Lew's Log

This has been a really good week. My workouts weren't organized, so I didn't do daily logs. In addition to the exercises I listed earlier this week, I've started doing some new things.

I've started using the seated forward fold as a way to loosen up some of my tight muscles. I have to enter the position with bent knees, but I am able to straighten a little afterward. I'll take it slow, I'm happy that I'm now actively working to improve my flexibility. I'm also going to start to doing the pancake stretch. I think these two stretches will be a nice start, I'll think about adding other stretches later.

I've been working knee supported planche leans. Since I have the support of my knees, I place my hands back pretty far. The first few times I tried this, I had to make an effort to keep myself from falling forward. From this position I've jumped a couple of times into a tuck planche, but haven't tried to hold it.

I've also started doing push ups with my fingers pointing towards my feet. Initially, I needed knee support to do these push ups. I can now do these without knee support now. I do these throughout the day, but no more than 2 reps per set. This exercise challenges my wrist and shoulders in a way that's new, so I'm taking it easy.

I finally feel like my training is coming together. I am finally starting to get a sense as to how much strength I will need in order to perform certain skills. I can kick into a handstand now and not worry about my shoulders giving out on me. Even though I haven't lost any weight, my body is starting to feel lighter. I've also learned that stretching can take away a lot of the soreness/fatigue that results from working out.

Next week, I'll try to gather actual numbers as far as what I'm doing. I won't record workouts, because I still plan to do multiple short workouts throughout the day. I'll just record total number of reps/hold times for the day along with any notes that I feel are important.

Training is now becoming a lot more fun. I'm improving in almost every area. I do have one problem area, that I plan to seriously address this week. I have a few exercises I plan to do daily this week. Other exercises will be done just to add volume in a particular area (horizontal, vertical, inverted.)

Having stronger shoulders is allowing me to kick into handstands with less effort and almost no hesitation. Most of the time I'm in handstand, is spent either with wall support and bent knee or knee supported on a box. When I feel I have done enough volume for the day, I'll kick into a full handstand with wall support.

While doing the wall supported bent knee handstand, I'll do slight bounces up and down. I also will alternate raising and lowering one of my legs. While doing knee on box handstands, I'll shift my weight from side to side and do shoulder and side taps. I think I'll continue to scale the exercise this way for a while. It's allowing me to build strength without me worrying about fatigue.

I'm doing foot elevated planks and reverse planks. I can hold the reverse planks but my form isn't great. They also seem to be tougher on my wrist and arms. I think elevated reverse planks followed by push ups where my fingers point to my toes, will be a nice combination. I'm also still doing rows. Most of my leg work is in the form of shrimp squats.

My problem area is pull ups. They are still on the decline. My mornings are very busy, so I usually don't try pull ups until sometime in the evening. Fatigue could be playing a factor in my decline... The fact that I can still any other exercise in the evening, has me believing it must be something else.

I still haven't decided on what type of band to buy to assist with body weight exercises, so I'll scale my pull ups with leg support. I'm hoping that a week or two of moderate volume, scaled pull ups will address whatever weakness or imbalance I currently have.

My stretching is still a work in progress. On the days that I remember, I'll spend a few seconds in the seated forward fold. I want to get more serious about this and see how much my flexibility will improve in 2 or 3 months.

Today, I've been doing a little circuit:

5 x knee supported HeSPUs, upper ROM

5 x push ups, fingers pointing towards feet

5 x cabinet pull ups w/ leg assist

I've done this 4 or 5 times already and plan to do it at least 5 more times before I leave the office. I'll add 5 x shrimp squats to the end of the circuit.

I finally ordered my bands today!

Thanks to information contained in one of Slizzardman's posts, I bought a red and green endless loop pair from ironmind http://ironmind-store.com/Training-Gear-Just-Protein-Accessories/products/52/

I know my youngest son and I will put the bands to good use. I might even be able to convince my wife and oldest son to join in.

I haven't found a power rack I can afford, or a wall mounted pull up bar I like yet. I hope to find something soon, so that I can retire my door frame pull up bar.

