Ori Hofmekler and Stress

The Poison Is in the Dose

The poison is in the dose.

I happened to come across a copy of my old friend Ori Hofmekler’s book, The 7 Principles of Stress. Ori is one of the health and fitness world’s few original thinkers. An internationally known artist, his satirical political cartoons were featured in the London Times, New York Times, Der Spiegel, U.S. News & World Report and Washington Post, to name but a few.

When Ori turned his full attention to fitness, he came at “fitness” from a radical perspective: Ori’s optimal physique and ideal performance profile was a military archetype, not an athletic archetype.

Ori Hofmekler’s Warrior Archetype

Ori posited that the ideal physique is best exemplified by the lightly muscled, highly conditioned, intermittently fed ancient Greek trireme rower or the common Roman foot soldier. A trireme was an ancient Greek warship used by fifth-century B.C. Greeks to project naval power. Each trireme had roughly 170 rowers. These men were not cartoon slaves chained to an oar; in the Athenian model, rowers were trained, purposeful men whose work was brutal and whose labor metamorphosed a man’s physique.

Rowers nominally pulled oars through water for extended distances. Periodically they had to “sprint,” repeatedly attaining ramming speed during sea battles. Fitted with a bronze ram, a metal nosepiece used to puncture and sink enemy ships, the trireme ruled its aquatic arena. Imagine the type of physique this job created.

Triremes, Roman Soldiers, and Loaded Work

The Roman foot soldier carried substantial loads in armor, weapons, rations and campaign gear with every step they took, every charge they made, every battle they fought. Estimates of Roman military loads vary, but the useful point is simple: these men were conditioned by loaded movement done often, for distance, under pressure.

Soldiers and rowers developed what Ori calls hybrid muscle fiber: not purely fast twitch, not purely slow twitch, but a superior blend. Dr. Len Schwartz first pointed this out to me, and Ori confirmed it. In Marty language, hybrid muscle fiber is loaded with mitochondria and built with what I call “weighted cardio.”

Weighted Cardio and Hybrid Muscle

Swing a sledgehammer, run or walk with weighted packs, sprint, engage in an extended kettlebell session, wrestle a strong opponent, tear into MMA drills, row hard on land or water, run up hills — this type of training, weighted cardio, can push muscle toward greater oxidative capacity and more mitochondrial firepower when repeated intelligently over time.

These cellular blast furnaces are part of what separates the sedentary human from the conditioned human. Sedentary people have a paucity of mitochondria; elite athletes’ muscles are chock full of them. Weighted cardio drills need to be sustained and consistent.

Ori sought to create a type of training that would replicate the performance and physiques of these military archetypes. He sought a physique capable of regular and repeated sustained physical effort and, when needed during life-and-death encounters, the ability to call on berserker strength. Ori wanted sustained strength for forced marches and rowing long distances; he also wanted the absolute strength needed to overwhelm a weaker opponent on the battlefield. Sustained strength, strength-endurance, leans heavily on oxidative capacity. Explosive strength leans heavily on high-output fiber. Ori wanted both.

Strength-Endurance, MMA, and Tactical Fitness

Ori’s resistance training approach is similar in many ways, yet dissimilar in other ways, to the philosophy Dr. Len Schwartz used to create HeavyHands: create cardio drills that include purposeful muscular contractions and require all four limbs, arms and legs, to participate in generating the totality of the muscular effort.

Ori was dismissive of bodybuilding and most sport-specific resistance training. His “strength-endurance” approach prefigured modern MMA training and prefigured the whole tactical-strength movement.

Modern mixed martial artists created drills designed to keep them from “gassing out,” from running out of energy and becoming exhausted during a fight. MMA drills purposefully inject muscular effort into cardiovascular formats. Examples might include repeatedly slamming a heavy ball, running up a steep hill for reps, pushing or pulling a weighted sled, or doing any drill that requires repeated muscular contractions designed to push the athlete past current ability to deal with oxygen debt, glycogen exhaustion, local muscular burn, and rising discomfort.

Ori has championed this type of training for decades.

The Warrior Diet and Intermittent Fasting

Ori also noted what these ancient archetypes ate, and just as importantly, how seldom they ate. Thus, the Warrior Diet was spawned. Ori did not invent fasting; humans have fasted for religious, cultural, survival and practical reasons forever. What Ori did was help popularize warrior-style intermittent fasting long before the phrase “intermittent fasting” became mainstream fitness-speak.

His nutritional contention was simple: we eat too much of the wrong stuff too often.

The Biology of Stress and Hormesis

The premise behind The 7 Principles of Stress is that there exists a “biology of stress.” By recognizing and codifying differing types, kinds and sources of stress, by identifying and differentiating stresses, stress can be ridden like Laird Hamilton shooting the curl of a 20-foot wave.

Like big-wave surfing, Ori demonstrates that there is a thin line between beneficial and harmful. Stress, manipulated and bent to our particular purpose, can amplify the quality and quantity of our lives. Too much of the wrong kinds of stress creates an equal and opposite reaction.

In the excellent foreword to The 7 Principles of Stress, Matt Kaeberlein points to hormesis: a little bit of the right stress, applied the right way, can cause a biological system to adapt and become more resistant to stress. Ori rightly concludes that modern man often lives in a world of anti-hormesis: too much comfort, too little exposure to the environmental stresses that humanity evolved to deal with.

Amen, Matt.

Ori and I agree that progressive resistance training is self-inflicted stress. The right progressive resistance dose, right frequency, right intensities, right exercise selection and right techniques, strengthens the organism. Stress that strengthens is invaluable. The stronger the organism, the more resistant and resilient in dealing with life’s struggles and stresses.

