VRT Newbie

[rclightning]

Greg,
I have been receiving the Transformetrics newsletter for a few months and have a copy of M7. So when Mr. Peterson recommended your VRT program I decided to give it a try. I must say that I couldn’t be happier with VRT. I have been stuck at 3 pull-ups for some time now. After one week of using your program I decided to give the pull-ups another try, and I am happy to report that I was able to complete 3 sets of 5. In a little less that 2 weeks I completed my first set of 7 pull-ups. Thank you to Mr. Peterson for the recommendation and to you for a great program.


Sincerely
Ron

[Bruno]

I haven't pulled the trigger yet..soon.

Greg, have you had any succes with the powerlifting exercises? Deadlift or squat.

[VRT Man]

Thanks for the endorsement, Ron. I appreciate it.

And Bruno, no, I haven't done any weightlifting tests of any kind. I intuitively know there is an increase in strength, but I don't have any weights to test it on! :act-up::act-up:

And a man who created an exercise system is probably not the kind of person to join a health club just to access weights just for strength tests. Or, maybe not! What do you think? If you do have weights, give it a try, but don't hurt yourself!

Nice new forum, eh?

Greg Mangan
"VRT Man":act-up::dazed:

[Bruno]

Greg, my question wasn't clear. Have you done deadlift or squat vrt style and if so any tips?

Imagining that you were doing a deadlift with a heavy weight?

I have not done actual weight deadlifts with any regularity and have been trying to perform vrt style deadlifts mainly because I hear that its an effective exercise.

[VRT Man]

My answer is yes to both, Bruno. I've found the VRT deadlift an EXCELLENT therapy for lower back problems, and the VRT squat is a great quadriceps builder. I believe both of those exercises are in my written course, and just the squat part of it is in the DVD. If you have not tried it, please do. It cannot hurt you if followed correctly, unless you currently have some joint issues.

Greg Mangan
"VRT Man"

[MikeNY]

One of the VRT tricks I use for focus is using a wooden staff four feet long as a bar. For me it makes it easier to focus. Use a Japanese Jo or a European fighting staff, whatever you have there, even a walking stick would do!

[Andy62]

Bruno, Here is one success story:

Check out the following quote from page 109 of Mike Dayton's " Chi Mind Control" Course which was published in 1978: The Proper Breath is a deep breathing exercise, the Chi exercises are all DVR/VRT, and the mental rehearsal is exactly as it says. Pretty impressive. Don't underestimate the power of yourt mind.

" Michelle Klimesh, the model used in section 1, came to me to study weightlifting and Chi training in February of 1978. She had never lifted a weight before., and was 23 years old.

After five weeks of training [ using the Proper Breath, all of the physical Chi exercises and the mental rehearsal,particularly in the dead lift ] . I accompanied Michelle to the State Power Lifting Championship at Stockton, California. There she broke three out of four women's weightlifting records in the 123 lb class. For only five weeks of training , her debut was sensational."

[Royce]

Bruno,

Perhaps the following will be of help to you:

Tactile sensing for VRT/ DVRs

In my view, DVRs are not dependent upon visualized resistance. Resistance in DVRs is real and provided by the braking action supplied by antagonistic muscles.

In order to learn to do DVRs properly, I believe it is necessary to focus upon tactile sensations. And how, you might ask, does one accomplish that? Let me explain:


If you take a dumbbell that is too heavy to curl for more than, say, half of the required movement and then focus your mind on the feelings generated within your body just as the weight becomes too heavy to move another millimeter, that feeling will be feeling that you need to emulate in order to do DVRs successfully. That’s the important feedback.

A set of cable strands or a device such as the Exergenie could also provide that same sort of resistance.

In Qi Gong schools, you will find both DVR style exercises AND visualized resistance exercises. They differ in method and application.

Visualized resistance exercises have various oriental names, but I will avoid the various nomenclatures and simply describe the exercises.

Let’s, once again, go back to the curl exercise. When doing the visualized exercise, you simply imagine your arm curling a heavy weight. You don’t tense your arm muscles or move your arm; you just imagine everything. Like DVR style exercises, visualized exercises are ancient in origin and have served practitioners well for many eons.

I have worked with visualized exercises, but not nearly as much as I have worked with DVR style exercises.



I have said many times in the past, VRT/DVRs build size, strength and power. I have been off weights for some years now, and I have gained size and strength with only DVR routines. Frankly, I am weary of trying to prove that DVRs work as well as weights. But they do.

