Oh yeah, it can be done.
Can you burn fat AND build muscle with *just* the Original Strength resets?
In a word: Hell yes!
Okay, that was two words. Sue me.
The fact remains the same – for as gentle as the OS resets are, time and time again my students (most of whom start off using ***only*** the OS resets before moving on to any tougher exercises) report back to me that a steady diet of OS and OS alone has helped them lose fat and build muscle.
Just the other day a student brought up – almost sheepishly – this topic during our lesson.
“I’ve noticed that I’ve lost weight lately. Is it even possible that what we’ve been doing could be responsible? I mean, it all seems so gentle…it just doesn’t make sense!”
This is hardly the first time I’ve heard this. Last year, someone who went through my 30 day crawling challenge (crawl a total of 10 minutes daily for 30 days) told me she actually LOST weight while eating like crazy during the myriad Christmas festivities she took part in!
“Yeah, but building muscle? Everyone thinks they’ve built muscle once they start doing anything and the fat starts to fall off.”
^^^ True. But when a student comes back from having her body composition tested professionally (more than once, mind you) and is told that she’s lost fat AND built muscle, well, that’s something!
Moreover, my good friend and former powerlifter Corey Howard of Sioux Falls, SD has experienced the same thing by loading up his crawls and training them seriously. (Check out his article “Crawling Is Better Than Deadlifting” for the details). Dude’s an experienced lifter whose results go beyond mere “beginner’s gains”.
So why might this be? How can deep breathing, head control, rolling, rocking, crawling, and marching POSSIBLY do anything more than feel good?
Here are a couple of reasons why that you can be damn sure of:
* “It doesn’t matter how much work you can do – it matters how much work you can recover from.” OS helps your recovery ability even with the most basic reset of deep breathing. The better you can relax and recover (be it from your day-to-day life to your hard training), the less physically stressed you are. Not only that, but it balances stress hormones with anabolic hormones, making for better fat loss.
* OS builds real, usable strength in every nook and cranny of your body. Traditional strength training – as great as it is – usually has you standing in place. Real life happens in motion. Strengthening your most important movement patterns and all the muscles that support them and you’ll be shocked at how much lighter everything will feel – including YOU! Case in point: I spent two months away from squatting and crawled in its place. I took my double 24 kg kettlebell front squat from 10 reps to 20 reps!
* OS builds work capacity. Crawling and marching – particularly when done in tandem – are tremendous ways to ramp up your work capacity like nothing you’ve ever seen. Greater work capacity = greater energy (i.e. bodyfat) consumption. Best of all, for those of you HIIT junkies in need of some sort of sucker punch to your heart, lungs, and muscles alike, these two moves are where it’s at, yet are gentle enough to be done daily as they doesn’t tax your central nervous system the way many other forms of training do.
* Done consistently, it lifts movement restrictions from your body, allowing you to move more efficiently, more gracefully, and more powerfully, meaning you can express your body the way it was meant to be expressed and you can do so more often. Consistency in any endeavor leads to success.
The list goes on (and on, and on…) but I digress. The proof is in the practice. If you haven’t spent some serious time with these moves under your belt, there’s no time like the present to add them to your daily routine.
Your health (and waist line) will thank you.