CoreForce Energy
Peak Performance Training Article

Training Like a Ninja for Super Strength

I’ll tell you one thing for sure - spending hours training watching to make sure your shadow can move undetected amongst the silhouettes of the night and making sure each step is undetected amongst loose crunchy gravel, can teach you invaluable things about how to move more efficiently and powerfully for speed strength and anticipating your breath to be fluid with each movement.

None of my martial arts sensei encouraged this odd behavior and maybe I spent too many years reading comic books. But, as a teenager, I used to spend hours training with the stealth techniques of the ancient ninjas – the “invisible assassins” of feudal Japan.

The straightest distance between two points is a straight line. Yet, most of our actions compared to the movements of what a ninja must have been like, are like the loose bobblings of a marionette.

I used to spend hours just trying to scale a small wall or fence slithering as much like a snake as possible. The muscular strength, control and stamina to move slowly without making a noise takes a tremendous amount of super strength and is something that develops body, mind, and spirit.

As you shift your bodyweight from each step to the next, each one must be calculated with precision – otherwise the gravel underneath creates an alert to anyone nearby in your imaginary realm of scaling castle walls and sneaking up creaky stairways of rogue warlords.

So that your entire weight can be shift from one foot to the next, you begin to anticipate every action with even your breath. If your breath does not coincide with your actions, your actions become brittle.

Of course, anything that promotes brittleness of movement disallows fluid movement. And, without fluid movement, efficiency, speed, and power are compromised.

Practicing at night not only fit my vision of the inspiring fables of the ninja, but sound amplification at night is at it greatest. You can hear even the faintest sounds by moonlight.

That was all the better to practice stealth movements with – and to feed the fantasy of being a real ninja. :)

A lot of us have heard the stories of the “invisible assassins” and yet how many have spent even a half hour just trying anything I’ve mentioned? Through the years I’ve studied and have met hundreds of martial artists and yet, I can count on one hand those who have spent more than 15 minutes moving with true stealth that I speak of.

If you train by the quite of night and amongst the shadows, you will learn invaluable lessons first hand about efficiency of motion and anticipating your breath to be fluid with each movement so that you are absolutely quiet. If you practice with true stealth, you can’t your sloppy movements betray you to your imaginary guards nearby.

For most, it’s probably a lot easier to be a crazy teenager to gear your imagination to believe you are a real ninja who must move through the night completely undetected – invisible.

Maybe these days, you should do it in your own backyard so your neighbors don’t call the cops. But, if you spend even 15 minutes trying to move through a bed a gravel or up creaky stairs completely undetected, you’ll find your brain will find ways to streamline your body movements and breathing to make your body more structurally sound and efficient – which equals greater strength and speed.

Then you can use these things to improve everything you do.

The ideas of CoreForce Energy came from years of experimenting with things like this – the very things that REALLY change how you think and move AT THE SAME TIME – and details that many may overlook because they sound a bit crazy or are just too easy to fantasize and theorize about without actually doing.

To your Strength and Mastery,
Garin Bader