BEYOND STRONG: RISE AND FALL

2 Women and a man..

Life with a baby, a woman and well, a man who is eager to train... It just ain't happening at the moment guys. Let me point out first, that it is a wonderful experience, seeing a little baby grow up so fast. Our daughter has been growing like weed, and now nearly 7 weeks, she is getting pretty bulky.. 6 kg my guess is at the moment..
But it is work, hard work I tell you! Long days, especially when a baby doesn't want to sleep, LONG nights, when she cries nearly every hour and you have to make an agreement, a shift schedule, in order to make sure that the sleep you can get, you actually do get, without being both awake and attending to a crying baby..

I have read that the average sleep one loses when a newborn baby comes into their lives, is around 200 hours of sleep.. To me, that is not only 200 hours of growth time, but I did a small calculation and training wise that is around 160 hours of lost training hours. (that is, if the situation remains as it is, with less than an hour of training atm..)

Yup, and it is all worth it!

Theo

Who's your daddy!!

WE have a daughter!! Born 27th of September, at 3.55 in the afternoon in Denpasar, Bali...

Back levers..

Here's a picture of me in a back lever..

Still working on the front lever, and the bloody muscle up.. Due to inflexibility in the shoulders it's really hard to get it down.. Same goes for the planche work on the floor, that is friggin'  hard, so instead I'm trying on parallettes..

Theo

Abscent

Rise and Fall has lately been very not up to date. You'll have to excuse me for this, because even though there are no excuses to be made not to train, I think I do have a valid reason for not being so bloggerish at the moment.

My wife and I are expecting our very first baby, and end of the pregnancy is very near. She is nearly 9 months, and just about to deliver any moment now. She gained a nearly a whopping 30kg's, so she will be so happy once this pregnancy is over and the baby will be finally in our hands..  We have seen on various scans that the baby is healthy, already weighs around 3kg, and will be a beautiful little girl! I can't wait, and it will be a wonderful and exciting time for us.

So you will have to excuse for a bit, although I am still training and doing my body weight routines I am a bit preoccupied...

Cheers,

Theo

Jimmy Laureys

There will be a new DVD release on the strongman scene, which covers footage and other stuff about the Strongest Man Competition of Vlaanderen. My friend Jimmy participated and once again, came out victorious!
Congratulations Jimmy (a bit late though) and here is a preview of the DVD..

Click here for an earlier interview I had with Jimmy.. To purchase this dvd, please email JIMMY LAUREYS

   

Bali life training wise

All is well here in Bali. Since two weeks I have started my new job at one of the international schools here in Bali, and I must say, I enjoy it very much. I am the PE teacher for the whole school, as well as teaching geology, environmental science, history and citizenship. A lot of things on my mind so that's why I have been a bit slow on the updates..

Right now I am again down in bodyweight, around 87kg. I actually feel bigger though, but that's probably because I am carrying a lot less bodyfat around. The weight loss has been mostly due to the fact that in here, an eating regiment is pretty much non existent. People mostly go by on feel. When you are hungry, eat, and if not, don't.So it's very common to sit down and have a big meal, say, around 23.00 at night, or even later..

I used to, as a newcomer, receives all kinds of foods like sate, soups and pancakes (very sweet by the way) because everybody wanted to treat me so nice. That got me heavy in the beginning of my arrival quite fast. Now that things have settled down more, I do not have the obligations any more of swallowing down food that I don't actually want to eat. Although a good set of goat sate is always welcomed though..

Basically what I eat now, is in the morning some light cereal, or sometimes just some fruit. Around the afternoon is mostly some rice, or mie, with 2 fried eggs. Coming back from work, mostly is 20 sticks of sate with some rice, and my evening meal consists of again some sate (chicken mostly although the pork is quite good too) and rice. Tiny portions of rice though, I must say. If every now and then I feel too bloated because of what I ate in the day, I will skip the rice or mie in the evening and only go for some chicken and a fruit juice. You can order fresh fruit blended into a tasty drink, or just have it cutt up and eat it with your fork all for a measely 20 euro cents.. Pineapple, mango, apple, tomato, some other fruits I don't know the name of as well. Tasty!

Training wise, it's going well. I am able to do a full handstand pushup (which puts a lot of meat on the shoulders and traps!), and do a back lever on the rings. Front lever I am almost able to straddle it with a straight back, so that's getting there too. Muscle up, that is still quite hard, and I am trying to grease the groove a lot, because my right shoulder has some flexibility issues.

The one arm chins is going allright, I have cut down on the volume, and work it with quick sessions. Most of the time I start with 4-5 sets of 3-5 reps with 25kg added and then go on to one arm negatives, or do assisted chins with one arm hanging onto a rope, as low as possible.

Leg wise, pistols are going average, can knock off around 10 right, left is still not up to par though. I feel very tired lately in my legs, maybe due to my lack of sprinting on the beach and jumping around. So I will be incorporating that some more once I have some time on my hands again..

That's it for now..

Theo

(I was going to upload some pics of my back lever, but forgot my memory stick, so I'll post them later..)

