Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning
Price at time of review $29.99 + shipping or 'Free' with his $129 'Insider Secrets' video package.
"All throughout the world you will see that animals in the wild are in far better shape than human beings...how do these animals get into this kind of condition? They do it by working with their own body weight...If an athlete wants to get the most out of himself, it is a good idea to copy the way of the animal"
- Matt Furey, from the back cover of Combat Conditioning.
Charles Atlas. He's the one in the back of your old Spiderman comics clenching
his fists in his leopard print pants. Atlas made a mint. Preying on adolescents'
insecurities with super hyped ad copy , Atlas sold them a series of bodybuilding
courses based on simple bodyweight exercises.
The genius was that, despite having built his physique by lifting weights, Atlas's mail order course required no equipment. Perfect because if you were 14 and had a body like PeeWee Herman, you didn't even have to step foot outside your own bedroom to train. You emerge all beefed up like the superheros in the comics Atlas targeted. No equipment meant that anyone could do it and importantly Atlas didn't have to spend a dime on manufacturing any equipment! An where did Atlas claim he got his inspiration? Watching animals in Brooklyn Zoo!
Furey took ancient, popular exercises, Dands and Bethaks and called them Hindu Pushups and Squats, bundled with the wrestler's bridge and named The Royal Court.
Perhaps the word 'functional' applies to Furey's background sport of wrestling? Matt was fortunate enough to train under all-time-great wrestler and coach, Dan Gable. Gable was, and is, held in awe for his ball-busting dedication to strength and conditioning, not just for himself, but for all wrestlers that trained under him. Gable's recipe for success? Pushups, situps, chins, rope climbs and plenty of weight lifting. Yep, Gable is a staunch advocate of weight training. As was Furey, who used to regularly pen wonderful articles about the benefits of hoisting iron.
What you get is a good book. The exercises, all 47 of them are good. There's
The Royal Court, 6 extra, very simple, routines and a 4 page Q&A. Plus
the obligatory ads.
Furey doesn't give much guidance on training frequency or rep volume. How
many reps? Er, as many as you feel like. How often? Erm, whenever. Furey is
a very talented scribe and the writing is pretty straight forward in the book
and actually far less cheesey than some authors out there.
Summary:
There's something wonderfully minimalist about training without equipment. It's cheap, clutter-free , natural and most of all, effective. Indubitably Matt Furey does deserve props for the publicity he's generated for calisthenics.