I know, it's been awhile since I blogged but, August was a busy month and had a number of projects that I was working on and it's the last full month of summer and just wanted to soak it all in.
But, it's back to the grind since Labor Day is only a few days away.
I mentioned awhile back about how I was doing 200 pushups in 5 minutes where basically I was spreading the pushups out over the course of the day and not just doing them in one session.
I continued doing this for a few weeks and I thought it worked great.
I changed things up a bit. Three days a week I would do pushups, and 3 days a week I would do pullups.
With the pullups, I didn't quite do 200 of them in a day. With pushups, you can do them anywhere, but with a pullup, you obviously need to have a pullup bar and since I'm on the go most of the day, I'm limited to when I can do pullups when I'm home and have access to my Iron Gym.
So I started off with just doing 50 pullups throughout the day. I would do 10 sets of 5.
After a couple of weeks of doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week and 50 pullups, 3 days a week, I add more to each exercise: I increased the number of repetitions per set of pushups that I was doing from 10 to 15 and the number of repetitions per set of pullups from 5 to 7. So I ended up doing 300 pushups a day, 3 days a week, and 70 pullups a day, 3 days a week.
I was really impressed by how simple this routine was, how it doesn't take long, and quite frankly, how great the results are for your upper body by just following these two simple movements.
I'm really starting to think that if you just used these two movements, added in some interval training, got your diet in line, that you wouldn't need much else.
So just remember to try and not complicate things too much. Stick with the basics, eat better (and less food if fat loss is your goal), and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
If you haven't already, give this routine of pushups and pullups (if you have a pullup bar) a try for a couple of weeks and let me know how it goes.
I remember back in the day, I use to be able to go into a clothing store, find the waist and inseam size of a pair of pants I wanted, and just buy them without even having to try them on.
I was out shopping recently for some new shorts. For as long as I can remember, I can wear roughly a 32 or 33 waist pant size and feel comfortable in them.
But going through the racks, it was frustrating because all I could find were sizes 28, 30, 34, 36, etc. For the life of me, I couldn't find a 32 or a 33.
So I just decided to grab a couple of pairs of the size 30 and try them on and see what they felt like.
I Went into the changing room, tried them on and was shocked: They fit, and they were almost too loose.
For a split second, I was a bit excited, but, then I thought to myself "Wait a second, something's wrong here. There's no way I'm a 30." I checked the pants closely. There's no elastic anywhere to be found.
Just for testing purposes, I went back out and got a pair of size 34 to see how those fit. Put them on, buttoned them, and they fell right to the ground. And that's only one or two sizes larger than I normally wear.
I remember a few years ago when I was trying on some dress pants and noticed that there was this elastic pull on the sides. I thought that was pretty funny in that it allowed someone to wear a pair of pants smaller than what they could normally wear, say that they were wearing a size 32 but were actually stretching them to a size 34.
But in this most recent situation with the size 30, I think is taking it to a bit of an extreme. It also explains why there were no 32 or 33 sizes, because the guys that were actually wearing size 36 could fit in those instead.
Think about the ramifications of that though. If you're all of a sudden fitting into a size 33 or 34 where you are normally wearing a size 36 or 38, isn't that giving you the sense that you are in better shape from a waist measurement perspective?
Studies are showing that there's a strong correlation between waist size compared to your height and your risks of various health risks, rather than looking at the old standard of Body Mass Index (BMI).
If we are now making pant sizes bigger than what they actually are, just to make people feel better about their body shape, aren't we actually putting these people in the delusional mindset that they are at a healthy waist size, when in reality they may not be?
I guess looking back at my recent shopping endeavors, I've been seeing this for quite some time. I've always been a solid medium when it came to just your every day shirts, but looking through my closet now, I notice a lot more smalls sizes.
I even remember a couple of years ago not being able to find a bathing suit that fit that would actually stay on and having to go to the Juniors section to look for one (that didn't work out to well either but with the opposite problem).
I guess my point is that you need to be careful when buying clothes and to not get to excited when you're able to all of a sudden fit into a size that you normally haven't fit into and it isn't because you've been losing weight or body fat, because chances are, your pants are lying to you.