Progression

 

Life in Bali is good. Last week we made a trip to Java, with the boat. I drove in our Kijang LSX, better known as a Toyota. Traffic in Bali has its dangers, with a lot of crazy bike drivers coming from any corner, speeding too much, and sign and signals that many people do not obey. There are speed limits, which is a necessity with a road no bigger than two lanes, but since everybody neglects the signs things can become very, very dangerous. The bigger transportation busses, trucks, they tend to pass you even in the most dangerous situations and turn. A big curly road, incline or decline, on the mountain, even then they will pass you with dangerous speeds.. I have spent a measly 400km on the road, for a total of more than 24 hours and saw: a big snake on the road soon to be road kill, a truck that just drove into the living room of a small house, a truck that fell down a bridge, another truck that fell down the cliff and where people were busy trying to carry the big bags of rice back in the truck, two trucks that drove into each other, a man falling from his bike whilst going downhill, a few dead dogs.. Driving in Indonesia, not your typical driving environment like in western countries..

Started to train again as well. My training, that is now focussed towards bodyweight exercises mostly coming from gymnastics, as not really structured yet. Most days are a lot of pull-ups on my thickbar, pushups, ab exercises etc.

I have now found it necessary, if I want to see any progress to make some sort of program. However, dividing a bodyweight routine is a bit of a problem, because many exercises are based around compound exercises, which makes it hard to split up things.

So, best is to see what kind of skills I want to get, and work with that. Here I will outline some of the skills and exercises I am currently working on:

Handstand (wall)/ handstand pushups: I am kicking into the wall handstand with a straight leg, and hold for time. Straight arms. Mostly I get around 60 seconds with this exercises. When I want to work shoulders, I just try to lower myself inch by inch. I am not yet at full depth, but once there, the exercise will be made harder by doing it on paralettes. Eventually the goal is to do a free standing handstand pushup.

Parallet work: This goes from every L sit progression you can think of, and push up work. A tuck sit, with my knees as close to my body as possible, until a straight leg L sit. Holds for time, in sets of 3-5 for 10 seconds or longer. Goal for all the sits are 60 seconds. Works the core very, very hard. Push ups on paralettes will give you a bigger ROM and therefore I like them. I try to get into a planche position as much as possible by leaning as far as possible and then push up.

Rings: This has been too much on and off. There are many skills that I want to be able to do. I am using a lot of the articles on gymnasticbodies that contain a lot of good information. Highly recommended.. Muscle up, and the front and back levers. I suck at the back lever, and I suck at muscle ups. The transition of the muscle up is very hard for me, but I am working at it. I try to do dips and get lower a little bit every time, until I finally will be ending up at the final position of the pull up. Likewise I do this with pull ups, trying to power up higher and higher. Hopefully I can get the muscle up in the near future.

Front and back levers are great skills and look neat too. Progressions with these exercises are really easy, going from a tuck (knees in) to slightly more stretched, then straddled etc. The back lever, I can only work on the rings, too bad because...

Thickbar work (grip): I can work the front lever very well on the thickbar that I set up in the garage. It’s a 2” scaffold pipe. Front levers can be done here very easy, starting from a chin ups, and then pushing shoulders backwards and trying to push down with hands, staying tight throughout your whole body.. one thing that will work very well in learning the correct body position in the front lever is the hollow position. To learn this position you should lay down on the floor, and touch the ground with your lower back. Try to really press it down, simultaneously pressing your hand (that you hold by your side) down into the ground. You can put your chin up to your chest if you like. Try holding this position until you get tired.. (the hollow position, is also THE position you should get yourself in when you are doing your abdominal movements like crunchs, leg raises, etc. )

Next to the lever work, I do a lot of pull ups and chins. I try to vary with every single hand position possible, pronated, supinated, mixed grip, implement towels and what not. Just pull ups? Yes, because you can make it as hard as you want. Right now I like using frenchies, holding a static position in the top, at 90 degrees, and at 120 degrees for more than 5 seconds.. That is one rep...

Right now one of my main goals is getting a one arm pull up. OAP... And that is hard, especially on a thickbar.. I will do this in a thumbless curl grip, because I don’t really have big hands. At the moment I do a lot of mixed grip pull ups, with one hand as far from my body as possible, and the other (the one with the curl grip) as close to my body as possible.. From what I have read, 12 reps in this style is good and close to getting a OAP.. You can make this exercise harder by looping a rope over the bar, and grabbing it with your (non) working hand/arm.. Grabbing lower will make it harder.. Negatives are also something I use, lowering as slowly as possible with one arm, assisting with just a finger of the other hand.. An OAP is not an OAP when you not start from a dead hang, and right now that is not something I can do yet. The thickness of the bar has something to do with that, and the fact that it is hard not to pull your shoulder out of its socket or get instant elbow tendonitis.. Care must be taken in the quest to an OAP!

Floor work: Push ups, abdominal work.. You know the drill. One skill for long term is the planche, but I wonder if I will be able to ever do that.. Will take a lot of hard work. At the moment I am still working on progression 1, and that is the frog stand. I am at 40 seconds right now..

