Archive for the 'Articles' Category
October 28th, 2008
I have never suffered from the debilitating syndrome called carpal tunnel precisely because of the techniques I share with you in my Finger Gymnastics course. These principles that make my hands extremely powerful and dextrous come from my years experience I’ve gained throughout my lifetime as a concert pianist, magician, martial artist, powerlifter, and all-round exercise aficionado.
Carpal tunnel occurs when the median nerve which runs from the forearm into the hand becomes pressed or squeezed at the wrist. It can be very painful to say the least. Unfortunately, I see so many people these days wearing these unsightly wrist braces that will supposedly help cure the pain. So far, there is not one person that I’ve asked that has told me that the wrist brace enabled them to go without it and has cured the pain.
I meet thousands of people each week who come up to me all the time after my concerts and ask me how I protect my hands and also why I have such ferociously strong fingers to play like I do while also being able to do two finger pushups without injuring myself. The answers lie precisely in the principles and techniques I teach in both CoreForce Energy and Finger Gymnastics.
Trying to mask the symptoms of carpal tunnel is not the answer - because if you’re gong to go right back to doing the very things that caused it in the first place, you’ll go right back to the pain zone out of pure ignorance. Through my years of practicing 8 to 13 hours a day to win 13 international piano and magic competitions, I have acquired and developed some some powerful exercises and techniques that can help you not only strengthen your hands far beyond any other devices or techniques but to make them dexterous and safe from the pain of carpal tunnel.
These techniques came not only from those two disciplines but from knowledge gained throughout all those very years from training in martial arts, powerlifting, and sculpting all at the same time. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the hands and wrists to have never been injured. I tell you these things not to boast but to show you I walk my talk and that you too can have the same knowledge to protect your hands and to make them insanely powerful and fast.
In drilling my hands relentlessly that many hours and for years on end, I know what I’m talking about from pure experience. Since I make my living doing all of the above, I can’t afford to be injured and can’t afford to be performing wearing one of those ridiculous wrist braces. So you if you want to really know the scoop from someone who not only walks their own talk but who knows from years of testing and experimenting - listen up.
I know exactly what works through years and years and hours a day of throwing out the bad and keeping the good. Not only do I know precisely how to get maximum muscular strength and dexterity from the hands - free from tension, but I know that seating position in height and distance away from a computer, keyboard, or whatever is critical to your success.
Seating position is one of the most important things you should know about to protect the hands from carpal tunnel and to keep it away forever. You need to get it right so your energy flows from the top of your head down to your shoulders. Any break in that energy and pressure on meridians or pressure points themselves constantly throughout the day with your wrists in seemingly harmless positions can bring you severe pain that will reoccur until you know how to stop the endless cycle.
Most people are not even aware that the very way they sit most of the time is draining their energy, their creativity, and frighteningly lessening their strength and dexterity. They live with tension and pain and almost begin accepting that “normal”.
For years, I would experiment sitting at the piano low, high, faraway, close - in every imaginable way. I would move the bench fractions of an inch to find that every new position would have a dramatic consequence that would either strengthen or weaken my abilities. I was in search of how I could sit an play with effortless energy, strength, speed, dexterity, and keep my hands free from tension and injury. These very techniques are what I use to demonstrate raw power in martial arts and strength exercises.
This is why in my course Finger Gymnastics, I teach you precisely how to sit and give you exercises that not only strengthen but give you freedom from movement to move from the entire body - so your power doesn’t come from just the fingers and wrists - but from the entire body and spirit moving as one. That is the way you not only exude the best sound as a musician and artist, but what enables you to produce the maximum power in all that you do.
In my next installment I will tell you how, just with fingertip strength, I effortlessly tossed a 235 pound black belt in jujitsu off his fighting stance 7 feet backwards. I used only my fingertips and no wind up or telegraphing in any way.
Learn how to flow your energy like a chi master, sit properly, while exhibiting extreme fingertip power, by checking out Finger Gymnastics and CoreForce Energy. Both these courses teach you how to move effortlessly with super strength, power, and speed - while helping to keep you injury free like myself.
To Your Strength and Mastery,
Garin Bader
Posted in Articles, Super Strength | Post Comment
October 6th, 2008
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? That was the brilliant question the African American baseball star Leroy “Satchel” Paige once ask.
How old do you feel right now? Is it the brain or the body that feels age? Many will tell you it’s their body that feels old. They’ll happily tell you every reason why age is making them forget and lose muscle tone. They’ll tell you how age automatically brings pain in the joints and muscles.
Then again, others will light up the room with enthusiasm, vigor, and almost unstoppable strength like a world-champion Olympian swimmer that I recently met who came to one of my live performances. He’s now 77 and about a month prior added yet another 1st place to his long list of swimming medals.
