So today I tried out the superhuman protocol that was describe in The 4-hour Body by Timothy Ferriss.
I decided to not do squats or dead lifts and instead just did some bench work. I don't know how I will feel tomorrow because the book never says anything about doing a warm up set, and I did one set for 15.
The purpose of the protocol is to try to build strength without hypertrophy and lactic acid build up, it says to do 2-3 reps for 2-3 sets. I feel like it isn't really that safe to lift without a warm up set so I did a total of 4 sets but only one was for warm up.
My chest didn't feel like it was going to explode but I did have a little bit of tightness in it so I will continue to experiment and figure out what is the best way to approach this protocol.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Strength training for once I get my back straightened out
Ok, so my back has obviously been having its problems but I keep getting more and more excited about working out the closer I become to getting this thing straightened out.
So here is where my head at right now as far as exercising goes.
I have no doubt talked about the 4-hour body in previous entries and have mentioned the book Building a Gymnastics Body. Well I am starting to think that I want to combine some of the different things discussed each book.
My goal is to build up my strength and flexibility to the maximum I can achieve while maintaining my current body weight (or at least around it plus or minus about 5lbs due to Creatine supplementation).
The diet part is going to be tricky, I have never been one to eat very unhealthy but I am probably going to have to start restricting my diet in order to raise my natural testosterone levels. That means lots of eggs and red meat for me. In the morning when I wake up it will be eggs and at night it will be eggs before bed. Meh!
Also, I am beginning a supplementation program that includes drinking a mixture of cayenne pepper and water, fish oil, creatine ethyl ester and multi-vitamins. Most of those things are pretty self-explanatory except for the cayenne/water mixture. This combo will be taken for its thermogenic nature and will allow me to lower my body fat.
I am not overly concerned about being ripped so my diet wont be some insanely complicated thing where I watch every carb, count every calorie and have a freak out about raising insulin from eating to much fruit.
Next thing I will be making sure to do is to make all my bathes cold bathes because this again raises testosterone as well lowers body fat.
As far as the exercise program goes I intend to get up at around 5 a.m. M-F before I have to go to work so I can do a little egoscue, kettlebell swinging and yoga.
After work I intend to do that superhuman strength training protocol discussed in The 4-Hour Body. Which basically is doing bench and dead lift three times a week. The way this is done is low reps and long rest periods between sets.
I want to figure out a way to include squats into this plan but I'm not sure how I am going to do this. I was thinking since I work out at home that I could do low rep squat work by doing one zercher dead lift and then proceed to squats for reps before setting the bar down.
After all this lifting I intend to do the work out of the day from the gymnastic bodies website to build some foundational gymnastic strength. I say I intend to because the super human protocol is designed in order to allow the athlete to do weight training along with their sport specific training.
Once again I'll end this with some yoga.
Finally, assuming I am not completely exhausted from all this I want to run a little on weekends either normal or retro running depending on how I feel.
That is the plan lets hope that I can stick to it, but first I just need this back to heal.
So here is where my head at right now as far as exercising goes.
I have no doubt talked about the 4-hour body in previous entries and have mentioned the book Building a Gymnastics Body. Well I am starting to think that I want to combine some of the different things discussed each book.
My goal is to build up my strength and flexibility to the maximum I can achieve while maintaining my current body weight (or at least around it plus or minus about 5lbs due to Creatine supplementation).
The diet part is going to be tricky, I have never been one to eat very unhealthy but I am probably going to have to start restricting my diet in order to raise my natural testosterone levels. That means lots of eggs and red meat for me. In the morning when I wake up it will be eggs and at night it will be eggs before bed. Meh!
Also, I am beginning a supplementation program that includes drinking a mixture of cayenne pepper and water, fish oil, creatine ethyl ester and multi-vitamins. Most of those things are pretty self-explanatory except for the cayenne/water mixture. This combo will be taken for its thermogenic nature and will allow me to lower my body fat.
I am not overly concerned about being ripped so my diet wont be some insanely complicated thing where I watch every carb, count every calorie and have a freak out about raising insulin from eating to much fruit.
Next thing I will be making sure to do is to make all my bathes cold bathes because this again raises testosterone as well lowers body fat.
As far as the exercise program goes I intend to get up at around 5 a.m. M-F before I have to go to work so I can do a little egoscue, kettlebell swinging and yoga.
After work I intend to do that superhuman strength training protocol discussed in The 4-Hour Body. Which basically is doing bench and dead lift three times a week. The way this is done is low reps and long rest periods between sets.
I want to figure out a way to include squats into this plan but I'm not sure how I am going to do this. I was thinking since I work out at home that I could do low rep squat work by doing one zercher dead lift and then proceed to squats for reps before setting the bar down.
