Just stay still (workout without moving) - Part 2 Wall Sit

The most dreaded of the static exercises, or maybe just my personal nemesis, is the wall sit.  It is all the more daunting because it looks so easy.  We lean up against stuff all the time right?  That's all this really is.  You are just at a funny angle.  Here's how it goes: stand a foot or two away from the wall then lean back.  Slide you back down the wall until your knees form a right angle.  Then just hold it as long as you can.  Sounds simple right?  I think I made it about 30 second the first time I tried.

I hate photos like this.  Don't smile, be realistic. Grunt, grimace, grind your teeth in frustration, something, anything to show this exercise is not a pushover.  She is such a faker or she does this constantly for some kind of crazy wall sit competition.  

As you might have guessed, this is going to work your legs pretty hard.  First your quads. Quadriceps are the ones on the fronts of your thighs. These work to straighten you knee.  And your hamstrings. On the back of your thigh these are used to bend your knee. Needless to say after a couple sets of these your thighs might be a little warm (Warning: the previous sentence was a massive understatement)



Hope these are helping.  The next one is going to get a little weird.  It involves being upside down!


Just Stay Still Series:
1 Planks

Just stay still (workout without moving) - Part 1 Planks

I have found that some of the exercises that give you the best burn don't require any movement.  As a matter of fact they require you to stay completely still, normally in a rather uncomfortable position.  Everybody knows (or thinks they know) about the most common kind of static exercise, the plank.  Now before you run off to take pictures of yourself laying down in funny places lets note, that trend was not an exercise and most people were getting no benefit from it.  Honestly taking a pose like the one below works your back and is closer to a superman but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

good effort but no

Planks in their many variation are all designed to strengthen the core, primarily your abs.  You can do a high plank which is the same pose you would take at the top of a push-up.  This is the easiest to get started with as it's a more natural position and helps keep everything off the ground.  The only parts that should be touching are your hands and your toes.







As you get more comfortable though try getting lower to the ground.  A low plank is what you will normally see in a Google search.  Up on your toes, spine straight,support yourself on your forearms.  The lower you go the tigher you have to hold.  If your really skinny (read skinnier than me) take the wide push-up stance and then lower yourself until you are almost touching the floor.  If you can do that why are you reading this?




Another alternative that keeps you completely straight and doesn't threaten to pinch your shoulder blades is using a chair to put your feet on.  This is a little harder and requires you to squeeze those abs a little tighter but that burn is what your going for.


Just about every variation of plank can also be done as a side plank.  This way you are working your abdominal, obliques, and back one side at a time.  Some people find them easier some harder but feel free to do less time since you should always do both sides.

This quickly went from a intro to static exercises to just planks so we'll make this a series and call this part one.  Feel free to post any questions or ask for a certain workout or topic to be covered.  Until next time I'll leave you with my personal feelings on planks.  No one I know looks like the people above so when you feel like the picture below don't sweat it.  Core workouts are more about maintenance and resisting injury.  You are getting more benefits that you don't see than one you do.

Just Stay Still Series:
2 Wall Sit

He's going to pump..... You up!

My favorite fitness social media site, Fitocracy.com has teamed up with biggest fitness icon of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Together they have created something called the 1% Challenge.  Together they have created 5 workout routines (so far) that take about 15 minutes each.  There are strength and cardio as well as equipment and body weight routines. Where does the 1% come in?  15 minutes is roughly only 1% of your 24 hr day.

I've talked about Fitocracy before but adding in these routines takes it up a notch.  Your not just blindly trying out exercises to see what works, though that's not always a bad way to begin.  All of these routines have video tutorials which is great for beginners who aren't sure of correct form.  In preparation for writing this post I watched a couple and I would even recommend them to people who know the exercises.  There are some good tips on how to keep your form all the way through the routine.

My favorite Routine is B or the Body Weight Circuit.  These means you can do all the exercises without buying any equipment going to the gym or even being at home.  If you live out of a suitcase you still don't have an excuse for not doing these.  Once again this is a great routine for beginners because it's much harder to injure yourself with no heavy objects around.  If this gets too easy you can always up your repetitions or jump over to the intermediate body weight routine D.

To ease myself back into working out and make sure I don't injure myself like I did last time this is how I'm starting off.  Personally I have added in some crunches and side planks but as with any exercise routine only do what feels comfortable to you.

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Ab Myth - it's not muscle it's fat!

I have heard some of the craziest things in the world regarding abs.  One of them being he's not strong he's fat. Granted this is the exception rather than the rule.  Many people think that you can target belly fat by doing tons of ab workouts.  That is only going to work if you already have an extremely low body fat to begin with.  You will build your abdominal muscles and there are some fantastic benefits to that, but there won't be anything visible. This is why many of the Strength competition guys look like they have extra belly.  It's really just a small layer of fat over the muscle.  Also for people that are trying to gain a lot of muscle, also called 'hard gainers', consuming enough food to grow muscle without gaining a little fat is extremely difficult if not impossible.  Did you know the guys and girls you see in bodybuilding competitions are normally weaker during competition than the rest of the year?  That's because they eat more to pack on the muscle and then eat less and do more carido to have the lowest body fat possible to compete.

 

Let's break this down a little though.  For those of us not entering a strong man or body building competition any time soon, the logic is much simpler.  If you have enough willpower to keep working those abs to the point where you can see that area getting bigger, you are still working out more than the average American. More muscle also means you burn more calories so if you have not been increasing your calorie intake you should be loosing weight. The best way would be to work on all muscle groups evenly.  Even if you could get just your abs and nothing else, would you really want to be as over balanced as this guy? 

