Whenever people ask me about fitness, or when I’m training a client, I usually recommend they get a heart rate monitor. This gives you real information about how hard you are working out, and also your progress and changes over time. They are also generally more accurate than the ones on the treadmills.
Here’s a whole article on how to use and train with them.
Tick tocks are a way to exercise the upper back and shoulder muscles, and also work your shoulder and back flexibility. Try to work up to the by doing the yoga wheel first. Push up into your shoulders… As you progress, do them as slowly as you can, this builds up a lot of your stabilizer muscles.
Scooters you probably remember from your high school or middle school gym days. For bodyweight training, you can use them for all sorts of things. Here I’m doing peck flys, which you might normally do on a bench with barbels. The scooters work quite well. Adjust the weight by starting on your knees, or on your toes, but with legs apart. Try to keep your arms straight. My left arm bends a lot, not sure what to do about that yet…
Pavel Tsutsouline has done some amazing shit. Once I saw his one-arm one-leg pushup, I had to add it to my repertoire. Easier said than done. Well I’m getting closer with a one-finger assist!!
Just got back last week from a long trip to the west coast, san francisco, berkeley, sierra mountains, reno nevada, and of course black rock city. Never a dull moment…
Anyway, after a long hiatus, here’s a quick double clap pushup video. 10 reps. If you’re having trouble with this trick, seperate your legs more. If you’re in a complete straddle position, for instance, most people can do a double clap pushup, because you have more time in the air. Try it and see!
I’ve been working on the arm-bar and planche exercises for a long time. I talk about them on this blog quite a bit. My strength at the planche has been slowly improving, so I’m confident enough with it now to post a video. Basically I go into an elbow planche, and then slide forward and off the elbows, holding fulling extended with straight legs for about five seconds.
The “hollow body hold” is a really easy exercise for anyone to do. Easy as in simplicity, but it will work your abs like crazy. I would start with 30 second sets. Please beware to *NOT* arch your back, keep it flat against the floor at all times.
What also makes this a great exercise is it doesn’t take up much space, you can do it while watching tv, in a hotel room, or pretty much anywhere…
I’ve had people ask me about target heart rate before. In one case a person said, my trainer suggests I use 128bpm as my target heart rate. In another case someone said, I heard my target heart rate should be 135bpm.
As with everything the truth is always a bit less black and white. The American Council on Exercise says “research shows that optimum exercise intensity for fitness improvement is in the range of about 50 to 85% of maximum oxygen consumption. This corresponds to about 60-90% of maximum heart rate. The ranges are broad because of the effects of the level of fitness, as well as genetic factors. The higher a client’s level of fitness, the higher the appropriate exercise intensity.”
There are a few different methods to calculate all of this, with fancy scientific names, but for simplicities sake we’ll call it percentage of heart-rate reserve method:
rhr – resting heart rate (hr first thing in the morning)
mhr – maximum heart rate (220 – age)
(mhr – rhr) x intensity + rhr
For me, my resting heart rate is 50bpm because I run alot. My mhr is 180.
(180-50) x 0.75 + 50 = 130 x 0.75 + 50 = 98 + 50 = 148.
So if I want to shoot for 75% I’d go with 148bpm. Given the above 60-90%, that means 128bpm at the low end, and 167bpm at the high end.
As anecdotal evidence, I can tell you the best average I’ve hit for one hour of running, really going all out is 147bpm, maxing out at 155bpm. If I do an all-out sprint, a barely push above 160, and how long can a person sprint for?
There is also something called the talk test, which says if you’re at the intensity which is low to moderate, especially for beginners, if you can still carry on a conversation, and breathe comfortably. People with higher fitness levels, and pushing for higher functional capacity may find this method conservative.
In the end a lot of these measures depend on variables such as any smoking history, current weight and percent body fat, and so on. There really is no magic number. Keep in mind that the higher heart rate you exercise at, the greater benefit you will see overall, but to a point. In the beginning especially, don’t over do it. And as always, increase gradually.
What about monitoring your heart rate, what’s the best method? I recommend a heart rate monitor from the likes of Polar or Garmin. Polar has some as inexpensive as $60 and at the higher end, Garmin has some $299 models which have GPS, and can give you a lot of data that sync up to your computer. But primarily what you want is to know what your min, max, and average were for your workout. You can always write that information down.
As always consult with your physician if you are beginning an exercise program for the first time, especially if you have a pre-existing condition, injury, are a smoker, are overweight, or are an older individual.
There are a lot of milestones that I’m shooting for. One in particular is the one-arm pullup. This is not where one arm pulls on the wrist while the other arm pulls up. This is a real one-arm-only pullup where the other arm is not contributing at all. I ran into a rock climbing friend of mine who said that only 1 in 100,000 people can do this feat. I figure that makes it a good goal to strive for!
When you’re doing strength training, you want to be able to do comparisons so you can measure your improvement, and also see how far you have still to go. One great way to do this is by comparing reps to maximum total strength or power. Here’s the breakdown:
# of reps % 1 rep max
1 100
2 95
3 93
4 90
5 87
6 85
7 83
8 80
9 77
10 75
11 70
12 67
15 65
Ok, now how do we put this to work on the one-arm pullup? Here’s what I did.
Throw a rope over the bar and attach weight to it. The non-working arm pulls on the rope, and the other arm pulls on the bar. Keep adding more weight, until you can do your one-arm pullup. I weigh 150 pounds, and can do the pullup with 10 pounds attached to the rope, so my 1 rep max for one arm is 140 pounds. For working this skill, let’s put 15 pounds on the rope. Calculating that out, you’ll find that 135 pounds is 90% of 150 pounds. Looking up in our table above that means that with the 15 pound weight, I want to be able to do FOUR REPS.
This type of comparison of reps to total power can be used all the time in your strength training. If you know the total 1 rep max that is your goal, you can design reps at smaller weights to get there over time.
This technique provides you with another tool to apply during your training, allowing you to breakdown your goal into manageable and measurable steps.
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!