[A1C Evans]

Yeah I hear you Royce, you have been defending them for a long time, i'm with you though, DVR works.

Jared

[Bruno]

Thanks for the input.

Personally I believe in the results. Although, I have not used dvr exclusively except that for the full month of August, I used ipf alone. Otherwise besides dvr, I have included ipf, dsr and push ups.

I have been performing dvr exercises as I have learned them through M7 and ipf as learned through IPR.

I think they are great and am a big proponent of the method.

I wanted to incorporate some of the weightlifting movements advocated by some of the legends of the strength game such as Saxon and newer figure like Pavel and Kubick vrt style. Those movements include the deadlift, squat and bent press. The moves have been touted for overall strength and power development.

The bent press and deadlift are not so easy for me to incorporate and that's why I asked for tips. The broom handle and rope seem to go along way.

I'm not looking to attack vrt/dvr simply expressing my present difficulty with some exercise movements and not looking for anyone to justify their use of it. I feel as though I have to type gently or else forum members will misapprehend my comments. I certainly don't want to have to preface every comment with I believe in vrt and... or I believe in nerve force but... or well you get the idea.

[Andy62]

Actually Pavel recommends VRT, which he mistakenly refers to as Dynamic Tension in the following quote, to get through sticking points in lifting:

" Because strength generally does not exceed 30% of your tendon strength, the strength govenor mechanism is set up way too conservatively. Scientists believe that pulling the brake from your gas pedal, that is minimizing the inhibitory imput into the muscles is the key that will open the door to super strength undreamed of by the strongest people in the world. Despite grandmothers wrestling leopards and mothers
lifting cars to save their progeny supposedly do something to prevent the 'take it easy, you might get hurt' commands from reaching their muscles. Insane people bend bars in the windows of their cells- I believe they call them wards in the US- because their neural circuitry is goofed up. It does not recognize inhibitory input and does not hold you back.. This is the essence of DISINHIBITION TRAINING, THE HOTTEST NEW DIRECTION IN STRENGTH TRAINING. Of course we do not want to to totally lose our senses, rather learn to ignore them when we choose to.

Enter FEED-FORWARD TENSION, one of the most promising disinhibition techniques. It requires you to maximally contract your muscles with a submaximal weight or NO WEIGHT WHATSOEVER. Remember Charles Atlas and his 'Dynamic Tension'method? You are supposed to imitate lifting a weight by flexing your muscles for all you have got. Just as Tai Chi Kung differs from visually similar calisthenics in concentration and awareness , 'Dynamic Tension' is an Oscar Winning pantomime of a world record powerlift, and not just a mindless going through the motions.

The guy in the leopard skin swim suit did not invent the method. Russian Scientists Anokin and Proshek did in the early 1900s. Or so they thought. Bodhidharma, the semi mythical progenitor of Oriental martial arts from India, may have practiced such exercises a millennium and a half ago.

Scientists were skeptical of 'Dynamic Tension' for a while suspecting that by creating artificial resistance within your muscles you learn to put on the brakes. The Soviet study by Kovalik established beyond the shadow of a doubt that ' virtual lifting' builds strength even in the so called quick lifts."


"Power to The People"

by Pavel Tsatsoline

Pages 71& 72:

[Bruno]

Thanks for the post Andy.

Yes, I have some of Pavels books and on an older thread I quoted him on the topic of using a crushing grip and actively contracting the muscle to it's maximum.

[Andy62]

That maximum contraction principle is very prominent in Russian Strength Training even to this day. As nearly as I can tell they got it from Alexander Zass who lived in Russia for much of his life.

[A1C Evans]

That is awesome. So the braking action did not become an automatic reaction when lifting real weight, and they proved that by out lifting others and their own records. What is a quick lift? Is the effectiveness of DVR disputed because they still used weight to test themselves and a pure DVR program as we know it would result in this braking reflex kicking in when lifting real weight? Is that what they were arguing?

[Hank_Z]

My answer is yes to both, Bruno. I've found the VRT deadlift an EXCELLENT therapy for lower back problems, and the VRT squat is a great quadriceps builder. I believe both of those exercises are in my written course, and just the squat part of it is in the DVD. If you have not tried it, please do. It cannot hurt you if followed correctly, unless you currently have some joint issues.

Greg Mangan
"VRT Man"

Greg,

Both the deadlift and the squat are on your DVD. The DVD shows you doing one version of the squat. It also shows how to perform another version of the squat.

Hank