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For now I'll continue with a circuit similar to the one I did at the office. I like that I can do this almost anywhere.

knee supported HeSPUs, upper ROM

push ups, fingers pointing towards feet

pull ups w/ leg assist

shrimp squats

I feel I could do 6 or 7 reps of each exercises without much problem. I'll work until I can consistently do 10 reps.

Training this week went pretty well. I continued to focus on

knee supported HeSPUs,upper ROM,

push ups, fingers pointing towards feet

pull ups w/ leg assist

shrimp squats

Next week, I plan to add HeSPU negatives to the training. I believe I can handle a few reps of that a day now. I'll also spend more time with L Sit. I did some work in tucked L Sit this week, but it wasn't very consistent.

My bands should arrive Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I can't wait to see what I'll be able to do with them.

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I've finally figured out how I will set up my garage gym. I'll get what I need to get started and leave room to expand in the future. I hope to everything in place in 2 or 3 weeks.

I'll mount a pipe in between 2 of the walls to serve as my pull up bar. This should be pretty cheap and will allow for multiple persons to use the bar at a time.

I'll attach my rings to the ceiling. This should give all the clearance I need, since I won't be limited by the height of my pull up bar.

I'll put some padding on the floor, so that I won't have to worry about falling onto the concrete.

This should be good enough to start. I don't think I'll ever outgrow this setup. However, I'll have room to add things if desired in the future. Someone did mention they'd like a treadmill... :roll:

It's been a good week. Kids went back to school and seem to be doing well. Experienced my first earthquake (I thought I was having car trouble at the time.) I received my nylon endless loops, and hope to receive my iron woody bands sometime tomorrow. I exercised most of the week, but it wasn't anything I really thought would be worth logging on a daily basis.

I've really only focused on two things most of the week, shrimp squats and knee supported handstand shrugs. I did both of these exercises several times a day. The shrugs would be 15-70 reps per set. The number increased each day and eventually I tried to do a minimum of 50 reps each time. The shrimp squats were 5 to 10 per set. Sometime I did bounces instead of actual squats and this would be for 15-20 reps per set.

I had the thought that once I was able to easily do 50 supported shrugs consistently, I'd have a nice amount of strength and stamina to do more unsupported handstand work. Once I reached 50 supported shrugs, I thought I'd feel better about my strength and stamina at 100 supported shrugs.

Today I decided that enough was enough and it was time to do something else. I am doing knee supported HeSPUs again. I try to get my upper body as perpendicular to the ground as I can and work for reps. At this point, I don't have a set number of reps that I want to achieve per set. I just want to feel strong and confident while performing the exercise.

I don't do it too often, but when I kick into a handstand against the wall it's easier to hold. I can do several shrugs with little effort while on the wall. I'm happy that my body feels "lighter" when I'm on my hands. I'm glad I made use of the box(chair, cart, bed among other things) to scale the exercise to get the strength I have. It's a treat to hold a handstand against the wall now, not an exercise in frustration like it had been in the past.

I'll spend a week or two doing knee supported HeSPUs. At the end of that time, I'll test my ability to perform a regular HeSPU. I'll also see if I feel strong enough to start working on the balance I'll need for a freestanding handstand.

Once I receive the bands, I'll use them to scale lever and muscle up work. I hope to achieve a few of my short term goals within the next couple of months.

Today's a nice, beautiful Monday. My weekend had some challenges, but it was good overall. The power at my house has been out for about a day and half, but the house itself has suffered no damage. Most of the food I had to throw away, was food that had been in the freezer for months and probably wouldn't have been eaten.

I received my bands on Friday and was very disappointed in them. My thoughts are they are too wide, too short, just not what I expected. I can combine them with my endless loops, and overcome some of the limitations I feel the bands have. So it's not a total waste of money, but I don't think I'll buy resistance bands in the future. I'll most likely get resistance tubes instead.

My plan for this week is handstand shrugs with wall support, knee supported HeSPU negatives, planche leans and shrimp squats.

