Last year my fitness goal was to touch my toes. Still working on that one.... My fitness goal for 2016 is a muscle up. It is basically a pull up into dip over the bar all in one fluid motion. There are various variations but I'll be trying to do a straight bar muscle up with a kip.
Here is my first muscle up attempt on 2/19/2016. I had been working on my pull ups quite a bit in the last 12 months and at this point I can do about 6-8 good form pull ups.
Another attempt, same result
I have 1 day a week dedicated to muscle up training. I've started off with the following
3 * Regular Pull ups
3 * Dead Hang
3 * Knees to Elbows (hang from bar and swing your legs up till your knees touch your elbows)
I'm also doing straight bar dips at the office and working on my grip strength with my captain of crush grippers. I'm going to add some things from the following and start doing some variations of the initial pull up movement
Hat tip to Erik Aho from work who suggested this video series.
I already shared my office setup that showed my stand up desk setup, chair and a few other gadgets. We know that sitting all day is bad for us. Even if you are working out everyday for 30 mins and getting your recommended amount of exercise but living a sedentary lifestyle you still won't be healthy.
Here's a study where they examined the sedentary behavior among elite professional footballers (soccer)
Another good article on why sitting all day might be undoing your time in the gym.
However standing all day isn't the answer either and you will have similar problems if you just stand all day. The key is constant movement and positional changes. I'm a big fan of Katy Bowman's philosophy on movement and her book move your dna.
How do you achieve that when you have to work at a computer for 8 hours a day?
The first thing you need is a timer or reminder system to let you know its time to take a break or move. I use Workrave, it is free and very customizable. Another article on some other options which I have no experience with.
The defaults on Workrave are quite intrusive. I've settled on a micro break every 10 mins and rest break every 30 mins. It seems to be the general consensus that you need to do something every 30 mins to undo the damage from sitting.
For the micro break a little reminder will pop up on the top of your screen.
If you keep working it will just disappear and then reappear based on the postpone time you set. If you want to take the break you have to stop typing and moving the mouse. The screen will then lock for the time that you set, which in my case is 15 seconds. During these micro breaks I will simply do a quick stretch or stand up for a second. I also avert my eyes from the screen and focus on something in the distance to avoid eye strain. Fortunately I have a window in my office, but you could also look across the room or whatever far point is available to you.
Every 30 mins I take a rest break for 1 min 30s. This is where I will do a little more stretching or exercises and I will also often switch to standing or sitting. One of the nice things about Workrave is that it gives you exercises to do while the screen is locked.
So you can just follow along, or do something on your own. Here are some more ideas for things to do from Sitting Solution.
You will get some funny looks from other employees and I've been asked if I was ok when I was in cube land and doing cat cows on the floor.
Here are some of the different sitting/standing positions I use.
A little difficult to see because the half moon foam pad is black but I'm stretching my calf on it in the above pic.
Ultimately I probably take less breaks than this as I often postpone breaks if I'm heads down but just having the reminder there is a good way to keep me honest.
There are some annoyances with Workrave. It tries to figure out if you're working and when you aren't it pauses the timer. This can be somewhat annoying if you're reading a document because it will pause the timer that whole time. You can set it to reading mode which will turn this feature off
but you have to remember to do that after each time you start Workrave or there are some regedit hacks you can do to change the settings. Check out this article and in particular the comments section for how to edit your regedit file. Not recommended if you're not technically inclined.
Aside from the breaks with stretching there are a couple of other things I do. When its nice out I will take the occasional walk but everyday I walk the stairs a couple times a day.
Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I work on the 2nd floor and the building has 6 floors. So I take my captain of crush grippers and head for the stairs. Walking up 2 steps at a time I alternate hands with the gripper every flight. Once at the top there is a straight bar railing and I do 10-15 straight bar dips.
Not only am I greasing the groove but this will help me with my 2016 fitness goal to do a muscle up as the final movement is a straight bar dip. I then do a little core work on the hand rails, hold this for 15 seconds or so.
Ok my form looks nothing like that but you get the idea, then head back down. On the way down I'll swing down using the hand rails. Just another way to get a different movement in my day. This all only takes about 4 mins and I'll do it when I need to go to the bathroom so any work time lost is absolutely minimal.
