A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

From an early age, I was consumed with physical training. Growing up in rural Carlisle, Pennsylvania, there wasn't much else for boys to do other than entertaining ourselves with our own inner resources. Televisions then were enormous boxes with small black-and-white screens and receiving four channels on any given day was a miracle--God's honest truth!--and video games didn't appear until I was already in college. Summer days off from school, I'd get up early, scarf down breakfast, then pack a sackful of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and run out the door to play in the nearby woods and fields...and my beloved Conodoguinet Creek.

It's funny: those idyllic days I spent building tree forts and makeshift rafts--interspersed with ongoing and various war and combat games--are not so different from my days now.  Our war games were epic.  The frenetic rock volleys with the kids from the other side of the creek threatened serious maimings--and trouble from the gown-ups back at home--but somehow no long-term harm was done.  Imagining ourselves the mighty 300 Spartans facing down the Persian horde, the rocks raining from the skies, clanging against our garbage can lid shields and, if the extent of airborne missives didn't quite blot out the heavens, well, you still get the idea.

Another terrific and favored pastime was sacking and destroying the other kids' tree forts.  Excitement would build as the neighborhood word-of-mouth alarm went off, local warriors hastening to their home forts--and usually too late!  What a melee it was.  Later, after a period of ritual lamentations--and cursing--came bustling plans and the ant-like cooperative activities of rebuilding.  Other times were less cooperative, and the neighborhood gangs met face-to-face, to throwdown at the showdown.  Still, this was an innocent time before settling arguments with guns became more commonplace.  In those days we stepped out mano a mano, fighting with fisticuffs and rough, country-style wrestling until one or the other combatants cried out, "give!"

Carlisle was farmland everywhere, there were no basketball courts, and the major sporting events were tackle football, smear-the-queer (aka kill-the-guy-with-the-ball) and nominally-organized wars with dirt-clods--which more gently impacted the body than rocks.  The dirt clod wars evolved later into BB gun battles and for protection we wore thick sweatshirts and safety goggles filched from shop class--these were the roots of modern-day paintball.  Our protean activities made up an authentic country-boy Olympics wherein the daredevil sprinting event consisted of teasing the local farmer's bull--and hauling ass for your life!  There were also friendly wrestling matches, which persisted until someone submitted.  It was here I learned how painfully effective the thumb-gouge-to-the-eye works to effect a quick-release; I remember precisely the first time someone did this to me--in second grade--Jesus, it hurt so bad, I couldn't see for a week! 

Local boxing matches were yet another event.  My dad, a former Navy lightweight boxing champ, had an ancient pair of horsehair-filled leather gloves, which were so busted up the horsehair leaked out where the leather was stripping off.  We beat the tar out of each other with those gloves, with painful bonus abrasions from the rough horse hairs.

My brother and I formed the core of one of the various neighborhood gangs--with the kids we were hanging around with--but the ultimate gang, and the terror of our neighborhood--were the Creek Road Boys.  Slightly older than the rest of us, they were a tight-knit group of brothers and cousins who could put the beat down on the rest of us.  To face these particular toughs, I judged myself woefully unprepared.

During our backyard boxing matches, when I'd get hit hard, I'd get so angry I'd instinctively rip off my gloves and rush my opponent.  My dad noticed my proclivity to clinching and taking an opponent to the ground and literally forced me to go out for junior high school wrestling (which I took to like a bobcat to the mother-in-law's chicken coop.)  This was just after being introduced (by my dad again) to my first barbell set.  Fortuitously, the York Barbell Company--in those days, the mecca of  Olympic lifting--was just down the road from Carlisle and thus I cut my teeth on the classic York barbell and dumbbell courses.  From the York system it was one short step to Perry Rader and his fabulous Iron Man magazine.  In this pre-steroid era (or at least the very beginning of it) the original Iron Man contained a wealth of fantastic old school information--nothing like the bloated, steroid rag of today which bears the same name.

Once the wrestling bug hit me, my interest was 100% focused on functional training and becoming the best wrestler I could be.  Still, I did a brief bodybuilding sojourn during my senior year--still following the old-school principles--and went from 156 to 205 lbs. in about three and a half months on a 20-rep barbell breathing squats program.  I was squatting 320 lbs. for 20 reps--deep, below-parallel squats--and handling 245 lbs. in the stiff-legged deadlift for 15 reps.  I was a poor bench presser and never fared well with that move, but I was able to do a strict military press with my body weight of 205 lbs. 

My freshman year in college (at Westchester State as a physical education major) things were run like a military camp with strict dress codes, hair rules and uniforms.  Powerlifting was all the rage, exciting and new, and the guys all used the power lifts to supplement their sports training.  I adapted a power/bodybuilding routine based on the power lifts and was training heavy and hard for the upcoming wrestling season.  In high school, I'd wrestled at the 155, and sometimes 165 lb. classes, but now I found myself a bulky power lifter, trying out for the freshman squad as a heavyweight!  I had a rude wake-up call when I realized that my height of 5'8" put me at a severe disadvantage in the heavyweight class, where most of the guys would be over 6', with tremendous reach and leverage.  My second wake-up call came with the the ample running requirement that made up part of the P.E. curriculum.  This was the birth of Cooper's aerobic program, and I was huffing and puffing hauling myself around out there on the cross-country course during the men's conditioning classes.  It was at this point I decided being big, bulky and incredibly strong wasn't serving me.  I remember one class, going up the run we called Cardiac Hill, with my instructor, who was about 60-years old--and he ran us into the ground.  I was floored that this old codger could kick our butts like that!  I was utterly disillusioned and realized there were many more athletic attributes I wished to manifest other than the ability to lift heavy stuff.  I steadily dropped weight and changed my strength training to a circuit style.  It was at this time I was introduced to High Intensity Training (HIT) and the Arthur Jones Nautilus machines.

