Up and then down hard

Oct30
by Duf on October 30, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Posted In: Fitness Equipment, Injuries, Physical challenges

Over the weekend I decided to hit the bars briefly.

First up I tried doing the one arm dead hang challenge utilizing some new Under Armour gloves I picked up at the outlet.   They are incredibly sticky so I thought they might be helpful trying to do the hold.

Unfortunately the sticky material started to stretch a bit as the attempt went on.  I wound up holding 7 seconds shorter than my bare skin and chalk attempt.

Next up I thought I would try some weighted pull ups, something I have not done on my home bars, only at the gym in the past.  I again utilized my new gloves.  For pull ups they felt good.

I worked my way all the way up to a 90 pound weighted pull up, slightly more than half of my 176 pound current body weight and 5 pounds heavier than my old personal record.  Very cool!

I was feeling pumped up by my success so I figured I would round out the effort with a matching 90 pound weighted dip.  I had never tried weighted dips at home before either.

When I built my parallel bars, I built them on the high side since I have very long legs.  Typically when I am dipping on them, I stand on the small cross support and do a small hop up and slightly back to get into position.

For whatever reason I didn’t think there would be any complications doing the same thing with 90 pounds between my legs. Boy was I wrong.

As soon as I did my small jump up onto the bars it set the weights below me into motion, my body became an unwilling counterweight and started to rock back and forth, out of control.

In the span of a couple seconds I had pitched too far forward to control it and I crashed downward, smashing my upper right arm into the one 4×4 support on the way down.

To be honest it scared me at first.   I did  a quick survey, wondering if I seriously hurt myself.  The only immediate damage I saw was a nasty brush burn looking type of injury.  So after gathering myself for a bit the pain from my arm mutated into anger.  Now I wanted to do the dip just because.

I got back up there, hopped, this time making sure to control the sway immediately.  Even being aware of it, I struggled a bit to hold it.  Once I got settled I went down but stalled out coming back up.  Damn.

Here is the video of the incident.

Obviously the next time I try weighted dips at home it will be with sort of step that allows me to simply step into position instead of jump there.

Afterward, the brush burn area got progressively nastier looking and more painful.  However today I was able to do a full workout without major hassle as long as I kept the brush burn area from rubbing against things.

 

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Posterized, Moving it higher, Mental Muscle, Shamrock Gym

Oct23
by Duf on October 23, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Posted In: Exercises, Fitness Equipment

When I was doing my 10K run on Sunday my mind was wandering.  It wandered on to what I thought was good saying for the Bar-barians.  When I got home I found an appropriate pic of Zef and came up with this.  Evidently people liked it, it got a ton of likes and was shared out a bunch of times across Facebook.

I have some ideas of other posters that I will work on when I get a chance.

Ever since I set my personal best in pull up reps several months ago of 25 reps, I have not been able to match it.  The best I have managed were the 23 reps I pulled off at the Barstarzz event in SoBe a couple weeks ago.

Since my left wrist has been hurt I have been doing more pull ups since they are a movement that doesn’t hurt.  I have pulled a couple very high rep sessions during the last month or so, netting 180 pull ups over one lunch hour and 200 reps the next.  Even so, my one set max had not improved.

So on the way home last night for some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to try a max pull up rep attempt.  At lunch time I had already worked my back and scalpula pretty tough working Metins pull day.  I also did a max pull up set while I was there and only netted 20 reps.  To think I laid the groundwork for a good attempt last night would have not made much sense. But, it was in my head.

So I headed out back into the windy weather.  After chalking both my hands and the bar to maximize my grip, I started pulling.  I wanted to try to make sure my form and ROM were solid as I pulled hard and fast.  I managed to get the first 20 reps without pausing, a new milestone.  Then I got rep 21 and 22 in consecutive fashion.  I knew I was in good shape.  I managed to break my old best by not 1 but 2 reps, pulling chin high 27 times.

I was pretty surprised I hit that number based on the situation going in.  I think the biggest  reason I cracked the number was because I imagined myself doing so.  Visualization is an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to all aspects of life.  Neglecting your mental muscle power is a surefire way to failure.

