Hi everyone!

[Iuri]

Hi guys! I´m 23 years old, turning 24 soon and I´m  from Brazil, I weight 90kg and I have 1,80 cm of height. I´m an exercise enthusiast and a wannabe athlete, I´ve done exercise all of my life not counting the many hiatus I had in some periods of my life, expecially after I turned 18. Currently, exercise-wise, I´m getting back to the basics and trying some new things at the same time. I´ve followed this forums some years ago so I´m quite aqquainted to the old folks here even though they don´t know me, I signed up in to the forums so I could participate actively now but I probably won´t be posting very often. Well I really just wanted to say hello and use the opportunity to show you something that I think could interest you, it´s a bodyweight exercise that is very good to build functional strength, I also think it could be considered a sport on its own.

In my view traditional weightlifting and calisthenics build a lot of raw strength and functional strength of course, but it gets to a point where more functional and natural exercises are of great valor as well, that´s the case of this exercise that I´m about to show you, as I see it it is the equivalent to bodyweight exercise what stone lifting is to external weight exercises:

 

 

In my opinion this exercise is great and very unique, not only it strengthens the entire body in synergy but it also works the legs AT THE SAME TIME that it works the upper body AND core, I believe that´s the only case of a bodyweight exercise that does that.

I´ve practiced it some years ago for some weeks, I would do it every day or every other day and I had very good results, my skills got a lot better quickly but then ithey stalled, this exercise is very hard. Now the results on my body appearance were nice too, I noticed an Improvement in the thickness of my body, especially the arms, by the way my father noticed that too. I was about 19-20 at the time. Apart from that I felt overally stronger and healthier as well as more confident.

 

Although I really think this exercise is truly great it has some issues. First it is really hard to find a suitable place to do it, second it has some obvious safety problems if you decide to go high, but that is obviously up to you if you want to do it or not, apart from that it also will give you a lot of cuts and scratches all over your body especially your forearms and feet if you step on something, sometimes you may even bleed. Lastly I think it is not a hundred percent joint safe, I believe this exercise should not be approached by people who are not reasonably athletic or overweight. Myself, I´m a bit overweight but I do it sometimes, then again and pretty strong but even still I feel some ankle pain and disconfort. I don´t believe this exercise should be a problem if you are reasonably athletic and not overweight though.

 

Some of you may have already realized that this exercise kind of opens a whole new dimension of bodyweight exercises possibilities, from that basic positions many isometric strength holds could be made with the arms bent and legs in different positions(this may hurt you), I did some of them and they improve really quickly, you got to be creative. I would NEVER advise you to do upside down work, it may be tempting to do so but remember that in that position while upside down you would find yourself in the positon where you either would have the strength to hold yourself or you wouldn´t, you wouldn´t be able to "hold a little bit more " to get to the floor in safety, if you happened to lose your strength(and you would because holding upside down like that is almost impossible), you would fall, so my suggestion is just keep it to the normal "standing" work, unless you find a way to do the exercise somewhere where there would  no danger should you fall, and the only place like that that I can think of is above a pool. Now how would you float the tree up the pool I don´t now however.

 

I have a video of myself playing with this movement some months ago, when I taped that video I wasn´t training the movement routinely. Also the tree where I did makes it is much easier to do it because it´s a lot easier to hold onto the tree trink with your feet(you have more leverage), I can still do it on coconut and palm trees though.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhBRbjhOZY

 

Now gymnastic-wise I don´t know if by doing these there would be a good carryover to the actual gymnastic sport  really, and also I wouldn´t be surprised if gymnasts had difficulty attepting these since they don´t usually train these kind of movements, I believe(maybe that would be a reason for gymnasts to do them and hence improve their strength capabilities).

 

To finalize I would like to note that I really don´t think that artificial poles would substitute this kind of work, the tree trunk surface and density is really unique, but maybe it is possible.

Lastly a very important warning, you should be aware of diseases that passes through blood when doing these on public places, it is impossible to do this exercises without cutting yourself a lot, maybe some clothes would work though, don´t know.

 

Sorry for the long introduction I just thought that that could really interest you, nice to finally "meet" you all!

 

 

[Klaudius Petrulis]

Nice to meet you too

[Karri Kytömaa]

Hello and welcome.

 

Climbing is indeed very amazing and functional way to train. Trees are just one option, bouldering and wall climbing are excellent too with more emphasis on grip strength.

 

If you haven't already seen this, enjoy:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePJ_cOpoppc