An off-the-grid consortium of transformational experts—who we are and why you should listen to us
Unknown to you, there exists an underground Guild of like-minded strength athletes, coaches and sports medicine doctors. In the Dark Ages, trade guilds emerged with the goal of sharing any and all information they had learned in their trade. Within the guild they shared trade secrets instead of jealousy guarding them like family heirlooms or privileged information. Sharing information was also the price of entry. A Strength Guild—a consortium or loose confederation of men—exists and shares information on an ongoing basis. The goal is profound—to dramatically improve the form and function of the human body.
This modern Iron Guild is strictly unofficial and ad hoc; yet, we stay in contact and share information on how to best create progress. How do we transform the human body—how do we best improve its performance and function across every definable benchmark? We want it all—to be lean and more muscular, with superior performance in every athletic category. You can’t join our Iron Guild unless you are a national and world champion athlete, a national or preferably international level coach, a member of an elite military spec ops unit, a governmental counter terrorism operative, or a cutting-edge sports medicine human-performance doctor.
You haven’t heard of us because we are off the commercial fitness grid, and we are not included in the mainstream fitness world. We hone our strength kraftwerk in private—some would say in secret. We keep to ourselves and network with each other. The Strength Guild’s raison d’être is to cross-compare techniques, tactics, modes, and methods to up our collective game and improve our collective results. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Guild members accumulate empirical training data on an ongoing basis by observing the results—or lack thereof—as it relates to our own training efforts. Virtually all Guild power-players are at the apex of a pyramid of local athletes. These athletes take their training and transformative cues from the Guild participant. To aid our own efforts, we share ideas and strategies with our strength collaborators. The Guild has members all across the United States, and in every geographic region including members throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East.
Membership is based on accomplishment and is not formalized—there is no secret initiation, no secret handshake, and no fee. The coin of our realm is information—information about strength training, human performance, and methods of altering body composition. The inner circle shares technical and tactical ways to up our own respective games.
I bring 50 years of immersion in the world of progressive resistance training to the table. I set my first national weightlifting records in 1967, and my most recent national powerlifting records in 2013. I was mentored by a hall of fame strength athlete, and now I mentor hall of fame strength athletes. Our strength System— passed along to me by my mentors—is a full-blown, fully realized progressive resistance training system. It’s ancient yet pliable, an inch wide and a mile deep, with limitless variations and possibilities within the System’s self-imposed boundaries.
The Way of Power is both subtle and overt, hard and soft. It’s sophisticated in its simplicity, yet complex in its totality—the individual component parts are easily understood, but the complexity springs from the layers of various disciplines, which create a logical (and potentially confusing) transformational matrix.
Our resistance training strategy is second to none—we do not need your approval or praise. Now it’s time to break our self-imposed silence and create a manifesto—a summation of our collective knowledge and conclusions to date. The Strength Guild has had an unwritten Iron Bible for generations. Until now, no one has taken the trouble to make the System public.
Being a longtime inner circle Strength Guild member and professional writer, I was the logical choice to compose this Iron Bible, The Tao of Power. This book, to be published next year by Dragon Door, will be a manual of techniques and tactics that define and differentiate our approach from all the others. There is no doubt that our approach works— we hold too many current world records for there to be any lingering questions about its effectiveness. The athletic and military elite has passed judgment; their continual use of our combined services is testament to the effectiveness of the System and the tangible results we obtain.
The only real question is this: do you have the guts, gumption, the situation and favorable circumstance, the drive, desire, motivation, and the burning primal urge to transform? Believing that a transformation is actually doable creates sustainable, renewable motivation. A vision of the finished physical product—and a sincere belief in the system—will overcome the force of habit. When vision trumps habit, success is assured. We’ve found a sizable, identifiable segment of the fitness public, which intuitively embraces and senses the truth of our counter-intuitive, unorthodox, and heretical approach when exposed to it. We seek this radical fringe of men and women who sense the truth, logic, and positivity of our approach—and immediately embrace it totally.
We’re really big on totality. Our System is not a progressive resistance cafeteria where the reader peruses the contents, embracing one aspect or tactic while rejecting another. Our System is an integrated strength system. We represent a style—a strength art—and have a specific arsenal of techniques and tactics that define who and what we are.
***
Marty Gallagher, author of The Purposeful Primitive, is an underground legend. Mentored by a Hall-of-Fame strength athlete as a teenager, Marty set his first national record in 1967 as a 17-year old Olympic weightlifter; he set his most recent national record in 2013 as a 63-year old powerlifter. He is a former world powerlifting champion who turned his attention to coaching athletes and devising individualized training templates for the finest strength athletes in the world. Gallagher was the personal coach for national and world champion Mark Chaillet. Gallagher is best known for guiding the career of strength legend and six-time world champion, hall-of-fame powerlifter Kirk Karwoski for a decade. Marty was the competition coach for the greatest strength athlete in modern history: Ed Coan.
Marty coached the United States powerlifting team to the world team title and has six national team coaching titles to his credit. His writings, musings, speculations and observations on “physical transformation” and all things strength and power related since 1978 when he penned his first article. Since then he has had over 1,000 articles published. He has mainstream journalism credentials, having written 230 fitness columns for the Washington Post.com.
For the past decade Gallagher has worked officially and individually with Tier 1 Spec Ops commando both in this country and abroad. His work with spec ops has flourished because of the measurable results he obtains from men already at 95% of their genetic potential.
For hands-on instruction in the Strength Guild’s methods, check out The Purposefully Primitive Strength Training Seminar.
Marty Gallagher is currently completing a new title for Dragon Door Publications, to be released in the Spring of 2014, The Iron Bible: The Tao of Power.