Hill Sprint

What is probably the best body weight only exercise? Burpee? Handstand push up? They are good, but do they beat sprints? In my opinion: No. Sprints work everything, in balance! Burpees are pushing dominated, and thus can cause imbalances. Handstands push ups could elevate your scapula, cause wrist pain and don't do much for the lower body.

Sprinting isn't perfect, but it sure rocks! It builds strength, makes the metabolism skyrocket, burns fat, conditions the body for most sports and much more. Hill sprints are great, because they have a much lower injury risk over flat ground sprinting and are quite a bit harder, so I recommend hill sprints over flat ground unless to are training for a sport that requires a lot of sprinting, then you may want to incorporate both flat ground and hill both.

Make sure you warm up and do some mobility work before you do sprints. Especially loosen up the hip flexors, those tend to be tight and weak... and are a key factor to sprinting!

I recommend sprinting 3-4 days a week if you're goal is to get lean and fast. 2-3 days a week if you want to gain weight. 3-5 if you don't do much else for exercise. You really don't need much more if you don't have big fitness goals like myself. 

Now, go make sprinting a habit! 

Just a word of warning: if you're training earlier in the morning or in the winter, get really warm and mobile inside first. You may need a sweater and running pants. Light pants are better. Having heavy pants can mess with your form or over stress the hip flexor.

Have at It! I plan on doing some this week! I restarted my fitness quest last week!

Just a Few Things I Hate

...or if you want to be nice: strongly dislike. Because this is a fitness blog, I will only go into things involving fitness.

1. High heels. Well, there are obvious reasons why I don't like these on guys... but why don't I like it when girls wear them? And how does this pertain to fitness? Let me explain.

I like to have the body functioning properly and hopefully with considerable strength and speed. High heels do not encourage proper body function. They cause constant plantar flexion of the ankle, which causes tight calves (already too common), tight calves can cause shin splints, pulled achilles tendon, and/or knee pain. Yay, already not good. That's not all folks! Heels also move your center of gravity forward a little, shrink your base of support plus your tightened calves will tighten your hamstrings (and make them inactive)... Increasing your risk for hamstring injury. Now, overtime that can cause your hips to anterior tilt and your femurs to internally rotate. Internally rotated femurs can the knees to cave in (and maybe the ankles next). This can lead to an ACL or MCL injury. No one wants that. Anterior pelvic tilt causes the lower back to arch. Arched lower back+time=back pain. Back pain is usually a sign that you are at risk for injury. Back injuries are one the worst injuries possible. Don't let this happen to you.

Sometimes an arched lower back can lead to a rounded upper back. Why? Because if the thoracic spine (upper spine) was straight or arched (following the lower back) you would be looking at the ceiling all the time. A rounded thoracic spine can cause upper back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain and stress head aches. Yeah, I bet you didn't know high heels could be so bad!

2. Lazy posture. Most commonly seen as a rounded upper back in some way. Usually head is forward, shoulders rounded, upper back rounded, lower back either rounded or arched. Yeah. Pretty much can cause more damage than high heels... I don't feel like explaining it all... and you probably don't want to read a wicked long post either. 

3. Pushing-but-not-pulling. Mainly horizontal pushing and horizontal pulling. This pertains to posture as well! Noticing a theme? If you're horizontally pushing (bench press, push up, dip, etc), you're strengthening the pec, pec minor, anterior deltoid, the latissimus dorsi and a few other muscles. All of which encourage internal rotation and/or protraction of the shoulders. Which pretty much means slouching/rounded up back and shoulders. This can be taken care of simply by working on external rotation and rows! 

Why does this happen so often? Because of lack of knowledge, laziness or wanting "big pecs". Rows are your best friends when it comes to posture and a healthy upper body!

4. Curl monkey-ing (or just over isolation). This is hard to do with bodyweight only exercises, but it can still happen. Curl monkeys are guys (or girls) who do lots and lots of bicep curls so that they get that nice "bicep peak" or "pumped up" look. Sorry dudes, that's a pretty poor way to get bigger arms (and stronger). Compound (multi-joint) movements are where it is at. They build more strength (more muscles used in unison), which means more weight (or stress) which means more strength gains! It is also how the body was meant to move! This can actually go for more than just bicep curls. Triceps extensions, pec flies, quad extensions, hamstring curl, calf raiser, wrist curls, etc... all of which are not needed in the slightest for a new lifter. Don't waste time on isolation! If you have a solid 2-4 years under your belt, then you could work on some more isolation.

I almost forgot: the one thing that could use isolation is the rotator cuff, it can be hard to work on some muscles in there when you're not isolating the muscle.

