Iwonbigbro Training Blog

Weighted slow muscle-ups

2012-01-25T14:50:00.000Z

Its been a while since I blogged, prior to my last blog about the rollouts. Despite having not made an appearance on here or YouTube, I haven't been lounging around as one might assume. :-) I have been chipping away more patiently than normal, at acquiring new skills.

Recently, I watched this video by Jim Bathurst (BeastSkills) and was inspired to add weight to my acquired slow muscle-up skill.

Here is my feeble attempt:

I have only been able to do the slow form of the movement, as opposed to the 'kip' style, since the beginning of December. I progressed from a 'kip' muscle-up by simply aiming to perform just one slow muscle up. Initially I could only achieve one rep and one set; that was it, my shoulders were spent. But I tried to practice the movement at least two or three times per week. Within two weeks I could complete three to four sets at one rep. After that, I aimed to perform more reps per set, increasing my volume to three reps and four to five sets; the last set usually being one or two reps down on the initial set, which is when I know to stop. Mid January I saw Jim's YouTube video and wondered if I could progress to that immediately. To my surprise I was able to add weight. I started with 1.25 kg and added 1.25 kg with every smooth completed rep, until I reached my max of 6.25 kg. Today, I thought I would video the results for the blog, and annoyingly, after filming I got my PB of 7.5 kg. I may have a go on Friday and aim for 8.75 kg. If you haven't seen Jim's awesome video, then I hope that it might inspire you too. Good luck!

Rollouts without wheels

2012-01-17T18:50:00.001Z

I thought this might provide people with some ideas on performing rollouts without wheels or sliders. Obviously you need a smooth floor, but socks or a towel is enough. On carpet you could use a food tray or plastic chopping board. Feel free to reply with thoughts or ideas.

Watch "Rollouts without wheels" on YouTube

Stopwatch

2011-09-12T21:06:00.000+01:00

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/large-stopwatch/

50 40 30 20 10

2011-09-12T21:03:00.000+01:00

Those numbers are the reps for each set of alternating push-ups and squats. Aim to complete all 150 push-ups and 150 squats in as little time as possible. Tonight's time was 7 minutes 28 seconds, a personal best.

7:28

Human Flag

2010-08-27T09:12:00.001+01:00

A few months back now I managed to finally get to grips the flag. It's taken a lot of time, patients and practice to get there, but now I can finally hold it for a few seconds at a time. It's now on to goal two and holding for longer and being able to perform concentric movements while in the flag.

Home-made Equipment: Dip station

2010-04-12T10:09:00.006+01:00

I have been out of action for quite some time for a few reasons lately; I know ideally there should be no excuses, but my time is exclusively reserved for decorating until we get our new house in order. In the mean-time, I have been preparing for my return to training by making some equipment using some of the scrap left over from the DIY jobs. After gutting the bathroom, I found it was kitted out with copper 40mm waste pipes. Although copper is usually quite a soft flexible metal, these pips are at least 1.5mm thick (copper didn't used to be as expensive as it is now), thus make for great handles for a dip station. I had some old wood lying around that I constructed into a frame, using the wall as the main anchor for the load.

First get a 42mm hole cutter and cut holes in a 2x6 inch piece of drywall stud. The hole need to be cut as close to the horizontal edge as possible, but not too close to what will be the vertical edges. This will provide plenty of strength for supporting your weight, combined with a 3:2 pivot ratio on the bars. Use some long 6M or 8M screws to secure it to the wall; I have used 3 x 6M 80mm screws, which will be plenty to support my weight plus 50kg of ballast (tested using sandbag).

Next place your 40mm copper tube (use steel tube if you plan on putting a load of more than 130kg on them, I am not sure of their capacity beyond this before they will start to bend). They should sit on a slant with plenty of slack, not too tight.

Next, get your spirit level and mark a line on what will be the supporting ground post for the frame. You want to cut the post so that it is almost level with the top of the 6x4 where it is mounted on the wall. If your floor is even and level, you can just mark it by standing it next to the 6x4. I preferred a level since I didn't trust the level of the floor enough, so held it in place.

