| Hi Friend,
There were no commercial gyms in 13-year-old Matt Furey’s hometown of Carroll, Iowa. Just as there were no health spas or health clubs — hell, there wasn’t even a weights room at his high school gym! Yet these drawbacks didn’t halt the inexperienced teenager from hitting the iron.
Training in his parents’ basement, Furey’s home gym was a plastic barbell set from Sears with baseball legend Ted Williams’ name inscribed on each plate. He also had some steel plates.
The three weekly sessions he performed were brief and didn’t take longer than 20 minutes. And progression was super-simple, too: each workout, the youngster tried to add weight to the bar and beat his previous best.
But here’s the thing… Furey only trained with ONE MOVEMENT, and he didn’t even know that exercise very well. The movement was his best imitation of the clean-and-jerk.
Writing in The Dinosaur Files some 21 years later, here is what Furey had to say:
“As a 13-year-old who didn’t even know the exact form for how to do the clean-and-jerk, that one movement still produced a crop of muscles on my body within six weeks and made me stronger than hell… My one-movement training program was giving me the explosive strength I needed…”
These days, Matt Furey is a martial arts world champ. He is also the first American to ever win a gold medal competing in China, and a shoot-from-the-hip authority when it comes to dishing up quality information on grappling.
When Furey released his book on bodyweight conditioning exercises entitled “Combat Conditioning: Functional Exercises for Fitness & Combat Sports”, it became a critically acclaimed, best-selling classic.
Yet despite the titles and stellar successes, Furey would be the first to tell you he laid his fitness foundation — and made his best muscular and strength gains — using one movement workouts.
And oftentimes, that’s all you ever need.
Until next time,
Squat for Glory!
Lee
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