5. "Toning". 

We all heard it: "So, what are your goals?" "I want to tone my abs and my arms."

"Why are you using that light weight?" "It helps me tone my arms"

"You should be using a heavier weight." "But I don't want to become big and bulkly, I just want to get toned."

The list goes on...

Fun fact: you can't "tone" a muscle. Toning is a made up word that sounds nice. It means nothing in the fitness world. If you say you want to "get toned", I will assume you want to get your muscle "harder", while burning fat. Sadly, when someone is "toning", they use very light weight for very high reps. If you remember from my post about strength, that's not how build muscle. You may burn a few calories, but no where near as many if you used a weight you could only lift 6-12 times. 

Sometimes I wonder if the term toning was thought up so that you would not need to do hard work, while thinking you're doing hard work. Here is how to get a "toned" body: lift heavy, eat healthy and do some HIT. None of that lift-a-5-pound-dumbbell-for-75-reps stuff. 5 pound dumbbells are for rotator cuff work and injury rehab, not "toning".

6. Bad lifting mechanics. This can be related to posture, but people with good posture can fall victim to this all the time. Too many times I see rounded backs, caved in knees and heels off the ground. 

A rounded back when lifting something up can pull muscles, slip discs and pinch nerves. If the object you're lifting is too awkward to carry with a straight back, fill your lung and brace your abs and back very hard. Pushing your abs out, do not suck them in. Pushing them out is a much safer and stronger postion. This will transfer some of the weight off the spine and into your muscles.

Caved in knees can be do to posture problems, but when lifting something off the ground think about ripping the world in half with your feet. Or some would say: "spread the floor." But ripping the world in half sounds cooler. This helps align the knees so that they are in a healthier postion when lifting something off the ground.

Heels off the ground. Not as bad as the previous two, but still very common and bad. Usually, when you pick something up ans your heels come off the ground, your knee passes way over the toes. This puts a ton. If sheer force on the patella tendon. This can cause knee pain if done too often. The one time this is acceptable is when doing so allows you to keep your back straight. Keep your heels on the ground when lifting something off the ground!

7. "I can't ____ because it hurts my ____". If you're injured or have a real medical issue, this can slide, but if you can't do something like squat or row because it hurts, figure out what is wrong and take care of it! Most likely you have bad form. Have someone who knows their stuff assess your form. Sometimes you get pain because you have imbalances. If you do, take care of these imbalances.

There you have it: 7 things that really bug my guts out.

Conditioning

Conditioning. A word hated among many athletes who are out of shape. Why? Because if you're out of shape it's going to be hard. Don't worry, if you can't handle pain well, you can just start really slow. Anyway, back to future! I mean, the topic at hand. I get distracted at times.

Conditioning is the other side of the coin in training (strength training being the first side). There is plenty of debate in the fitness world about the best way to condition the body. Before I give you my opinion, I will tell you what conditioning is: conditioning trains the body to function more efficiently at the task at hand. In the fitness world, that's training the lungs, heart, recovery ability and work capacity. Strength training can be considered a form of conditioning, but for simplicity, I (and many other people) will not call strength training conditioning.

Starting easy. Depending on your abilities, this may be walking...or tire drags. Ethier way, do not start out crushing yourself. Trying to walk/job 10 miles or dragging a 150 pound tire 400 meters on day one is a bad idea. What ever you do, gradually increase intensity. Sound familiar? That's pretty much what I said about strength training: gradually progress so your body has time to adabt (and not stall out).

Personal goals. I can tell you, my goals will be different from yours. Set your own, don't let me choose them for you (best find something you enjoy). It is very important to set a goal. Just think about it: would an 100 meter dash runner, a marathoner, a mountain climber, a swimmer and a power lifter have the same conditioning routine? No way, dude.

Now I will tell you my opinions that I devoleped after spending hours researching (on the Internet, and on using myself as a test subject). I think high intensity (interval) training (HIT or HIIT for short) is the way to go. By high intensity I mean: sprints, hill sprints tire drags, heavy farmers walks, circuits, etc. I used to be a "run-farther-and-farther-and-farther" guy, but I think that training is not as effective. HIT requires less time than 'endurance' training, and in my opinion yelds better results. I don't know a lot of the chemistry behind it, but after a ceritain point endurance training doesn't burn fat well. HIT on the other hand has yet to fail me in making me lean. I also read plenty about how HIT works wonders for people who struggled losing weight via endurance training. HIT also burns fat for a longer time after the workout. Shorter workout with more fat loss=cool.

