Bodyweight Exercises

One component that bodyweight exercises develop better than any other exercise program (as opposed to "movement programs," like dance or karate kata) is balance.  Many bodyweight exercises use the act of balancing as an integral part of the exercise.  For example, handstand pushups rely on how the body maintains balance to develop the muscles of the lower back and spine, in addition to your shoulders.  Weightlifting requires only that you balance the bar.  The "movement programs" mentioned before arae excellent for developing balance and coordination, and that is why a bodyweight exercise program is such a great complement to them.

But having good balance comes in handy in many different ways.  Sure, it's impressive to be able to walk from the bar to yor dorm and not fall down like everyone else (as if they would notice or remember).  And it's a real skill to have if you have to walk across an icy parking lot or sidewalk.  I remember the sidewalk in front of a particular building in Chicago (I won't mention the name, except to say it was Arthur Anderson) became like a sheet of glass in icy weather, because they used some material that, in my humble opinion, didn't make for a good sidewalk.  Balance was really needed to traverse that block.  Balance could have been used INSIDE that building, too.  But I digres....

In my job as trial attorney, balance comes into play frequently.  No, it's not to dodge a gavel or book thrown by an angry judge.  It's to be able to remain calm and focused when something unexpected happens in a trial.  Maybe a witness testifies differently than what I expected.  Maybe the trial starts sooner or later in the day than planned.  Maybe  it's a different judge.  But whatever happens, I need to remain focused and cannot be thrown off by anything.

Having good physical balance, in my opinion, translates into having good mental and emotional balance.  Much like my body will pull itself right if I start to fall out of a headstand, for example, I can feel mentally that I am being pulled back to center if something unexpected happens.  The concept of maintaining balance and staying focused becames ingrained into your fibers, which becomes ingrained into your psyche.

Most lawyers can maintain focus.  If something goes wrong, a trial lawyer has a script or outline to come back to, to re-center himself or herself.  But there's a difference between just going back to the script and staying balanced within the script.  For example, say I expect the witness to say that he heard the conversation on the porch.  But when I ask him that question ("Did you hear the conversation on the porch?"), he says "No."  Now, remaining focused would simply mean asking him the rest of the questions in the script, and getting disjointed answers.  But remaining balanced would allow you to possibly get the answer from him.  Simply asking "Why couldn't you hear the conversation on the porch?" could bring the answer "Because I was in the car."  Next question: "When you got out of the car, could you hear the conversation on the porch?" Answer: "Oh, yeah. Every word."

Bodyweight exercises integrate balance within muscle development and aerobic exercise.  The balance exercises also help you practice focus and, if you are so inclined, a little bit of meditation. 

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Losing weight and getting in shape are not the same thing.  Warren Sapp, at over 300 pounds, was quicker and more agile than people half his size.  And Nicole Richie lost a lot of weight, but clearly does not look in shape.  Getting in shape will generally melt away the excess fat you're carrying around.   Combining a well-planned routine with a proper diet will heolp you lose (fat) weight and get in shape the quickest.  Now, how can you lose weight without dieting?

Losing weight is a very simple equation: burning more calories than you take in == weight loss.  So the idea is to burn more calories throughout the day than you take in.  The more calories you burn, the faster the weight comes off.  But, the more calories you burn, the more stress you put your body under.  And stress will eventually break your body down, unless you give it sufficient opportunity to rest.  This is the idea behind "split day" routines in weightlifting.  Working your biceps hard every day does not give yor body enough time to restore the muscle tissue and get rid of the lactic acid that builds up in the mucsle tissue, and eventually your biceps will cramp up or tear.  Ouch!

Bodyweight exercises, on the other hand, do not tear up muscle tissue and, by keeping the flow of blood to the body part being worked unimpeded, can get rid of the lactic acid buildup a lot quicker.  A great routine to lose weight quickly is to do pushups every hour during the day.  Now, that's impractical for most people.  But it demonstrates that bodyweight exercises don't need as much rest time as weightlifting.

There are also bodyweight exercises that focus on working your heart rate and increasing blood flow.  Jumping jacks, for example, have almost no other purpose other than to get your hear rate up into the target zone as quickly as possible.  Jumping jacks are also easier to do than jumping rope for a lot of people, from a coordination point of view.  And they just feel better than squats.  They can also be done at the beginning of your routine (as a warm-up), at the end (as a cool-down), or in between exercises (to keep your heart rate up).  So incorporating jumping jacks into your exercise routine is another easy way to lose weight.

