Hardstyle. The what, the why.
Here at Edge of Strength, we use a system of training known as Hardstyle. It made its way to America from Russia in the late 90’s via the “Kettlebell Renaissance” but the time-tested methodologies and principles stretch back across centuries.
It is a system like no other but few understand it. Here I aim to give you a thousand-foot view of the what’s, why’s, and how’s of Hardstyle philosophy and training so you may see why it is simply the best way to train for strength, health, resilience, and longevity!
The term Hardstyle is derived from Martial Arts. In that context, HardStyle described schools of Martial Arts that honored a philosophy of meeting force with force and placed great value on physical strength and the practice of “Kime”(focus).
Hardstyle (fitness) training honors this same philosophy. We believe in focused efforts, and meeting force with force on both ends of the spectrum. High tension in slow lifts/ expressing maximum speed and power in quick ones. We don’t hang out in the mushy middle where results are lost and where you’ve probably spent most of your time until now. The tactics employed in hardstyle training make the weak strong, and make the strong stronger, building unbreakable bodies built to take on whatever life brings!
Principle: Safety is part of, not separate from performance
When we train, the goal is to build a healthier, stronger, more mobile, and resilient body from head to toe. We aim to build up, not break down. We do this by enforcing quality standards, focusing on using excellent lifting techniques on every rep and learning to listen to our body. Injuries in training are preventable 99% of the time yet they are commonplace in many gyms..Not here, that is Unacceptable. I would hope it was common sense but being distracted, not respecting the weight, ego-lifting, and attempting to impress or outdo others serves no purpose, and getting injured while doing something intended to make you healthier and more resilient is incredibly idiotic. Accidents can happen of course but when you tear your shoulder apart trying to beat some arbitrary time in today’s “WOD” you have to ask yourself why…Unless you’re being paid, you can tell yourself anything you want but in reality, no one cares what your time was or how much you lifted..The good news is you get to sit on your couch, with your health on the slide for the next 5 to 6 months, and think about it. Respect the process, respect the weight, respect your body, put your ego to the side, and realize tomorrow is another day…and I’d like to train tomorrow. Safe performance is optimal performance. Be smart, and keep your ego in check, that is Hardstyle.
Employing the following hardstyle tactics makes training infinitely more safe, effective and sustainable:
Tactic: Abdominal Breathing/ Power Breathing - Abdominal breathing is simply how we were designed to breathe since birth. In every exercise, the ability to belly breathe will enhance your stability. The more stable you are, the more force you can produce. The more force/strength you can produce and express the more rapidly your body will change.. Mouth breathing while training or anytime really, sends the body into fight or flight mode, raising stress and cortisol…two things that work against fat loss and strength-building efforts, you will feel more lingering fatigue from your training and you will hamper your ability to recover from training, meaning results will be diminished. The body will not adapt while in survival mode. You must master your breath for optimal results. Every well-done exercise has an optimal breathing pattern, we call it the biomechanical breathing match. Matching the breath to your movement makes you safer, more stable, strong, and more powerful.. There is no exercise where breathing up in your chest with your mouth wide open is going to improve your performance. Unless you are power-breathing, keep your mouth shut. It is a skill. And it is helpful in more scenarios than you might think ;-)
Tactic: Pay attention to the Stop signs- When it comes to listening to your body, Hardstyle training and the Strongfirst system utilize “Stop Signs”. Indicators that it is time to stop the set, and sometimes the session altogether. The stop signs include:
Rep Speed slows down
Technique changes in any way
Perceived effort level exceeds 8 on a scale of 1-10
Gasping for air
Hitting any of these Stop Signs indicates that you have exceeded your body's current capacity in the chosen exercise at the given intensity(Load or volume of work) and pushing past these stop signs would be a foolish attempt at forcing adaptation upon the body, and opportunity for injury increases. You must allow for adaptation not force it. You must respect the process. Instead of mindlessly pushing through, simply note the point at which a stop sign was reached and allow the recovery process to take place. In your next attempt, 2-5 days later, you will likely find you can go further than before. That is listening to your body, that is allowing for natural adaptation. That is progressive resistance training 101. We are training, not testing. Know the difference, mind the stop signs. Maintain the standards, and have self-discipline, that is Hardstyle.
