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I’m going to call this the crow elbow press. It’s inspired a bit by the yoga “Crow” position, but also by the Capoeira Queda de Rins. Queda de Rins is pronounced kada ja hines, and means elbow to the kidney. This trick uses the triceps, abs, forearm, and lats to keep balance. It’s harder than it looks, believe me.
One day I will kick into handstand and come down on the elbow of the other side, that would be the expert or extreme version of this trick!
I learned these pushups a few months back from a crazy russian guy. He says if you work these enough, it’ll help with the muscle-up on rings or a pullup bar. Who knows… They definitely work the triceps and shoulders like crazy.
Previously I posted about the 21 pushup challenge.
I’m currently extending that to twenty-one days, but with a twist. I’ve drawn a table with four columns and ten rows. The rows list these different types of pushups (and one with pullups):
Each of those rows and columns represents one 21 pushup challenge. That’s right, sets of one, then two, then three, then four, then five… then twenty then twenty one. Once you reach the top, go back down twenty one, twenty … two, one, DONE!
Each set represents 460 pushups of various types. So if you give yourself one day of rest in twenty one days, you’ll do two 21 pushup challenges per day. For a total of 920 pushups per day.
Hey, look at it this way, Bruce Lee used to do 1000 pushups a day to warmup, sets of 100!
I plan to post some quick vids of the different types of pushups, so stay tuned.
A snippet from “Mind Wide Open” by Steven Johnson speaks directly to what frequent exercisers know, but what those of us who don’t exercise often, tend to doubt…
“Brain researchers had long suspected that the family of painkilling drugs derived from the opium poppy — heroin, morphine, codeine — targeted a dedicated site in the brain, but it wasn’t until the early 1970’s that a handful of researchers working in separate labs discovered the receptor: a synaptic lock contoured precisely to fit the opiate keys. This was one of those discoveries whose existence suggests a further discovery. Though the narcotic allure of the poppy has been part of the human experience since at least the dawn of agriculture, it seemed unlikely that the brain would possess a recepter for a chemical found in a plant that grew in only a few scattered locations around the globe. The existence of the receptor suggested that the brain produced its own endogenous opiate, and sure enough within a few years scientists had discovered two of them: the enkephalins and endorphins — meaning ‘in the head’ and ‘morphine within,’ respectively.”
He goes on to the really good part for all of us exercise addicts — or aspiring addicts:
“Newspapers, magazines, and talk radio were flooded with excitement over the brain’s ‘natural high’. And the surge of interest in fitness and jogging that began twenty-five years ago owes its existence in part to the discovery that these powerful chemicals were released during strenuous activity. People don’t get in shape simply because it’s in their long-term interests. They get in shape because working out makes them feel good, and their brains remember the feeling”
Yep, just a little bit of science to throw in there!