1. We can get our muscle up
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Aside from the pull up, the push up is the best exercise in calisthenics to build muscle. Why do I say that? Because the push up activates almost all the muscles in the upper body. From pecs, delts, biceps, abs, and triceps, the push up hits them all. However, there are different variations to push ups that focuses on different parts of your body. Switching up your hand placement and body motion can put stress on various muscle groups within your upper body. So here it is! this This push up guide will tell you which types of push ups to do in order to work different parts of your body. 6 pack abs: Twist ups![]() Get in a crouch position with your legs bent. Do a normal push up from that position, but twist your core, swinging your knees to one side. By swinging from side to side during each rep, you activate your entire body but especially your core! Trisexual: Diamond Push Ups![]() A study came out recently that concluded no other exercise works the triceps as much as the diamond push up. Make sure that your thumbs and pointer fingers are touching to put maximum stress on your Tri's! Explode!!!!: Clapping Push ups![]() The best thing about this variation is that you are activating your short twitch muscle fibers. Studies show that these fibers are the best to activate if you are looking to gain muscle mass and strength. To do these, assume a regular push up position, but push off with enough force so that you get as much air as possible. Clap you hands in the middle of each rep. Man Boobs no more!: Wide Grip![]() A great way to activate your chest and pectoral muscles is to increase the distance between your hands when doing a push up. Make sure you stretch so you don't tear a muscle! Spider man Push ups![]() These guys are great because it get your heart rate going while working your glutes, hamstrings, and core. On each rep, kick alternating legs out to the side. This will put extra pressure on your chest and shoulders as well. With great power comes great responsibility! Push ups are a great exercise that you can do throughout your life. Aside from these 5 variations, there are many other types of push ups you can do! Get creative and go out there and push it! What are your favorite push ups?
Introduction If you've been following this blog, then you remember my last post about the struggles with our ancestral systems and the present-day diet. If you haven't read the previous post, and are interested in doing so, click this link to be directed accordingly (Nutrition & Evolution: The Big Picture). In a nutshell, the image above summarizes the nutritional problem we face today. Survival requires using food as energy. But, contrary to the past, food is abundant. This means we can receive sufficient amounts of energy from immediate food sources and our developed ability to store energy is outdated. Today, there is very little use for storing energy as fat, but our bodies do it anyway! So, how do we fix it?
If we can't (necessarily) control the way our bodies function and metabolize food, then we need to focus on the part of the process that we can control, food. Take a good look again at the equation presented in the title image. What the image doesn't present is the important fact that the equation operates in succession. Meaning, digested food is first metabolized efficiently; and then, the excess is stored for later use! Therefore, by controlling what we eat, we can limit the amount of food going into fat and help speed up the disappearance of this evolutionary setback. This is the theory! So how do we turn this theory into practice? In order to completely limit this outdated process we need to understand the factors of food that control what is being outpoured into our fat storage system: 1) How much we eat (quantity) & 2) What we eat (nutrient density)
What We Eat Now lets talk about the food we need to eat. Here at CALIsthenics we define "good food" as food that is high in nutrition. But, this can be misconceived, because some foods are high in nutrition but also high in other "useless" substances. For example, potatoes have a lot of vitamins and nutrition in their skin, but the majority of the food is actually starchy chains of sugar. This means that our body will efficiently metabolize all of the materials that are of nutritious value, but the excess, unused materials in the potato will overflow into the second part of the equation to be stored as fat. For this reason we want to focus specifically on foods that are nutrient dense!
In Conclusion
Eating right is as much about the amount you eat, as it is about what you eat. The important thing to realize is that, although we are predisposed to store fat, we can control it. When eating right, you'd be surprised how many little calories you need to sufficiently supply your body. Being healthy is about understanding these mechanisms and then practicing them. Attached are some links with a greater list of foods and their ANDI Score for your own interest: -http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php -http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/healthy-eating/health-starts-here/resources-and-tools/top-ten-andi-scores So make the change today! There is an alternative healthy food to every unhealthy food out their. Find a way to eat right and counter the outdated system of storing fat for good. As always, please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or concerns and I will do my best to address them. Introduction As stated in my previous post about muscle soreness, Muscle Soreness: What Causes It?, DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness) is simply an inflammatory response to damaged tissue. But is this inflammatory response necessary for muscle growth? Similarly, people often rank the effectiveness of their workouts on how sore they are on days to follow. Is this thought process justifiable? Let's answer these common questions and more. Muscle Growth & Soreness Contrary to what you may think, muscle growth isn't the synthesis of additional muscle fibers. It is the repair and growth of preexisting ones. So what causes these fibers to grow? For the most part, yes, it is the breakdown of muscle proteins. This, in turn, activates the muscle fibers to repair and grow stronger. Notice how no part of that statement is relevant to an inflammatory response, aka DOMS. This means that muscle soreness isn't directly indicative of an effective workout, but can indirectly predict muscle growth through its direct relationship with muscle damage. Or can it??? It turns out that there are 2 processes that contradict the above statement.