Saw the post in two, hopefully you have enough for both posts. I chopped my post roughly in half in the end and used a floor strut to retain and raise the height of the posts slightly. If you have more wood at your disposal, cut them more precisely; I actually found the floor strut makes the structure more rigid, although I fitted it later on so don't have a picture of that, but it essentially mimics what the platform strut does. Cut a 42mm hole in the top of each post as shown; doesn't need to be much material above the hole, just enough to get some screws in for fixing the platform strut.

The platform should be secured to the 6x4 attached to the wall and to the supporting ground posts. This prevents any lateral movement in the frame, keeping it sold. You only need a couple of wood screws, nothing heavy duty since there shouldn't be much lateral stress on it. Conveniently, my platform strut was already cut to this shape and size, left over from building my son a table. Just ensure you have an area cut out between the posts to allow room for your chest should you lean into the dips.

Finally you should be able to neatly insert the pipes into the holes through the posts and into the wall brace. They aren't secured and shouldn't need to be; I like to be able to remove them when it's not in use so it doesn't take up too much space. Just ensure you always check the pipes are fully inserted before putting any load on them!

Here is a quick demo of the dip-station using just my body weight. I have also tested it using my 50kg sandbag held between my legs; seems suitable for heavy loads. I may upgrade the bars to some 40mm steel tubes at some point just for peace of mind.

Dogg Crapp - Week 1 Summary

2010-02-02T07:09:00.006Z

Okay, been doing DC for just over a week now. I am not fully integrated just yet, since I am trying to find the optimal weight to suit recommended rep ranges. I am currently overshooting on the reps by nearly double, so need to increase weight slightly to compensate next time.

One other thing I found is that the 3 day split routine is too short. I was completing the 3 day split in about 45 minutes, including the stretches at the end. Since this isn't efficient use of my time, I have moved towards a 2 day split as of yesterday, starting with the B phase of the rotation. I have summarised the two splits below so you can see the difference:

3 Day Split

This will land accordingly: Mon A1, Wed A2, Fri A3, Mon B1, Wed B2, Fri B3, Mon C1, Wed C2, Fri C3, Mon A1, and so on...

Name	Function
A1	CHEST
	DELTS
	TRICEPS
A2	BACK
	TRAPS
	BICEPS
A3	HAMSTRINGS
	CALVES
	QUADS
B1	CHEST
	DELTS
	TRICEPS
B2	BACK
	TRAPS
	BICEPS
B3	HAMSTRINGS
	CALVES
	QUADS
C1	CHEST
	DELTS
	TRICEPS
C2	BACK
	BICEPS
C3	HAMSTRINGS
	CALVES
	QUADS

2 Day Split

Name	Function
A1	CHEST
	SHOULDERS
	TRICEPS
	BACK (WIDTH)
	BACK (THICK)
A2	BICEPS
	FOREARMS
	CALVES
	HAMSTRINGS
	QUADS
B1	CHEST
	SHOULDERS
	TRICEPS
	BACK (WIDTH)
	BACK (THICK)
B2	BICEPS
	FOREARMS
	CALVES
	HAMSTRINGS
	QUADS
C1	CHEST
	SHOULDERS
	TRICEPS
	BACK (WIDTH)
	BACK (THICK)
C2	BICEPS
	FOREARMS
	CALVES
	HAMSTRINGS
	QUADS

Here is the full detail for the 2 day split routine:

