Sunday 11 June 2017

How to Build Strength and Muscle with Progressive Calisthenics | Mark's Daily Apple

How to Build Strength and Muscle with Progressive Calisthenics | Mark's Daily Apple

How to Build Strength and Muscle with Progressive Calisthenics

Inline_Pic 1

Today’s guest post is offered up by some long-time friends of MDA, Al Kavadlo and Danny Kavadlo. I’m excited to share their expertise with the Primal community here. This year I wrote the foreword for their new book, Get Strong, which was just released. 

If you’re into Primal living, chances are you’re a minimalist when it comes to exercise. In our busy world, we all want to make good use of the time we allot to our training. Additionally, we Primal devotees know that many of the fancy machines we may encounter at the local globo-gym are not needed for building real-world strength.



As Mark Sisson accurately says, you need to “lift heavy things” in order to get strong, but there is no need to overcomplicate the issue. Barbells, kettlebells and dumbbells are viable options, but you can keep it even simpler than that and still get very strong. Yes, you need to push your muscles with resistance training in order to affect growth in them, but your own body weight provides all the resistance you’ll ever need. You don’t have to rely on external weights in order to build strength and muscle. Calisthenics exercises generally require nothing more than the floor beneath your feet, a wall, a bench or a bar. Sometimes it seems too simple to be true, but I assure you that one can get extremely strong with nothing but bodyweight training.

Many believe that once you hit double-digit numbers on exercises like push-ups and pull-ups, an external load must be added in order to continue building strength and muscle. This is simply not true. If you know how to manipulate leverage, there is no need to ever add weights to your workouts. Once you understand the underlying principles behind progressive calisthenics, you can build a lifetime of strength with nothing more than your own body weight.

Here are three simple ways you can vary the intensity of any calisthenics exercise without adding weight or requiring the use of a gym.

1. Change the Weight-to-Limb Ratio

By adjusting the distribution of your bodyweight, you can increase or decrease the resistance on many calisthenics exercises. To illustrate this, compare a push-up with your feet on an elevated surface to a push-up with all your limbs on the ground. Due to the change in leverage, there is much more weight in the chest, arms and shoulders in the former than in the latter, rendering it more difficult. Conversely, a push-up with the hands elevated (instead of the feet) will place less demand on the muscles of the upper body, making the exercise better suited to beginners.

Pic 2

Furthermore, you can take this principle to the next level when you remove a contact point entirely: A one-legged squat will always require more strength than a squat performed on both legs. By completely eliminating one point of contact, you’ve doubled the weight loaded onto the individual leg. Fortunately, there are many steps in between the two, such as split squats and other asymmetrical squat variations.

2. Alter the Range of Motion

Another way to progress bodyweight exercises is to alter the range of motion. One example of this is to progress from a hanging leg raise where your legs end up parallel to the ground, to a hanging leg raise where your toes go all the way to the bar. The increased distance makes it harder.

Additionally, you can regress a movement pattern by using only part of the standard range of motion. For example, practicing the negative phase of a pull-up as a progression toward full pull-ups, or doing half-squats until you are able to perform the entire range of motion.

3. Give Yourself an Assist

There are several ways that you can use the principle of self-assistance as a gateway toward more advanced bodyweight exercises. In the case of the one-legged squat, this is often done by sitting back onto a bench, as doing so provides balance and stability in the bottom position, which is one of the most difficult aspects of the exercise.

Pic 3

A self-assist can also be provided from the legs when working certain upper-body movements. If you aren’t strong enough to do a pull-up yet, you can keep one foot on a chair or platform to assist your arms. Put as much of your weight as possible in your arms and use your foot to make up the difference.

Here are a few additional exercises that employ these three principles, which you can begin implementing in your training today—if you’re ready for them!

1. Drinking Bird

Pic 4

This is like a straight-leg deadlift performed on only one leg. It’s a great example of altering the weight-to-limb ratio by removing a contact point. Like the single-leg squat, taking one of your legs out of the equation doubles the amount of work performed on the primary leg. Furthermore, a major balance and stability component is added to what would otherwise be only a pure strength exercise. That’s why the drinking bird is surprisingly difficult even with just your bodyweight.

Begin by standing on one foot with your opposite leg hovering just above the ground behind you. From here, lean your upper body forward, bending from your hips and reaching your opposite leg out behind your body. This will not only help you balance, it will also further engage your lower back as well as the leg that’s in the air.

Watch out that you don’t bend your spine on the way down, but rather take the stretch in your hamstrings. The idea is to keep your back flat and pivot from the hips.

2. Archer Push-up

Pic 5

This advanced push-up variation is an excellent example of how you can change the weight-to-limb ratio in order to progress an exercise. Begin in a push-up position with a very wide hand placement. From there, keep one arm straight while you bend the other, so your body slides toward the side of the arm that bends. Most of your weight will wind up in the bent arm, making the move substantially harder than a standard push-up.