Another thing HIT has over endurance training is sports. I am not talking about XC, because obviously endurance training works great for XC. Sports like soccer, football, lacrosse, basket ball, field hockey, ultimate frisbee, etc. These all require short bursts of high intensity, not a 7 mile jog. HIT is the way to go if you're an athlete.

Finally, I have heard stories of people losing strength when they upped their endurance training. It makes since too: your body adapts to its stressors. Endurance training does not encourage strength. HIT on the other hand does. To make it simple, I'll just say. Your muscle has potential to be more slow twitch muscle fiber dominat (running slowly, doing long and low intensity tasks, etc) or fast twitch muscle fiber (sprints, sports, jumping, heavy lifting, etc). Fast twitch muscle fibers are bigger and stronger, while slow twitch muscle fibers are small and weak (but can keep working for a long time). 

Now before you cross country runners rant at me saying everyone should be able run a decent 5k, let me tell you: you can easily run a decent 5k while only using sprints to train for it. Granted, you could become better at running 5ks if you trained for 5ks with some endurance running, but it is not needed.

Are you convinced that HIT is, in general, a better form of condionting? I hope so, but now I'm going to tell you that I don't only use HIT. Sometimes when I feel like I'm not be active enough in my daily life or I want to clear my head I'll go for a nice couple mile run. Why? Well if I am not being active during the day (walking around, doing low intensity chores, working manual labor, etc) then I am getting very little slow twitch muscle fiber work. I want a bit of endurance so when I go for a hike, walk up a ton of stairs or go running with a friend I won't be huffing and puffing. It is also easier to think when running 5-8 mph, rather than 12-18 mph.

Remember: condition however you want to (unless it is a marathon, see *Quick rant below). If you hate sprints with a passion, you don't have to do them. For the average person just trying to stay or get fit, I would recommend 2-3 days of some kind of HIT, and 1-2 days of endurance training a week. I will write in a later post how to progress in both (with some sample workouts!).

*Quick rant: don't run a marathon. I mean it. They are terrible for you. They make your body go catabolic (burns fat), extreme dehydration, degrades your joints (you can't hold perfect form for 26.2 miles, buddy), stresses your heart to an extreme (bad) and plenty of other bad things, I'm sure! I repeat: don't run marathons.

Balance is Key

No, I am not going to talk about standing on your head on a tight rope with your eyes closed, I am going to talk about balancing your strength training routine.

To know how to balance your routine, you need to know some basic movements: horizontal push, horizontal pull, vertical push, vertical pull, squat, pull and hip extension. All these movements should be balanced. 

For every horizontal push (push-up, leaning dip, etc), you should have a horizontal pull (bodyweight row, front lever, etc). I think that someone should actually have a little more horizontal pulls than pushes, because most things we do in our daily life encourage internal rotation of the shoulder and rounding of the back (just like horizontal pushes.

It is actually less important to have a balance between vertical pushes (handstand push-up, pike push-up, etc) and vertical pulls (pull up variations). Though, it is still somewhat important (also, some people just don't have the thoracic flexibility to do verticals movements). 

I said squat, pull, hip extension, but that is not always the case. A heavy back squat can build a nicely balanced lower body. Sadly, there is no such 'perfect' exercise with calisthenics. Squats with bodyweight only simulate more of a front squat (a quad dominant exercise), and thus will build an imbalanced lower body. That is why I said: a squat, a pull and hip extension. These three should be relatively balanced. 

For a squatting movement I recommend squats (duh). Once you prefect your form move on to thing like lunges... Then eventually move on to pistol squats and jumps. Don't worry, I will write more on this later.

For a pull, is a bit harder with no weights. Dead lifts are perfect, but require a lot of weights. So instead we need a few movements. An easy is stiff (but bent) one leg dead lifts. Another exercise is the back lever, which works on the lower back and a bit of hamstrings (meanwhile giving your upper body a grand workout). Finally, the hardest (and maybe the best) lower body calisthenic exercise: the glute ham raise! This will utterly wreck the hamstrings, fry the glutes and maybe some lower back and calve work! I am yet to preform a true glute ham raise, but it is close to as good dead lifting for the posterior chain! There are some other exercises, but I will get into those on a different post.

Hip extension. The kind-of-awkward exercises. Sadly, this is often neglected because it is awkward (or "too painful"). Glute bridges (also called hip thrusts, but I will stick to glute bridges) is the name of the game. Great glute work and activation (most people have under active glutes which can cause knee, hip or back pain). Once you master the single leg version, you will not be able to progress much more with calisthenics.