You're going to do 5 exercises in a row, each for the time listed next to the description below. Once you're done with the circuit, you'll rest 30 seconds, and then complete that circuit again, rest another 30 second after completing the circuit a second time, and then go on and do the circuit one more time.
Here's a video of it and the written descriptions are below:
Knee Taps - 30 seconds
1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, and bend your arms at the elbow right in front you of with your upper arms tucked into your sides. 2. Bring your left leg up as quickly as you can, touching your left hand with the top of your left knee. 3. Lower your left leg while at the same time bringing your right leg up and touching your right hand with the top of your right knee. 4. Continue back and forth between legs as quickly as you can and remembering to bring your legs up as high as you can to touch your hands until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.
Side Leg Raise with Extension - 15 seconds on each leg
1. Kneel on your knees and hands and keep your back flat and arms straight from the shoulders to your hands on the ground. 2. Starting with the right side, raise your right leg (while keeping the knee bent and your upper body stable) up towards your right side until the leg is parallel to the floor. 3. Then extend knee so that your entire leg is straight and pointing to the right, while keeping your leg lifted in the air. 4. Pause for a second, then bend your knee back into towards your body and then lower the leg back down. 5. Continue doing all the repetitions or time on one side before moving on and completing all the repetitions or time on the left leg.
Cross Crawl - 30 seconds
1. Stand with your hands behind your ears and pull your shoulder blades together. Keep your eyes looking straight ahead. 2. Move your right elbow across your body and slightly down while at the same time, bringing your left knee up as high as you can. In other words, aim your right elbow towards your left knee. 3. Return your upper body to the starting position and place your left leg on the floor. 4. Follow the same movement aiming your left elbow towards your lifted right knee. 5. Continue alternating between both sides until you have completed the recommended number of repetitions or time.
Prisoner Squat - 30 seconds
1. Stand with your feet just greater than shoulder-width apart. 2. Clasp your hands behind your head. Keep your elbows back and shoulder blades pulled together to work the upper back. 3. Start the movement at the hip. Push your hips backward and “sit back into a chair.” Make your hips go back as far as possible. 4. Squat as deep as possible, but keep your lower back tensed in a neutral position. 5. Don’t let your lower back become rounded. 6. Push with your butt muscles, hamstrings, and quadriceps to return to the starting position. Continue the movement for the recommended number of repetitions or time.
Spiderman Crawls - Knees - 30 seconds
1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Your arms should be shoulder width apart. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips. 2. Drop your knees straight down on the ground without moving them closer to your stomach. 3. Starting with your left leg, bring it forward towards your hand as far as you can and drop your foot flat down. Make sure to keep your body straight. Don’t raise your butt. Keep your arms straight/locked at the top of the position (don’t lower yourself). 4. Pause for a moment and then return your left leg to the starting position. 5. Do the next rep using the right leg and continue to alternate legs until you have completed all of the recommended repetitions or time.
I was looking at some of my favorite exercises and noticed that all of them really work the abs so I decided to put them all together to make a nice little 2 minute circuit.
The exercises that you're going to do in this circuit are a Side Plank - Forearms, Plank - Forearms, and a Pushup.
You're going to start by doing a Side Plank on your forearm on your right side and you're going to hold that position for 30 seconds. Then without dropping your knees or using your left hand to help with the movement by setting it on the ground, you're going to roll over clockwise into a Plank on your forearms and toes. You're going to hold that Plank for 30 seconds.
Then again, making sure not to drop your knees to the ground or push off from your right hand, roll clockwise again into the Side Plank on your forearms on your left side and you're going to hold that position for another 30 seconds.
Once that 30 seconds is over, roll counter clockwise (without dropping to your knees) and get into the top of the pushup position. Then do 10 pushups.
Then you can rest. Rest 60 seconds, and do that circuit 3 more times.
The important point is to not use your free arm on the side plank or your knees in any of the positions to make the transition from one movement to the next. The transition should be made with your core.