If you’re unable to perform a full archer push-up, you can start with your hands a bit closer and allow your straight arm to have a small bend in the elbow in order to make the move more manageable. In time, aim to eliminate that bend. Play around with gradually moving your arms farther out to allow for a full range of motion.

The archer push-up is also an example of a self-assist, as it can be used as a progression toward a one-arm push-up. In this case, you can think of it as a regressed one-arm push-up with the secondary arm acting as a kickstand to help provide stability to the rest of the body.

3. Muscle-up

Pic 6

The muscle-up begins like a pull-up, but keeps going until your entire torso winds up above the bar. Grip the bar slightly narrower than you would for a pull-up, then lean back and pull the bar down your body as low as possible. At the top of your pull, reach your chest over the bar and extend your arms.

Though you can think of the muscle-up like a pull-up with a much bigger range of motion, the two movement patterns are subtly different. When you do a muscle-up, you’ll be driving your elbows behind your body, rather than toward your sides as you would in a standard pull-up. This is why a narrower grip tends to work better for the muscle-up. It’s also helpful to think about leaning away from the bar during the pulling phase before pitching forward at the top. This creates a movement pattern that’s more of an “S” shape than a straight line, allowing you to better maneuver your body around the bar. When starting out, we encourage you to use momentum and be explosive. It may take a lot of practice to get a feel for the timing, though if you are solid on your pull-ups, and diligent in your pursuit, the muscle-up will eventually be yours.

Pic 7For more information on building strength and muscle with bodyweight training, pick up a copy of Al and Danny Kavadlo’s newly released book, Get Strong

I want to thank Al and Danny Kavadlo for their guest post and the great suggestions today. And thanks to everyone for stopping by the blog. Have questions or thoughts on using progressive calisthenics for your Primal fitness routine? Share them on the comment board. Have a great week.

Friday 26 August 2016

10 exercises to get great abs without sit-ups

10 exercises to get great abs without sit-ups




When it comes to getting a toned set of abs, noted gym
rat Albert Einstein was all over it. "Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results."

Yet this is  the type of insanity that prevails in gym culture every day. Folks still
think fat-free is healthy, protein overdosing is going to jack them up,
and laying on their back doing a million crunches is the recipe for
perfect abs.
Let dinosaur methodologies be gone. If you want a lean midsection, these 10 exercises work your abs plenty, and without a single sit-up.


1. Kettlebell swings

The kettlebell swing is a near gym-perfect exercise because it works
your heart, legs, core, and back. Swings are an explosive, compound
movement that produce lean muscle from head to toe.

2. Farmer's walk

Grab a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell with one arm, and take it for a
walk. The farmer's walk is like a moving plank that tests your grip,
legs, trapezoids, and abdominal strength all in one go.

3. Single leg push-ups

Had enough of the bench press? Tone your chest while utilising many
other muscles, including your core, with push-ups. A challenging
variation of the traditional push-up is to simply raise one leg off the
ground. Instability with proper form means your abs are taking on the
load and doing even more work.

4. Sprints

I dare you to run 200 metres with 100 per cent intensity. Walk back,
and repeat nine times. Usain Bolt doesn't drop for 200 sit-ups to get
his toned body – he just keeps running with his core engaged, hard. And
high-intensity sprints guarantee you'll be burning calories long after
you stop working out.

5. Side planks

Everybody is planking, but don't forget to side plank. Your obliques
are important, and side planks provide the isometric movement to
strengthen them. To side plank, lay on your side with legs extended,
placing your elbow under your shoulder to prop up your torso, then hold.

6. Woodchopping

A full body exercise that's functional, twisting, and tones the abs
is the woodchop on a cable mountain. It starts with two hands grabbing a
cable's rope, then pulling and twisting in a downward motion. Using
cables is superb, as they make the concentric and eccentric phases
equally challenging.

7. Clean and press/jerk

Olympic lifts aren't just for athletes bound for Rio. The clean and
press/jerk is a full body (including abs) exercise just like all other
exercises where weights are lifted overhead. From the legs, glutes,
core, and shoulders – all must be engaged to hold a significant mass for
any time above the head.

8. Barbell ab rollout

This is an advanced exercise using a barbell with 10kg plates on each
side. On your knees, place hands on a barbell, then slowly roll it out
until your body is semi-parallel to the floor with arms extended. Pause,
then roll back to the starting position, and repeat.

9. Burpees

I said no sit-ups, but I didn't say anything about burpees. Sure,
they suck, but they also work the entire body and are especially good
for promoting lean, toned abs. In a quick, fluid motion, lower into a
squat position then put hands flat on the floor in front. Kick both legs
back into a push-up position. Perform a push-up. Spring both legs
forward, then stand up and jump.

10. Mountain climbers

Like 'standing high knees', mountain climbers are similar but only
when parallel to the ground. From shoulders and arms to legs and
abdominals, climbers are a cardio treat to slim and tone while engaging
most of the body's muscles.

