02 Mar 2024
03 Mar 2024
Survived the 15 Days Lunar New Year festivities and good-glut onslaught!
February being a shorter month is always tough catching up to the staples of my "Daily Salad" of basic exercise. Yes this is a Leap Year so its only 2 days down from January... BUT
"The In-Laws Are in Town"
That made all the difference this time as I am shuttling to bring them out. This really eats into workout time on some days. Make sense to do more spread out exercising through out the day. Also decided even if I can't shake off another few kilos, will just run more and whip enough on abs to make things more defined.
Yes yes...it seems no matter what I did, weight wise seems to be stuck at ~77kg in the morning by now. However everything just got bigger... thought it was my own imagination in front of the mirror but the same old tee shirts are telling me it's for real!
Not looking forward to Mar with a fortnight worth of traveling that spans 12 flights plus driving for ~28000km!
My personal preference?... You guess it, I definitely prefer calisthenics.
But always
one to believe in taking the useful parts out of other disciplines to
complement/ supplement my principal goals. My approach has changed over time. Started out almost 100% with just bodyweight exercises but last year has gone back to the gym and re-started with more running at the same time.
Weights
Doing a benchpress, deadlift, barbell squat or bicep curl immediately makes most people equate these with bodybuilding or powerlifting. But the way I see it is to help in my overall strength training.
Pre-exhausting with dumbbell press to get the pushups and dips to failure without excessive reps above.
The point is I'm not push/ pulling or lift to keep breaking PRs but will still rep it out with a vengeance for the intensity needed in most workout sessions.
"But you can always just do weighted calisthenics right?"
Sure. However there are a limited number of effective calisthenics moves where one can add resistance effectively and safely. I have seen too much stupidity with "creative weighted calisthenics"...
One important thing is always to train safe and stay away from unnecessary risk and injuries.
Oh.. and I may get some flak mentioning the importance of cardio... because some swears by just resistance training and believes cardio work is pointless.
My philosophy of a total functional fitness package is to be able to run, jump, lift, pull, push + having stability and balance...
...which reminds me that's really what I did in the army 30+ years ago. Yes, if it comes to real functional fitness for a purpose... there is no denying that's what I got from the military years ago. Pound for pound there is nothing like hauling your ass with 40-50kg of gears and trudge 20km after jumping out of an airplane...
Today, life has gone back full circle to my younger days -- tuning my workouts in a similar manner but towards long term health and fitness goals.
And something I have been incessantly talking about... Proprioception and stability training. Nothing is more important with aging and able to balance. Building muscle mass alone (which is definitely important to fight sarcopenia) but getting all bulky and waddling like Big Bird of Sesames Street, isn't what I envision my future to be.
quote from good ol' Bruce...
As the title suggest, its been a subject that got me putting on my thinking cap in the past year. There are 2 sides of the camp... in weight-centric groups there will be many from young to old that swears by going heavy to load up the plates. While some others will always champion lighter or speaks volume on bodyweight training.
After some reflecting- I find it boil down to identifying "WHAT I WANT" vs imagining what I will be. Adding on factors like age, present build and any lingering injuries to the bigger equation:
Yes that sounds a lot like another new category of fitness training-- The Hybrid Athlete. However as I thought further, it's really no different to my army days... Log PT, unarmed combat, running, forced marches and so on...
In essence, yes, what I want in everything now was taken for granted when I could easily do all of them when younger.
When it comes to strength and strength endurance, its not looking to benchpress 300lbs or deadlifting 500lb day after day. Rather...
Strength functionality personally to me would be things like the ability to complete 4-5x on a monkey bar continuously without a break or doing 1 pullup going from one rung to the next on the monkey bar.
Strength-Stability: I prize the ability to get up on one leg from a full deep squat more than a barbell bell squat hoisting 300-400lb on my shoulder. Although I wouldn't mind able to do the latter :)
With those thoughts formulated around the start of 2023- I began to change up the way to train. Started doing a lot of things I would otherwise not be doing today.
Imp0rtantly, have also learned to slow down and train properly. Today is the start of another phase in my pullup training. Working towards that "perfect" L-sit PullUps which started about 15 months ago from the first crooked-legged L-sit ChinUps and arms with half-assed extension.
Max today was 2 of these in good form... but I have learned to be patient and certain that in time the reps will work themselves up any given set.
More importantly, what's gleaned from this past year doing things slow and deliberate in an attempt to improve form has an added bonus. It fixes or at least helps the recovery in many kind of strain injuries. This is "real-time" analysis having to live with a lot of stupid strain-injuries sustained which are really difficult to totally rid with daily workouts ongoing.
I hope this and "meditative" deadhang will bring a further improvement in enhancing the recovery of shoulder related strains/ issues.
Kick starting the first complete month of the new year... nothing really new. Been training as usual. All about consistency. No New Year resolutions, never needed entertaining such thoughts all my life. If there is something to be done, you don't have to wait until a new year to start...
Finally gotten something else in the middle of Jan. First Jumping Muscle Up. Been doing straight bar dips after work for months after parking the car in the evening by using Pullovers to get up. So this was a pretty exciting change. Also learned to have more awareness of the transition with the jump momentum to get up.
Achieve: Jumping MuscleUp at 1.8m Bar, -- slightly above my height.
More weight sessions at the gym too. But Daily Salad of basic exercises didn't fall away this time. Manage to hit the monthly quota again. Except for PushUps but then again Dec numbers were a little more than usual.. Stopped just shy of 800 counts for Jan. Given all the rest, not really missing much.
Running is kind of hard to gauge though. Very slight increase in average heart rate but lots of time, weather was pretty hot too. Plus I been using the less than stellar Saucony PwrRun over my preferred Xtep. Might need another pair of shoes soon.
Last few days of the month was thinking of getting back more with skills training... Headstand, Crow/ Frog, Straddles and maybe Elbow Levers... will KIV for Feb.