Think or say what you will about Nautilus (and machines in general) I can tell you those old Nautilus circuits were some of the most brutal workouts I've yet undergone and for me, it ushered in a whole new training philosophy of metabolic conditioning.  The concept was simple:  a person can do a large amount of moderate-to-easy exercise, but can only do a small amount of really hard exercise.  The Nautilus philosophy embraced brief, hard workouts as optimal for increasing all-around strength and endurance.  When heavy strength exercise was combined with little-to-no rest, you had a very hard training style that taxed you systemically and muscularly all at once. The idea was that a small amount of hard, intense exercise was more beneficial than a larger volume of easier.  Perfect for an intense sport such as wrestling.  I thrived on the Nautilus system and shed every bit of body fat, assisted by a strict low-calorie diet.  My senior year, my wrestling coach talked me into dropping down to the 158 lb. class and it was a real stretch.  Many people I'd gone to school with no longer recognized me, as I'd shrunk so much in size.  This was at the height of the Bruce Lee phenomenon and the lean and wiry, shredded look was current. 

I stayed with Nautlius for many years, even after I graduated college, applying it to other modalities, including body weight and barbell training and Hammer Strength.  I practiced the ultimate high intensity protocol, known as Super-Slow, for several years.  I was in fact among the first group to be certified in the Super-Slow system.  After college, I continued wrestling on and off, but it was difficult traveling to the venues.  I attempted to fill the void with other sports, like running, occasionally racing 10ks or half-marathons; kickboxing; biathlons, mountain bike racing; karate; kung fu and my own boot-camp-style group exercise circuits I dubbed Rambo aerobics.   My version of Rambo aerobics was influenced by the old Wide World of Sports/Survival of the Fittest and American Gladiator television shows.  Survival of the Fittest pitted outdoor athletes in a series of events such as climbing, trail-running and a ropes/obstacle course.  American Gladiator was really cool--very similar to the current show--with contestants vying against the gladiators in a host of athletic contests designed to measure all-around physical ability.  I actually had people in a Center City Philadelphia upper-storey gym rappelling out the windows and scaling chain link fences over at the local tennis court, as well as partner carries up four flights of stairs, ha.  Every time they came to class, the program was a little bit different, again, much like I do today.  I'd pull barbells into the aerobics room and set up circuits, all set to eighties disco and interspersed with eighties-style high-impact aerobics dance moves.  This was way before Body Pump.  I was the original Cross-Fitter!

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.  My fascination with ancient physical culture led to researching Greek (and Roman) records of highly productive training methods--every bit as effective today.  These are the simple, classic fundamentals of training. 

I began to feel a letdown in my training with the Hammer Strength and Nautilus circuits.  It was also about this time (1989) I encountered the Gracie brothers and their synthesized training system.  I'd also read some interesting books, in particular Brooks Kubik's Dinosaur Training.  Power yoga was the current trend making the rounds and influencing the fitness world.  While I'd made good strength gains, the machine-based training circuits left a lot of holes that the new-found Brazilian jiu jitsu quickly exposed.  I was somewhat stiff and inflexible and lacking stamina in certain situations.  Well, you can't do everything; you must choose what's important to you, and I wanted to maximize my jiu-jitsu potential.  I began to explore other training systems, especially how grapplers had been training through the centuries.  I learned about the great body weight systems of the Hindu wrestlers, renowned for their strength and stamina.  I discovered the Russian kettlebell, a sina qua non tool for strength, endurance and cardio.  I was an iconoclast in Philadelphia, studying all I could find on yoga asana to discern its roots in conditioning and adapting what I found to my jiu-jitsu game.  I also learned of another form of flexibility, called mobility, primarily utilized and categorized by the Eastern Bloc.  I also explored club swinging.  I'd learned the basic Indian club moves as a college freshman in the P.E. program, but I'd never experienced the heavy club swinging that remains a staple of Middle Eastern wrestlers for millennia.  And let's not forget the Bulgarian training bag, which has assisted the Bulgarian wrestlers in dominating international wrestling lo, these many years!  Interestingly, there are depictions of Greek athletes swinging similar shaped sand-filled bags and bladders.  Being involved in a jacketed wrestling style (wearing the gi)  I've also researched what the Japanese judoka have been doing the past few centuries.  You might say I traveled back to the future, returning to my former, pre-Nautilus mode of training, combining it with elements of what I'd assimilated from my research and insights of my own.

All of these elements I've combined in my training systems for the ageless athlete.  I've been told I have a rare ability to meld seemingly disparate conditioning elements; I don't consider myself a man of many talents, but this is one I fully acknowledge.  Like the late, great Bruce Lee, I take what is useful and discard what is not.  All those who participate in my seminars are given the opportunity to assimilate what they can from my 46 years of training experience and insight.  I lead all my own seminars and personally certify each well-merited candidate.  I'm gratified my work is recognized as some of the best in the business and this is who I am and what I'm about.  Thank you for letting me share my reminiscences and the story of myself, in the hope that you can better understand where I've come from and what inspires and motivates me to do and be my best.
I look forward to seeing you soon at an upcoming seminar or certification.

In Strength & Health,

Steve