Tactic: Go Barefoot or wear minimal-sole shoes- Our feet are our first connection to the ground. They are what root the body to the earth and provide balance and stability. When you perform an exercise standing on one or two feet, your ability to feel the ground underneath you is critical to safety and performance. The skin and soles of our feet are full of mechanoreceptors, only our hands have more. These pressure sensors send signals to the rest of the body informing it of how much load we’re under and the tension we need to generate based on the forces at work on our body. Cushy, over-priced, thick-soled shoes do not belong when training for strength. They impair the sensitivity of these sensors- essentially leaving the body to guess what’s coming. If the body is unprepared, muscles can literally shut down (via the Golgi Tendon) and restrict our strength and mobility. Our feet are designed to grip, just the same as our hands but the typical “gym shoe” with a narrow toe box and thick sole will keep you from being able to freely move your toes to grip and the sole will keep you from being able to feel the floor. This is a recipe for instability, poor balance, inability to produce power, and less than optimal if not downright dangerous performance. Free your feet, go barefoot or wear flat-bottom, thin-soled shoes when lifting. Save the cushy dad shoes for jogging or loafing around, keep them out of the Hardstyle Strength Dojo.
Tactic: Posture(position before submission)-Before you can perform an exercise well, you need to own the postures and positions required of it… Too often in fitness, it’s monkey see, monkey do with little or no attention paid to proper set-up, biomechanics, posture, and positioning. Every exercise performed in training has an optimal, most effective, and wrong way that it can be performed. There is not necessarily a “perfect” way but there is always a wrong way. The difference between optimal and just plain wrong is typically a question of posture and positioning. Can you get into position and then hold the posture required to perform the exercise properly? It’s going to come down to your mobility, stability, and motor control. Optimal/most effective is subjective, it means making the exercise fit you and your current level of mobility/flexibility/strength as you progress; wrong means you have limitations and mobility restrictions that prevent you from even getting into the right position to perform the exercise safely but you do it anyways. To see an example of the wrong way, just look around the next time you're in the gym or visit the local CrossFit box to see what slop, poor posture, and bad positions look like, then decide you’re better than that. You are Hardstyle.
Tactic: Tension/hyper-irradiation- Strength is tension, tension is strength. Learning to “get tight” was long a secret privy to only the naturally strongest individuals in the world. It has since been reverse-engineered. Lack of tension is why the average gym goer can blow out their back lifting a load the equivalent of a paper clip while those who know how to harden their body through the application of high intrinsic tension can lift the front end of a station wagon and stay injury-free. The ability to produce tension is a skill and practicing it amplifies your strength, stability, and safety to heights you wouldn’t think possible. By using hyper-irradiation techniques, essentially firing your muscles together, so they wire together, you can turn every exercise into a full body lift thereby greatly increasing the metabolic effect of your training, the systemic load is greater and results are achieved in less time. This is the very essence of HARDSTYLE. We don’t seek to make an exercise “easier” or “efficient. We make it maximally effective by utilizing high tension in the slow lifts(aka Grinds)/ speed, power, and explosiveness in the quick lifts (aka Ballistics).
Tactic: Relaxation /Fast and loose - All things in nature operate in cycles. Training for strength and health is the same. Not only in the overall view of training across a lifetime but within the session and exercise itself. As it applies to training various lifts, on one end of the spectrum we have maximum tension which allows one to generate and apply great force; on the other end is relaxation which enables us to produce great speed and power. The ability to quickly and rapidly shift between tension and relaxation is the definition of athleticism. All martial artists know this, just watch Bruce Lee as he throws a punch, completely relaxed as he throws a jab then tense as a stone at the moment of impact…The HARDSTYLE kettlebell swing is one of the most unique exercises there is because within it you will see this cycle of tension and relaxation, simulating a powerful karate strike and it is why when done correctly it is one of the most athletic, and beautiful movements to behold. Shaking the muscles out after a hard set is also a must…Tension, especially through the grip creates an occlusion effect, temporarily restricting blood flow to the muscles; in order to perform well in subsequent sets, and prevent the buildup of lactic acid (the burn), restoring blood flow by use of “fast and loose” drills is necessary to recover and repeat high-quality efforts. Which is why we “ shake it out”. Learn to get tight, learn to stay loose; yin-yang duality is Hardstyle.
