Mid Life Fitness

Today I have a guest post from Jason Ferruggia. I think that most people will do pull ups or chins at some time, and perhaps like me you will learn better technique from this post.

To quote Julie Morgenstern, the New York Times best selling time management guru, “confident people embrace the learning opportunity a mistake or failure presents”, and I will admit to learning that I was not following the best form despite all I know about pull ups.

So, here is Jason:

1) Don’t go to failure- This is the biggest problem I see with pull
ups. Everyone goes to failure on every set. That’s because it’s so
easy to do. As soon as a single rep does not look exactly like the
previous one and you can’t get as high, the set is over. If your
speed slows down noticeably the set is over. You
would never continue a set of squats if you could no longer lock
out the weight. If you got all the way up on rep five but were only
able to get up half of the way on rep six you wouldn’t proceed to do
four more reps of partials until the set ended with the weight
crashing down on you and crippling you. But that’s exactly how
people finish their sets of pull ups. The form gets worse and worse
and worse, and they keep going and going and going, climbing up the
invisible ladder, swinging and kipping. When you do this you get no
stronger. And most of the time you get weaker. The negative effect
of training to failure is seen more on chin ups than any other
exercise. No one knows why this is, but trust me, that’s how it is.

2) Lose excess body fat- If you are carrying excess body fat your
ability to do pull ups will be greatly reduced. Extra body fat is
good for lifting more weight in certain exercises that require
greater leverage like the squat and deadlift. But that’s all it’s
good for. Other than that it’s unhealthy and unsightly.

3) Start in the proper position- All too often people start in the
dead hang position with their scapula elevated and their shoulders
touching their ears. This is dangerous and incorrect. When you do
“this all of the tension is placed on your tendons and ligaments
instead of your muscles. When you get on the bar you want to pull
your shoulder blades down and lock your shoulders into their
sockets. This is a far safer position and ensures that the stress
will be placed directly on the muscles and not the tendons and
ligaments.

4) Maintain a slight elbow bend throughout the set- This goes hand
in hand with the above tip. Before starting your set you want to
bend your elbows ever so slightly. This bend should barely be
noticeable, but it will have a huge impact on your elbow health. Do
not start with your elbows completely locked. This, again, places
all of the stress on the tendons and ligaments instead of on the
muscles. On each successive rep you should lower yourself until your
arms are nearly straight, stopping just shy of lockout. But don’t
use this as an excuse to cheat. Just shy of lockout means that your
elbows are “99% locked out;” you just don’t want that complete
extension.

5) Initiate with the lats- When you start to pull, be sure that you
fire your lats first; not your biceps. If you have trouble feeling
your lats, as many newbies do, have someone poke or slap your lats a
few times before you start pulling. Even having a partner keep his
hands in contact with your lats throughout the set may help. It may
also look a little strange to other members of your gym.

6) Drive your elbows down- To get the most out of your lats when you
chin you should think about driving your elbows down and back. Don’t
simply pull with your biceps.

7) Pull your chin to the bar- I used to be a stickler for having
people pull their chest to the bar. I still instruct beginners to do
that, knowing full well that they won’t be able to, but that it will
at least instill the importance of getting high. You only need your
chin to clear the bar. That last few inches does very little for you
lats and instead focuses the stress on the smaller, weaker muscles
of your upper/middle back. The pull up should be used to target the
lats, first and foremost. Don’t waste energy struggling with that
last few inches at the top. Get your chin over while keeping your
back arched and then lower yourself. Use other rowing exercises to
target those smaller upper back muscles and use the pul up to smoke
your lats completely.

8 ) Use a variety of grips- There are countless ways to pull your
body up. You can do chin ups with your palms facing you at a number
of different grip widths. You can also do chin ups with your palms
facing each other, or pull ups with your palms facing away at
multiple grip widths. You can pull up on bars, rings, fat bars,
ropes, towels, suspension straps, beams, Eagle Loops, and even
baseballs or softballs hanging from a chain. The variations are
endless. Use as many different chin ups as possible to avoid burnout
or overuse injuries.

9) Use a variety of rep ranges- To do a lot of pull ups you need
strength and you need endurance. Strength is built with low reps.
You can do low reps with a weighted vest or dip belt or you can
simply perform more difficult variations of pull ups. Endurance is
built with high reps. This is where the use of bands comes in handy.
Having a few different levels of band tension will allow you to vary
your rep range greatly. This will help you boost your chin up
numbers a lot faster. Some days you train in the range of 1-5 reps
for maximal strength. Some day you train in the range of 6-12, and
others you train in the range of 15-30, with a band, to improve your
endurance.

10) Strengthen your grip- The stronger your grip is the easier pull
ups will feel. I suggest getting a Captains of Crush Gripper and
using it a few times per week. You can also add in some more
specific grip work at the gym like fat bar holds, hexagon dumbbell
holds, as well as various pinching and crushing exercises.