After all this lifting I intend to do the work out of the day from the gymnastic bodies website to build some foundational gymnastic strength. I say I intend to because the super human protocol is designed in order to allow the athlete to do weight training along with their sport specific training.
Once again I'll end this with some yoga.
Finally, assuming I am not completely exhausted from all this I want to run a little on weekends either normal or retro running depending on how I feel.
That is the plan lets hope that I can stick to it, but first I just need this back to heal.
Barefoot style running in the winter and for the cheap
So ever since I read the book Born to Run I have been dying to try my hand at barefoot running or at least running without normal running shoes.
Well now there are all these shoes coming out that are being marketed as barefoot running shoes like the Vibram 5 Fingers, Nike Free and I think Timothy Ferriss mentions something called Terra Bosa in his book The 4-hour body.
The problem with all of these shoes are well there expensive and I don't really have that much money at least not enough to justify quite yet purchasing shoes that look like a pair of socks.
My alternative so far (as of yesterday) is to wear those beach shoes you can buy at Rite Aid for $10 in the summer. The soles are flat and thin and are actually surprisingly warm when worn with a thin pair of socks inside them.
I'm not sure if I am reaping all the benefits from running this way as opposed to running in those other shoes or going barefoot, but until then I will probably continue to run this way and since it is winter I will keep my socks on underneath the shoes.
Overall, I have to say that running this way yesterday was quite a bit different then running in normal running shoes or even in Converse Chuck Taylor's (which was my previous solution to running barefoot).
I have to say that when I ran this way the muscles in the middle of my feet got pretty tired and my ankles actually felt like they were getting worked out. I'm guessing that as far my ankles are concerned is that running this way is forcing them to stabilize body and work at keeping its balance more when running this way.
Well now there are all these shoes coming out that are being marketed as barefoot running shoes like the Vibram 5 Fingers, Nike Free and I think Timothy Ferriss mentions something called Terra Bosa in his book The 4-hour body.
The problem with all of these shoes are well there expensive and I don't really have that much money at least not enough to justify quite yet purchasing shoes that look like a pair of socks.
My alternative so far (as of yesterday) is to wear those beach shoes you can buy at Rite Aid for $10 in the summer. The soles are flat and thin and are actually surprisingly warm when worn with a thin pair of socks inside them.
I'm not sure if I am reaping all the benefits from running this way as opposed to running in those other shoes or going barefoot, but until then I will probably continue to run this way and since it is winter I will keep my socks on underneath the shoes.
Overall, I have to say that running this way yesterday was quite a bit different then running in normal running shoes or even in Converse Chuck Taylor's (which was my previous solution to running barefoot).
I have to say that when I ran this way the muscles in the middle of my feet got pretty tired and my ankles actually felt like they were getting worked out. I'm guessing that as far my ankles are concerned is that running this way is forcing them to stabilize body and work at keeping its balance more when running this way.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Back almost completely healed from Egoscue
Well last night I was reading through my copy of the 4 Hour Body and was looking at the section about reversing and curing life long injuries.
I figured since I am a fairly active person who currently has a bad back I might see what this section of the book has to offer.
In the book Ferriss talks about the different methods he has tried to relieve his back pain and the ones that he found to be most effective.
One of the methods mentioned but not considered to be the most helpful was Yoga. That's when I thought to myself Damn, because I was banking on this Yoga thing to get my back straightened out.
But he later mentions walking in Vibram 5 Finger shoes, or barefoot walking, this of course has been something I have been interested in trying since I read Born to Run earlier this year. Of course with it being winter in Michigan and me only having just graduated and using whatever little money I have for Christmas shopping this was an impractical solution to my problem.
Ferriss talks in great detail about this egoscue method of rehab, great, here was something I could actually do in my living room without freezing my feet.
There were about 5 or 6 rehab exercises described in the book but Ferriss said that only three should be done on a daily basis, but in my head I was thinking what the hell I'll try them all.
So, I gave them shot not really expecting great results but low-and-behold I was completely wrong. I was feeling great my back still had a slight kink in it but I figured I would test the water with a few Yoga poses.
After attempting a few poses I was convinced that I needed to put this into my daily routine, my flexibility through my back was better then it has been all year.
I woke up this morning even more surprised because my back felt even better then it did from the night before.
Anyways definitely worth checking out if you have a bad back. Look for it in the 4-hour Body by Timothy Ferriss
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Self Experimentation Through Gymnastics and Yoga
As of late I have been trying to improve my general fitness and strength using both two things Gymnastics conditioning and Yoga.
I have never been a particularly large person let alone even very strong, what I am though is fairly athletic. For the last few years I have spent most of my attempts at becoming more fit in the weight room trying to get bigger and stronger to match my athleticism .