 

My personal experience with this was in high school.  I wasn't athletic and didn't participate in sports but I did get into kickboxing.  It was mainly cardio but we did plenty of crunches, planks, and pushups as well.  However not giving a damn about being healthy (as teenagers normally don't) I finished every workout session off with a Mountain Dew and anything that I was burning I was eating more to compensate.  Not on purpose, just because I was hungry more often. Point is my abs were getting bigger but my body fat percentage wasn't going down any.  My aunt noticed that I was filling out and told me I needed to slim down.  I explained my situation and she laughed at me.  She told me that I was silly and working out tighted up the fat.  You are allowed to laugh all I could do was sit and stare at her dumbfounded. Point is that you can get bad information from anyone even if they mean well.

Granted you are talking to someone who sill doesn't have defined abs so feel free to believe what you will. However if you want the lowdown from a professional here is my favorite article on the subject.



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Pictures by sumoman.co  CC-BY

Crazy Abs (not in a good way)

I have heard a lot of interesting stories around abs, who has them, how to get them, even how to fake them.  Thought I would share some of the crazy some of the serious and some of my theories.

So let's start with the truly crazy:
Implants: Yes skip the work outs, skip the gym, and the healthy food. Don't worry they can make it look real with abdominal implants under your skin.  That's right 30 minute abs just got real. If I know you and you just considered this don't tell me.

I only have a few issues. This requires you to be put under which means you might not wake up. Yes I know how often this is done and how it hardly ever happens but why take the chance when it's not life threatening? Next, if you don't have definition already or if you gain weight this is going to look horrible. I personally think plastic surgery should be saved for burn victims and people born with deformities.  Large breasts attract my attention, I'd be lying if I said otherwise, however as soon as I even think the they are fake I'm not interested.  If you are crazy enough to try this you probably would like to know that just about all muscles can be implanted so you look like this guy.  But in all seriousness if you decide to get these please rearrange them into a smiley face and send me the picture.


Etching: Ok I hate to admit this but this option gives me pause.  Personally I could never do it but...... well you decide.  Etching is another form of surgery.  From the limited research I have done the concept is a form of selective liposuction that targets the fat pockets around the abdominal muscles. This is for those people that work at the gym 3 hrs a day and eat right and still can not quite get that definition.  For sustained results you have to continue to go to the gym.  While I still personally disagree, I have less of an issue because these people still have to put in the effort.  If you have never done a sit up, or leg raise, or side bend then it doesn't matter how much fat they take off you still won't have anything to show for it.  That being said I still consider this unnatural and could never do it personally.

Abs in a Box:  I really shouldn't be surprised by this one but really?  Have you ever seen the far side comic with the guy that has ab definition tattooed on.  I was really hoping to find a picture of that.  Please send me the link if you find one but I found this instead.  Damn near the same thing Abs in a Box is a semi-permanent stain that you put on to give the impression of curves in the right places.  I also think this is stupid but can you imagine the people that buy this thinking they have a true quick fix?  Honestly unless you are a makeup artist the possibilities for screwing this up are endless.  And, because it "works so well" it's water resistant.  So if you get carried away and paint the Mona Lisa on your gut, it's going to be there for a while.  I do see how this would work for super models and makeup at photo shoots.  As a matter of fact it makes me feel ever so slightly better about myself know that these "perfect people" have help. My last comment on this, dumbest tagline ever. "Paint away Flab" then they show women that are already super skinny and just add definition.  if you have any flab this isn't going to work.

I don't know if it makes me feel better our worse that these things are actually available out there.  Better that I am willing to actually work to get abs or worse about humanity that people think this is a viable alternative.  None of these things will make you stronger or healthier and without serious effort none of these things will make you look better.  Save the thousands of dollars you were going to spend on surgery and buy a gym membership and start eating better.

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Detox

So I’ve been working on getting in shape for a long time now going through the normal ups and downs of working out consistently and then slacking off and losing the results.  I’m on my up-tick again and hope to stick with it this time, or at least make it last longer.  My biggest goal is to see ab definition.  If I get that for a single day I think I’ll die happy.  I do a decent amount of crunchs: ball crunch, decline crunch, leg raises, and planks are my normals.  I’m about ready to move to weighted leg raises.

I know that it doesn’t matter how many you do.  You wont see definition without lowering your body fat percentage.  I’m working on it. According to a pinch test I’m down to 14% but I think they were being nice.  I want to get down to 10% but that is going to take a lot of effort.

Then I went to this free seminar on detox.  They explained how acid builds up in your system when your liver and lymphatic system can’t handle what you are putting in.  They also said that unless you are only eating all natural organic and living in the woods it’s bound to happen.  When the acid escapes it is called free radicals.  I had heard the term but didn’t know what it meant until now.  Those acids attach to you cells. Your fat cells in particular.  Then your body pushes water to those areas to keep the acid from damaging your cells. This water build- up is what causes or at least contributes to cellulite. (I’m not a doctor and I’m going from memory here)  The point being that in order to remove the water and acid you need to detox.

I bought in right up until they told me how much their product cost to complete my detox.  Sorry I don’t have a grand just laying around.  So after a lot of online research I fount there are many ways to detox that are cheaper and can get you similar effects as long as you combine it with healthy eating.  So I am going to try a wrap (not the kind you eat) that has alkaloids on it.  The theory is that the wrap will make you lose the water and then the alkaloids with remove the acids.  I know for a fact that the first part works because you can lose a couple inches wearing these things for an hour or so. But you can get similar effects from a steam room or other forms of dehydration.  Did I mention you are supposed to drink half your weight in water when your done?
So my question to you is what are your thoughts on detox.  Have you tried one? did it work? And is it going to get me that definition I so crave?

Hope I helped inform some people.  If your interested in hearing more about detox let me know.  I did quite a bit of research.

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