For more great training tips and workouts pick up your copy of
Muscle Gaining Secrets today at:
http://www.TheHardGainer.com/

Train hard,
Jason Ferruggia
Strength & Conditioning Specialist
Chief Training Adviser to Men’s Fitness Magazine

Renegade Strength & Conditioning, LLC, 453 Watchung Ave, Watchung , NJ 07960, USA

All of the religious and spiritual systems have one thing in common – they have a method for grounding. You might know it as centring, prayer or contemplation but despite the names it is all a form of meditation.

In our daily lives we are especially beset by confusion. We have multiple levels of distracting communication coming in at us, any number of things which act to stress us; things we need to do, to respond to. Multitasking is commonplace even where we try to avoid it, and the end result of this process is to leave us fragmented and without focus.

We can also find ourselves withdrawing from the pressure, putting up walls and allowing ourselves to stagnate and become depressed.

Stresses damage your body

Depending on your belief system you might view your response to these problems as being an issue with your energy being, your mind or just with your spirit. We have a physical body but we also have an intangible, mental or spiritual part, the part which makes us who we are.

To improve your body you need to have focus and this means you can’t afford to be fragmented and confused, but neither can you afford to hide from the pressure either. Both will result in not scheduling your workouts, nutrition and rest properly and even when you do workout the chances of maximising what you are doing will be slight. It’s all too easy to muddle your program and not give the exercises the focus they need because your mind is somewhere else. Mental stresses will impact on chemically on your body, reducing your ability to cope and this too will slow or even reverse your progress.

The solution is to put the time aside to ground yourself. To be effective this cannot be something that is done once in a while, you need to make it a regular process and if you can’t do it every day then at least do it before each workout. You need to make sure that your focus is on what you want to be doing, to make sure that you tick every box necessary to achieve your goals.

Meditation exercise

Most meditation systems start with breathing. If you have your own system – you do yoga, Alexander technique, martial arts or belong to a religion, go and learn that part of the system and apply it to yourself. You may not have been taught it, but if you ask your teachers they will be able to help.

But if you don’t have a system or simply want to start now then follow this:

Take a seat, wherever is comfortable, close your eyes and breathe.

Open your mental eyes on your inner space. Where are you? Are you in your head, are you floating about outside your head? The first task is to bring yourself back into your head, and you do this by focusing on your breathing. As you breathe pull your awareness back inside your head.

Once you have it there, you need to start to bring it down into your body, breath by breath. Take it down past your neck, past your chest and all the way down to your pelvic floor. You can do this by visualising the bones of your chest or the backbone and go down one vertebrae each breath. If you are familiar with chakras then go down one by one, it doesn’t matter how you get there so long as you do. This is the seat of the body. I find that when I get there suddenly my breathing slows down of its own accord and I relax.

As you continue to breathe you need to be aware of the energy of the body and how it flows. You can think of the energy or spirit being drawn in as you breathe and then pushed back out as you breathe back out. If you think in terms of chakras then apply your knowledge and for example you may want to spin the root chakra. Find a visualisation that works for you.

It need only take five minutes and it may take several attempts before you can achieve it, but if you can start the energy flowing then you can clear or ground yourself. The energy is like the incoming tide, it will sweep away any disturbances; any scattered sand or water that has become backed up in a pool, leaving it fresh, clear and ready for the day.

Be present in yourself

When you are grounded then you are present in yourself, you know who you are and you are in control. If you are not grounded then life tends to live you and not the other way round. When you are centred, you are in touch with your core values, the things which you are passionate about, the things which make you who you are. If you do this before a workout then your focus is fresh, your motivation reconnected.

So this week I switched to the Hardgainer Project X. It’s time to put it through its paces and see what it’s really made of.

Now, normally you should never stop a program half way through – you’ll never make progress unless you stick with what you are doing. Flipping programs is one of the biggest reasons people don’t see gains. But as it happened, my previous program was an extension of an older one and the trap tear injury meant that I’d had two weeks out so it was perfect timing to try something new.

On that note, here is a training tip I picked up from a friend of mine who you may have heard of – Vince Delmonte (you can read more about Vince here). If you’ve been doing a workout for a while then your gains are going to start slowing down. One reason for this is that while you’ve grown the muscles you are targeting, the other muscles which you use have not grown as much. Take as an example shrugs which target the traps. It’s not unusual to reach a point where your grip strength isn’t up to the loads that you need to keep improving on the traps. So, take a break in your program, target the forearms for a month, then go back. This time you’ll be able to hold onto the bar or dumbbells long enough to start working those traps. You can do this with almost any exercise.

Back to the Hardgainer program. When you start a new program always drop back on the weight. The first time through is always a case of feeling your way to find the right balances. It might take two or three weeks to work up to the right weight, but that’s OK. Now for me, this program has a lot more volume than I’ve been working with, and it’s very intense. So I’ve dropped back on the weight and not really pushed myself.

I started out with too much weight on the squat, I’ve trimmed it back now and today was much better. Other exercises such as the shrug I was too light, but as a result I know a better weight for next time.

The first day is a long workout, and it took me more than an hour. The others I completed in comfortably less than that. Now I know what I’m doing, I can shave time off and certainly I expect to bring the others down to about forty minutes. That first one I’ll get under the hour, beyond that I’ll have to see.

Got any training tips you’d like to share? Add a comment below, I’d appreciate your thoughts.