Name	Function	Exercise	Rep Max	Rest Pause?	X-Reps?	Sets
A1	CHEST	Incline bench press	15	Yes	Yes	1
	SHOULDERS	Front shoulder press	13	Yes	Yes	1
	TRICEPS	Close grip bench press	15-20	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (WIDTH)	Behind head pull-ups	18	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (THICK)	Deadlifts	12-20	No	No	1
A2	BICEPS	Dumbbell curls	20	Yes	Yes	1
	FOREARMS	Hammer curls	15	Yes	Yes	1
	CALVES	Hack squat style with 20 second negative phase	12	No	No	1
	HAMSTRINGS	Glute ham raises	15-20	Yes	Yes	1
	QUADS	Hack squat	20	No	No	1
B1	CHEST	Flat hammer press	15	Yes	Yes	1
	SHOULDERS	Seated Arnold press	13	Yes	Yes	1
	TRICEPS	Rope push downs	15-20	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (WIDTH)	Rows	18	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (THICK)	Cable rows	12-20	Yes	Yes	1
B2	BICEPS	Preacher curls	20	Yes	Yes	1
	FOREARMS	Zotterman curls	20	Yes	Yes	1
	CALVES	Leg press machine - rest stretch on first set	12	No	No	2
	HAMSTRINGS	Stiff leg deadlifts	12-20	No	No	1
	QUADS	Squats	20	Yes	Yes	1
C1	CHEST	Hammer incline	15	Yes	Yes	1
	DELTS	Rear laterals	15-20	Yes	Yes	1
	TRAPS	Shrugs	20	Yes	Yes	1
	TRICEPS	Bodyweight extensions	20	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (WIDTH)	Chin-ups	18	Yes	Yes	1
	BACK (THICK)	Deadlifts	12-20	No	No	1
C2	BICEPS	Cable curls	20	Yes	Yes	1
	FOREARMS	Inverted EZ curls	15	Yes	Yes	1
	CALVES	Standing calf raises	12	Stretch	No	2
	HAMSTRINGS	Glute ham raises	15-20	Yes	Yes	1
	QUADS	Leg curls	20	Yes	Yes	1
	ADDUCTORS	Adductor machine	15	Yes	Yes	1

The Rope - Cont.

2010-01-28T21:50:00.003Z

Just following up about the new digital rope I bought from Tesco.

The Rope

2010-01-26T16:36:00.003Z

I got a new rope from Tesco yesterday; £3.50 gets you a rope with a timer and counter integrated into the handle. It's nice and easy to adjust, just pull the loop tabs through and tighten. For £3.50 this is the best rope I have owned to date. I have had around 5 different ropes now:

The first is a leather rope and although heavy and slow has lasted the longest (2 years). £10.99

The second just snapped the first time I tried some double unders. £1.99

The third lasted the longest, almost 5 months. It had a metal handle and some free metal needles attached to the nylon rope, which prevent wear on the nylon thus preventing the rope from snapping. Unfortunately, it has no bearings so the metal pin wore out and eventually came free from the handle. £14.99

The next rope I bought was already broken when I got it out of the packet - bin! £7.50

Finally the Tesco counter rope. It has stood up to my fearce round of DU's today with no signs of catching or tangling. Will see how it goes. £3.50

I used the counter to see how fast I could go performing DU's today. I managed to pull 101 turns in 29 seconds out of the bag before my arms lost synch with my feet and my brain melted trying to maintain rhythm. I will get some footage of the rope and how it works soon.

Dogg Crapp

2010-01-26T09:42:00.002Z

Okay, just over two weeks in and feeling pretty good again. Have managed to get about 85% of the load back I had prior to getting ill, so am heading in the right direction. Since HITT seems to really batter my immune system at the moment (I can litterally feel symptoms of a cold the next day), I am going to just do light cardio while my body gets back on form. So since I will be doing only light cardio work, I have room to stress myself a little more during strength sessions.

I saw a blog about the DC (Dogg Crapp) training methodology from Bjorn Granum. After reading his posts, I decided to do some reading myself and have found some similar variations following the same principles. One approach is to incorporate X-reps immediately after the work set; no rest.

The theory is well documented in the link, but to summarise, it describes how maximal muscular growth is triggered at repetition failure. In most workouts we avoid taking muscles to failure since this requires extended periods of rest to repair the damage. However, working beyond failure by performing micro-reps, extends this period of maximal growth, stimulating the muscle to grow 2.5x as much than normal during the recovery phase. Most that have been sceptical about this technique but have actually tried it, have all said it works just as well in practice. The only negative to this is the recovery phase is extra important and it does put you out of action from participating in any extra activity.

