Real Man Muscle Building: Back Yard Edition

What you're about to read is my version of "real man muscle building." Oh, yes, of course, it applies to women too. It's just a fancy term that describes building real strength that you can use in every day life.

Your body is an amazing machine. It adapts very quickly to your workouts, nutrition, and even sleep. For example, it's quite easy to teach your body how to get by on only 5 hours of sleep.

Now, of course, it's not ideal. But the point is, your body adapts.

Because of this often rapid adaptation, I constantly change things up. As I write this, I haven't entered a gym this week. I haven't had to because I'm building real man strength!

You see, I've been tearing out my backyard. I've been tearing apart sheds, ripping up brick, digging, lifting, raking, and carrying heavy sacks of yard waste and debris to take to the dump.

All of this heavy and long work has given my muscles and cardiovascular system work that they are not accustomed to. Plus, I'm burning a TON of calories.

The work in my backyard is expected to take about a week. I'm installing new sod, plants, trees, and just "beautifying" the space in which my kids can play. I know, it's the beginning of winter soon, why will my kids be outside playing in the cold?

Well, for one, this summer flew by. My family and I took several extended vacations (I was recently laid off from my 8 to 5 job). And another thing: It doesn't get that cold here in the winter. Once in a while, the temp drops to below freezing, but that's short-lived and infrequent.

So, in short, my back yard will be a place we spend our time in during summer, spring, fall, and winter.

We're lucky. All this hard work I'm doing now has a double-benefit: We'll shortly get to enjoy our "new" back yard, PLUS I'm getting a great workout!

All in all, we carried off 20 contractor-size bags of leaves, tree clippings, and bush debris (and a lot of dirt), a 10x10 shed, and we've dug up and moved about a thousand bricks (I'm not counting, but I'm not kidding either).

This "unconventional" training conditions the body in ways that you just can't do at the gym. It's like a 10 or 12 hour circuit training session with bending, lifting, stretching, twisting, and climbing, all wrapped in one fantastically-exciting and draining session. You build strength in your forearms and fingers like you wouldn't believe and your core strength benefits hugely because you're giving your muscles exercises that aren't easily simulated at the gym.

All in all, it's been a great week so far and I'm going to head back to the gym stronger, fitter, and more flexible. I'll also have more gripping strength and better conditioning.

I suggest that once every six weeks or so, get out and do some REAL WORK.

There are two programs I'd like to mention that do a reasonable job at simulating "real work." They're definitely worth looking into, but only if you want to build real muscle and cardiovascular health:

Real Man MuscleThe Caveman's Guide to Fitness

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