Here's a video explanation of it:
Exercise Descriptions:
Side Plank – Forearms
1. Lie on the floor on your right side. 2. Support your bodyweight with the outside of your right foot (with your left foot lying on top of the right foot) and your right elbow with your lower arm pointed straight ahead and your palm on the floor. 3. Keep your body in a straight line so that your body hovers over the floor from your foot up to your right forearm. 4. Keep your back straight and your hips up and your head looking forward, making sure that your neck is in line with your spine. Hold your abs tight. Contract them as if someone was about to punch you in the stomach, but breathe normally. 5. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time and then switch to the left side.
Plank – Forearms
1. Lie on your stomach on the floor. 2. Raise your body in a straight line and rest your bodyweight on your forearms and toes so that your body hovers over the floor. 3. Keep your back straight and your hips up but not so high that your butt is sticking in the air. Hold (brace) your abs tight. Breathe normally. 4. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time.
Pushups
1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Your arms should be shoulder width apart. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips. 2. Lower yourself down until your nose is only a few inches from the ground and make sure that your hips do not sag. Also as you are lowering, pull your shoulder blades together as far as they will go and make sure that your neck stays in line with your spine. 3. Pause for a second, then brace your abs and keep your body in a straight line from feet to shoulders as you push through your chest, shoulders, and triceps until you get to the top of the position. Repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.
For the most part, if you ask most people whether they are subjectively “feeling healthy” most of the time, they’re going to say “Yes” regardless of whether they eat unhealthy or healthy, whether they exercise or not exercise, whether they smoke or not smoke.
That’s really kind of a strange way the body works. If you take on unhealthy habits, your body doesn’t immediately fight back and make you FEEL like there is anything wrong. Over time it slowly clogs the arteries, decays your lungs from smoking, increases your heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting glucose levels, and not to mention, your waistline.
But through all of that, you continue to think that if all of those bad habits were so bad, then why aren’t I “feeling unhealthy?” So you just continue on with your bad habits and push aside all the warnings the “experts” have about the risks of those bad habits as nonsense in the real world.
I bring this up because I came across an story about an obese woman Marci Williams, who went to the doctor for a physical, with no known “health problems” (because I’m assuming she felt “fine”), and within two weeks she was taking medication for high-blood pressure, started taking insulin because she was diagnosed as diabetic, and her cholesterol levels were off the charts and had to start taking cholesterol lowering medication.
She states that:
"My resting pulse was in the 120-something range," she recalled. "That's a racing pulse for most people, and that was my resting pulse."
She ended up going to a cardiologist and this is rather long quote but I truly love the fact that the doctor didn’t mince any words with her:
"I just knew the minute he walked in this wasn't going to be a very good appointment," she said. "He said, 'You know, you are not going to live to see 50 if you don't lose this weight.' He made it very clear to me that all these things that were happening to me were symptoms of obesity, rather than stand-alone illnesses. His advice to me was [that] we can treat all of these symptoms, but the only way to cure this is to lose the weight." [my emphasis]
The first thing she did was to get an angioplasty to open up those arteries a bit.
Then she started watching what she ate, and had a goal of exercising 30 minutes a day, although in the beginning, that became too much for her and she had to break that up into 10 minute workouts a few times a day.
I think this is a great idea of breaking up the workout into very short little sessions all day and I mentioned that I’m in the process of testing this right now with pushups.
She lost some weight, and the doctor gave her the okay to do some more strenuous exercise, so she joined a gym.
As she continued to drop weight:
...she also shed symptoms. She stopped having to take insulin. Her blood pressure came under control. Her cholesterol improved.
When this all started, Marci weighed around 332 pounds (at 5’ 3”) and her weight now is between 135 and 140 pounds.
I talked about this in a post about a client that I have in my class that was always overweight but then had a heart attack and that really woke him up. He had always ate unhealthy foods, didn’t exercise, but didn’t “feel unhealthy” so he just thought he was mortal to any problems.
But as both him and Marci Williams found out, at some point, these habits will catch up to you and the consequences will hit you like a brick. Thankfully both of them were freaked out enough to make some changes.
