New and Lost

Hello,

I’m a 34 yr old male, 5’ 8â€, 155 lbs with inadequate muscles and flexibility. I hired a personal trainer for weight lifting a few years ago and that was going great, but then I took a job that keeps me on the road 250+ days/yr, so that nixed any consistency in my life and I’ve atrophied back to where I was before starting the weight lifting. (I can do a couple of pull ups. Whoop-de-do.)

I made a list of personal goals for this year. Gaining strength, eating right, working on balance and flexibility all ended up on the list and somehow I put two and two together, searched for gymnastics and stumbled across Coach Sommer’s stuff.

I was really excited. I’d love to be able to do handstands, L-sits and some of the other cool things you guys do. I picked up Building the Gymnastic Body and the DVD’s and I’ve been trying some of the exercises in the book.

I’ve run into several problems though. First, the only equipment I can use is what I can carry into a hotel room. At the moment, all I have is this pull-up bar:

http://tinyurl.com/yc2aeux

So I can do pull-up stuff in a door frame, but putting it on the ground doesn’t get me up high enough to start the l-sit progressions.

The other problem is that since I’ve been trying to do the frog stands, I have this pain that shoots down my right wrist. It only kicks in when I have an open palm on the ground with weight on it (as with a pushup or frog stand.) I’m ok if I make a fist and do pushups off my knuckles. So I assume that means either I need to warm up, or do joint prep or something, but I didn’t see anything about warming up in Building the Gymnastic Body, and Liquid Steel™ and Handstand Chronicles haven’t been released yet. (There’s also the chance I slept on it wrong one night and it’s not related to me messing around with handstand stuff at all.)

So I guess my question for you guys is, assuming my goal is to start building very basic strength, and limited by the confines of a hotel room (the only equipment the hotel provides is a treadmill and stationary bike) what should I do, how should I warm up and how many days and reps should I do each week?

Thanks

Welcome to the forum Dano! I will attempt to answer a few of your questions.

dano2l said:

First, the only equipment I can use is what I can carry into a hotel room.

As far as I know, GB workouts requires the least, cheapest and lightest equipment for most of its exercises compared to most types of exercise. Get yourself a pair of Xtreme rings and PVC parrallets. They are both ultraportable. You can purchase a very good pair of ring off this site. I own the same door chin up bar as you, and you can attach the rings to it fairly quickly--though I would avoid hanging upside down from it . Making PVC parrallets is quick and easy too, and should cost you under $30. Here's the link I used to build my own pair:

http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/13_03_Parallettes.pdf

It's a PDF you can print and show it to a guy at a hardware store. He may even be able to cut the PVC without charge. You may want to skip glueing the PVC for extra portability, or only glue the elbows to the longer pieces for extra strength.

dano2l said:

I have this pain that shoots down my right wrist

It may be that your wrists are not strong enough to perform the exercises that cause the pain. I advise you do some wrist prehab such as wrist push-ups, first-knuckle push-ups and dorsal push-up. Check out the Joint and Flexibility section of this site for advise. Also check out the excercises in the two videos on forum-member Ido's website:

http://idoportal.blogspot.com/2009/07/preparations-for-our-daily-training.html

Hope that helps!

dano21 said:

... So I can do pull-up stuff in a door frame, but putting it on the ground doesn’t get me up high enough to start the l-sit progressions ... The other problem is that since I’ve been trying to do the frog stands, I have this pain that shoots down my right wrist...

L-sits may be either performed on the Xtreme Rings or two chairs to allow your feet to drop past horizontal.

Many Gymnastic Bodies forum members have found it best to focus on building up L-sit and Back Lever strength prior to engaging in serious planche training.

In addition to this, schlaffmann's recommendation to add Wrist Pushups to your regimen was spot on.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Welcome, Dano

If I was you, I would do push-ups, frog stands, L-sits, back-lever and Leg work. I think that you wouldn't have problems with that exercises because you only need two chairs for the L-sit.

You say that you have a portable bar? That's excellent. Several pull-ups and chin-ups are great.

Now, in the flexibility, all I can say that you should work static stretching (the "typical" stretching) and some dynamic stretching (such kicks)

Hi everyone,

First of all, thanks for the replies. Right after I posted I hit a period of working 15+ hr days so I put off starting an exercise routine, but I did order a set of rings to hang from the pull-up bar and I bought and partially assembled the parallettes. The really cool thing is that they have PVC fittings that screw together. I can break the parallettes down and toss them in a large duffle bag with my rings and pull-up bar (which also breaks down). Equipment = done. Also, the wrist is back to normal.