Handstand shrugs w/wall support

I'm happy that I can do at least 20 reps of shrugs while on the wall. I can do this multiple times throughout the day. I don't have a max number of reps I want to hit at this time. I feel that at 25 reps, I will still be too weak to do more than 1 or 2 HeSPU negatives on the wall. I'll see how things feel as my rep count increases. I'll probably feel more confident when I hit 50 reps or as my knee supported HeSPU negatives improve.

HeSPU negatives w/knee support

Even with knee support, when I'm completely vertical and touch my head to the ground, I'm not able to do many reps of HeSPUs. The closer my elbows are to a 90 degree bend, the harder it is to push up. For now, I'll do HeSPU negatives with knee support for reps. I haven't tried to determine a max amount of reps I can do with this exercise yet. On Friday, I'll state the number of reps I'm able to do then.

Planche Leans

I'm still working to gain the strength I need to be able to lean forward until I lift off of the ground. I feel that a tuck planche will be possible in two or three months.

Shrimp Squats(Beginner/Intermediate)

Today, I learned that what I've been doing is the beginner version of a shrimp squat. It will be a while, before I'm able to hold the ankle of my back leg and touch that knee to the ground. I'll work towards lowering to the ground with more control for this beginner version and hope to start the intermediate version soon.

This has been a good week. I actually followed my plan for the week. Sorry this is a little long. I'm reviewing what I've done. What's working, what isn't working, and how I can change things to make them more efficient. I'm happy that I'm continuing to get "lighter." It's really helping my confidence, making me less afraid to try movements/positions.

Handstand shrugs w/wall support

I'm currently doing 30 reps of shrugs while on the wall. I can actually do more than 30 reps, but I don't want to get surprised by fatigue and fall onto my head. I'm now confident enough to do these shrugs with stomach towards the wall as well as with my back to the wall. With my stomach towards the wall, my hands are still more than a foot away from the wall but I'm getting closer.

HeSPU negatives w/knee support

I worked these daily, but not at the volume I expected. It's a lot easier and faster to kick into a handstand and do a HeSPU negative against a wall than it is to do one on a table. Once I lowered my head to the ground, I had to use some strength/energy to get off the ground and back into a starting position. Most of the time, I'd lean just enough so that I could do an angled HeSPU to return to the starting position. This limited the number of negatives I could do in one set.

I'm going to return to doing partial ROM HeSPUs w/ knee support. I discovered I'm able to do a ROM to about 90 degree bend in the elbow for at least 5 reps. As I get stronger, I'll lower beyond the 90 degree bend in the elbow. This should make it a little easier to do HeSPUs on the wall, once I feel I'm ready to pursue them.

Planche Leans

Most of the time I worked planche leans from two positions, I like these positions because they resemble the tuck planche I'm trying to acheive

Lean w /knee support

If I worked the lean with my knees on the ground, my hands were placed beside my knees. This would result in my wrists being slightly behind my waist. This was manageable, because my knees were helping to support my weight. I had enough control, that I didn't feel like I was going to fall forward. I could actively tense and relax muscles in my shoulders and back.

Lean w /foot support

From a standing position, I'd place my hands on the ground and try to lean as much as I could into a tuck planche. Most of my foot would be off the ground, I'd have support from a couple of toes on each foot. I believe this exercise allowed to me to appreciate even more how the weight will feel on my upper body when I'm in a tuck planche.

Shrimp Squats

I'm currently working on being able to start this squat from the lower position instead of standing. Currently I can't even get off the ground doing the beginner variation, but with a little assistance it's possible. As I get stronger, I'll need less and less assistance.

Pull Ups

Yesterday I decided to really spend some time with pull ups. How could I go from doing chest to bar chin ups, to not being able to do a regular pull up or chin up? My pushing strength is improving greatly, why isn't my pulling strength? I decided to test ROM w/ my pull up and see how things were.

From a dead hang to 90 degree bend in the elbow, things seemed fine. There was a slight stretch/tightness, but not much. The number of reps I could do in one set was low, but this makes sense since I haven't done pull ups in a while. When I started above the bar and lowered to 90 degree bend in elbow and then pulled myself back above the bar, it was a lot tougher. I could really feel the stretch/tightness that caused me to stop doing pull ups a while back.

