Enter the Lion’s Den
By David Kelso, head of Brutal Training Europe

I have recently returned to Melbourne after traveling up north for a few months. A few weeks ago, was the first Thursday night session I had took since getting back. H has asked me to write about that night.

I decided that the group would be doing 500 squats in a single set, I have been doing this every day for the last 3 months and so it wasn’t something I had built up to, I did 500 squats one day, then did them again the next, and the next. If I could do them anyone could. I am no better or have any more power available to me than the next person. The only difference is that most people let what they can or cannot do be dictated by the thoughts in their head, the ones that say ‘That’s impossible!’ Once I have decided to do something, I let what I can or cannot do be dictated by death. I will either do, or I will die, that’s it. So I told Jerry we were doing the 500 squats. He asked if was insane; I said it’s a possibility but lets continue regardless.

At 250 I told the group that the pain was not going to get any better. There was only two options, continue resisting and fighting against the pain, grunting and groaning your way to 500, or completely surrender to it. Accept that the pain is there. It’s not going anywhere. It’s here and it’s now. Accept that and keep squatting anyway.

When you fully surrender, fully accept any condition of the moment, when you fully accept and surrender to what is, there is a detachment from it, pain is present, but you are not someone suffering through pain, it’s just part of what is arising. There is no personal attachment to it; it’s not a personal problem. When this happens you have transcended the pain and the drill has become a meditation, the pain doesn’t go anywhere, its still there, but no longer are you moved by it. Some surrendered while others resisted.

After the session some of the guys asked me about reps with a combination of the experience from the session and recent article H had written. Their interest was fired up. I explained that when doing reps to a high number of anything something happens. The mind begins to quiet, you become still, you become present, you start to meditate and something else entirely takes over. When you do anything completely, you leave no trace of yourself. You are not doing anything because you are not even there.

They asked about the science behind reps. I said there were many explanations as to why they work through the science of men, but I’ll not go into that here because I don’t really care about it. But the science of nature explains it very simply. If you want to get good at something, do it, and do it lots.

Any limits you think you have are placed upon you by the mind. The mind works according to the opinions and laws of man. The laws of nature don’t give a shit about the laws or opinions of man. By doing reps the mind will crack. Here’s the magic secret to reps - you can never do enough. Repetition of anything can take you straight to your very own eternal nature, but you must do them into eternity.

Here are some inspirational stories about reps and the power of the present mind, here and now, which has no limits.

During a session I used to run in Scotland we were doing 500 squats. This was about 3 years ago and my then 13-year-old brother decided to come to the session out of the blue. Now Jack at that point had the health and fitness of a decaying sausage. His daily reps consisted of how many hours of TV he could watch. He did nothing at all, and hadn’t for some time. He came along to the session and decided to join in. He did the 500 squats straight off, and kept pace with the whole group. We did them in less than 15 minutes.
Now how can a 13-year-old couch potato do that? Because he had no limiting belief, he didn’t have a clue that 500 squats are seen as a big thing. To him it was just a number it could have as easily been 20 or 1000. His only reference for fitness had been watching me train. So he just did it, no questions.

In another session in Scotland I had the group do a ladder from 1-20 of burpees at one end, and 1-20 of tuck jumps at the other, in between was a 20m bear crawl. At about 12 on the ladder one dude, could not physically move any more, he was on his hands and knees shaking and in tears, then he suddenly let go, he stopped fighting the pain, got up and crawled on.

I train 2 guys in Melbourne who are training to be fighters. When I first got here in October I took them for a session with H. Later on that same day was my first Brutal session on the beach. H explained to me that these dudes will need to pushed about twice as hard as the 2 fighters, and that was the case. A few short months have passed and the 2 fighters have been training and doing reps, and one thing I have never heard from either of them is the words ‘I cant’. They just do. Now the poles have reversed truly. These guys have 2-hour sessions with me and are going at it more than twice as hard as the beach sessions. You could tell them to run through hell and back and you would not here from them ‘ I cant’; there is no cant for these dudes.

In their last session they did 200 squats, 100 push-ups, and 300 sit ups, as a warm up. Then went on to run hill sprint drills for 30 mins, then 30 mins of reps of various strikes on the pads, then 30 mins of suicide runs, then to finish another 300 squats.

Why am I telling you these stories? To show you there are no limitations, anything can be done, it is just a case of simply doing it. If your thoughts say you can’t, let them be and do it anyway, cut them with reps, do enough reps and the mind will fall silent. When there is silence, there is nothing that cannot be done.

500 SQUATS ANYONE??

The Adventure waits…
DK