I have used visualization many, many times, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously to tackle tough obstacles.  Likewise I have seen many people use their minds to derail their goals.  Telling themselves ahead of time, “I can’t do it”, ” I feel like shit”, “I am going to do poorly”.  Without fail, if you are having these type of inner conversations you WILL fail.  Use your mind to help you, not hold you back.

After my pull up set I messed around with a static hold I have seen guys do.  It feels a bit awkward but wasn’t to bad for me to hold for a few seconds.

It kind of reminds me of an elbow planche, looking more difficult than it really is.

I shot a video of the brief hold so you can see how you set up for it.

Yesterday I saw an ad for something called the Shamrock Triple Gym.  Apart from it’s corny endorsement by Ken Shamrock, it actually was quite interesting. It utilizes the same concept as the Iron Gym, using doorways and leverage to create an indoor pull up station with even more.  You can add an attachment so you can have a set of doorway dip bars!

It also comes with a set of cheap straps and handles allowing you to use the rig to do things you would normally do with rings.  The pull up bar actually is unique as it extends above and in front of the top of the doorway, giving you more height to work with than an Iron Gym which has it’s cross bar inside the doorway.

Of course my biggest question would be how sturdy it feels.  Supposedly it’s steel construction will hold up to 300 pounds so I am about 125 pounds in the clear.

I took a flyer and ordered one, it looks like I might be the first video review out there.  If you want to do the same, use this code, “fallfun” to get 10% off.    You can order yours here, or wait until I post my official review in a couple weeks.

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Anatomy of a Sunday morning run

Oct21
by Duf on October 21, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Posted In: Endurance activities

Saturday, 11:45 PM – “Sure I’ll get up and run, need to burn off all these beer calories anyway”

Sunday, 7:53 AM – “Eh I feel like shit, there is no way I am running”

Sunday, 8:15 AM – “I don’t feel quite so bad after my Pop Tarts.  I really should run for Mudder training”

Sunday, 8:23 AM – “It’s only 66 degrees outside??!!  Man that is great to run in, ok I am going to do it”

Sunday, 9:17 AM – “I’m only 100 strides into the run and feel like shit.  I have an hour to go, I could still just stop and walk back”

Sunday, 9:17:30 AM – “Don’t you DARE stop. Don’t be a pussy.”

Sunday 10:15 AM – 10K complete

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Just squat

Oct17
by Duf on October 17, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Posted In: Exercises

I generally don’t enjoy doing lower body weight work. However I do realize it is an important part of a well rounded fitness plan and in my case beneficial to prevent injury to my twice repaired right knee.  One of the best ways to help shaky knees is to build up the muscles that support the joint.

I have only recently started squatting again the past couple weeks.  I abandoned them when my right knee was flaring up.

So today was leg day, which starte doff with squats.  I can’t do heavy weight but I do try to use decent form when doing reps, getting as low as I can while keeping my core tight and engaged while pressing through my heels.

Jeremy, whom loves to watch exercise more than perform it, had been bugging me to video my squats so I brought my Iphone to the gym.

Here is the end result.

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200

Oct12
by Duf on October 12, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Posted In: Exercises

A couple weeks ago I tried an all pull up lunch break.  I basically got loose and did as many pull ups as I could before I had to head back to work.

I had set a goal of 200 pull ups but fell short, netting 180 in around 33 minutes.  I was burned out and out of time.

Well this time around I used a slightly different strategy.  Instead of doing all sets of 5 for the first 100 pull ups, I did a quick initial set of 15 reps before settling into the 5 rep sets.  After 100 reps I dropped back to 4 rep sets.

This attempt is both physically and mentally taxing.  As you get deeper you just want to stop.  I had to fight that urge and make sure I was keeping my breaks in between sets relatively short.  Here are my approx time/rep break outs.

50 reps – 5:18

100 reps – 14:00

150 reps – 24:58

200 reps – 35:45

I can already feel a deep soreness in my back from all of those reps.  On the positive side I don’t feel the numbness in my fingers I did the first time.  Of course I wear my lifting gloves for these high rep sessions.  My hands would be two big open blisters if I didn’t.

The one bodybuilder guy I talk to at the gym, whom is huge and strong as an ox was taken back when I told him I just finished my 180th pull up of the work out.  He gave me a fist bump of respect.

Another PR, 2 months shy of birthday number 45.

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