For now, I'm going to work pull ups from dead hang to slightly above 90 degree bend in the elbow. As I feel stronger and feel less of the tension/tightness in my arms I'll raise myself higher. I'm going to really put some attention into this over the next week and I'll see how things are by Friday. Hopefully pretty soon I'll at least be able to do sets of 5 reps again.

I've figured out that I have pretty tight muscles, especially my triceps, and that's the reason it's difficult to do pull ups now. I've spent the week trying to relax and stretch my shoulders, back and muscles in my arms.

The time I've spent on stretching is slowly improving the situation. Last night I was able to do a dead hang chin up. I didn't want to try too many, since I could feel that the muscles are still very tight.

I finally found a use for the bands that hasn't disappointed me. I can use them to do shoulder dislocates.

It's actually been pretty easy to relax this week. I'll spend a few more days trying to loosen up and start fresh on Monday.

My stretching, resting therapy for my shoulders and triceps is going very well. I'm not really doing anything complicated or spectacular, but I am getting better.

I lowered the volume of handstand and planche work to either once a day or every other day. Multiple times throughout the day, I'll do shoulder dislocates. At home I'll use the 41" small(blue) iron woody band to do the exercise. At the office, I'll use an ethernet cable to do the exercise. I like the tension from the band while doing the exercise, but admit that at times the tension does limit the ROM I can achieve.

At home, I've also done a mix of dead hangs and swings on the pull up bar. The swings are fun, and allowed me to feel how loose or tight my problems areas were without having to do pull ups or chin ups.

This weekend, I could do 1 rep of of pull up or chin up, every time I walked past my bar. I could still feel tension in my muscles as I did that rep, but it was a lower degree.

I feel that I can increase the volume of work I do this week. I won't do any handstand shrugs or knee supported HeSPUs, but I feel static handstands and planche leans will be fine.

Unless I have a break through or setback, I probably won't update the log again before Friday.

After seeing Breaks' thread on his dream machine and seeing how simple it was to build, I was inspired to run to Home Depot and pick up some of the supplies I would need.

Unfortunately the store didn't have any pulley's that I wanted to use for the project. They had some that would have been fine if my sons' were using the dream machine, but me plus only 20 lbs of additional weight would have exceeded what those pulleys were designed to handle. I'll visit a few more stores today and should be able to get everything I need.

In addition to being able to do fun and amazing things, I believe the pulley system will help me to do some therapy on my problem areas.

You can view Breaks' thread here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7143

I've started focusing more attention on my core. One of my favorite exercises at the moment involves the use of a swivel chair. I get into a plank or reverse plank position, with my feet on the swivel chair. I'll swing my legs from left to right for reps. I can't do circles, because my office isn't big enough. While in a reverse plank, if I hold the plank with good form I can barely swing the chair. I'll play with this exercise for a few weeks and what benefits it brings.

My pull ups, are the same as they were this weekend. I'll continue with stretches and hope to complete my pulley system within the next couple of days.

Wow, my log has had an explosion of hits lately even though I haven't posted as often. I haven't had any major changes in my routine, it's still pretty light right now. As far as chin/pull ups, some days are better than others. I missed a few stretching sessions this weekend. It wasn't intentional and once I realized it, I grabbed the small(blue) 41" band and did a few minutes of work on my shoulders, arms, and back.

My dream machine is almost finished, I'm just deciding on what type of harness I will use. At the moment, I'm debating on whether I'll use a sit harness or vest harness. The harness will have a ring at each hip. I'd love to have a twisting belt, but that will have to stay on the wish list for now. I plan to make a decision on the harness and get it ordered or purchased today.

I have been making some nice progress with my core. In addition to the exercises with the swivel chair, I'm doing tucked dragon flags and other leg lifts where my lower body is hanging off of a platform. I'm happy that my core won't be the weak link it has been in the past.