Principles of a Hardstyle Mindset :
Principle: Quality over quantity - The emphasis on Quality over Quantity is perhaps the most fundamental of all Hardstyle training principles, we simply do not allow for sloppiness. Your training should reflect who you are and the way you want to carry yourself in this world. If you were to not hold yourself to a standard at your job and just allow yourself or your employees to complete a ton of tasks but all of them poorly, what would that say about you, and where would it get you? Probably in the unemployment line. Quality is a virtue and maintaining quality shows that you care about what you are doing, it shows that it is important to you. Strength and Health are of vital importance to all, therefore, quality is a must. Why do we focus on Quality? Because How you do anything is how you do everything. Hold yourself to a standard, that is Hardstyle.
Principle: Practice vs working out - A workout is a random, mindless effort. Often untracked, unrepeatable, unsustainable, and devoid of direction. A workout is only meant to get you sweaty or sore or give you that endorphin rush so many blindly seek it’s not truly moving the needle toward fitness…It is also the reason so few people can consistently train throughout life. They rush out the gate and are smoked after the first lap. Life and training is a marathon, success in the long term means pacing yourself. There are times to push the pedal to the metal but if you live with your finger on the NOS button, or you’re constantly redlining, your engine is going to blow a gasket, I promise. Practice simply means training in a way that is simple, repeatable, and consistent. Practice means a practical, sustainable approach with progressive intensification, instead of short-term, meaningless gratification( aka “I feel like I got a good workout”) Guess what, your feelings don’t Matter... Strength, endurance, power, and stamina, are skills, and skills require practice not workouts. Changing your mindset and approaching your fitness training as practice can be the game-changer you’ve been looking for that finally helps things click and allows you to create the consistency you know you need, when you can do that, you are becoming Hardstyle.
Principle: Less is more- In Hardstyle training, the emphasis is on doing fewer things better, rather than doing countless things poorly. This principle also applies within the session itself…wherein we avoid taking sets to failure, instead, we reduce the number of reps and aim to complete more high-quality sets. This is tough for a lot of people to wrap their heads around but if you want burn, light a match, stop chasing it in training. Leaving a few reps in the tank is a method proven to provide sustainable, consistent strength and muscle-building results because it optimizes recovery both in session allowing you to lift heavier and keep quality high and leaves you feeling fresher in the days after. Less is more means getting the most out of your training in the least amount of time, with the fewest variables and fewer moving parts whenever possible, keeping things “simple”, not “easy”. It means narrowing your focus to the 20% that gives us 80% of what we’re after…Less is more means less time training and more time out enjoying your family, your friends, your hobbies and life. Unless you are getting paid by the hour to work out, no one cares how much time you spend in the gym…duration and effectiveness are not synonymous. Oftentimes, more is just more. Do less, but do it well, this is Hardstyle.
Philosophy :
Hardstyle is an attitude. It is non-conformist. It is the antidote to the poison well that produced the complete and utter failure known as the modern health and fitness industry. When you practice Hardstyle training, you are a student, aligning yourself with generations of individuals who recognize that strength is a skill, that strength is the master quality, and that strength has a greater purpose, it improves every aspect of your life and allows us to be there for others. You acknowledge that what we do in training should support, not take away from life outside of it. When you practice Hardstyle, you are saying to the world that you are in control. You own your strength, you own your movement, your breath, and most importantly you own your mind and you will not be swayed by the latest fad or work yourself into a sobbing, panting heap in training chasing after “the burn”, the “pump”, the” rush” or whatever cliche is trending this week on TikTok...You instead seek continuous improvement, and mastery over your body, your skill, your mind, and spirit. Utilizing what is tried, true, and timeless, rather than flash in a pan. You recognize that discipline is far stronger than motivation and respect the fact that intelligent training is the key to consistency and consistency is the ONLY mother of success.
We can all be strong, mobile, anti-fragile, resilient. No matter if you are 12, 42, or 92, strength is health, you deserve it and no one does it better than Edge Of Strength.
We Are Hardstyle.
-Coach Q