inflammatory response you become. Therefore, you feel less sore, even though you have broken down your muscles the same amount as before. Those of you that participate in a daily workout regime probably are already experiencing this phenomenon. Don't worry. Not having muscle soreness doesn't mean you aren't working out hard enough. Your pain receptors have just become more tolerant. You are still sufficiently damaging your muscle fibers so that they rebuild stronger. Process 2: Build Muscle without Damage Against common belief, you don't actually have to break down muscle fibers to initiate muscle growth. It turns out that your muscle fibers contain mechanically sensitive receptors, called integrins, that initiate protein synthesis when put under tension. This means you can build muscle without even damaging your muscle fibers, and no damage means no soreness. In Conclusion (MOST IMPORTANT) MUSCLE SORENESS DOESN'T CORRELATE COMPLETELY WITH MUSCLE GROWTH. and MUSCLE SORENESS IS NOT INDICATIVE OF THE EFFECT OF YOUR WORKOUT. So what's the best way to tell if your workouts are packing enough punch and you are getting stronger? Elite Impact Labs says all you have to do is answer 2 questions:
1) Did you train at a high level of intensity, taking every set to absolute muscle failure? and 2) Did you improve from your previous week's performance by performing more reps or completing the set faster? We couldn't agree more. If you can answer yes to both these questions then you are on your way to a better and stronger you, regardless of how sore you are. Introduction This is a follow up to last weeks blog post on Dynamic vs. Static Stretching, where we discussed the importance of stretching the body dynamically in order to warm up the muscles and work them through their full range of motion. After looking into all different types of warm up stretches across the web, I have narrowed the selection down to the 7 best ones. Although our warm up routine at California Calisthenics doesn't involve all of these stretches, the warm up is plenty sufficient at preparing your muscles for the prescribed workouts. These stretches offer the most potential to properly warm up the entire section of the body being focused on, but which ones you should do is dependent on the exercises you will be performing. ***You can click on the image to the side to be directed to a youtube video showing the proper movement. Legs
Upper Body
Full Body
Remember, the most important thing to properly prepare the muscles for exercise is to get blood flow to the muscles. This means, at the least, go for a short jog to get your heart pumping (Next Blog post about stretching). Otherwise, perform proper warm up techniques to optimize your workout and keep your body healthy.
Introduction We all know that stretching is good for us. It started in physical education class when we were young and carried on throughout our athletic and physical lives. Stretching primes the muscles for activity by increasing their range of motion. This puts less strain on the muscle at any position and protects it from injury. Today, studies are providing new information about this phenomenon and, fortunately, the benefits of stretching listed above are still true. Conversely, new information is showing most of the types of stretches you did in grade school were actually detrimental to your physical performance.
doing a quad stretch like in the picture to the right help prepare you? It wouldn't. First, before you exercise, your muscles are stiff and cold, making them more brittle. They need to be "warmed up". Does holding a stretch provide any source of heat? The counter to this question usually is, "Why am I able to stretch further after holding the position for an extended amount of time?" Turns out this occurrence has nothing to do with the muscle being primed for activity. Your body is able to stretch further because your perception of discomfort decreases over time, so you are more willing to push the stretch further. Static stretching also intuitively doesn't make sense because running is a motion, not a held position. It requires function of the muscles throughout their entire range of motion. How does holding a stretch in one position prime the muscle at every other position. Static stretching has actually been shown to inhibit complete muscle fiber recruitment for up to 30 minutes after. Not only are your muscles unprepared for the activity, they also have conflicting messages from the brain resisting them from functioning optimally.
brain to your muscles. This means that when you commence the vigorous activity, your brain will already have developed the most efficient pathway and can recruit more muscle fibers to be used.
In Conclusion Dynamic stretching is the means to optimize your workout so you can get the most out of your efforts. It will keep you safe by preventing injury and help you increase your flexibility. So, at the least, start your workout with a short jog. Next week I will follow up with some of the best warm up exercises so you can perform to your fullest. Introduction One of the biggest misconceptions with calisthenics is that it doesn't provide enough resistance for ample muscle breakdown; and therefore, muscle gain. Intuitively, this makes sense since the only form of resistance is your body weight and, for the most part, your body weight doesn't change. The BIG misconception with this theory is: THE AMOUNT OF RESISTANCE DOESN'T DICTATE THE AMOUNT OF MUSCLE GROWTH To truly understand this misconception I must first explain a little about the different types of muscle fibers and the motor units that stimulate them.