Hope everyone has a great week, and I hope to be doing a little more soon.

My future's so bright I gotta wear 8)

Took an extra day, but I finally found the last piece to my dream machine. I decided to get a tumbling belt. The one I selected is nicely padded, and is said to fit any waist size. Best case scenario, this belt will fit everyone except my daughter. Worst case scenario this belt will fit everyone except ME and my daughter.

I know my youngest son will enjoy using the system. I believe that his big brother will play around on it as well. My wife didn't really care to try out band assisted pull ups, but I think she'd give the dream machine a second look. My daughter will be a little disappointed, but as long as she gets to bounce on the mattress and swing on the rings, she'll be ok.

Ab work is still going pretty well. It may take a little while before I can do a proper dragon flag or candlestick, but I won't have to tuck forever.

Using my 30 and 50 lb dumbbells, I've started doing shoulder presses. The ROM I'm using is the weight starts on top of my shoulders and I push to slightly beyond a 90 degree bend in my elbow. I've just been doing as many reps as I can, before I'll rest and then switch weights. I'm hoping this will assist with developing strength I need for HSPUs. For the upper ROM I'm still doing knee assisted HeSPUs.

My max rep of chin/pull up is still only 1. I can feel that things are improving as the pain is less and doesn't linger after the rep. I'll continue to take it slow. Whenever I get really disappointed that I haven't recovered yet, I'll do swings on the pull up bar. They're always fun and lift my spirits.

My tumbling belt should arrive today! I should have the pulley system in place by Thursday. The garage still isn't cleaned out, so the system will have a temporary home until I get that done.

I'm starting to increase the amount of exercise I'm doing. I still haven't done much pulling, but that will change once the pulley system is in place.

Thanks to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7223

I have hope that I'll be able to achieve an l sit someday. I haven't tested my times in the static positions. For now, I'm having fun doing reps.

In the office, I'm doing tuck planche work using my swivel chair to assist me. At home, I hang a band from the pull up bar and keep my legs fully extended. I appreciate both of these for helping me to build strength and stamina.

I feel much better than I did 2 to 3 weeks ago. I want to do pull ups, inverted hangs, tucked 360 pulls again so I will get that dream machine built as soon as I can. After I've been on the pulley system for a few days, I'll see how long I'll need an assist before I'm ready to try the basic exercises unassisted.

My tumbling belt arrived yesterday! My youngest son and I both tried on the belt and it fit! I had some work to do away from home, so I couldn't finish the system yesterday. I explained the setup to my wife and it seems that she will try it out once I'm done.

I watched a few youtube videos that dealt with handstands, cartwheels and flips. The language spoken in the videos was Japanese. I didn't understand everything that was said but I learned a lot from the videos. As a result of watching the videos, I started practicing some bridge exercises again.

At home I did swings on the pull up bar. Still stuck at my 1 rep limit for pull ups. I did get a pleasant surprise in the fact that I discovered I have no problem doing inverted hangs on the rings. I think I knew that a couple of weeks ago, but the problem with the pull ups convinced me otherwise.

After a couple of weeks of rest and randomness, I'm ready to get back to something resembling a routine. I'll try it out today and post it later.

I haven't updated in a while, so I thought I'd post something. I do have a regular routine I'm following again, but it doesn't include everything I want to do yet.

Dream Machine update:

I went to Lowe's and bought most of the parts that would be used on the dream machine while it's in it's temporary location. Instead of using rope, I am using steel cable that's wrapped in vinyl. Hopefully the vinyl won't wear out too quickly. I hooked everything up minus handles which I haven't purchased yet. I am happy with the system, but I wouldn't continue to use it without some leg straps to keep the belt in place. My son and I will have to wait a little longer before we get to pretend to be supermen.

I am currently doing the following exercises:

Bridge wall walk - My hands are not touching the floor yet, but I'm getting close. I'll also rotate into position while standing in front of a table, stairs, the bar in the elevator. A couple of times I got stuck when trying to exit the position, but practice and increased strength has eliminated this problem.