Finally 10-15 mins on the ping pong table in the afternoon. This will actually get my heart rate up to around 115.
Other options are to walk while you take any phone calls on your phone. You could try doing a walking work meeting. Park your car further away. Take the stairs over the elevator. Get creative there are plenty of options but the key is to move as much as possible in different ways and not stay in a static position whether that's sitting or standing. Sitting all day and then killing yourself with a 30 min crossfit wod won't make you healthy.
I'm sure you've heard that sitting is the new smoking. Well I wanted to share my office setup so you can see some of the tools I use to try and counter act the lack of movement throughout the average work day.
Fortunately for me I have a pretty progressive employer who understands the benefits of making employees happy. Based on employee feedback we were given the choice of a sit/stand desk or a new chair (we had a choice of 4 different chairs that we could try out). It was a no-brainer for me to go for the sit stand workstation. A new chair doesn't address the fact that I would still be sitting all day. The one you see in the picture is an Ergotron, I think they are around the $500 range. When I first got the desk I was standing 30 mins at a time sometimes longer. However I started to get calf cramps in the middle of the night. At first I thought it was my workouts or a mineral deficiency of some kind but I couldn't figure it out. However eventually I realized it might be the amount of time I was standing. I eventually settled on standing 10 mins of every hour. Now I tend to stand a little longer but with less frequency.
I bought it sight unseen. I had been looking for an alternative chair for a while as a regular chair really bothers my lower back. I heard Joe Rogan talk about the chair on his podcast. It is $850. I really balked at the price of this chair but once I figured how much I would be using it I treated it like a bed purchase and that it really would be worth while to make the investment in the chair. My fairly constant lower back pain was also a good motivator to purchase the chair. The particular model I got is designed to work with a sit stand desk and when you sit in it you don't really use the back of the chair as it naturally puts you in more neutral spine position. I also like that you can adjust the height and sit a little higher up like a bar stool. It works great with the sit stand desk in this way and enables me to adjust my seating position throughout the day. It is still possible to slouch and have your pelvic tilt but it starts you in a much better position.
The mouse I use is an Evoluent vertical mouse. A coworker turned me onto these.
I switched to this to take some pressure off my right wrist.
You can see in the picture where a lot of the pressure was on my wrist with a regular mouse. This is from years of working on a computer. It took a little while to get used to the mouse but overall I think my wrist thanks me for the change.
I use an anti fatigue mat to stand on when I'm standing. I bought this Joe fatigue mat for $14 and have been very happy with it for the price. The carpet is very minimal and the floor is quite unforgiving if you're standing on it. I also take my shoes off when I'm at my desk. I use the golf ball to massage the bottoms of my feet when I'm sitting. When I'm standing I use the half moon foam pad to stretch my calves.
I have these captain of crush grippers at my desk which I use periodically to improve my grip strength. They are pretty much the gold standard in grippers and come in various strengths so you can just purchase the next one up once you get strong enough. I have the sport (80 lbs) and the trainer (100 lbs). I started on the sport and had a pretty weak grip. I'm only 140 lbs so your mileage may vary. You might want to start with the trainer or higher if you already have a strong grip or have bigger stronger hands.
That's a himalayan salt lamp. My wife got me some of these for xmas and I put one in the office. She got it here. They are supposed to negatively ionize the air and have some benefits. Worst case it gives off a nice soothing glow to bring out your inner hippie.
That's the ping pong table in our game room at work. Yes we have a game room at work and I play ping pong almost daily. Great way to break up the day and get some different movements in. Read more about how I stay healthy during the day with my office work outs.
To some my fitness goal for 2015 might seem to lack a certain degree of difficulty. However, there has never been a point in my life where I remember being able to touch my toes. I'm sure my parents could come up with a few stories of me touching my toes when I was a baby playing with weeble wobbles.
The last time I was close was when I was doing two a day practices in high school soccer. I remember towards the end of two a days I was just about able to clip my toe if I bent my toe towards me and really went for it. There was certainly no grabbing of the toe or holding a position where my finger was touching my toe. Now some 25 years later and lots of sitting and staring at a computer screen you can imagine how flexible I am. This is my starting point. A pretty ridiculous 10 inches from my toes.