I tried the DC X-rep combo yesterday as a start on a new 10 week strategy I have set for myself; starting with the A1 workout: Chest, Delts and Triceps. On completing the A1, I have never been so muscularly fatigued from a strength workout before (probably due to having avoided taking my muscles to failure and beyond before). I really can vouch that this style of DC really is a killer, not for the faint hearted.

I am fairly sore in places today, but not places I'd expect to be. For one, I was expecting more pain in my pectorals and triceps, but I feel nothing there. My delts feel tender, but not too bad. The weird part is my biceps throb, but bearing in mind I hardly used them yesterday. I will put this down to not stretching them during the stretch phase of the DC workout. I only stretched my chest, back and triceps. I will stretch all upper/lower muscle groups for the A2 workout.

It Begins Here

2010-01-11T07:47:00.003Z

Not made any entries for a while, so I'll up date you. I got really ill towards the end of October 2009, which put me out of action for ages. I had the odd attempt at returning to the gym when I thought I had recovered, to find it just brought back a relentless wave of the same symptoms again. By the end of December I gave up entirely and just waited for the cold/flu/virus (whatever it was), to finally burn out.

I paid the gym a visit last week, for the first time since December, to see if the same thing would happen again. Safe to say I am still in good health (touch wood), and don't feel any of the symptoms returning. What is obvious is the amount of strength I have lost and overall work capacity. I used to be able to handle a full compact hour, every day, without any problems. Now though, I struggle with just a few test sets and no post workout finisher, leaving me sore for days. Not good. The overall strain of the virus has also meant my losing over 14 lbs of lean mass along with any strength gains I had worked hard to achieve over the past year or so. I now weigh at my lowest, 12 st 6 lbs, so have a massive task to regain the year that I just wrote off.

Consider this the beginning; the reboot. I need to think of this as January 2009 and get back everything I lost through nearly 3 months out. I will start really light to avoid injury and avoid needing days to recover. The bar will be set low, but hopefully the bar can be raised considerably as the weeks go by.

Human Flag Progressions

2009-09-18T06:55:00.002+01:00

I have been working on Human Flag progressions over the last few months and I am now at a stage where I can hold the flag from a vertical bar. However, a few issues I am having are that I seem to have backwards momentum on the bar once in the flag position, which causes me to rotate backwards around the bar thus forcing me to let go. Once I solve this I may be able to hold the flag for longer periods of time.

Double clap pushups

2009-09-17T08:23:00.000+01:00

Taken a while and the video is not the best of quality so it's difficult to see the two claps but I promise they are both there. The first is a front clap followed by the behind the back. So next on the agenda is the triple clap pushup. Hmm, that could take some effort....

What's happened?

2009-08-21T14:53:00.002+01:00

I don't know what has happened to my fitness just lately, but it's taken a landslide. I managed to get my 50 burpees down to 2:57 a while back but 2 weeks ago it took me 5:06 to achieve the same amount of work. Again today I still have only managed to recover it to 3:58. It's a bit of set back but I am slowly ramping it back up again. I have used some back off periods so I don't think it's a case of exceeding my work capacity. Bollocks!

I have finally completed my sandbag. After buying several different sizes, all either too big or too small I have settled for a 30" Canvas Toolbag. It's a tiny bit too big, but I might bulk it out with some mini bags of wood chippings that I can interchange with mini bags of sand when I want to increase work capacity.

The Amazing Spiderman

2009-07-27T06:40:00.007+01:00

I recently read about Jyothi Rai in The Sun news paper. He was once a builder but now entertains thousands with his climbing antics, a real demonstration of strength, skill and most of all that even what seems impossible can be possible. Looking at the pictures featured in the paper was enough to captivate me, but after watching the clip below I take my hat off; that is something else...