So one way to lose weight without dieting is to begin a program of bodyweight exercises.  Another way is to change your eating behavior.  Not the foods you eat - but how you eat them.  Don't eat anything after 8 or 9 at night (taking your work schedule into consideration, of course).  Plan on eating something every 2 or 3 hours during the day.  The "in between" snacks should be healthier foods, not brownies and cookies.  Well, every now and then is okay.  Drink water instead of diet sodas.  And if water is boring, drop a mint or 2 into the bottle for flavor without adding unneccessary calories.  Learning a little bit about nutrition will help also.  It's not necessary to get a Ph.D. in Dietary Science, but understanding why spinach is so important or why diet sodas may actually cause you gain weight will help you decide what foods to eat.

Jumping on a fad diet may help you lose weight in the short term.  Most studies show that people don't stick to the diets, and that most people will gain that weight back.  But changing your behavior so that you consistently maintain or lose weight because your activity level and manner of eating - combined with eating better - have you burning calories consistent with how many you eat is the best and healthiest way of weight control.  Plus, your energy level will soar, your moods will level out, you'll be happier, and you'll win the office football pool every week.  Well, the office pool thing may be a little much.  But you will be able to make better picks.

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What's the first thing you think of when someone says "bodyweight exercises"?  Probably pushups and squats, right?  And when someone else says "sit ups," you say "Ugh! I hate sit ups!"  Because everyone hates situps.  They're hard.  They hurt.  They're embarassing (depending on what you ate, and when).  And they aren't all that effective.  But you have to do abdominal exercises, because a big chest and big shoulders with a big belly still looks FAT.

So how can you work your abs without doing situps or using equipment (because that's one of the focuses of this blog: bodyweight exercises without equipment).  Well, one of my favorites - and the one that has given me consistent and quick results - is the V-up.  This is also called the Jack-knife.  I like it because it hits all the muscles of your abs AND throws balance in the mix.

The exercise itself is simple to describe:
    1.  Lie on your back, with your arms extended over your head
    2.  Keeping your legs straight, raise them up.  At the same time, pull your chest up, keeping your arms straight.
    3.  Keep bringing legs and chest up until legs and arms are both pointing straight up, and only your butt is on the floor.
    4.  You should now look like a V or a folded Jack-knife.
From this:

     |_______o___

To this:

       |   \  

        \    o

          \   /

            =

    5.  And back down, to repeat over and over, to flatness.

Like I said, I especially like the fact that this exercise requires you to maintain your balance, so the obliques and the small muscles up and down the back come into play.

This is a pretty advanced exercise.  If you can't do it right away (don't feel bad - it's an exercise the Navy SEALS use during their training!), build up to it:

    1.  Lie on your back in position #1

    2.  Keeping your legs straight, raise them up 6 inches off the ground and hold for 10-20 seconds.
    3.  Lower and repeat.

I try to do these every day.  Talk about igniting the "fire in the belly!"  The V-up is an exercise that will hit your abs hard, but won't wear them out for the rest of the day.  And it is easily integrated into your daily fitness routine.  Plus, I am sure there is a component of setting your chi in motion (if you believe in such stuff.  The V-up is ideally situated to stimulate your tan tien and start the flow of chi.  But I digress...)

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This post will be a little different, because it doesn't deal directly with bodyweight exercises.  It deals with choices.  It deals with morals and character and sportsmanship and all those things that my grandfather talked about.  All those things that don't seem to be around much today.  And that were lost a little more, with Marion Jones's announcement that she took steroids before the Olympics, despite her years of vehement denials.

When I was in high school, the question first came up.  It was probably in English class, since my school didn't have anything like philosophy: What if you could take a drug that would make you excel at sports but would kill you?  And the question wasn't about sports or steroids - it was about character.  It was about taking short cuts.  It was about respecting yourself and your profession enough to approach it and your competitors fairly.

This question has come up in various forms in both of my professional careers.   When I was a programmer, we had to deal with the consultants whom we suspected of intentionally placing bugs in their programs, so they would have to be called back to "fix" problems.  We would either rewrite their programs or hire consultants we could trust.  So the buggy consultants made some money, but lost long-term cash flow and job security.

In my present profession of attorney, the question comes up all the time.  Clients who ask me to cross the boundaries of ethics.  Opposing counsel who lie to the Court, fail to produce evidence, or deliberately misinterpret the law.  Judges who enter orders without the necessary facts or findings.  All to get to an end cheaply, quickly, and sometimes despite the law and the evidence.  As a lawyer, there is actually additional pressure to maintain a ethical standard: since the profession has such a hard reputation in the eyes of the public, the attorneys and judges who do practice ethically (and it is, in fact, the overwhelming majority) really go out of their way to maintain high ethical standards.

So this is why Marion Jones is so disappointing. She spoke so eloquently against steroid use.  While she knew she had used them.  She is going to be stripped of her gold medals.  She'll be banned from competition, if she evens still competes.  She may do a few months in jail.  But is she going to apologize to each one of the hundreds of thousand and millions of little girls and boys who looked up to her, who now think that cheating is okay?  Is she going to appear at the next Olympics and apologize to each one of the athletes who win there, when fans say, "Oh, she's probably juiced, just like Marion Jones"?  Is she going to pay for her own medical care, when she gets osteoporosis, cancer, or any of the other diseases associated with steroid use?