3: Intermediate twitch: medium: can be trained to contain beneficial properties of slow and fast twitch fibers. (These fibers are very unique and can be further discussed in another blog post) Furthermore, these fibers are recruited to contract based on The Size Principle, which states that Weight Lifting Argument Knowing The Size Principle, weight lifters conclude that if they lift the heaviest weights, then they will cover the full spectrum of muscle fibers from slow to fast. It turns out that this statement is true. But because of this belief and your body weight being the highest amount of resistance one can obtain in a calisthenics workout, weight lifters have come to think that calisthenics can only take them so far in their training. The problem is that the rapidly drastic climb of excitation from slow to fast fibers makes you really susceptible to injury. Where weight lifters fault is that, again, force isn't the limiting factor of fiber recruitment, so there are safer ways to workout the entire spectrum of fibers in the muscle.
you are requiring more and more motor fibers to be recruited till they are all exhausted. Carpinelli shows that doing 20 reps of an exercise or 8 reps with higher weight have no significant difference in strength or physical outcome. So why risk injury.
The moral of this blog isn't that weight lifting is wrong, or even that calisthenics is right.The moral is that regardless of what type of exercise you are doing, effort dictates all, so push yourself beyond what you think you are capable, always tell yourself you can do one more, and never stop growing. *For a short and easy summary of Carpinelli's writing check out this link: http://www.cbass.com/Carpinelli.htm All the contradicting information surfacing about carbohydrates has created a mass confusion. It is true that carbs are calorie heavy foods that if abused can lead to obesity and other health problems, but by no means are carbs "the enemy". Eating carbohydrates is all about eating the right types of carbs. Unfortunately, most of the carbohydrate foods surrounding us are the ones we need to be avoiding. These are called simple carbohydrates. We need to be eating the second classification of carbohydrates. complex. So lets dig in! Let's learn the good, bad, and everything else about these two important classifications.
and heart disease. We highly recommend you limit the consumption of these carbohydrates. the problem is they are everywhere. Candy, fast food, white bread & rice, pastas, and foods with refined white flour surround us. Like the "forbidden fruit" these foods taste delicious and tempt us everywhere, but their consumption is ultimately harmful to our bodies.
amount of time. Complex carbohydrates come from the earth, most commonly found in fruits and vegetables. These types of carbs are also found in legumes and whole-grain breads and cereals. Eating good carbs can make you eat less calories while still fulfilling your nutritious thresholds. So eat the right types of carbs and experience the benefits of a healthy diet.
Your Body's Response to Sleep
You see, our bodies have gotten so advanced to where they now anticipate situations, like starvation. After a full night of fasting, our bodies go into a starvation mode in preparation for more hours without food. The biggest effect is with Insulin, the hormone responsible for pulling sugar out of the blood to be consumed as energy in the cells. When in starvation mode, your insulin receptors are numbed so that the liver can store sugar as fat for later energy use.
Studies have shown that insulin resistance while fasting is time dependent. The longer you fast, the more resistant your insulin receptors become, causing more fat storage and less sugar consumption. It turns out that eating a breakfast around 6-9am is the ideal amount of fasting before insulin resistance is overly compromised. When you skip breakfast and don't eat anything till lunch, the resulting amount of fat storage can be dramatic. And continued insulin resistance can lead to Type II Diabetes in the future.
So eat some breakfast, even if it is just a little bit. The consumption will jumpstart proper metabolism and end the dramatic response of starvation in the body. Skipping breakfast amplifies the negative responses to fasting, leaves you feeling tired and fatigued, and predisposes you to future health problems like Type II Diabetes. "Break the Fast" and stay healthy. The Power of Spinach I'm sure you already knew that spinach was good for you. It follows the rule we have been told time after time as kids, " The greener the food, the better it is for you." This statement couldn't be more true for this leafy green. Spinach is packed full of tons of vitamins and nutrients. In addition, it also contains dietary fiber and protein. What more could you ask for? Well, it turns out that new studies in sweden are revealing that spinach also can provide huge gains in exercise performance.
efficiently. What does that mean? It means during exercise your muscles are producing the same workloads while consuming less oxygen. The result is you can lift more, run longer, and push yourself to higher limits.
So How Do I Eat It? The most common way of eating spinach is in a salad, but there are many other options for making this leaf a part of your diet. When cooked, spinach shrivels up and since it has little flavor, it can go unnoticed in almost any meal. Put it in your scrambled eggs or your veggie stir fry. Try to eat a little bit of spinach 3 times a week to help you climb the ladder of health. |