I never really tried these until a couple of weeks ago. I ran into a video on YouTube, and started working this against the wall.In yoga there’s something called a forearm stand, which is like a handstand where the entire arm from elbow to hand is used as your base. I’ve seen breakers jump up to handstand from this, but they usually do some sort of abdominal kick to get there. I worked it for a few weeks, and get a set of ten (five each arm) on video:
When you get bored of that video, take a look at this guy doing those without the wall!!
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):
handstand pushups
wide pullups
hop switch pushups
fully extended pushups
peck flys
ball planche pushups
crow R to crow L
deep pushups
planche pushups
one-arm pushups
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.
I thought I’d made some progress in training until someone forwarded me this guy Coach Geoff’s Blog. This guy is seriously into training. Take a look at his Leonidas workout. Not bad, not bad at all. Of course I got to work on it right away. Most of the stuff I’m pretty solid on. My burpees are strong, but with a back tuck I’d only try in the gym with padding, I guess I could probably manage three. And then there’s the infamous holy grail, the planche pushup.
Well I have been training them on parallette’s. I uploaded a vid for those interested in a ball planche pushup. These are tough by themselves. I’m up to a max of about 15 in a row. Tough indeed!
Ok, I’m pretty happy with my progress on those. Anyway, after watching Coach Geoff, and various youtube vids of these guys doing planche pushups I noticed they rock into them a bit. So I gave that a try. I managed to do some weak ones, but these definitely tire you out a lot! So some new progress I think.
Give me a few weeks and I should have a good 5 rep set. Cross your fingers!!
If it wasn’t already clear, the Planche is sort of the holy grail of bodyweight training skills. It’s extremely difficult to achieve, on par with an iron cross. There are lots of conditioning and strength building exercises one can do of course, but mainly it just takes time!
I am making some good progress. This pic below shows rock solid straight arms, with knees just behind my elbows. Once I can hold this position for 60 seconds, I’ll be ready to extend one leg out further, or try a more opened position. This position pictured is called a ball planche:
My progression has me starting to do the “advanced tuck planche” for about 15 seconds, while I can do a more basic ball planche for 60 seconds. I *do* work the planche pushups with my feet on the floor, but it is dramatically harder to lift your feet off the floor because in order to get that leverage your hands really have to be down at or below your hips. That makes the strength involved by your anterior (front) deltoid, and pectoral muscles, as well as some triceps strength to be on the extreme end.
Here’s a great YouTube video of a guy doing a few planche pushups properly.
If anyone has access to resources explaining how to calculate the strength of gymnastics and other bodyweight conditioning exercises, when changing the angle or leverage, I would be very interested in this. Please contact me!
You’re not alone if your yoga instructor or lifting trainer are constantly reminding you to breathe. It happens to me all the time.
Before you can practice your training with good breathing technique you’ll need to understand the what and why. When you exert yourself to lift a weight, or lift your body, you raise your blood pressure. If you hold your breath, you raise your blood pressure even higher. Not only is it an additional strain on your body, but it makes you weaker.
At the most basic level you should simply remind your self to breathe at all. Some breathing is better than holding your breath. But for optimal training you’ll want to breath *OUT* while doing the hardest part, the “positive” portion of the exercise. For a pullup this is going up, for a pushup, it is when you lift your body off the ground. For a bench press it is as you lift the weight away from your body. Conversely, you’ll want to breath *IN* while you’re doing the release part, letting yourself down from the pullup bar, allowing the barbell to come down, or easing your body towards the floor - the down phase - of a pushup.
If you’re doing yoga it may be less obvious when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Luckily most yoga classes provide the constant advice and direction that will keep you on the path to optimal breathing technique.
It is also worth mentioning that proper breathing is important to stretching and running as well. But I’ll leave those discussions to future postings.
