI and X-rays, my words sound like heresy. However, from what I have experienced, I think that in this view point of life is part of the truth.

Unfortunately, in our world there is a view that women and only women should practice yoga. Most men just will not understand if you suddenly start practicing yoga. Most of your friends will be suspicious of your passion for yoga. Some people will think that you are overly feminine; others will think that you go to yoga because it is your way of meeting girls. If you are worried about this, then it is better not to take any classes. Because such views of others can be much more harmful than the help, you will receive from yoga classes. There are even parents who will not understand your passion for yoga classes. I do not want you to have any problems because of it. In extreme cases, you can do yoga at home, thanks to the Internet. However, you should practice yoga, sports or Oriental practices regularly. This is one of the secrets in our lives. If you immediately pour 3 months of precipitation into the garden, and then do not give a drop of water for three months, your garden will dry up. If instead of baking bread for two hours at a temperature of 200 degrees, you put the dough for one hour in the oven preheated to 400 degrees, your dough will burn. It also does not make sense run 20 miles once a month, and then lie down for a whole month and grow a belly. Everything needs to be practiced regularly, such as painting, sports, and schoolwork. This secret of our life is important to remember and apply. I think that you should know this from very early childhood. Consistency is the most important principle that determines success.

You will ask me what the use of doing yoga. I cannot answer you. The answer does not lie on the surface. Of course, there is a positive side like gaining control over your body. You will have access to muscles you did not know existed. However, this is a superficial answer. Yoga will give you the activity of such vital energies, the existence of which probably did not suspect any Western philosopher. You will literally feel how this energy flows in you; you will be able to control it. Yoga helps to restore mental strength, helps to fight apathy.

In my opinion yoga is really helpful at crowning the mind as a king over your body. Yoga is a great way to curb your sexual energy, to harness it and to direct it to creative ways. Channeling your sexual energy for creativity and growth during adolescence is important. If you start noting the time you spend on the subject of sex, you will be surprised how much of your time it consumes. During adolescence, your body releases a huge amount of hormones so that you grow up faster and leave offspring as quickly as possible. Of course, this is the rule of life, all beings strive for eternity, and they want to get closer to it, at least by leaving offspring. However, if you can channel this powerful and wild primal energy into your own growth, you will be far above your companions, both spiritually and physically, as well as intellectually. Because probably only one in hundred people is capable of such a difficult job. Just by reducing the time you spend fantasizing about the girl you love, your future family, the home you will live in, what kind of children you will have, you can save a huge amount of time that you can fill with something useful, amazing and real.

I certainly do not know all the practices very well. However, I think it is a very good tool for learning about yourself. In addition, yoga is much more important than wrestling, running or swimming. Because when we grow up, we lose the fire of youth. We can no longer run so well, fight so well, and so on. If you are going to work as a blue-collar worker, you will get so much work in a day that you will not want to exercise. No one talks about it, but working as a blue-collar worker means that you work so hard that you get tired physically. Everyone, both schoolchildren and students, and workers can practice yoga. In addition, I do not think that if you get up at 5am in the morning, it will be good for your heart to go out for a run. I think that a walk in the morning may be useful. Yoga in the morning will also be very useful. Yoga will energize you and will not take as much energy as running. So I think that over time you will leave boxing, running, swimming, wrestling, but yoga will always remain with you.

Qigong also does a good job of restoring the flow of energy through your body. Qigong exercises also consist of breath control and meditation.

Sports and you

I hope that you understand that for the perfection of your body you do not need a super drug that Captain America injected, you do not need a spider bite, you do not need super radiation, you do not need to be born on another planet, and you do not need a gun or a knife. Strength, growth, and self-confidence come through daily training and a systematic approach.

Research shows that tall people earn an average of 15% more in their profession than their colleagues, but shorter. Research also suggests that attractive young people find it easier to communicate. In other words, more people want to communicate with such people. Believe me, communication is one of the riches of life that is expensive and simply inaccessible to many people. What could be better than chatting with friends, or having a dinner together with friends, where they exchange great news or ask for advice on how to solve a problem? Trust me this kind of communication — this is one of the patterns that adorn our lives. I am not saying that girls are much more likely to choose people who are taller as their partners.

I do not want you to be under any illusions. After you graduate from high school, you will find yourself in a world where you will compete whether you join the army, become a student, or get a job at McDonald’s. People will compete with you.

I do not know if you have seen the Joker movie or not. The story of how a weak and naive person endures bullying from other people day after day. Under the influence of his actions, he renounces his previous views, in which the main reference point was love and family. Instead, he preaches pain and violence. Pain and violence are so real in his world that all other people living in the world of love and family live in a fake world. Therefore, they are not real until they live through what he has been through and what he has seen. Most importantly, no one will feel sorry for him, no one will justify him. None of those people who spawned this monster with their cruelty will be considered guilty. No one can say that the real victim in the Joker’s story was the Joker himself. Here is the real “victim blaming”. There is a big lesson in this. Bravery is the greatest virtue and the greatest blessing-and these are not my words. Cowardice is baseness, and eventually leads to actions that everyone considers low and mean. Do not be a coward. After enduring violence and bullying, either you will forgive your tyrants. Or resentment will eat your mind and force you to revenge. That is why you must use your body to protect your soul, heart, and mind. The body is a warrior that must be used to preserve your old man (mind) and child (soul) and woman (heart). You cannot become a slave to your body. There are veterans who have lost some limbs but never lost their spirit. The tyrant plays on your fear of hurting and depriving your body. If your body gets scared and starts whispering to your mind. Do not give in; force your body to suffer either through everyday consistent exercises or in a crises situation. If your body will not suffer then, your mind, soul and heart will suffer much more. However, it is even more important to understand that without training and without preparation, you can do little in this situation. So be prepared for a meeting with a tyrant, plan this meeting in such a way that you have a legitimate tenfold superiority over him, if there is no such superiority, then avoid such a meeting, this is a special forces strategy, use it. Every time a tyrant gets in your way, be sure you are not alone. Until you grow up, until you are 18 years old, all the power of the state, trillions of dollars allocated by the state to hundreds of thousands of police officers and hundreds of FBI agents, thousands of judges are all on your side.