June 19th, 2009 Milan
Find a bar or tree branch in your neighborhood. Once a week try this challenging advanced chin ups workout. If you can’t do a chin up, do other workouts for now, but every week come back to your chin up bar and try it again. Starting with just one is great. You will see your strength increasing and you will be able to do more, you will get better.
Tips:
- Stretch before you start
- cross you legs and don’t move them while lifting yourself up
- go all the way up - your chin should reach over the bar
- go all the way down to extended arms (elbows)
- every intense chin up workout start with different set of chi ups
You will be doing 10 sets of different kind of chi ups. Break between each of them is 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Write me how many you did on each of them.
1. Wide grip chin ups - maximum amount of repetitions (max.R.)
2. Reverse grip chin ups - max. R.
3. Crossed grip chin ups - right hand reverse grip - max. R.
4. Crossed grip chin ups - left hand reverse grip - max. R.
5. Close grip chin ups - max. R.
6. Close reverse grip chin ups - max. R.
7. Medium wide grip legs up chin ups - max. R.
8. Side moves in chin up position - max. R.
Get up to the chin up position and start moving as far as you can from left side to the right side. You don’t have to keep your legs crossed. Move to the right and left = 1 repetition
9. Backward pull ups - max. R.
10. Flip turn on bar - max. R.
Be careful on these one. This is the most difficult and hardest one and yes it is little dangerous one.
Pull yourself up. Start leaning your head backward and lifting your feet up.
Bring your legs up and flip them over the bar your body fallowing.
This is the ending position. From here go down to hanging position without touching the floor and start over.
My numbers:
1. - 23
2. - 15
3. - 13
4. - 13
5. - 13
6. - 13
7. - 11
8. - 9
10. - 10
11. - 3
Total amount of repetitions: 133 R
Write me your results.
Posted in Workout plans | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009 Milan
Protein builds, maintains and repairs tissue. It does not like to be used as fuel.
If you are inactive, you should consume 1.0 gram of protein per kg of body weight per day.
If you are active, your protein requirement will range from 1.2 grams to 1.7 grams per kg of body weight.
Athletes who compete in endurance sports should eat around 1.2 grams of protein per kg. Body builders should consume around 1.8 grams per kg.
Your weight in kg = Your weight in pounds : 2.2
If you eat properly, the maximum amount of energy from protein that your body will use is 5 %. If you don’t eat enough carbohydrates and your exercise is long in duration, or you are very active person, your body will use up to 10 % protein for energy. And you don’t want that.
If your intake of calories on daily basis is low, well below the energy you need for maintenance, your body will use even more protein. While this is more common between athletes, it can happen to very active people too.
Posted in Fit nutrition | No Comments »
June 11th, 2009 Milan
To be active day in and day out means to have more energy for everything.
It’s mostly those fit people who tell you after exhausting hike, all day skiing or intensive tennis or soccer game : What are we doing tonight? Where are we going next? Do you want to go dancing tonight?
You think : Aren’t you suppose to be tired by now after all that you did today and just go sleep or watch TV?
Yes, those fit, active people are restless. Their bodies recover faster from hard physical activity and they want more. Their bodies work more efficiently.
And that’s why they stay active all the time. They don’t get fat. They don’t get sick. Their bodies work like a well oiled machine. They burn like a perfect roman candle.
If you are inactive, you are missing a big part of fun time in life. You don’t have enough energy to enjoy certain activities and you don’t have enough energy to do more things.
You need to exercise intensively at least 30 minutes 4 - 6 times per week doing strength, endurance and flexibility exercises for more energy.
Try some of my workout plans for more energy in your life.
Posted in The cost of inactivity | No Comments »
June 5th, 2009 Milan
Like most people, all day long, every day, you use your muscles. They don’t get stronger, they don’t get healthier, they don’t grow, they stay the same - weak.
You quit using your muscles before you reach the moment where the stress causes them to start growing and get stronger. It’s the natural thing to do, because an exhausted muscle feels unsafe and it hurts.
You need to do a many repetitions first for no reason other than to tire out your muscle, so that the last few repetitions will make that muscle so tired and that will cause that muscle to grow and get stronger.
