Friend,
My friend Matt Furey invited me to be his guest at a seminar he hosted this weekend in Clearwater Beach, Florida.
The three-day, thousand dollar a ticket event was called Regain Your Brain.
Matt co-hosted the seminar with a man named Michael J. Lavery, aka “The Hammer Man.”
I did not know what to expect going into this event, but it turned out to be truly unique and enlightening.
Seriously—I could very easily write you a 7,500 word email about my experience and all I learned. But I’ll keep it brief out of respect for your time.
Mainly, the event shed light on how technology and other factors are are dumbing-down our brains—especially when it comes to children.
But the event also delivered many ways to awaken our brains…to improve short-term memory…and to help stave off the effects of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neuromuscular diseases.
In fact, we were taught many drills to strengthen the hippocampus—the area of the brain that governs memory, emotion and the autonomic nervous system.
For example, we learned how to recite the alphabet backwards.
We learned how to memorize (in order) the full names of all 44 United States Presidents and the particular term each served, i.e. James A. Garfield was the 20th President of the United States.
And we did an abundance of cursive handwriting and penmanship drills. Why? Because other than speaking, nothing we can do stimulates the brain more than writing in cursive (a dying skill in today’s world).
But we also did a variety of physical drills to strengthen the brain ranging from Tai Chi moves to hammer drills, which leads me to the central thrust of this message.
I think you’ll love doing the hammer drills.
All you need is a golf ball and a rubber mallet from Home Depot.
Your goal is to simply hit the golf ball up into the air several inches while trying to do as many repetitions as possible without missing.
Sounds easy, but it isn’t.
Now, Mr. Lavery holds the world record for the most consecutive golf ball bounces on the rounded edge of a ball-peen hammer and he’s even performed his “super human” skills on the David Letterman Show.
He can literally do thousands of repetitions on the mallet without a single miss.
He can do it with a 4 pound sledge hammer. He can do it while running. He can alternate hands with ease. He can even do it while reciting the first 100 digits of Pi in 25 seconds…the alphabet backwards from various points…or the powers of the numeral two right up into the billions.
He can stop and balance the ball on the head of the hammer…or on the handle (it’s next to impossible to do this)!
Matt Furey even demonstrated how he does the hammers while simultaneously reciting passages from the Tao Te Ching.
It was truly amazing to see all this…
When I returned home from the event, I had a headache because I activated previously dormant areas of my brain (this was normal and expected).
Still, I showed my wife and son how to do the hammer drills with the mallet and golf ball Matt gave me.
My 11 year old son couldn’t can’t stop practicing. I mean, he was all over it.
That night, he was able to do about 20 repetitions without missing. On the second day, he did 73. His goal today is to reach 100.
One man at the event says he recently did 3,600+ reps without missing…and he’s shed nearly 4% of his body fat in just a few months. He attributes it entirely to the hammer drills and other brain stimulating activities he’s learned through coaching with Matt and Michael.
A really intelligent 18 year old boy (baseball player) I met there has been doing the hammer drills for a few months now and he’s put on 12 pounds of muscle mass.
And these are just two examples of many such testimonials I heard after interacting with the other attendees.
When you do the hammer drills, it causes a process known as steroidogenesis to occur in your brain. This causes the natural release of testosterone, growth hormone and other neuro-chemicals, which results in a wide range of health benefits from increased muscle mass to more energy to greater mental clarity.
The key to understand here is that both halves of your brain are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. When you do the hammer drills, it increases blood flow into this “bridge.” That gets both halves of your brain working together simultaneously. So if you’re using your left brain or your right brain too much…these drills will help balance you out.
Supposedly, doing the hammer drills awakens unused regions of your brain, increases hand and forearms strength, improves your memory, skyrockets your hand-eye coordination, sharpens your focus, helps you become ambidextrous, etc.
If you’d like to see Mr. Lavery demonstrating his hammer drills, click here. But you can find many other videos of him on the Web.
(Ignore the 70’s music he’s singing if it’s not your cup of tea. Yes, he’s a musician, too).
I am letting you know about this because I thought you might enjoy practicing these drills as much as I did, especially if you feel Lazy Brain Syndrome setting in.
Or, it might be interesting for you to try these drills in your next staff meeting, or with some of your students, once you’re able to articulate the benefits behind it and demonstrate it properly.
It’s fun, challenging, unique and beneficial to see who can do the most reps.
Give it a shot.
As for me…I’ve gotta run. It’s time for me to do my hammer drills. My current goal is to be able to do 1,000 reps without missing.
To your success,
Rob
Rob Colasanti,
President, GCI