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Last June I blogged about the 100 Pushup Challenge with the sincere intention of joining you all in the effort. Well, after a summer of silly mishaps*, I’ve finally recuperated enough to hit the floor and push my way up to a hundred. I’m currently on my second round of week 2 (I wasn’t ready for week 3 after the second exhaustion test) but I’m not discouraged. In fact, I’m totally digging the program. I love that the plan is laid out for me, all I have to do is show up, and it’s super easy to fit a few push-ups into the day. I guess it’ll be a little time consuming once I’m up to sets of 15+, but my brain seems to like the singular challenge of doing one type of exercise in a session. The time commitment doesn’t really phase me.

The ultra nice thing is that I don’t really see the pushups as exercise; it’s actually kind of fun, especially when I’m well rested and feeling gung-ho. And doing push-ups is a total mind-trip. When I first did the max pushup test, I could barely muster a few. But once I had a few goals put in front of my face, it was far easier to crank out a few more. Getting fit is all about these Jedi mind tricks, isn’t it? I think I can… I think I can… I think I can…

I’m just stoked that I’m doing some resistance exercise again, something I’ve barely touched since I quit the gym. Go me.

Speaking of push-ups, MizFit has a nifty vid on her blog for all you folks who are looking for a challenge. Her advice: get some balls!

* I fell off my bike - ouch! - and then I fell on the pavement - double ouch! The result: bruised ribs and a sad Monica. But I’m all better now!

A little over a week ago, JD at Get Fit Slowly announced that he was starting the “one hundred pushups” training program. Loads of people have followed his lead and I think I’m inspired to join them.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any resistance exercise, over a year, in fact. Since I I quit the gym, I’ve been swimming, cycling and walking up a storm. And though I’ve been meaning to work in some sit-ups and pushups, I never quite got around to it. I optimistically hoped that swimming would keep my upper body strength up to snuff, but this morning I learned otherwise.

I set off to do my first pushup, body raised off the ground, straight as a board. I lowered myself down and encountered a bit of a surprise: it was really hard to push myself back up. I was shocked by how difficult it was.

I know I have more pushups in me. I’m not sure about 100 - this isn’t a numbers game, after all. I’d rather be able to do a few pushups with good form than a whole bunch of jerky, pointless excuses for pushups. The “one hundred pushups” program seems like a good place to start. So why not?

More blogging about 100 pushups:

• MizFit, who has a great video that demonstrates how to do a pushup
• Dave at Geek-Fitness
• Shauna The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

Anyone else got pushup fever?

Don’t be scared to lift the heavy boulders… just don’t drop them on your head!

Hey girlies, if you’ve been wanting to build muscle but have been hesitant to push yourself with the weights then think again. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research shows that women who want to build muscle strength and endurance should opt for a “traditional” strength training routine, pumping iron with more weight and fewer reps than other strength routines.

Researchers at Ohio University studied three groups of healthy, college-aged females who performed three different training methods over a six week period:

• Traditional strength training - heavier weight, fewer reps
• Endurance strength training - lighter weight, more reps
• Low velocity strength training - lighter weight, fewer reps, slower workout

Workouts consisted of leg presses, back squats and knee extensions. At the end of the six weeks, participants were measured for absolute strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance and body composition.

If you’ve done any strength training, then you may not be surprised by the results:

• The traditional strength group gained the most strength in leg press and knee extension exercises; the groups were not significantly different in the squat exercise
• The traditional endurance training group was the most successful at boosting muscular endurance
• Cardiovascular endurance didn’t increase significantly in any of the groups
• All of the groups combined showed a small decrease in percent body fat, but it was not statistically significant.

It’s interesting that body fat didn’t go down by much, but I suppose that’s because these women were “healthy” to begin with. So don’t panic if you’re hitting the weights hoping to lose body fat. Last year, research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that strength training can reduce body fat in overweight or obese premenopausal women, even without dietary changes. The bigger message is: don’t fear the bigger weights. Allow me to refer you to one of my favorite sites for women’s weight training, stumptuous.com. In the words of its wonderful author, Mistress Krista:

If you’re a woman who’s always secretly eyed those dumbbells but has always had some dummkopf tell you you would “hurt yourself”, “get too big”, or Gawd knows what other idiocies, this is a good place for you to start finding out the truth and to learn to love the iron.

Best Bet For Boosting Brawn In Women Is Traditional Strength Training [ScienceDaily]
How Strength Training Can Reduce Body Fat [dietblog]
Women’s Weight Training [stumptuous.com]

A recent study published in the Obesity journal not only supports the role of resistance training in weight loss, but also suggests that a diet and aerobics alone may result in lost muscle and a decreased metabolism.

Researchers at the University of Alabama studied three groups of overweight women, each on a different exercise regime: aerobic, resistance, and no exercise training. All women followed a calorie-restricted diet, and all subjects lost weight, but the differences in body composition following the weight loss was astounding:

• The aerobic group lost less fat than the resistance group
• Both aerobic and no-exercise groups decreased their metabolism and their muscle mass
• The resistance group conserved muscle and metabolism

Thanks to Josh at Fitfilter for linking to this. I agree with his conclusion: strength training is vitally important if you’re trying to maintain your muscle and metabolism while losing weight. Moreover, strength is just as important for women as it is for men. So don’t be afraid to get hard, ladies. Scared? Then check stumptuous.com for a little inspiration.

Resistance Training Conserves Fat-free Mass and Resting Energy Expenditure Following Weight Loss

I just stumbled across a really great series from Outdoor mag. circa 2002.

The series is called The Shape of Your Life and it presents what looks like a really sensible and long term fitness programme.