To give an example I went from 135lbs at the end of my senior year of high school and graduated college with a body weight hovering around 175 to 180lbs, with my heaviest being 185. I always thought if I could reach 200lbs then I would finally be big enough to start making some significant strength gains but through the years of trying to get stronger and bigger I have managed to get a few injuries that took me months to recover from.
The first major one that I can think of is a groin strain I suffered last year likely due to heavy front squats or pressing a beer keg half-full of water over my head.
Now I currently have a pretty bad back injury that I can't quite trace the source of but is most likely due to in one way or another trying to lift something heavy with my back.
So, needless to say I haven't really done much lifting of any sort to work towards my goals in the strength and weight department. But, that doesn't mean that I have given up working out as of late I have been putting a lot of my focus into gymnastics conditioning and Yoga.
It starts with Yoga, I took a yoga class my final semester of college to try and see if I could straighten out some of the kinks in my back for the most part it seemed to work but didn't really cure much of my back pain, of course during this time I was still lifting which was probably a big mistake.
I started rehab for my back and I would leave feeling great but would walk out of the athletic trainers room and into weight room, again I wouldn't recommend this.
One thing I learned that while doing rehab almost all of the exercises I was doing was largely done with body weight with medium sized rep ranges with only about 2 sets. Now, this way of rehab I think would be great if I was someone who wasn't very active already but unfortunately I am extremely active and fit.
So my solution was to get a book called Building a Gymnastics Body which you can buy off of the Gymnastics Bodies website and start utilizing some of the exercises out of that book.
The book has become my new bible for all thing body weight exercises and actually offers some new challenges to test my strength in and some great variations to classics like the push up and dips.
Alongside gymnastics training I have added a much bigger focus on Yoga and stretching and it has now become something I do daily when I wake up after a light warm up.
My results for the most part have been pretty positive, I'm not 100%, but I am starting to feel like I am coming closer to feeling healthy again.
I have never been a particularly large person let alone even very strong, what I am though is fairly athletic. For the last few years I have spent most of my attempts at becoming more fit in the weight room trying to get bigger and stronger to match my athleticism .
To give an example I went from 135lbs at the end of my senior year of high school and graduated college with a body weight hovering around 175 to 180lbs, with my heaviest being 185. I always thought if I could reach 200lbs then I would finally be big enough to start making some significant strength gains but through the years of trying to get stronger and bigger I have managed to get a few injuries that took me months to recover from.
The first major one that I can think of is a groin strain I suffered last year likely due to heavy front squats or pressing a beer keg half-full of water over my head.
Now I currently have a pretty bad back injury that I can't quite trace the source of but is most likely due to in one way or another trying to lift something heavy with my back.
So, needless to say I haven't really done much lifting of any sort to work towards my goals in the strength and weight department. But, that doesn't mean that I have given up working out as of late I have been putting a lot of my focus into gymnastics conditioning and Yoga.
It starts with Yoga, I took a yoga class my final semester of college to try and see if I could straighten out some of the kinks in my back for the most part it seemed to work but didn't really cure much of my back pain, of course during this time I was still lifting which was probably a big mistake.
I started rehab for my back and I would leave feeling great but would walk out of the athletic trainers room and into weight room, again I wouldn't recommend this.
One thing I learned that while doing rehab almost all of the exercises I was doing was largely done with body weight with medium sized rep ranges with only about 2 sets. Now, this way of rehab I think would be great if I was someone who wasn't very active already but unfortunately I am extremely active and fit.
So my solution was to get a book called Building a Gymnastics Body which you can buy off of the Gymnastics Bodies website and start utilizing some of the exercises out of that book.
The book has become my new bible for all thing body weight exercises and actually offers some new challenges to test my strength in and some great variations to classics like the push up and dips.
Alongside gymnastics training I have added a much bigger focus on Yoga and stretching and it has now become something I do daily when I wake up after a light warm up.
My results for the most part have been pretty positive, I'm not 100%, but I am starting to feel like I am coming closer to feeling healthy again.
FIrst Post
Hey guys this is your moderator for the new 4 hour body Flint, MI chapter and I am pleased to annouce the creation of this new blog dedicated to the people in Flint, MI interested in self-experimentation and simply becoming a better you.
First things first though you need to buy Timothy Ferris's book on Amazon. The book is an inspiration and should help you start with your experimenting. I know I for one will be eating three hard boiled eggs tonight (got to get that testosterone up) and may even start eating cinnamon in the morning to keep my body fat down.
Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section I can't wait to hear about what you guys are doing.
First things first though you need to buy Timothy Ferris's book on Amazon. The book is an inspiration and should help you start with your experimenting. I know I for one will be eating three hard boiled eggs tonight (got to get that testosterone up) and may even start eating cinnamon in the morning to keep my body fat down.
Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section I can't wait to hear about what you guys are doing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)