So how does this relate to bodyweight exercises?  Because bodyweight exercises work best when you do NOT take shortcuts.  Pushups are pushups, and about the only enhancement that works is having someone sit on your back.  But even adding bands just adds a temporary increase in strength or endurance.  I can't imagine taking a short cut to a temporary goal that is actually a short cut to the end of my life.  I have several relatives that are almost 100 years old, who are still physically and mentally sharp as a tack.  The love and vitality they add to my life, and the effect they have on my kids, is unbelievable.  And I don't want to miss THAT by taking a shortcut now.

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Six pack abs are all the rage.  Everyone wants to be able lift up his or her shirt and get that "gasp!" when a fabulous set of abs appears.  A six pack is supposed to signify health, fitness, conditioning.  But, just like people used to think that a good tan showed health - and now realize it just means pre-leatherous skin damage - a six-pack alone simply shows a low-caloric diet.  What's actually more impressive is a powerful core, achieved by using the proper bodyweight exercises.

Everyone has his or her favorite abdominal exercise, and most aren't even situps!  The traditional situp is always being attacked.  Some people say it is just a hip flexor exercise.  Others say that are more efficient exercises.  Some say that they don't exercise the abdominal muscles properly.

I recently came across an exercise called the Janda situp that is supposed to be either the most difficult abdominal exercise or the pefrect exercise, depending on what website or book you are reading.  The theory behind this exercise is that, by contracting the hamstrings and the glutes, the abdominals are isolated and therefore work more efficiently.  It seems that it is virtually impossible to perform this exercise without using either a partner (who holds your legs about 2/3 of the way up your calves) or a piece of equipment adapted to press your legs back into it as you are performing the situp.  But, either way - since it requires something other than bodyweight alone, I don't feel like doing it!

Besides, I had read way back in the day that the key to obtaining a flat and strong set of core abdominals is to exercise the inner oblique muscles, which run diagonally across your gut underneath the muscles that make up the "six pack."  These inner muscles are primarliy involved in twisting the trunk.  But exercising them has the advantage that they pull all the other muscles in, which is how a flat stomach is achieved.  And, since they are deep under the skin and outer muscles, strengthening them provides the strong muscles to resist punches and such.

So, how does one exercise these muscles?  The best way is the oblique twisting crunch.  Put your feet up so your thighs are perpendicular to the floor and your shins parallel.  Put each hand near an ear with your elbows pointed toward you knees.  Now, put each elbow on the opposite knee, alternating between sides. That's it.  You can do this exercise either quickly or slowly.  This exercise won't pop your six pack out.  That's achieved by proper diet and a good fitness routine.  But this exercise will give you a powerful core, which is just as noticeable and just as impressive.

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Organizing your exercises into a routine that gets results the fastest and the most efficiently is the holy grail for anyone who works out.  When my main exercise focus was weightlifting, I had developed a routine where I inserted a set of 10 squats in between each exercise: bench press 3x10; squats; lat pull down 3x10; squats; etc.  This was very good for me, as it increased my aerobic capacity without adding too much mass.  Now that I am focusing on bodyweight exercises, the search is on for the "perfect routine"!

One way to organize your routine is to break it down by body part and work them out in sequence: chest, shoulders, core (stomach), legs, arms, lungs (aerobics).  The order may vary, so that one person starts with chest, another starts with core.  Or, you can cycle through the body parts, so that it goes chest-shoulders-core... and then repeats chest-shoulder-core...  This has the advantage of hitting each body part multiple times but giving them a chacne to rest between workouts.

However, most people who use bodyweight exercises as their exercise of choice tend to view the body as a whole unit, rather than as different body parts or sections.  Exercises are chosen that work the entire body.  For example, spiderman pushups hit the chest, shoulders, hips, core, and lungs.  Romanian deadlifts work the thighs, lower back, balance, and buttocks.  So organizing the exercises into a cycle of body parts might look artificial, when the goal is to continuously be working the body as a whole.

Bodyweight exercises also can be used to achieve a specific goal, even more easily than other types of exercises.  It is relatively easy to switch a bodyweight exercise routine around to lose weight, tone up, build muscle, or increase flexibility.  It is much more difficult to switch a jogging routine from weight loss to muscle building, or a weightlifting routine from mass building to flexibility.

So what is the "perfect routine"?  It may sound trite, but the perfect routine is the one that works for YOU.  This will obviously be different for each person, and will change from time to time, as your needs change.  Writing down your various routines will help.  And using various experts to take suggested routines from will help.

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