Using the swivel chair in my office, I'll simulate moving from full planche to tuck planche. I don't lean as much as I would if I were doing planche leans on the floor, but that will come with time. I'll also perform this exercise from a reverse plank position with my feet in the chair.

After watching a few more youtube videos, I determined that my arms were spread farther than they needed to be during handstands. Making this adjustment has made the position easier. I'm working on increasing the amount of time I can hold the position now.

For now, I'm taking a break from pull ups, not even doing my 1 rep. I'll try the exercise unsupported on Friday to see how I feel. If it's still a struggle, I will hopefully have the straps for my dream machine and will just do what I can to work through it.

I thank God that I can do pull ups again!

I still can't do multiple reps yet, but I'm getting closer. I don't feel any pain as I'm pulling towards the bar anymore. I do feel some tension once I've released the bar, but it leaves very quickly. Other than occasional swings on the pull up bar and infrequent stretching with my iron woody band I haven't done anything to purposely strengthen or loosen the area. I did pray for strength and healing, perhaps that's all it will take to make me whole.

I'm not doing too much right now in terms of the different exercises I'm pursuing. I don't have a regular routine but I try to do something 6 days a week.

I'm working tucked l sit holds using raised surfaces to simulate p-bars. I'm still not really one who likes to do a lot of static holds for time. So I'll alternate between holding the position for time and holding the position while I shrug my upper body. I'm also still working on handstands and bridge work.

After a minor scare last weekend, I'm happy to say that my exercise has been going nicely this week. I thought I had over worked myself and was about to lose the progress I'd made on regaining my pull ups, but all is well.

My workout hasn't changed much. I'm still working bridges on the wall and floor, tucked l sit, and handstand work. I'm working swings on my pull up bar and doing 1 or 2 reps of chin ups. This week, I started actively working to attain the ability to do a split. I'm also working on improving my german hang so that I can start work on back lever again.

I ordered a couple of petzl pulleys which should arrive tomorrow. I wanted to get them last week, but I had a few other expenses that were higher priority. My youngest son has been patiently waiting, and will be nicely surprised when I set up dream machine ver 1.1.

I'm feeling pretty good right now. I still have that momentary pain at the end of chin ups, but I don't expect that to last much longer. I expect to be doing amazing things soon and not just when I'm on the dream machine.

I'm probably going to post a little more often for the next few days. I'm testing myself and discovering that I can still do some things and do a few things I didn't know that I could before.

Yesterday evening, I did some swings on the pull up bar. I decided not to do any chin ups or pull ups, because I wasn't in the mood to do a few 1 rep sets. After doing some stretches to increase the range of my german hang I couldn't help but want to try back lever. No one was using the rings, so I decided to have some fun. I transitioned from inverted hang to tuck BL pretty easily. I don't have a mirror where my rings are and my son wasn't with me, so I couldn't tell how horizontal I was. It looked like I was parallel to the ground.

I played with the position for a little while and then took a break. After the break everyone was busy doing something, so I still didn't have anyone take a look at my tuck BL. Instead of worry about position, I gave it my best guess as to when I was horizontal in tuck BL. During the second session of exercise, I decided that I wouldn't hold the position for time. For a few minutes, I alternated between tuck BL and tuck FL. I would only hold each position 1 or 2 sec max before going to the next position.

My front lever definitely wasn't parallel to the ground, but it was closer than I thought it would be. I did some front lever work in the past, but it wasn't much. I was happy that I was using my strength and not momentum to move between the two positions. As I started to have thoughts about how long I could continue doing the exercise, my abs let me know they had enough. It was only a small cramp that disappeared as soon as I returned to my feet.

I repeated alternating between tuck BL and tuck FL a few more times and now have a new favorite exercise to do while at home.

My new pulleys should be home by the time I get there this evening. I probably won't have time to set everything up tonight but the system should be in place this weekend.

It's been a long time without an update, but I have been exercising. I'll probably start using this space again to take notes or summarize what I'm doing during a particular week/month, only time will tell.