With floor work, also comes leg work and calf work. Just regular calf raises for tons of reps, and walking on toes with weights.. At the moment I weigh around 89kg, and this loss is mostly coming (and I want to say fat loss) from my puny legs ATM... To counter this, I work my legs with pistols, one legged squats. I can finally get into a full squat, and am working on reps.. Later weights can be added, by holding a KB for example.. Lunges, and a few other exercises are also in my arsenal.

For conditioning I use the beach a lot, sprinting, jumping up on stones, throw around rocks like a caveman and swim some..

 

To make a long story short, you can get strong and beyond using just bodyweight. The trick is in the knowledge of how to make your body work just as hard or even harder like when you would go to the gym..

 

Theo

 

Injured..

Have been abscent for a while. We went on a small holiday last week, with the whole family. My wife has some relatives living in Java, the island next to Bali. We went to Banyuwangi and Jember, to places in the east part of Java. Travelling to Banyuwangi needs to be done by boat, which only takes 30minutes, the rest of the trip is about 120 km. Unfortunately, going through the mountains of Bali and the ridiculously dangerous driving of fellow road users, will slow you down so much that a measely 120km took as more than 8 hours.. Crap!

Came back in the weekend, and started renovating the garage. I was a bit optimistic carrying out land and bricks with just a shovel and am currently enjoying my heavily aggravated lower back.. Really, it hurts!

Somehow still my kettlebells have not yet arrived, nor did my new Xtreme rings. Once my back feels ok, I can start training again, although I feel that the week and a half of rest did my body some good.

A small training highlight for me at the moment, is that before I left on holiday, I was able to get down into a full pistol position and grind out 6 reps! Pics to come, for all you Bolo voyeurs!!

Quick update

Everything going very well here in Bali, and I am slowly but surely adapting to this whole new lifestyle, which has me eating at weird hours, sleeping in the day, and lots and lots of chicken and goat sate...

Still training, with rings, parallettes, pullup bar and on the beach.

Right now I am working on several skills, namely the Front lever and the back lever on rings, the muscle up, and a lot of variations of the L-sit on parallettes. Good for the tummy!

Progress however, on levers, is not really fast, because I am still around 91 kg, and getting into a lever is pretty tough. I will get there though..

I also started with doing handstands, and trying to work up to a full handstand press on parallettes.

Every other morning, I go to the beach, for some cardio, running up and down the beach and combining a few laps with jumps up on the pier and off the pier. There are big rocks that are easy to jump off too. After that, there is a tire laying around, not really big, and I flip that for 20 reps, and then it is back to running a few laps.. To finish off training, I go for a swim.. All in all, doesn't sound too much of a punishment to be here, in Bali, doensn't it?

Tomorrow we will be going on a small vacation to visit some relatives in Java, the main island of Indonesia. We will be going with our car, im the designated driver for more than 7 hours so Joy!

Since I am living in Indonesia, I have all of a sudden become a great fan of making things the DIY-way, or Do It Yourself. Living on a somewhat tight wallet, well, actually that’s not really true but one must keep an anticipating eye on the future, I like to search the web and fabricate stuff myself. And I am surprised what stuff you can make by yourself, saving a lot of money on the way. One nice item I had never even thought of before, is parallettes.

Yes, I am in a somewhat gymnastic mood as of late, but these babies do work! I looked up a schedule how to make them, bought some PVC and for less than 10 dollars you can make your own set. Your abs will get a good workout when trying going for time on the L-sit, you can use a bigger ROM for push ups, you can try planche work (if it’s not useful to you, it sure looks impressive), and working your way up to a handstand push up. The latter is something I really want to get, but here I don’t really have a suitable wall and I seem to always get kind of dizzy. But with the parallettes, it’s easy because the closer you bring your feet to your hand and the straighter you keep your upper body, your shoulders will get most of the work. Not convinced, Go make some!

Well, the rings I have already written about. Nice things, and I actually bought a pair of Xtreme rings. They were on pre-sale, and although shipping is a bitch to Indonesia, the price was still allright.. Everyday I am sore, (static tension really fatigues the muscles) and that’s about all I have to say about that.

Barbells, easy to make with some cement and a scaffold pole. Will not be pretty, but does work. Here at home I have a few small ones laying around and although too light, it does work. Don’t worry if they are offset, your body will compensate for that and did you ever in real life handle an opponent or object that was perfectly weighed down just for you to lift comfortably.. ?

Sandbags, didn’t do that yet but will do someday. We do not have a lot of space around the house, but I am set on making some. There is enough sand laying around Bali anyway.

Atlas stones ofcourse, but I never made some. I know Nick has made a few back in the day for the Wheyconsortium, so who knows he can give you some insights..

Pull ups bars, well actually that is a no brainer, ain’t it?

The next plan for me is to make some poles stuck in the ground or build some sort of platform to attach my rings to. We bought a car a few days ago, and now I can’t ring sling in the garage anymore.

So that is it for now.

 

Theo