Over the months you work from building endurance to strength and on to flexibility before moving on to speed and power and then finally balance and agility.

Many of the exercises are functional in nature, the writing supporting the programme is informative, inspirationally straight-foward and sometimes funny.

The endurance programme starts with building an aerobic base through heart rate training, a topic, er…, well… close to my heart? (sorry) Speaking of which, my running is going well now that I’m back from my travels.

Take a look and see if you find some inspiration.

Link to series index
Link to series introduction
Link to month one training plan

If you stumble across something great on the web and you think the SmarterFitter community might be interested in reading about it please let us know.

One of the fitness trends I’m following is the movement towards minimalist training using functional training techniques. That’s training movements and not muscles.

Here’s the NYT on why the push-up, a classic functional exercise, is so important.

“It takes strength to do them, and it takes endurance to do a lot of them,” said Jack LaLanne, 93, the fitness pioneer who astounded television viewers in the 1950s with his fingertip push-ups. “It’s a good indication of what kind of physical condition you’re in.”

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.

Link

Dr. Atkins left his mark on the world by making protein one of the most debated diet topics of our time. Thanks, doc, no we’re really confused. What is protein? And how much protein do we need?

Lauren, a personal trainer, tackles these questions and more in her post Protein: Why? How Much? When? Though aimed at strength trainers, her post easily applies to the rest of us normally-muscled folk (especially those of us who’d like to put a bit more Arnold in our biceps). She explains in simple terms what protein is and why we need it, and also has a good tip to help you figure out what’s best for you

Check what level of protein you are eating now. Just for one day, write down everything you eat, and then figure out how many grams of protein it was…

If you are strength training regularly and are aiming to build muscle and lose fat, build mass, lose fat and maintain muscle, or you are participating in heavy exercise and your protein intake is currently low, try to get between 1.5-2grams/ kg to start with. Up that intake to around 2.2 grams/kg. If you aren’t strength training…start. There are too many benefits for you to avoid this kind of exercise.

Another way to look at it to start, is to consume at least 30% of your daily calorie needs from protein. I prefer to look at grams/kg however this will also give you a decent number to aim for, and simply another way to look at it.

If you don’t want to count the amount of protein you eat, make a conscious effort to get some quality protein at every meal,

By the way, you don’t need supplements to get enough protein. And if she seems hell-bent on strength training, there’s lots of good reasons for this, but I’ll save that for another post!

Link to Protein: Why? How Much? When?

Last Sunday, and with no advertising to lure them, 5,000 people, 90% of them male, converged on a 150-acre area of countryside in South Staffordshire, the Dickensian-sounding Mr Mouse Farm For Unfortunates. There, they spent anything between 57 minutes and five hours running through turbulent streams and ludicrously uneven woodland areas, up precipitous mud hills and down nettle-festooned slopes, tackling obstacles with names such as Tyre Torture and Fiery Holes. This year, only 3,000 managed to finish the course. The 1997 race saw seven people break their legs, and in 2001, 700 people developed hypothermia. This is why participants were encouraged to take out personal insurance and sign health-risk waivers. This is why the event is called Tough Guy.

Okay, so it is a bit of fun and great marketing but is it any good for you?

The organiser was heavily involved in setting up the London Marathon in the early 80s and then decided that road running was breaking people down, causing long term injuries. He got into doing shorter off road events to reduce the amount of stress on joints by picking courses on softer ground.

The article interviews one runner who describes the functional training programme she uses to be able to compete in this race:

The specific training’s really changed my bodyshape: I’m doing a lot of hanging from bars, burpees [jumping to a squat from a press-up position, then jumping to an upright position] and press-ups, which I could never do before.” Hinks completed the course in an admirable two hours and 45 minutes. “I’m very impressed with myself. I’ve got baby biceps, I’ve lost a stone in weight, and my upper body has really developed.”

So, soft ground, full body exercise and a good chance of hypothermia… I guess it is up to you to make the trade off.

Link to the Guardian story
Link to a Guardian gallery of photos
Link to a Flickr Group, lots of good photos

Over the past few months I’ve come across a couple of articles about functional training. Gym Jones used it to train the cartoon-like warriors in 300 and then I caught an article in Outdoors about the Monkey Bar Gymnasium, a non-traditional gym with no machines or mirrors.

What is functional training?

From Wikipedia:

Functional training involves mainly weight bearing activities targeted at core muscles of the abdomen and lower back). Most fitness facilities have a variety of weight training machines which target and isolate specific muscles. As a result the movements do not necessarily bear any relationship to the movements people make in their regular activities or sports. Functional training attempts to adapt or develop exercises which allow individuals to perform the activities of daily life more easily and without injuries.

That’s a bit dry, isn’t it?

From Monkey Bar Gymnasium:

Natural fitness uses a series of free range of motion movements and body weight training. You use your own body weight with or without resistance in order to build functional strength. Strength you can actually use for everyday activities such as shoveling snow or cleaning the house. Weight machines isolate your muscles and restrict your movement to the track of the machine. Training isolated movements restricts your body from developing stability and support muscle around your larger muscle groups. Stability muscles prevent injury! Your muscles were never meant to be isolated; they are designed to work together for overall functional strength.

Why is functional training interesting?

Well, I have felt for a while that going to the gym is a bit of a waste of money and that it is better to get out into the world and get your exercise, walking, cycling, hiking, running. I’m just more inclined to actually do those things. But, I’ve not really found a good way of matching those cardiovascular exercises with good, free, go anywhere strength exercises. I think that functional training might do the trick.

The Monkey Bar Gymnasium has its daily routines online, including a no-weight training programme.

Link