Modern Man is either dying from lack of stress, the right kind of stress, stresses in the proper dosages and frequencies, or Modern Man is dying from too much stress, the wrong kind of stress in inappropriate dosages and frequencies.

Ori-Style Stress Training

Ori suggests that Modern Man needs to self-inflict predetermined doses of stress using differing modes and methods. Hardcore resistance and sweat-inducing cardiovascular training create physical stresses. Ori, like me, feels that Modern Man often uses the wrong exercise modes, either inflicting stresses of insufficient intensity or using the wrong intensities for constructing mitochondrial-laden hybrid muscle.

Ori is no fan of bodybuilding. “Why train to be statuesque?” Bodybuilding is divorced from performance while Hofmekler cares only for performance. Performance improvements, using his template and strategies, build hybrid muscle. This is tough work and there is no crying allowed during an Ori workout. His training purposefully injects repeated intense muscular contractions into extended cardiovascular formats.

Ori might start a drill by riding a stationary bike like he is fleeing a rabid wolverine. While pedaling, he begins pressing light dumbbells overhead to failure for perhaps 25 reps. This is immediately followed by curls to failure, now side laterals, now front raises, now back to overhead pressing. Repeat for 45 minutes.

Another Ori drill might be to run stadium steps wearing a weighted vest while pumping light dumbbells for 30 minutes. Now drop the vest and bells and commence wind sprints on the flat track. Every Ori workout is designed to take a man past his current capacities to endure.

Ori’s drills push deep into the pain and discomfort zone. This type of training, done repeatedly and consistently, creates mitochondrial and performance adaptations within the working muscles. This doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over time and with methodical adherence.

The 7 Principles of Stress

What are Ori’s seven principles?

• Exposure to low-level stress yields resiliency to high-level stress.
• Maximum resiliency requires combined nutritional and physical stress.
• A low dose of toxins can help relieve or prevent toxicity.
• Energy deficit is the key factor in hormesis.
• Excess intake of energy inhibits hormesis and shortens life.
• Hormesis requires stress to be intermittent and not chronic.
• Resiliency to stress extends vitality.

Food Quality, Fasting, and Detox Language

Ori and I both note that truly strong people are more resilient than weak people. If a strong person adds a necessary cardiovascular training effort, and underpins hardcore, high-intensity training with intermittent fasting, you create a healthy, stress-resistant human — assuming the fasting, training, and recovery match the person.

Ori stresses nutrient quality. He is all organic all the time. Organic foodstuffs, locally sourced, seasonally appropriate proteins and produce, are not only maximally potent, they are also maximally flavorful.

His contention, in Ori language, is that we need to detoxify. We are poisoned and should eat once a day. The one meal starts with salads and natural, uncooked vegetables. This is a prerequisite before consuming portions of organic protein. The quality of the food supports the process, and the long daily period of non-eating gives the human body time away from constant digestion. Ori sets up a daily anabolic burst with his brilliant food strategies.

Wim Hof, Cold Exposure, and Mental Stress

I think Ori and Wim Hof are both stress masters. Wim is another original thinker. I wrote the foreword to his book. What could be more body-shocking, more stressful, than lingering in cold air or icy water? Wim found that overcoming the stress of cold water and cold air caused the body to overcompensate, with the best possible consequences.

Wim’s cold therapies create a more resilient organism. Ori’s strategies create a more resilient organism. Our hardcore power training strategies create a stronger, more resilient organism. All three approaches short-circuit the overactive conscious mind, thereby reducing mental stress. Because, as Krishnamurti notes, “If there is no thought, there is no mental stress.”

Let’s get to self-inflicting some stresses out there. Just make sure the dosages are appropriate: not too little, not too much, just right.

Safety Note for Stress, Fasting, and High-Intensity Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on Ori Hofmekler, stress, hormesis, fasting, and weighted cardio. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, mental-health, cold-exposure, rehabilitation, detox, or programming advice.

Stress is dose-dependent. The same stressor that strengthens one person can harm another. Intermittent fasting, one-meal-per-day eating, hard resistance training, kettlebell work, dumbbell pressing while cycling, loaded carries, weighted-vest running, hill sprints, sled pushes, MMA drills, and cold exposure are not automatically appropriate for every person.

Do not self-dose toxins. Do not treat “detox” language as a license to ignore medical care, food safety, or environmental exposure risk. Fasting can be inappropriate for children, teens, pregnant or breastfeeding people, underweight people, people with eating-disorder history, diabetes, blood-sugar concerns, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, medication issues, or significant medical conditions.

Cold exposure can trigger rapid breathing, blood-pressure changes, panic, dizziness, or dangerous water responses. High-intensity exercise can overload tendons, joints, the cardiovascular system, and recovery capacity when rushed.

Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, confusion, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, sharp pain, severe cramping, heat symptoms, shivering that does not resolve, uncontrolled movement, disordered eating patterns, repeated technical collapse, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Stress-Based Conditioning

Stress-based conditioning does not require fancy equipment. The equipment only gives the athlete a way to apply the dose. The dose, technique, recovery, and judgment matter most.

For loaded cardiovascular drills, readers and facilities can compare kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, exercise bikes, and treadmills.

Specific options such as IRON COMPANY premium powder-coated kettlebells, IRON COMPANY urethane hex dumbbells, an IRON COMPANY urethane barbell set, the Throwdown HIIT Bike Pro, and the Spirit Fitness CT900 slat belt sled treadmill may fit certain stress-based conditioning spaces when the product, user, room, floor, coaching, and intended use align.

The equipment does not create hormesis. The intelligent dose creates hormesis.

Related Stress and Recovery Reading

For more Marty Gallagher recovery context, read Sleep, Rest, and Recovery for Muscle and Strength Gains. For a related article on stressors that affect strength training, read Stressors and How They Affect Resistance Training Recovery.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.