I know with my client, and I’m assuming with Ms. Williams, is that now that they are actually following better eating habits, exercising, and watching their weight, that even though they “felt healthy” for most of their lives with their bad habits, they now realize how unhealthy they felt now that they TRULY know what “feeling healthy” feels like.
Which I think is my overall point: don’t assume that just because you don’t feel “unhealthy” (especially if you have bad eating habits, don’t work out, and are overweight) that everything is “okay.” Go to the doctor, get blood work done, ask your doctor for a blunt opinion, and make some changes and see what it feels like to really “feel healthy.”
A slight break from fitness talk to talk about my dog, Scarlett the Doberman, and how she cracks me up on a daily basis. No matter what kind of mood I'm in, she can just do something so innocent to put a smile on my face.
And I think that's why pets are important. They can really help you stay healthy, both mentally and emotionally.
One of Scarlett the Doberman's craziest antics is that she actually smiles. That's right, she smiles. I have to act like a fool sometimes to get a good one out of her (as you'll see when watching the video) but it's well worth it to see that smile show up on her face.
One morning I walked back up to my room after doing some work downstairs for awhile and decided to grab my camera to see if I could get her to smile, and she didn't disappoint.
I'll keep the camera handy to try and catch other ones in the future as well.
The other day I talked about Starting a Fat Loss Program and I used pushups as an example of a great exercise that uses a lot of muscle that when done, will lead to your body need more calories for the recovery process, thus burning more fat after the workout is over.
That got me thinking about pushups some more and how I really like doing them. I still think the pullup is my favorite but, the pushup comes in at a close second.
So I decided when I woke up yesterday, that I wanted to get 200 pushups done in 5 minutes.
There's a catch though. I wasn't going to just get on the floor and muscle out 200 pushups in one session. I was going to do them a little bit at a time over the entire day.
By my calculations, it takes me about 15 seconds to do 10 pushups.
So if I were to do 20 sets of 10 pushups throughout the day, that would mean I was spending just a total of 5 minutes a day doing pushups.
If you assume that you are awake 16 hours in a day, that would mean you would have to do 12.5 pushups an hour to reach 200 pushups.
So I woke up in the morning, jumped out of bed, got down on the floor, and did 10 pushups.
Got ready for the day, and after my shower, did another 10 pushups.
Throughout the entire day, I just stayed cognizant that my goal was to do 200 pushups for the day, and when the desire hit me, no matter where I was, I would drop down and do 10 pushups (I was in a parking lot and dropped and did 10 right in front of my car....Got a few crazy looks for that...).
I drink a lot of water during the day and found a nice routine in that when I had to use the bathroom, I would drop on the floor and do 10 pushups first. Considering I probably have to use the bathroom every 45 minutes or so, that means over the course of 3 hours I would have done 40 pushups.
By the time I got to my last set of 10 pushups at the end of the night, my form and intensity were exactly the same as when I did my first set of 10 in the morning. I felt great. Didn't feel depleted at all.
Woke up this morning and have a tad bit of muscle soreness in my chest, but feel a really great pump in my arms, shoulders, and especially my lats.
One suggestion though: If you've never done a pushup before, or you only do them from time to time, don't try and hit 200 over the course of one day at first. Work your way up to it. Try shooting for 50 first. Then if that feels okay, the next time you do it, try and shoot for 75 or even a hundred throughout the day.
The larger point of trying to do 200 pushups spread out throughout the day is to show that short workouts can do wonders for you. I talk a lot about doing a 30 minute workout and how I think that if designed correctly, can be even more effective than a 60 minute workout. But even doing short little burst of an exercise (such as 15 seconds), can still be beneficial. This shows that there truly is NO EXCUSE for saying you don't have time to do a workout. Spread the workout over the course of the day if finding a block of 30 minutes isn't going to work for you.
I'm going to continue doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes (and if you're going to do this, I would recommend only doing it 3 days a week to start). I'll let you know how my progress is going in a few weeks.
I'm a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).
I've been helping people get rid of that unwanted fat by teaching group classes for the past 10 years and training clients one-on-one for the past 5 years.
Contact me at mike@leanbodyfitness.com