You can read about his awe-inspiring career on the internet as his name is Graham M Johnston, a United States Masters Swimmer http://www.usms.org/hist/sto/index.php?ID=86&srt= . At 75 he set 8 world records at the 11th Fina World Masters Championships in California.
He’s set dozens and dozens of world records in his long career after having won two Gold and two Silver medals in each the 1950 and 1954 Commonwealth Games held in New Zealand and Canada as a young man that prompted him being selected to represent South Africa in the Olympics. He’s even swam across the Strait of Gibraltor.
After introducing himself after one of my concerts, we sat down with him, his lovely wife and several of his traveling companions for quite some time. His enthusiasm, charm, and immense energy was inspiring to everyone around him. It was obvious he radiates personal magnetism and powerful self-confidence that radiates into his extraordinary strength throughout his daily life. It’s something you can actually easily acquire with very little practice like my wife teaches in her extraordinary course called the “Pizzazz Factor”. The sparkle in his eye radiated into his movement, energy, and words of wisdom.
I asked him many questions about training and what made him a world champion Olympic swimmer. He told me that races are always won by hundredths of a second. He told me that it’s the small things that you do every day that count and that will catapult you above your competition in the heat of the race.
He said since the beginning of his career, he was always the first one in the pool and the last one to leave. Of course immediately, I wanted to know what motivated him to work like this day after day, year after year, to present. Not surprisingly, he believes just as I do that it’s the mind in most things that must be conquered first before the body.
He said that many train hard and long but that you need to your brain to think differently, to see differently all the time with new enthusiasm. It’s these things that make the body move differently and rejuvenate it. He said that cultivating enthusiasm in loving what you do and seeing your success in your mind’s eye will create a winner inside and out.
It’s a fact that thinking creatively induces more electrochemical energy, and forms new connections to throughout the brain, nervous system, and musculature. Inspired thought patterns remodel nerve endings and improve receptor networks that can directly translate into more physical strength.
By challenging your brain, body, and senses, to expand with new creative thought patterns along with diligent training, you can slow the aging process and revitalize your body with new found resources of strength and stamina.
You can replace years of decline with years of growth and purpose by your thoughts and visions of being a champion just in your every day life. You can revitalize your life by creative thinking and enthusiasm one day at a time, second by second. Make each second count with inspired thought. It’s each “tick” that make or break champions.
Make ‘em count! There’s Gold in each second.
To Your Strength and Mastery,
Garin Bader
Posted in Articles, Super Strength | Post Comment
September 15th, 2008
Here are #12 and #13 of twenty-five reasons I’ve come up with that we fail to master optimal mental focus.
Again, they are not in order of importance. We would enjoy far more frequent successes in our lives if we spent just as much time on mental mastery as we do on physical mastery. There is unbelievable synergy created when they are worked on together in unison. Unfortunately, many never enjoy the vast rewards of this synergy because of these reasons…
To Your Strength and Mastery,
Garin Bader
12 ) We think that mental focus will miraculously become keener when the game is on. We fool ourselves with that adage that we work best under pressure and that the eyes of a crowd or adrenaline will somehow sharpen our mental lenses purely by the “magic of the moment”.
Granted, many of us have done some of our best work under pressure. Deadlines can be a good motivator. But, they don’t always bring us optimal inspiration nor our best performances. To rely on keen mental focus because of the pressure of deadlines is courting disaster more than it’s courting inspiration.
Although we may have given some of our best performances under pressure, we shouldn’t depend on that and it’s reckless to do so. Those that have been practicing 2-4 years for the Gold in the Olympics know that their competition have also been rehearsing under every condition and way ahead of schedule in order to win. They’re certainly not depending on the Olympic Torch to give them last minute inspirations and newfound abilities. To wait until the last minute for inspiration that may or may not come is certainly not preparing yourself to stay within your optimal mental focus zone.
Certainly miraculous things often will occur when the synergy of a crowd, adrenaline, and other factors are present, but to not prepare ahead of time in every aspect to the best of our ability is to be hoping for the best instead of preparing for the best.
13 ) We haven’t practiced mental focus techniques when our blood sugar is low, when we haven’t eaten, or slept well and are not used to regaining it quickly in those circumstances nor have techniques to help circumvent those conditions in the first place. High stress situations put your body in precarious situations quite often that completely crumble the best mental focus practitioners. So, when your body isn’t feeling up to par in real life competition and/or inevitable high stress situations, the reason our mental focus often spirals out of control is because we haven’t practiced in those kinds of sub-par conditions.
People often say there is not a substitute for experience on the playing field. That may be true in one sense. But what is for certain is that we don’t learn to practice and cope with “bad” physical conditions when we rehearse. Most people always want to feel in the best physical condition before they go out to practice because they feel they should achieve optimal performance every time or simply hate feeling uncomfortable.