As for the workout routine, I see all the recommendations above, but I could use some help breaking it down a little further, otherwise I’ll just be kind of aimless and slack off. I need a set plan to work from. My goal is to work out 4 days per week and I need to do fundamentals (the stuff in BtGB and I’d like to do some basic handstand work). I’m a complete blank slate. What exercises would you recommend I do each of those four days?

Also, I don’t understand sets/reps for bodyweight exercises. If I were lifting weights I could easily figure out how to adjust the amount of weight to come to failure after a specific number of reps. With bodyweight exercises, not so much. For example, I can do a L-sit PB tuck on the rings for like 10 seconds. Should I just spend X number of minutes working on this, or do I stick to a specific number of sets? (ie. Do I spend 5 minutes working on L sits regardless of the length of individual attempts, or do I just do three 10-ish second attempts for a total of thirty seconds?) The only thing I do understand is that the goal is to be able to do a solid 60s of one form before moving on to the next step. Right now I'm pretty far from 60s of anything.

Thank you so much for the help.

My goal is to work out 4 days per week and I need to do fundamentals (the stuff in BtGB and I’d like to do some basic handstand work)

Look up the Killroy70 program. You may also look into scaling the GB WOD accordingly. I would adjust to fit into some lower body work since you may want to work that in there using deck squats and SLS progressions.

Resistance is resistance as far as the FullBodyExercises (aka movements like pushups, pullups, situps, squats). 3x5 work well. 5x5 get a bit much which they also do when in the Barbell world. TM doesn't use 3d/w of 5x5.

For the static or FSP positions, if you've ever read into TimeUnderTension principles it's works similar. Some people have tried to come up with various marks of how many seconds of a hold equates to 1 repetition or how many reps will involve so much TUT.

More than likely, the L-sit, wall HS, body lever would work well for you. You may be able to start tuck levers either forwards or backwards but they could be too much, however basic ring inversions would be good for you just by themselves. You could work L-sit, Inverted hang (in tuck, legs on straps), Wall HS, Body Lever as your 4 FSP's. That's 2 push, 2 pull, necessary gymnastic basics (that are fun) and add in the FBE in there as well.

Throw in some mobility and joint prep and I could foresee you could do this all in your hotel room or something accessible.

I don't know how you can hang rings in a hotel room, but good job for figuring it out! I probably wouldn't have figured it out.

It seems you've been lurking around these forums for some time... are you a truck driver?

Ok, I'm getting there step by step. I just found Killroy70's posts and will read them in more detail tomorrow.

This is how you hang the rings in a hotel room:

The pull-up bar is one of those "as seen on tv" ones that I picked up at Wallgreens of all places. It was $20 or $30. I had to assemble it out of a box, which had the nice benefit of allowing me to disassemble it for travel. The wide bar was either an inch too long or an inch too short for the hotel door frames, so I took about 0.5" off each end and now it fits the frame nicely. Usually the only available doorway is to the bathroom.

No, I'm not a truck driver. I'm a field engineer who fixes power plants, so I end up traveling all over.

I've been lurking since I found the site. When I get a few free minutes I read as many posts as possible. I've been doing some exercises here and there, but nothing consistent. My goal was to come up with a routine I could follow regularly for four months. It looks like Killroy70's routine is going to be it. (When doing a new exercise, it's hard to develop a routine without someone who knows what they're doing standing there telling you exactly what to do. That's why I hired a personal trainer when I started weight training.)

In the mean time, I've also been trying to figure out the food situation with the crazy hours and places I work. Between frozen steamer packages of broccoli, brown rice and pre-cooked chicken, I've managed to make it work. Also particularly useful are the pre-sliced applies (I go through a 1 lb bag a day), bananas, protein bars and the microwaveable sweet potatoes. Certain take out meals work well too like chicken skewers from Macaroni Grill, and one or two of the chicken dishes from Ruby Tuesday's are pretty balanced between protein, veggie and carb. An 8 oz steak with sweet potato and broccoli from Outback is also a great meal. If there's nothing nearby, I usually end up with a Subway turkey sandwich with apple slices and milk.

I feel your pain.. extensive travel, work schedule, food options in chaos (life on the road).. If you're lucky to be around Whole Foods / Trader Joes when you travel.. well that would be good / better for food options.

That is basically the same set up I have in my basement for my workouts.