Triple play

Oct11
by Duf on October 11, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Posted In: Exercises, Physical challenges

Last night after work I headed outside to do some work on the bars.  The first thing I did was throw my rubber resistance band around the high bar and use it to warm up.  When I bought Metins program it included a video that outlines a basic warm up routine using these bands.

In the past my warm up was 5 minutes on a cardio machine and some static stretching.  I have found that using the bands is a much more effective way of warming up my joints for bar work.  The variable resistance the bands provide works the various small muscle groups and connective tissue in a way that just stretching can not.

Trying to go into bar work without an adequate warm up is a sure fire recipe for injury, especially at my age.

Next up I took a shot at the Triple Hanger, the version of this month’s BB challenge that incorporates the other three. You do a static pull up hold, then a one arm dead hang and finally a one arm static chin up hold for as long as possible with very limited time in between.  It is a grip killer for sure.

I was surprised how early I started getting the shakes during the pull up hold, I bet they started 15-20 seconds in.  I managed to stay up there for 1:07, not a great time.  I hung on the bar with the one arm dead hang for 53 seconds, 13 seconds longer than I held indoors on the Iron Gym.

I found as I was doing the dead hang my body wanted to twist back and forth.  The twisting, depending on the angle, made the hold more painful.  It is definitely best if you can keep your body still.

I had a similar issue with the one hand chin hold.  My body wanted to rotate a bit.  The rotation changed my angle enough where I couldn’t keep my arm locked in, as a result I only held it for 8 seconds.  The total hold of 2:08 wasn’t great but since I am the only one whom has tried it so far I am sitting all alone in first place.

Finally I shot some examples of the tucked lever holds that I am doing as part of Metin’s program.  I wanted to get some feedback on my form since that is always an issue with me.

As I watched back the video I could see some obvious problems.  I have a real hard time judging my body position when I am in lever position.  I either need video, a bystander or mirror to give me the feedback I need.  Although my holds are not great, I am able to keep my arms straight and I feel I have the shoulder and core strength to hold a tucked, semi-tucked lever pretty well.

 

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Barstarzz, one hand

Oct09
by Duf on October 9, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Posted In: Exercises, General Fitness Talk, Injuries

Saturday I drove across the state to the Barstarzz event in South Beach.  It was my first time ever attending a calisthenics group get together.

It was a great time.  There was so much positive energy on the beach.  The talent, hard work, and dedication on display was very inspirational.

Most of my time there was spent just hanging out, talking to people and watching the more elite guys do their thing.  My only official participation was in the pull up competition where I pulled off 23 respectable reps.  I think the winner posted around 40 reps.

I left there very glad I made the trip and thankful that Luis, one of the local Barstarzz guys that is 40+ like me, invited me. It was great to meet several people I only knew virtually up until that point.

Last night I did my first one handed push ups ever on video.  Last week out of the blue I figured I would try it.  Although I have been resting my left wrist from pushing movements, my right wrist is still intact, so I figured I would try a right handed version.

I had tried various times in the past to do one handed push ups and failed pretty miserably, partially because of lack of strength, partially because of poor technique.  Before making my attempt I reviewed the video Neil from Incite Fitness did on one hand push ups on his YouTube channel.

I was surprised I was able to get a few reps.  At the bottom of the movement the torque and strain I felt across my right shoulder and tricep was pretty severe.  I would expect that to become less unpleasant if I keep it up.  So anyway last night were my first reps on video.  It isn’t that pretty but I went down as far as my elbow would allow and got all the way back up.

Speaking of my left wrist, I went to the Barstarzz event in spite of it.  I sort of assumed that I would injure the wrist more screwing around on the bars at South Beach.  I took a couple Advil before the event and rolled the dice.  Well a weird thing happened.  My wrist actually has felt significantly better the last couple days,  I am not quite sure why.

I have to be smart enough to not go balls to the wall right away and wind up reaggravating the wrist.  But I am hopeful that I may be close to getting over the injury.

 

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Warm up

Oct05
by Duf on October 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Posted In: Endurance activities, Exercises

Since I am going to the Barstarzz event tomorrow I figured I would stick with just cardio work at the gym today.

I do a cardio pyramid on the treadmill that some people may find helpful.  It’s low impact, scaleable and challenging enough that you should be sweating your ass off by the end of it.

Set the treadmill speed at a decent walking pace and leave it there.  For myself that typically means a speed of 3.5 mph.  Most treadmills have an incline adjustment that goes from 0 to 15 degrees.  Start at zero and walk for 2 minutes.  After two minutes, raise the incline two degrees and walk another two minutes then raise another two  degrees and walk another two minutes.

The upside of the pyramid looks like this  from an incline perspective, 0,2,4,6,8,10,12,15.   Since the last incline amount is an odd number I just do a 3 degree jump at the top.  After walking two minutes at a 15 degree angle (you will be working very hard at this point), I drop it back down to 12 degrees, walk two minutes, then 8 degrees, 4 degrees and back to zero, walking two minutes at each inclination. The pyramid incline numbers will look like this overall, 02,4,6,8,10,12,15,12,8,4,0

If you follow these steps your total workout will be around 24 minutes and you should be burning around 10 calories a minute on average, a good burn.

Of course there are a million ways you can scale the difficulty of this up and down by walking faster or slower, holding each inclination longer or shorter, or making the steps up and down more or less numerous.

Give this work out a shot if you are looking for a low impact way to get your heart rate going.

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OAP, Bar Starzz in South Beach

Oct05
by Duf on October 5, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Posted In: Exercises, General Fitness Talk, Injuries

I have been avoiding all pushing exercises for the past week or so, trying to give my left wrist a chance to heal.  So far it hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference, the discomfort level seems to be just about the same at this point.

Yesterday I decided to try a pushing exercise with my one good wrist, a one hand push up, as pictured on the left by the great Al Kavadlo.  I have messed with this move only a few times in the past but never was able to pull it off, until yesterday.

I did a couple sets of three reps.  I went all the way down on my right arm as far as possible and was able to push through to the top position.  It felt good to pull off another movement that a couple years ago would have been an epic fail.  Of course I need to get some reps on video, because we all know, if it isn’t on video, it didn’t happen.

Saturday I am planning to head over to the South Beach Bar Starzz event.  The turn out for the event looks like it will be really good and includes some of my FB friends I only know virtually at this point.  It will be cool to meet a bunch of them in person.

Of course skill wise, I will definitely be on the lower tier of people in attendance but I expect it will not really matter all that much.  The bar community is all about doing the best that you can at that moment in time and always working to improve.  It will be cool to be around a group of like minded people that have a can do attitude instead of a do it later, maybe, mantra.

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Hard mode, new home

Oct02
by Duf on October 2, 2012 at 6:33 pm
Posted In: Physical challenges

I took a shot at hard mode of the October BB challenge, the one handed dead hang.  It was raining outside so I decided to try it on my Iron Gym indoors.  Well it was a mistake.

Because of my very long arms and legs I had less than an inch of clearance between the floor and my knees as I hung there.  I tried to awkwardly pull my feet up with my non-gripping hand but it didn’t help much.

To make matters worse, the foam grip on the iron gym started to rotate, making my grip slip onto my fingers faster than normal.  I was not pleased with my 40 second time.  I’ll try again outdoors with some chalk shortly.

You may notice the site looks dramatically different.  That is because I moved the content off of WordPress.com onto my own personal web hosting.  The move allows me more flexibility with the site as you can see with the different theme.

I like the new look.  Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments below!

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