The fact is, in performance and in the heat of the game, nothing is usually perfect and far from being comfortable. Your body is usually feeling stress long before your mind even recognizes it. So, if you haven’t rehearsed when your body isn’t feel well for whatever reason, those conditions will completely throw you off your best performance.
I feel you can create your own “experience” every day by rehearsing every scenario you may ever encounter - including those days where your body isn’t feeling it’s best. Having the attitude that every day is a good day of learning even if your body is feeling like crap, will bring you mastery much faster and you’ll gain experience at a much faster rate than most of your competitors.
Murphy’s Law is usually present in stressful conditions and we must practice to retain the keenest of mental focus when Murphy comes visiting. For some reason he always has a pass to get into every situation! He’s never invited but Always seems to show up for those that don’t expect him. “Bad” conditions are normal circumstances that occur in competition and unfortunately most of us practice mental focus to operate under the best conditions - which rarely happens in the field of competition or performance.
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Posted in Articles, Mental Focus, Peak Performance | Post Comment
April 19th, 2008
We’ve all wondered at one time or another how others see incredible things we don’t. Especially in extreme sports, we see moves that seem impossible to see even when we rewind the footage in slow motion - and yet our sports stars continually make the impossible a reality.
Many of us wonder how people seem to be able to slow time down and to see and react much faster than others. And we wonder, “How in the World do they do that?!”
Do they slow time down? OR, is their mind faster than the time we’re on? IS it just because of talent and innate abilities? Or can we learn to see faster ourselves just like them?
I chose to go with the latter viewpoint. As long as I can remember, I’ve always looked for any ways that will enable me to see faster, to comprehend faster, to react faster. No matter how small, I found that each new thing we add to our arsenal is yet another attribute of streaming-lining for efficiency. All these things translate into to physical movement being faster as well. Why wouldn’t they after all?
So, I’ll give you a few things I enjoy doing to help me see more, see faster, and react faster. You might think of them being inconsequential - that is, only until you try them and then discover for yourself the benefits in the power of doing instead of miscalculations of intellectualizing.
My first example you might say I’m looking for a way to write off my XBOX 360 on my taxes for mentioning it in an e-mail. Ha, you’re cleverer than I thought. Others, that know me will tell you I’m still a big kid - which I won’t deny. But, I’m sure you’ve noticed how young kids comprehend computer and video games at light speed, right? Well, why wouldn’t they, when they have grown up with lightning fast speeds in most graphics on computer and TV’s in their faces day after day?
If you’ve ever really watched the incredible speed at which characters in video games move, it’s a no brainer to know that real human beings don’t move that fast. Most adults will just write that off as cartoon behavior. But really, if a character is moving much faster than “humanly possible”, then children are really learning to respond with super fast reflexes, aren’t they? Aren’t they learning to see and comprehend at super fast speeds right from an early age? Of course they are.
The martial arts characters in these games move at diabolical speeds and the kids are learning to see and comprehend what most adults can’t even fathom. Any eight year old will most likely smoke you with a joystick game controller in their hands in a heartbeat if you haven’t played much before.
If you abhor the violence of martial arts, then you might like to try a racing game like Burnout Paradise where the graphics alone will blow you away in the detail and realism. Here, you’re driving the fastest most supped up cars imaginable at speeds that just are ridiculously fast comparing them to in the real world. Speeds that on a real street would kill you and everyone near you in an instant. The speeds and graphics alone are exhilarating to experience and fun.
However, in the pure fantasy of escape which a game is supposed to be, here you have an opportunity to teach the brain where to look to see farther ahead in the road - and to concentrate and focusing at new speeds which enable the reflexes to respond much faster than they would encounter in normal everyday life. It is an exciting time to grow up in with this kind of technology.
Instead of just writing it off as a “game” it might be a good idea to reframe many video games these day and call them simulators where we learn to see in spite of the sun glaring in your eyes; to see in spite of other vehicles racing in front of us, past us, and all around you at flashing speeds. In these lightning fast simulators, you’re learning new skills you might while learning how to respond to them with ease and accuracy. As an adult you learn to see, comprehend, and react faster by rehearsing the wickly fast speeds of “children’s video games”.
These might be the very skills that will help you in all you do and may even perhaps save your life when you encounter a scenario where thinking and responding calm and collected may save your life.
Instead of dismissing video games as just “games children play”, by playing them you have an opportunity to slow your breath down, to see with wider vision instead of tunnel vision, to get used to seeing at impossible speeds and to look and think ahead. Amongst all the fun you may have, you might even encounter the incredible opportunity to bond with your own children while.
So what happens when you begin playing and reacting to impossible speeds on a regular basis? In a sense, you’ve gained the power of slowing time down. You start seeing what others watching you completely miss. You start reacting with lightning reflexes while remaining calm. Your breathing almost automatically begins slowing down as you learn to accommodate your new found comfortability factor with blazing speeds.
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