I am happy to report that I can do pain free pull ups again. If I arch my back, I can even do chin ups where I get my chest to the bar(short term goal is to be able to do them again without the arch.) The amount of pulls/chins I can do in one set isn't very high, so I'm working to increase the reps.

I'm still working on SLS and shrimp squats. My strength and balance is increasing, but I'm still not at a point where I can go all the way to the ground unassisted. This is really due to inconsistent training and not always choosing the best place to perform these exercises. I need to train more with assistance in the lower range of motion for these exercises.

I've been inconsistent with my bridge wall walks, but I have been doing back bridge push ups pretty consistently. I can push up pretty high from the ground, but there's still more bend in my elbows than I would like. In a month or two I'll be strong enough to push up and then kick over.

Using a swivel chair in the office, I've also been doing the exercise in the video below.

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I've also started training one arm push ups. Currently I'm training them on the wall and on an elevated surface.

Rings aren't a part of my daily routine at the moment, but I will probably return to them soon.

Since my last post, I've really changed the way I train. I thought I'd share this in the hopes that it might be able to help someone else out there whose body is just too "heavy" and is frustrated with a lack of progress.

Work, family and other things have me very busy. My workouts had gotten to the point where they had no structure and a lot of things were being missed. As I would celebrate achieving one thing (improved bridge push up,) I was disappointed in learning I'd lost other things (decent frog stand.) I care about getting a nice handstand, but care about the planche more. At the rate I was going, it seemed like it would still be several years before I'd accomplish either.

I continued to come to GB.com two or three times a week to see what new things were posted. I'd continue to look at youtube videos for instruction and inspiration. I'd find a little something here and there, but nothing that I could really use at my current level. I'm "strong" and even reasonably flexible in certain areas, but I wasn't strong enough to do certain things. I could get into a handstand or tucked l sit, do a few pull ups, or whatever, but couldn't do most of these things for as long or as much as I wanted. Again as I focused on one thing, something else started to suffer. I kept reading success stories about scaling the WODs or how the SSC helped people to make progress, but for one reason or another it still wasn't appealing(or atleast that's what I thought.)

Thankfully someone posted in the community section about an article at T-Nation(no not THAT article.) After spending time there and on other sites, I really became interested in the farmer's walk exercise. It was a very simple way to "increase" gravity. My thinking is the longer I could support heavier loads for extended periods of time, the stronger I'd be. I didn't want to become a strongman, but I did want to become a stronger man. :wink:

Many of the articles spoke about doing the farmer's walk with the equivalent of your own body weight. Some of the better articles pointed out that most people would not be able to do that in the beginning. If I somehow chained all off my dumbbells together, I'd have my total body weight. The heaviest pair of dumbbells I own is 44% of my total body weight. In the beginning, I would alternate between my heaviest and the next heaviest pair of dumbbells. After a while, I stopped walking for distance and would either just stand for time or move forward-back, left-right for time. I'd also do some stair work while holding the dumbbells.

For a while this became the only exercise I did. At work, I have a 40lb piece of equipment in the office and would work out with it in a similar way to how I used the dumbbells at home(it's rack mountable, so it has two handles to grab onto.) One Friday while in the office, I read a few posts about handstands and decided to try one. I would kick into a tucked handstand against the wall and see how it felt. Instead of a tucked handstand, I kicked into an arched back to wall handstand. I started to bring my feet down, but then noticed...it's actually not that hard to hold this position! I tried it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke and again I could hold myself up.

I didn't try for 60 seconds, since that's not really a goal of mine. I didn't feel strong enough to attempt partial HeSPUs, but I feel that I'll be confident enough to try that soon. I tested and saw that my tucked l sit is easier to hold too. So for now, my training is mostly holding heavy weights and back to wall handstands. If I remember pull ups before I play with the weights and kill my grip, I'll do a few of those. This workout only takes a few minutes and easily fits into my schedule. I guess this will be my SSC for now. As my body becomes "lighter" I'll try more and more things.

Only problem I have is how to get heavier weights? I'm checking prices for plates, dumbbells and kettlebells to see which would work best.