The Barbarians – A Huge Hybrid Muscle Upset!
Under Burn Fat/Fat Burning, Muscle Building/Routines, Recent Posts
by Mike Westerdal
Glad you all got pumped up about the “Warrior Physique” report. Ya I know I left out some pretty badass warrior cultures, so by popular demand I’m spotlighting one more for now. If you haven’t read the report yet you can snag a copy by claiming a copy at the top of this page. Okay where did I leave off? Oh ya……
Everyone knows that the ancient Roman warriors kicked ass. In fact, the growth of the Roman Empire was just about unstoppable for nearly 500 years. That is, up until 476 AD, when they found themselves fighting the Barbarians who invaded Rome from the Germanic region of Europe. And this time, it was the Barbarians who kicked ass, not the Romans. This was one of their biggest defeats that the Romans had ever suffered. And what made this trouncing particularly humiliating was that it was carried out by an army that wasn’t well-organized. Even more embarrassing for the Romans was the fact that this “rag-tag” army had almost no armor—and in fact, some of them wore nothing at all—and used a mismatched, hodgepodge of weaponry.
For the Barbarians though, this was their single-greatest victory ever, and even today, this battle stands as the defining moment in the unification of Germany. So, how did the Barbarians—who seemingly were nothing more than roving, disorganized, loose-knit bands of guys with a penchant for fighting—clobber the mighty Romans? Taking a look at both the way the Barbarians fought their battles and what they did to prepare for them, sheds some light on why they were a force not to be taken lightly.
First of all, you should know that the Barbarians—in reality, groups of small, semi-nomadic, warring tribes—basically pioneered the art of guerilla warfare. They honed their fighting skills by battling each other and favored hand-to-hand combat, surprise ambushes and fought without any rules. They had almost no armor or helmets and sometimes fought bare-chested or even naked. So while the Romans were well-disciplined fighters, they were fighting as part of an organized unit—in other words, if one fell, another took his place. In contrast, the Barbarians weren’t organized. It was more or less, every man for himself—and that’s they way they trained.
Whether it was by design or circumstance, the Barbarians were almost always in a perpetual state of training. Not only would each small tribe be almost constantly fighting another tribe, but just to keep on their toes, the guys within each tribe often fought each other. So essentially, even more so than other warrior cultures—all of which used weaponry to a greater degree than they did—the Barbarians relied on their physical capabilities to defeat their enemies.
Because of this, it was even more important for the Barbarians to continually strive to build super muscle or type III muscle, as well as increase mitochondrial density. So for them, their training activities would have focused on those things that included a high degree of resistance cardio.
The hand-to-hand combat sessions would have helped them to develop speed, accuracy, flexibility and strength. But in addition to this, they would have had to also build up their endurance levels so there would have been lots of running as well. But to really increase the mitochondrial density and build hybrid super muscle, they would have also spent a considerable amount of time running across distances carrying supplies and whatever weapons they might have been using at the time.
They would have also done quite a bit of slower-moving resistance cardio—still carrying all the great—as they moved from place to place. The Barbarians were semi-nomadic so they were almost always on the move and their attack mode was similar to what the Vikings used—rapid, surprise attacks.
Remember too that the Barbarians more or less pioneered guerilla warfare, which requires an incredible degree of flexibility, speed and versatility. Knowing this, we can be fairly certain that their training routines would not have included doing the same thing day-in and day-out. In order to develop and hone the fighting skills that they needed to defeat their enemies, they would have had to be constantly mixing things up from day-to-day. And again, like the other warrior cultures we’ve discussed, they weren’t exercising so that they could look good—they were focused on functionality.
The Barbarians definitely go down in history as one of the elite warrior cultures of all-time. Stay tuned as we explore how we can build the same Super Hybrid Muscle the Barbarians had by copying some of their training regiments. As you have definitely figured out by now it is going to involve strength building and resistance cardio or max effort conditioning. When it comes to building the “Warrior Physique” you’re going to need to train like a warrior and that involves stepping out of your comfort zone and performing activities that build muscle and burn fat at the same time like resistance cardio or conditioning.
Don’t worry, you won’t need to quit your gym to join in on some of these workouts, you just need to get creative. Got any ideas on how you can build some Hybrid Muscle? Leave your comment below and I might just spotlight another requested warrior culture next week.
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