I started doing a fitness goal each year in 2014. My goal for that year was running 3 miles in 21 mins. Admittedly I hadn't done any running for many years. I didn't achieve that goal as the best I managed was around 21:30. It gave me a new appreciation for my brother's running prowess, who is 3 1/2 years older and runs 6 miles in 36 mins. 2015 I really wanted to improve my mobility for a host of reasons. I had already started doing some foam rolling and tissue work with a lacrosse ball to fix my tight hamstring and my lower back pain on the advice of my chiropractor (if you need a good one in Indianapolis see Dr Scott at Summit Spine). I also needed more hip mobility to allow me to do a proper back squat without stressing my lower back. And finally I wanted to reduce my chance of injury playing indoor soccer. I'll probably do a whole post on mobility but my goal of touching my toes was just part of a general goal of increasing my mobility and flexibility.
The main protocol I used was based on this move skill post.
2 rounds of Leg Swings, 10x Side to side, 10x Front and back
25ft of Waiter’s Bow without rounding your back (this isn’t the stretch yet, you are just warming up!)
Now for the hard work. You are going to perform 2 full rounds of Band Hamstring Stretch.
Be sure to watch the full video. Each Round will consist of:
10 Straight Leg Kicks – Kick high as possible with your knee straight and then drive your leg to the ground working against the tension of the band.
10 Second Straight Leg Hold – Again knee locked out, you are going to be pulling your leg towards your head while simultaneously driving our heel back towards the ground. DON’T LET YOUR LEG WIN. The intention here is to work against the stretch.
20 Heel Drives – This is where things get spicy. You are going to attempt to drive your heel up and overhead while pulling the band towards your body. Pull hard! The idea is to momentarily hit a stretch that would otherwise be unbearable. You should always be able to lock your knee. If you can’t, back off just a bit.
10 Second Bent Leg Hold- Pull your knee Into your chest with the bottom of your foot facing up or slightly overhead. Choke up on the band to increase the tension and pull in hard towards your chest. Simultaneously try to push the bottom of your foot up and overhead. You should feel a deep stretch in your high hamstring.
10 Straight Leg Kicks- Repeat exactly like the first round, notice how much range of motion (ROM) you have gained.
I would do this mostly in the evenings, choosing to spend most of my evening tv time crawling around on the carpet and pulling my legs into uncomfortable banded stretches much to the bemusement of my wife.
About half way through the year I also added a few things from this nerd fitness blog post
I also started attending a weekly 60 min yoga session. Flexibility was the main reason for starting yoga but I found I really enjoyed the relaxation that yoga brings and the calmness I feel afterwards. I am admittedly one of the only men in the class and I was careful to wear the appropriate under garments as I didn't want to shock any middle aged women with my downward dog.
I also wanted a more balanced approach to working out instead of all weights and cardio with no focus on mobility.
As you can see this is an aggressive foam roller. And to be quite honest it is pretty painful to use at first. But I have to say after using it for a couple of weeks it does the trick and I'll be using it regularly to break up the muscle fascia. I went full bore on this thing every night from xmas to the end of the year in a last ditch effort to reach my goal.
So how did I get on? Well I unfortunately I didn't track my progress regularly which I'm regretting now because I would have loved to see how my progression tracked over time. I certainly feel like I hit a bit of wall as I got close to the end of the year. Here are my results on 12/31/2015. I measured the stretch after just a minimal warm up.
As you can see I'm still about 4 inches away. Until looking at the pictures and despite my wife telling me I was 3 inches away I was sure I was much closer. Still work to do.
Despite my failings I'll log this one into the memory banks as something I'd still like to do along with my 21 min 3 mile run. I will post quarterly updates of my progress through out the year.
So now its 2016 I need a new goal, any suggestions? It needs to be hard enough that there is a chance of failure. Here is what I'm considering
15 good form pull ups
1.75 x body weight back squat
2 Hand stand push ups
1 Muscle Up