The article describes how Jyothi developed his skill through years of watching how monkeys climb trees and trying to reproduce stunts in films. He hopes to become the greatest climber in the world and I am sure he will acquire a massive following when he fulfils his ambition to open a climbing school.

Magic 50 Finisher - 10' 33"

2009-07-16T20:14:00.002+01:00

Best time yet! Hope to crack that 10 minute mark soon!

The heavy bag

2009-07-10T15:25:00.001+01:00

This is my first proper go on the bag. I did three one minute rounds as a finisher to a leg workout, although I realise this is a mistake (working with skills while tired is not a good idea, as it can encourage bad habits). However, since this is my first go I won't dwell on it :-) On a whole, I really enjoyed this and I think I will enjoy it more if I am fresh. Feel free to give me any pointers, since I have no boxing background (Jikishin Ju Jitsu)...

Video Log - 6 Jul 2009

2009-07-06T14:24:00.002+01:00

Because I achieved my personal best last week with the 50 Burpees Challenge, I thought I'd try and recapture the milestone on video. A couple of seconds out unfortunately (admittedly I was actually trying to better my PB), but here it is.

Time: 2' 58"

50 Burpee Finisher - 2' 57"

2009-07-03T14:55:00.002+01:00

I have mentioned before that I may be a little addicted to this finisher but its great! I did it yesterday as a finisher to my strength workout and got a time of 3' 13", a personal best until today. I did the workout today as a finisher to the "Minute Drill Workout #1" from Ross Enamait's Full Throttle Conditioning book. I managed 29 from the offset accompanied by 10, 8 and a 3 rep stint to 50. I was pretty fired up from the Minute Drill Workout which helped, so it will be hard for me to beat next week but I will give it another shot on Monday :-D

Variety is important but so is having fun ;-)

50 Burpee Finisher - 3' 41"

2009-06-30T19:34:00.003+01:00

Finished my ICT workout with this one again today. Beat my previous time, all be it by one second, but its a second closer to my goal. I used a different approach this time however, which seemed to stem off the fatigue for longer. I implemented short rest intervals between each set of 10 burpees, totalling 50 by the end. I will increase the rep range per set to 11 or 12 next time to see if I can up my capacity slightly.

Time: 3' 41"

London to Brighton

2009-06-30T19:17:00.004+01:00

I did this bike ride over a week ago now. Its the second time I have done it, but this time I didn't come close to my last time. I got bad cramp in my quads that I think was due to lack of salt in my blood. It was so warm that I sweat a lot of my salts out. So next time round I will make sure I keep my salt levels up.

100 Burpee Pull-ups

2009-06-17T10:01:00.002+01:00

Had a go at this, not done it in a long long time, first inspired by Bjorn Granum with his entry back in January 2008. I got an okay time this time round so thought its worth making a record of it. Will aim to beat 19 minutes next time. I approached this using small sets of 5 with a short rest between each. Worked quite well and I was able to stem the fatigue until the final 10.

Time: 19' 04"

Magic 50 - 11' 09"

2009-06-11T08:19:00.003+01:00

Had to use a 24kg dumbbell instead of the 22kg since some arse...I mean delightful young chap...was using the 22. However, I made an effort to keep up the good time I had achieved with the 22. I didn't quite stay within the 10 minutes that I'd hoped, but still a good time for me :-)

The video got cut a little short due to the 10 minute limit on YouTube

Deck of 52 - Red and Black (Plain and Simple)

2009-06-10T09:46:00.002+01:00

Red cards - Push ups
Black cards - Burpees

Haven't done this variation in a while and its particularly hard on the arms and chest. In all there are some 340 push-ups if you include the push-ups with each Burpee. The nasty thing about this exercise is your arms get no rest (unless you feel forced to rest like I did).

Total time: 30' 27"

50 Burpee Finisher - 4' 01"

2009-06-09T07:41:00.002+01:00

Did this as a finisher today. Bit slower than my last effort so hopefully improve this for next time. Sorry about the camera slippage; the pounding on the floor made it eventually fall over :-)