Actually, this brings up a good point: weight training is superior to calisthenics when trying to strengthen the legs. This is because the legs just are so strong that bodyweight movements eventually become too easy. 

Keep your routine balanced to keep joints happy and your body aligned. I will get into more detail later with things like: calves, rotator cuff, forearms, neck, etc. I don't want to bore you with all those details yet.

How to Become Stronger

One of the most important aspects of fitness is strength. Strength improves almost everything about someone's athleticism. Strength can lead to increased speed, more useful endurance, lower injury risk, more body control and the list goes on! Now that you know that strength is important, how do you become stronger?

It's a stress game. That's how you get stronger: stress. No, not late exams or papers kind of stress. Stressing your muscle. Why? Stress will make the body adapt to handle the stress better. I will use weight lifting as an example, because weight lifting is easier to understand. If you lift a heavy object every couple of days your body will eventually adapt to picking up that heavy object. That adaption results in muscle growth, and thus strength gains. Awesome! That's simple! One problem: once adapt to lifting a certain weight, you will not progress any further. 

Can you guess how to increase the stress on your muscle? You increase the weight! You don't need to be Sherlock to figure that one out. There is a special way to do so. It's called progressive overload. What you do is lift a weight you can handle relatively easily for 5-8 reps. You lift that weight one week, then the next week you add 2.5-5 pounds. Repeat for a long time, and boom: you're stronger...and still getting stronger.

Notice I didn't say do 50-100 reps with a weight and slowly add weight. That kind of stress builds endurance, not strength. You'd build a little strength, but not much. You will also plateau in your gains. Adding 2.5-5 pounds weekly is pretty hard to do to when trying to do 50-100 reps (also, that's really boring). It just won't work. To gain decent strength, you have to keep your reps under 20, and usually under 12.

This cool and all, but how are you going to apply this to body weight training?! You can't just add 2.5-5 pounds your body without becoming extremely fat, really fast...and no one wants to get really fat. So how does one increase the stress on the muscles with bodyweight only exercises? Here's how

1. Put more weight on to the limb doing work. You can do this by moving what ever you're working closer to your center of gravity. For example, moving you hands closer and closer to your hips while doing a push up, this will make the push-up more difficult. 

2. Increase the lever arm. This one is really cool, and I think the best way to explain it is through an example: try doing a pull up. Depending on your strength level, this may be easy, moderate or an extreme challenge. Now try doing a pull up with straight arms. Yeah, I bet no one reading this could do a strict straight arm pull up. I know I can't!

3. Make it unilateral! Try a bilateral pushup (aka: a normal pushup). Now try it with one arm. A lot more strength and core strength is required! That's just another great way to progress with bodyweight only exercises!

4. Weighted vest/ankle weights. This is now not strictly body weight training, but it is pretty fun to do! I would never recommend this for any kind of running. It would wreck joints like no tomorrow.

5. Change the exercise. Some times you can just completely change an exercise to get great strength improvements. Bored or think pushups are too easy? Dips. Back lever. Planche. Etc.

I listed 5 ways to increase the stress on your muscles with bodyweight training. Sometimes these mix together. Like the pushup example: when you brought your hands closer to your center of gravity, you also increased the lever arm a bit. Pretty cool, eh?

I will write about progressions through these various exercises later on!

Why Only Calisthenics?

People that know me, know that I love to train. I train with weights, calisthenics (body weight training, for example: pushups, pull ups, running) and a tire. So why would I write posts only about calisthenic? I want anyone to be able to use this blog as a resource. Not everyone has time or money to go to a good gym. On the other hand, everyone should be able to get a pull up bar of sorts, or at least a decently strong, horizontal tree branch.

Alright, speaking of things you'll need for training, I might as well give you a list of things you should get, should you take this seriously:

Required:

• Pull up bar/tree
• Hard work (duh)

Strongly Suggested:

• Parallel bars
• Somewhat thick rope or strong two towels (for body weight rows)
• Two sturdy chairs (for dips)
• Exercise band (for shoulder health)
• *Healthy* food
• A workout buddy (I wish I had one!)
• A nearby hill (hill sprints, baby!)
• Small towels (grip training!)

Somewhat Suggested: 

• A tractor tire, a rope and a deer vest (Tire drags are great for leg strength and conditioning)
• Weighted vest (one way to make body weight exercise harder, but if this is used, then you are not strictly doing "calisthenics")
• Gymnastic rings (Would be fantastic, but not necessary)
• Gloves (if you have wimpy hands, or just don't like calluses)

You only "need" what is required, but the other stuff can be helpful! I hope to be posting more soon!