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

 

Comments

[Nick McKinless]

Great post Theo! I will see how you progress goes with the OAC. I am considering going after these myself now I have dropped to 95kg. In the past I have done 3 reps. Good luck bro!!!

Nick