Still feeling my parking garage workout from Wednesday – 21 pull ups, 25 dips, back extensions 12×3, various OAP/OAC progressions including stagger grip, 2 finger off hand, one hand towel, reps for each arm between 3-5 for each progression. Dragon flags on ab board with feet getting below board level 3×3. As usual all of this is done in a circuit fashion.
Set of 21 pull ups, wall handstand hold 2×60 sec, elbow planche hold 3x30sec, P-bar straight leg raises to parallel, 3×8, P-bar L-sit kick outs 1×10, 30 second plank on fingertips, tucked back lever hold 2×10 sec, tucked front lever pulls 1×10, Front L hold (like an L on it’s back) 2x10secs
All of this is mixed together, no exercise done consecutively.
I haven’t been posting much on here much recently, I am however doing nearly daily workout updates on the Dufisthenics FB feed. It would be nice if I could post the daily workout here and have it post to the FB page automagically but I haven’t found a way to get WP to post to my FB group, only my personal FB feed. I need to look into it more. ( I may have just found the answer)
I also added better integration of my FB and YouTube feed to the site, click on the menu items above to check them out.
I started posting daily lunch time workouts in the hope it would give others some ideas for their workouts just as I get ideas from seeing other people’s routines.
Yesterday my routine was definitely outside of the box. My gym was closed due to some construction on the plaza where it resides. I decided to do something unconventional, work out in a parking garage.
I headed over to the near by garage and walked the ramps up to the 4th level which is mostly empty of vehicles. My plan was to do a simple but challenging work out.
I would do 10 push ups followed by 10 air squats which would equal one set. The goal was to go for 30 minutes, completing as many sets as possible.
I was not alone in utilizing the parking garage for exercise. There was a woman running the outer perimeter of the same level for laps. I asked her if she knew how far one lap around was. She didn’t know on a per lap basis but she did know that 20 laps around equals about 3.8 miles.
It didn’t take long for the 90 degree temperatures with high humidity to make it’s presence know on my t-shirt which quickly became soaked with sweat. Every 5 sets I would take a few sips of water and take a slightly longer break than I would between other sets.
I worked pretty quickly, only pausing after the air squat part of the set. As soon as I got the 10th push up I stood up and went right into squatting. The push ups of course took more of a toll than the squats, even so I made a point that every push up was chest to ground with a full extension at the top. I also made every set non-stop, meaning no pausing for rest in top plank position.
A weird thing happened which has happened to me before when doing very high repetition work, you get a second wind. Somewhere around 100 push ups I was feeling pretty beat already, skeptical of how I was going to keep going. However by the time I was at 200 reps I was still firing off reps at a fast pace, perhaps even faster than when I first started.
I was very happy with my end result, netting 31 sets in 30:06 which equated to 310 push ups and air squats. I was drenched for my efforts but hardly cared as I walked back down to ground level. I exceeded the upper limit of what I thought I could do (30 sets). My energy level was empty but my satisfaction level was topped off to the brim.
For whatever reason I find my favorite thing to do on the Triple Gym are back lever progressions. The foam covered bar on the dip attachment is just comfortable for me. Last night I also used it to do some inverted shoulder shrugs which it also worked out well for.
I made the mistake of doing my first back lever attempt with a wide, neutral grip. With this grip you are unable to press your upper arms against your lats for additional support. I felt the additional strain go right into my forearms and elbows, both of which are quite painful today.
I then switched to my favorite grip, tight overhand. A couple times I got very close to holding parallel, probably less than 10 degrees away. I could maintain that position for a few seconds. With my very long and lanky appendages, gravity really applies a lot of leverage to my anchor points when doing an lever. To get this close was encouraging.
It has been suggested to me a couple times that I may have better success if I popped into the hold from a Skin the Cat instead of trying to slowly lower into position which burns precious power. I’ll have to give it a try. My biggest problem is I have an absolutely awful sense of body position when doing levers. I can’t tell accurately how close or far I am to parallel to save my life.
So one of my online calisthenics buddies, Steve P, likes to post the various workouts he does on FB. I have borrowed a number of them. I like them because they save me from having to think and most of them are tailored to take 3o minutes or less, just about ho much actual workout time I get on my lunch hour workouts after travel and warm up/stretching takes place.
Well the other day Steve posted this routine:
Pyramid Work
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 wide pullups
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 pushups
Go pullup set to pushup set back and forth till complete
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 close chinups
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Dips
Go chinup set to dip set back and forth till complete
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 hanging leg lifts to 90deg
20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-
Go leg lift set to back extension set back and forth till complete
No rest
On Friday’s I normally like to mix it up so I figured I would give it a shot although I knew I would have a very difficult time doing that many pull ups and chin ups back to back.
I got through the first pyramid of pull ups and push ups but it was a struggle. I knew if I tried to jump to the chins/dip pyramid it was a guaranteed fail so I figured I would drop down to the leg raise/back extension pyramid to give my pulling muscles some rest.
Now I am not quite sure exactly what type of back extensions this was referring to. I took it to mean the contraption where you have pads on your thighs, your feet are secure on a platform and then you bend down at the waist and back up again. When I did my reps I interlocked my fingers behind my head which raises the resistance level compared to folding your arms in front of your chest.
Well this is an exercise I NEVER do. Yea I do some lower back warm up routines once a week or so but nothing extensive. So I basically went from nothing to a total of 110 reps of an exercise, a ridiculously stupid thing to do. And actually, I did less than I was supposed to.
I didn’t write down the routine so I relied on memory, a dangerous thing nowadays. I thought the back extension countdown was supposed to go down 2 reps each time 20-18-16-14 etc… I was SUPPOSED to go down by only 1 rep per set. Well as is my lower back felt like it was on the verge of spasming. I can only imagine what it will feel like tomorrow at this time.
I wasn’t timing myself although the entire workout was supposed to be done within 30 minutes. I actually ran out of time and did a condensed version of the remaining pyramid, only doing the 5,4,3,2,1 portion of it before I had to run out of there. I was BEAT.
![502_10152379707482841_691274603_n[1]](https://dufisthenics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/502_10152379707482841_691274603_n1.jpg)
My hands were already beat going into this workout, they were thoroughly trashed by the end of it.
Still, it was a good way to wind up a week. I’m sure I will keep borrowing some of Steve’s routines now and then, no matter how much they hurt.
