Stroops for Defensive Fitness

Fitness is an important part of personal defense and one of the things we always look for is any way we can, to increase the value of our time and effort spent trying to be more fit. And if we could combine our fitness efforts, with our defensive training, whether that's unarmed or a shooting training, that's all the better. And stroops gives us a way to do that right out here on the range or inside your home or maybe even at your gym. Now stroops is a made-in-America product that uses these elastic bands to actually create extra resistance and cause you to have to do more work and be more precise about the technique that you're actually performing whenever you're doing any kind of exercises Or specifically, one of the things that stroops is great for is sport specific exercises. That is exercises designed to enhance your ability to perform certain skills. Now naturally, they've developed in the world of athletes. They've developed things for tennis players, volleyball players, soccer players, football players. But I've been working with them, as have all of the fit shot developers to create sports specific exercises and to enhance their products to actually help people who are interested in personal defense skill development and defensive fitness. So let's take a look at what we've got here. First of all, I'm wearing a full body harness. So I've actually got straps connecting to the back of the leg cuffs that are down here at my ankles, with a resistance band for each leg. I've got the harness that connects in the middle and comes up over my shoulders and running through that harness is one band connected to both of my wrists. And what this allows me to do is to not only get resistance when I move my legs to full extension, when I close and open at the hip, but also whenever I extend my arms. Now what this means is I'm getting added resistance therefore more benefit out of any individual repetition. So regardless of what exercise I'm going to do, maybe it's going to be an air squat, I'm going to get more resistance. When I step up out of the air squat, when I stand up, I'm going to get more resistance from the leg strap and as I extend my arms out in front of me as I go down, I'm going to get more resistance in my arms and that's going to give me a better workout. So as I dip down to do the squat, I extend my arms out, come back up. And that rep without the stroop is worth what? 80 percent 70 percent 90 percent of what it is with. So again, it's maximizing my efficiency for whatever repetition it is that I'm going to do. I can combine stroops with any type of fitness exercise, maybe even including a kettlebell swing. So now I can dip down into my squat, come up with the kettlebell swing, maybe I'm going overhead, maybe I'm just coming up with the traditional swing, and either way I'm getting more work for my time, more work for my effort. Of course, one of the things we're specifically interested in is combining stroops with our firearms training. How can we become more athletic in terms of our shooting ability? How can we develop our shooting ability at a higher level, while using this technology? Well, that's why these straps are up here on the shoulders. Stroops traditionally have had the arm bands come under the hands. So they've actually come around the body and created resistance at extension that pulls down. Well naturally, when we start thinking about controlling recoil and managing the forces that are acting against our hands from the firearm, that pressure is coming from the bottom up. So what I don't want to do, is that extension have a force that's coming underneath of my arms, causing me to learn to push up. I actually want the force to come from above my arm so that when I'm at extension, I'm learning to press down and out because that's what's going to help me resist recoil. So if I go to my, in this case gray gun, my training gun, I put my holster on, and I think about practicing my presentation. As I go down to the gun, I come up, orient, and drive out, and now my extension is not only enhanced in terms of an exercise motion, the fact that I'm actually getting some resistance here, and I'm getting some strength development when I do that, but I'm also learning because I'm getting more feedback. I'm getting more neural feedback on that extension so I'm getting to practice more perfectly. Obviously I can practice that presentation from any angle, from any direction. I can practice it while kneeling, while seated. I can even think about practicing my reloads. I could do this live fire. Actually present a live gun, drive out, take shots, hit slide lock, do a reload, and get more feedback every time I do a rep plus I'm enhancing my personal fitness which makes me safer, makes me stronger. Fitness is an important part of personal defense and stroops is a great way to enhance whatever it is you're doing to be prepared for that worst-case scenario.