Posts Tagged ‘bodyweight workout’

One of the best ways to work your upper body is by doing pull-ups. You can give your biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, back, and even abs, a fast, complete workout in a short amount of time with a good pull-up bar. Even if you can’t do a single pull-up yet, doing hangs and negatives (slowly lowering yourself) is a great workout.

When it comes to at home pull-up bars, they all seem to fall into two categories. The first, require you to drill into your door frame. Personally I hate the idea of doing that, so I opted for the second, which actually wraps around the door frame, and can be put up, taken down, and hidden away within seconds.

There are several of these types on the market, and I wanted a good one that wouldn’t break the bank. Here’s the one I ended up buying.

There are several others like this one out there, but at almost 50% more than this one, I decided to pass. It shipped pretty quickly, and was at my door in less than a week. Assembly was a snap, despite the fact that the box contained next to no directions. I suggest spreading all the parts out and spend a moment thinking about how to put it together and it turns into a pretty simple process. No tools are required, and it had all the nuts and bolts I needed plus a few extras. Assembly took me about 10 minutes, but I also had a curious cat distracting me!

The really great thing about this pull-up bar is the variety of hand positions. While I haven’t tried it, I’ve been told that this bar is ideal for the P-90X program. (I’ll update if/when I start that program)

My one concern is the black foam that presses against the door. Others have had a problem with it leaving black marks on their door frame, but it hasn’t been an issue for me yet. A few quick pieces of duct tape around the foam will take care of that though.

If your nervous about it holding your weight, check the online reviews and you’ll see guys as big as 250+ pounds hanging reliably from this thing! It claims it can also be used for dips and pushups, but I prefer a good set of phone books for that. Also included is a free set of arm slings for doing abdominal work, however you need to pay shipping on them, it’s still a good deal, but to me it makes sense to save the money and just wedge my feet under the couch and do sit-ups.

Chances are when you first went to the gym, started a new workout, or did any new exercise you were pretty sore for the next few days. But if you stuck with whatever new exercise you were doing you saw some pretty significant gains in the first few weeks. This is due to 2 reasons:

1. Neurological: The first few times you do something you will be a bit shaky until your body adapts and “figures out” how it should go. Once your body has learned the new exercise you will do it better without any new muscle growth.

2. Physiological: Any new type of stress you put on your muscles is going to cause muscle growth in muscles that weren’t used very much before. This means that there will be a quick adapting period in the first few weeks of doing an exercise with large amounts of strength gain.

But what about after those first few weeks? You probably noticed you weren’t very sore anymore, and the shakiness had disappeared. Whatever the exercise was, you most likely stuck with it for several weeks to several months. But even if you worked hard you found that the gains were nothing like in the beginning and over time the resulting strength gains slowed down and may have even stopped.

This is called plateauing. It’s a pretty common term in weight lifting circles, and refers to a point when a certain exercise fails to deliver any benefit no matter how hard the person tries. It can also refer to a specific level of fitness that a person is having trouble moving past.

There are several ways you may plateau, and depending on the way, there will be a different solution to overcome this.

Stopped losing weight: Your body has reached an energy balance. As I’ve described before, you have as much energy coming into your body as is going out. Either cut the calories, or increase your level of exercise. Or, you can increase the amount of protein you are eating (Protein powders are great for this)and increase your exercise. This will allow your muscles to grow and burn more calories at a resting rate allowing you to lose more weight.

Stopped gaining strength: Again you have 2 options. The first is to increase your eating and let your muscles grow bigger and stronger. Or, change the exercises you are doing. Frequently changing your exercise routine enables continual “fast growth” like what I described in the beginning of this post. People often call this “muscle confusion” and many multi-week exercise plans use this method.

In summary, the 2 best things you can do for yourself when exercising and/or losing weight is to make sure you are getting enough food to fuel your muscles, and to continually change your exercise routine every few weeks. This will ensure that muscles are always growing at a peak rate and that they have the supplies they need to do all that growing.

I know, I know, it’s been a few months since I posted a work, but here we go.

My brother was getting ready for the police academy and asked me for some advice on how to get ready quick. I told him simply, the best way to get good at running, push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups, is to do LOTs of them. Thats where the Navy Seal Workout comes in.

Basically this is a workout the SEALs put out to get people in shape for BUDs (Beginner Undewater Demolition), the first step in becoming a Navy SEAL. It utilizes circuits of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. On top of that daily running and swimming are prescribed.

It’s ta tough workout, but its a smart one. At critical times the workout has you back off runs which could induced shin splints. I can tell you from experience those getting ready to enter the military or police academy’s can benefit A LOT from this workout!

So as usual, heres a downloadable, printer friendly copy of the Navy SEALs workout, enjoy!

Navy Seal Workout

You workout, you get tired and sore. Maybe, you don’t get on a regular workout schedule, or your schedule falls apart. Or, you cheat on your eating plan, get frustrated and give up.

Whatever the cause, we lose motivation and our dreams of a 6-pack disappear in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. It’s going to happen, I know because its happened to me and trust me, it happens to everyone else too.

Here are a few tips to get you motivated, or if you lost your motivation how to get it back:

1.      Get a workout/exercise partner (This is a big one)

2.      Share your goals with everyone around you Read the rest of this entry »