More than just abs

The beauty of all these exercises are not that they'll deliver abs, but even better:

1. It's about posture.

All
day you sit at a computer and hunch, hunch, hunch. Then you go to the
gym and crunch, crunch, crunch. Strengthening in the foetal position is
dangerous. It's not only an awkward look, but a hunched-over posture
(kyphosis) affects breathing and overall health.

2. It's about compound movements.

The
exercises above aren't singularly about abdominal work. They're full
body movements that work a variety of muscles. That's how you get lean,
strong, healthy, balanced. That's how you get abs.

Crunch this

And if you think it's all about crunches in the gym? Working off a
triple cheeseburger with sit-ups is as wise as gifting your bulldog a
saxophone. It's insanity. Everybody's got abdominal muscles, but it's
what you do in the kitchen that provides a window to see those abs.

The
next time you lay down to do some ab work, remember this – putting new
rims on a rundown '78 Holden still has you walking to work. In other
words, isolating your abs won't give you a new torso. Spot reduction is
the king of the gym myth castle. Don't wrongly assume if you work one
spot, fat reduction will come in time.

Wise up, and sit up less. Old mate Albert and I demand it.

Is your ab game strong? Let us know your secrets in the Comments section.

Passion
for lifestyle change is the cornerstone for everything Michael Jarosky
does. A Sydney-based personal trainer, he cajoled thousands of Executive
Style readers to undertake his 'Cut The BS' diet, and champions a
charity weight-loss event, Droptober.


Follow Michael on Twitter




Monday 14 March 2016

How does the eccentric heel drop help my achilles get better faster?

The Ultimate Runner's Guide to Achilles Tendinitis

How does the eccentric heel drop help my achilles get better faster?

The strength protocol consists of two exercises: a straight-kneed and a bent-kneed eccentric heel drop.


The protocol calls for three sets of fifteen heel drops, both bent-kneed and straight-kneed, twice a day for twelve weeks.


Standing on a step with your ankles plantarflexed (at the top of a “calf raise”), shift all of your weight onto the injured leg.


Slowly use your calf muscles to lower your body
down, dropping your heel beneath your forefoot. Use your uninjured leg
to return to the “up” position. Do not use the injured side to get back to the “up” position!


The exercise is designed to cause some pain, and you are
encouraged to continue doing it even with moderate discomfort. You
should stop if the pain is excruciating, however.


Once you are able to do the heel drops without any pain,
progressively add weight using a backpack. If you are unlucky enough to
have Achilles tendon problems on both sides, use a step to help you get back to the “up” position, using your quads instead of your calves to return up.


What’s the bottom line?


The eccentric exercises are thought to selectively damage
the Achilles tendon, stripping away the misaligned tendon fibers and
allowing the body to lay down new fibers that are closer in alignment to
the healthy collagen in the tendon.


This is why moderate pain during the exercises is a good thing, and why adding weight over time is necessary to progressively strengthen the tendon.

How does the eccentric heel drop help my achilles get better faster?

The Ultimate Runner's Guide to Achilles Tendinitis

How does the eccentric heel drop help my achilles get better faster?

The strength protocol consists of two exercises: a straight-kneed and a bent-kneed eccentric heel drop.


The protocol calls for three sets of fifteen heel drops, both bent-kneed and straight-kneed, twice a day for twelve weeks.


Standing on a step with your ankles plantarflexed (at the top of a “calf raise”), shift all of your weight onto the injured leg.


Slowly use your calf muscles to lower your body
down, dropping your heel beneath your forefoot. Use your uninjured leg
to return to the “up” position. Do not use the injured side to get back to the “up” position!


The exercise is designed to cause some pain, and you are
encouraged to continue doing it even with moderate discomfort. You
should stop if the pain is excruciating, however.


Once you are able to do the heel drops without any pain,
progressively add weight using a backpack. If you are unlucky enough to
have Achilles tendon problems on both sides, use a step to help you get back to the “up” position, using your quads instead of your calves to return up.


What’s the bottom line?


The eccentric exercises are thought to selectively damage
the Achilles tendon, stripping away the misaligned tendon fibers and
allowing the body to lay down new fibers that are closer in alignment to
the healthy collagen in the tendon.


This is why moderate pain during the exercises is a good thing, and why adding weight over time is necessary to progressively strengthen the tendon.

Sunday 10 January 2016

Dennis Quaid: 61-year-old actor shows off ripped physique

Dennis Quaid: 61-year-old actor shows off ripped physique

Dennis Quaid is seriously ripped at 61 years old

DENNIS Quaid is seriously ripped.
The 61-year-old actor, most famous for his role in The Day After Tomorrow, showed off his impressive body during a recent Hawaiian holiday.

Quaid spent the Christmas break relaxing at the Turtle Bay Resort with his
third wife, Kimberly Buffington, and his three kids, Jack, 23, and
eight-year-old twins, Zoe and Thomas.

How many people had a sixpack in their sixties?
How many people had a sixpack in their sixties?Source:Snapper Media