Friday, April 29, 2011

Home Ab Workout

Today a friend of mine asked me what a good workout for the abs was that you could do at home.  When I'm at the gym working abs, I have two main ab sets that specifically target the obliques.  Russian Twists, and Windshield Wipers, which I've shown below in the video.  After that I'll finish off with sit-ups, crunches, etc.  Those everyone knows so whatever.  The number one reason why my main working sets focus on obliques is that a lot of the stuff I do incorporates core tension and balance so I don't feel like I need to attack them so hard specifically, whereas obliques sometimes I find they're neglected.  Russian twists are awesome, but you can't really do them at home, so that leaves windshield wipers.  As long as you have a pull-up bar, which if you're working out at home you pretty much can't do without, you can do the wipers.  Normally you go side to side, but in my variation I like to go full circle to make a bit more challenging. Stretch out your back and lats before doing these, with all that tension you don't want to pull anything. 
And remember, you can do all the ab workouts in the world, but if you've got a layer of fat covering them, no one's going to see them!  So do your cardio!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Supplements have arrived!


My order from bodybuilding.com finally arrived.  I had ordered Myofusion protein, Micronized Creatine, and NOxplode.  I've been on Myofusion since January now, and it's pretty good.  Good tasting and it's not too lumpy when you shake it.  It has a nice creamy texture to it.  Mind you, I've only tried the milk chocolate flavour and cookies and cream flavour.  Cookies and Cream aren't bad but I like milk chocolate a bit better.  C&C is a little bland.  I had gone on creatine before, but at the time I never really had a good workout program going on, and I didn't really stick to it so I couldn't see any real gains.  So I'm going to give it a second try.  NO-Xplode, while I'm not sold on it's benefits, I know what it does and I'm curious to give it a try.  If nothing else, it'll get my energy up for my workouts.  I'm sure it's the same as caffeine but I'll review this product when I've given it a fair shot ;).  Right now I workout 2-3 times a day, so I really need motivation and energy to get through the second and third workouts, so I'm excited to try these new supplements out!
The only bad thing is that they seemed to have sent me one tub of protein short.  I've sent them an e-mail, and hopefully they won't have a problem sending me it...

On an unrelated note, my new fight shorts I ordered from MMAHQ came in today.  The site has awesome deals each day, the shorts were dirt cheap, and the ones I got are the tan ones:

Friday, April 22, 2011

Calisthenics training at the playground

Today was the first warm day of the year. It was +10, sun was shining, all was good. I pumped up the tires of my road bike, called my friend and told her we were going to the playground! I got my inspiration from these guys on YouTube:  BarStarzz.  They've got some creative stuff so check them out.
 

Thursday, April 21, 2011

How to Build Parallettes

After going back to the hardware store a couple times because I kept forgetting everything I needed, I finally had everything to make my own set of parallettes.  They're relatively cheap, (I paid just under $30 for all the parts), and they're going to really help with my training I think.  They're great for upper body weight exercise training, and they're going to really help with my planche training and handstand training especially.

Here's what you need:
-10 feet of 1 1/2" PVC
-8 End Caps
-4 Elbow Joints
-4 T-Joints
-PVC glue or cement
-Hack Saw
-Measuring Tape


BlogCatalog

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Day 7 of my 60 day handstand challenge

So I'm 7 days into my handstand challenge, and things are looking pretty good.  I made some good progress I think, but I'm starting to run into a couple problems.
-Wrist pains
-Can't seem to get my body straight without crashing down.

Of course, I could settle with the curved back handstand, but I'd like to challenge myself and really try and get the perfect gymnastics style handstand with the straight back.  I figure, if I'm going to do this, might as well go all the way.  The only problem is whenever I consciously stiffen out my body and legs, I seem to lose balance... I thought it was supposed to help me keep my balance?!  The other problem is that since I workout everyday, by the time I get home from school my muscles are exhausted.  Especially yesterday, (which btw, I got a new personal record on deadlifts... 350 lbs!) =)  My wrists were extremely tired from deadlifts and back day in general, and found that my handstand suffered as well.

Anyways, here's a video of my progress... as promised!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Handstand in 60 days!!

So ever since I created this blog, I've been asking myself, what are my goals?  Do I want to be a bodybuilder, a strongman, a fighter, or gymnast?  (mind you, all roads lead to spartan glory)  I wasn't leaning towards body building, because I don't want to be grossly out of proportion and it also limits a lot of my other activities such as fighting and gymnastics.  I've been working really hard on my strength training lately, but I also don't know if I want to be a strongman; it also takes a lot of dedication and sacrifices.  So the more I think about it, I think I have an idea of what my goals are:
- I want to put on a little bit of weight, maybe 10-20 lbs, BUT
- I want to keep my body fat % low, preferably less than 10%. I'm not exactly sure what I'm at now
- Work on my functional strength, through weight lifting and gymnastics.  I've neglected gymnastics for a while, but I'd like to get back into it.

I quite often have to remind myself why I started working out in the first place.  I've always enjoyed the fact that strength gives me the ability to control myself, and also my surroundings to a greater degree.  For example, I love climbing things.  Climbing rocks, walls, buildings, you name it, I'll climb it!  Honestly, the main reason I don't climb more things is that I believe society is creating these cultural norms which are holding me back.  For example, I'll be walking down the street, and there's a short fence in the way of my direct path.  If nobody was watching I'd just climb or jump over the fence, but only "trouble makers" do those kinds of things.  So I grudgingly force myself to take an extra 30 seconds to walk around and it kills me inside! If this sort of sounds like an ad for parkour, it is.  I love the idea of parkour and deep down I think I have a good understanding of the essence of it.  I'd really like to really learn it, but since I'm moving to a smaller city soon, I don't think they'll have any clubs out there....

But to get back to the point, my goal is to put on a little bit of weight so I can get a little bit stronger, but at the same time maintaining my strength to weight ratio because it's no good if I can sit down at a pull-down machine and lift 200 lbs but I can no longer climb things like I used to.  So I need that strength to weight ratio so that while this is happening, I can get back into gymnastics.  I don't know a lot, but I've played around on gymnastic rings and just strength holds. 

So here's the best part of this post:  If I'm going to be taking this gymnastics thing anywhere, I figure I'm going to need to learn how to do a perfect handstand first! So for the next 60 days, I'm going to spend 5-10 minutes practicing the handstand, and we'll see what happens on day 60!  I'll take videos throughout this process, and hopefully by the end I'll be walking up and down stairs with just my hands! Ok fine maybe not on stairs.  After I master that, on to hollow backs, hand stands on rings, and hand stand presses!

Here's a good read on handstands:
Hand Balancing Course

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Spartans Vs. Ninjas

Last night a friend of mine had a party called Spartans Vs. Ninjas.  Call us lame for having theme parties but it was a blast.  Obviously I dressed up as a Spartan, and they actually turned out pretty good!  If you're wondering, yes, that is a real "300" sword that I bought, and no, no one died or was seriously maimed, but I made everything else.  It took me about 2 days to put everything together, but the hardest part was the paper mache for the greaves and vambraces.  They were almost a rush job, and the spray paint wasn't even completely dry at the time when these pictures were taken =P.  I found this guy on youtube that shows how to make the greaves and vambraces... he has some pretty cool stuff:
How to make spartan leg braces

Spartan Costumes with Queen Golga

Almost finished Spartan Costume

Team Spartans...

Phalanx!