People who weigh-train successfully pay their dues in the first many repetitions with heavy enough weight and then get all the benefits at the very end, where it gets very hard.
Unsuccessful people pay exactly the same dues, but stop few repetitions too early.
Posted in Strength training | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2009 Milan
To stay healthy, you need to stay active, day in and day out. The more sedentary your job, the more you need a fitness program that can help counteract the harmful effects of sitting for hours on your but.
Lack of time is the most common explanation that people offer for giving up an exercise program. But few people realize that, even if they don’t have time to go to gym or track, they can stay fit with an abbreviated exercise routine.
A recent study showed that people who find the time to exercise regularly tend to squeeze it into their schedules, rather than altering their routines by getting up earlier or otherwise changing their lives.
Even if you spend long hours working in the office or caring for children at home, there are exercises that you can do virtually anywhere to keep yourself in shape.
Regardless of exercise environment, your muscles respond to weight training in exactly the same way: they get stronger, they grow, they get healthier and more flexible.
Your muscle couldn’t care less whether you workout in an office or a crowded health club.
Don’t wait for the evening and start at work. Try my office workouts:
Posted in Office workout | No Comments »
May 30th, 2009 Milan
20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain
Posted in Personal development | No Comments »
May 6th, 2009 Milan
Be decisive even if it means you’ll sometimes be wrong.
More time does not create better decision. In fact it usually decreases the quality of the decision. Decide fast, and trust yourself that you made a right decision.
The only exception - you need more information. More time without more information just creates anxiety, not insight.
Why should you decide fast about everything? Deciding fast saves time and frees a lot of space in your head. That space can be used for other more important thinking, for example creative thinking.
Rule your mind or it will rule you. - Horace
Posted in Personal development | No Comments »
May 1st, 2009 Milan
Former Northwestern University swimmer Richard T. Abrahams became the first 50-year-old to break 50 seconds in the 100-yard free-style. His time at age 50 was faster than when he competed at the 1964 Olympic Trials.
A decade later, in 2005, Abrahams became the first 60-year-old to break 50 seconds in 100-yard free-style. His best time during those intervening 10 years actually slowed by only 0.34 seconds.
To swim 100 yards under 50 seconds requires a lot of explosive power and endurance in speed, skills we are suppose to loose firs when we age. But apparently with a proper strength and speed training it is reversible.
My personal best for 100-yard free is 1 min 11 seconds. I guess I have to practice a lot to keep up with some 60 year old guys who are much faster and stronger than me.
Posted in Age is just a number | No Comments »
April 28th, 2009 Milan
Eating dark chocolate boosts the blood’s antioxidant power by 20%, according to research published in Nature magazine. The antioxidant in chocolate is called epicatechin. Milk chocolate is much less effective.
A study of older men in the Netherlands found eating the equivalent of a third of a dark chocolate bar (about 40g) a day may lower blood pressure and the risk of death.
Dark chocolate (but not milk chocolate or white chocolate) also appears to inhibit the aggregation of platelets, an early step in the formation of blood clots that can cause heart attack or stroke.
However, chocolate also contains sugar and fat, so while a little chocolate may be a good thing, a lot of chocolate may be too much of a good thing.
Posted in Fit nutrition | No Comments »
April 25th, 2009 Milan
I’ve been reading about some amazing athletic performances of people in older age recently.
Here is one:
The Ukrainian Tatyana Pozdnyakova won the 2003 City of Los Angeles Marathon in 2:29:40 at age 48 .
The Los Angeles Marathon is not some small-time affair. It attracts elite runners from around the world. Pozdniakova finished more than three minutes ahead of the second female finisher in the highly competitive field. Pozdniakova won the Los Angeles Marathon again the next year, at 49.
“I don’t think about age,” she told a newspaper reporter. “My age is very high for top marathon runner, but my head is strong. It is not about your body. It is about discipline in preparation.”
Hm, I hardly know anyone in their twenties who can run 1 mile as fast as Pozdniakova runs a whole marathon.
She averages a mile in about 5 min and 43 seconds on her whole marathon. That’s really fast. I can run a single mile in about 6:15 if I try really hard and I consider myself as an athlete in early thirties.
Posted in Age is just a number | No Comments »
