Exercise 3 ? Pull ups
How do you workout your back? Don?t tell me you?re knocking out a couple of sets on the lat pulldown and calling it a day?
This exercise works out your back, your arms, your shoulders and strengthens your core. It?s an amazing bodyweight exercise which can be made more challenging through the addition of a weighted vest if you start to find yourself knocking out a lot of reps.
Pull ups are done from a bar with your palms facing away from you. If your palms are facing you, that?s a chin up and is easier because you can pull with your biceps. Pull ups are a much more functional exercise because if you ever needed to climb up and over something, your grip would resemble a pull up. Ideally, you should combine the two for best possible results.
Also, you can wrap a towel over the pull up bar and do a modified chin up by holding the towel. This really blasts the forearms and grip.
Exercise 4 ? Squats
You all know the exercise. Legs shoulder width apart, squat down sticking your bum out until your knees are about 90 degrees, back up and repeat. It?s a great exercise for strengthening the leg muscles and is a staple in the routine of any serious gym go-er. If bodyweight squats are too easy and not challenging enough for you, then I?d recommend giving the Pistol a go. It?s basically a one-legged squat. It will further strengthen your legs, while improving your stability and balance as well.
I remember a friend of mine who had big powerful legs, but he simply couldn?t do a Pistol because his balance and supporting muscles wouldn?t allow it.
Here?s a video showing the Pistol technique:
Exercise 5 ? Push ups
Another no brainer really. Push ups will strengthen your shoulders, chest, triceps and core. Aim to improve your maximum number of push ups each week. Once you reach 50 push ups in one set, you?re ready to try the one armed push up. This is a much more difficult exercise which puts extra stress on the triceps and, to a lesser extent, the chest. Video below:
Exercise 6 ? Skipping
Most boxers are in fantastic shape, and it?s no wonder with the amount of anaerobic routines they go through. Skipping is a great exercise to get the heart pumping and the blood rushing.
Try doing double unders. Because you?re jumping higher to spin the rope twice before you land, you get an even better workout!
Exercise 6 ? Medicine ball slams
One of my absolute favourite exercises is the medicine ball slam. If you or your gym doesn?t own a medicine ball, you can knock one together pretty cheap by following this tutorial. The slams go like so:
- Take the medicine ball and hold it above your head
- Slam it down into the ground as hard as you possibly can
- Bend down and pick it up
- Stand up and raise the ball over your head
Repeat
This excellent conditioning exercise works the arms, shoulders and legs as well as improving your anaerobic conditioning.
Okay now we?ve got a few highly effective exercises, let?s put them into a couple of sample routines.
Sample Workout Routines
I?m going to give you 2 sample workouts to try and see what you think.
This first workout is commonly referred to as No Excuses. It only takes ten minutes to complete so it can?t be too bad. Can it?
- Burpees
- Pull ups
- Squats
- Push ups
The workout begins with a 60 second interval of each exercise (Burpees then pull ups, then squats, then pushups). You then immediately perform the circuit again with 45 second intervals, then 30 seconds, and finally 15 seconds.
You must move from one exercise to the other without stopping. There are no rest periods between any of the circuits or exercises. If you get stuck on an exercise, rest brief and do your best to continue. If you can?t perform anymore pull ups, hang from the bar for the remainder of the time rather than sitting out to rest.
The second workout is even more of a killer and you may want to make sure you can fully complete the first one before trying this one out.
- Hill sprint
- 10 Burpees at the top of the hill
- Jog down the hill
- 20 Medicine ball slams at the bottom of the hill
Repeat 8 times.
This exercise is very straightforward. Perform the circuit 8 times as fast as you possibly can. There should be no exercise between exercises or circuits. You can rest if you need to after the completion of the current circuit, but aim to complete the 8 circuits with minimal rest.
These exercises and very simple routines are not meant to replace your current workouts, but supplement them and shock the muscles by doing something a little different. I’ve had a great deal of success using these methods as part of my training and I’m sure you can too.
I?d love to hear your opinions and feedback on these exercises. Do you know of better routines that I can try? If you try these workouts let me know how you felt about them.
You should also check out munfitnessblog and The Fitness Black Book for regular fitness articles. Also, I wouldn?t know about half of these exercises and routines if it weren?t for the truly amazing and inspirational Ross Enamait.
Finally, subscribe to my RSS feed to get all the latest posts and then check out the following video, just because Ross is a complete badass fitness guru!
January 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Ross Enamait is the master of total fitness. I always think i train really hard..However, it is nothing compare to Ross’s program.
All those fitness magazine tell you how to get big. However, they all forget it is not how good you look, but how strong, how fast and how durable you are that count
January 9th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head there Sam. I’d much rather be strong, fast and flexible than one of those big meatheads guzzling weight gain powder and chatting instead of working out.
Also, Ross Enamait is awesome. His book Never Gymless has changed my entire perception of health and fitness.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:43 am
OK
January 12th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Great post! Bookmarked for further reference
February 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Christian,
Great article buddy! I can tell you spend quality time on your posts. I know a post of this length can easily take 2-3 hours…especially with all of the videos (I have been distracted on Youtube for an hour trying to find the perfect video for a post).
Thanks for the mention of my site. As a “thank you”…I submitted your RSS feed to hundreds of RSS directories (using RssSubmit), I “Stumbled” this post, and I bookmarked it with “Onlywire” (around 24 sites bookmarking sites). Submitted this post to Newsvine, Propeller, Dig, Reddit, and Netscape.
I enjoy the quality of your blog. We need more sites of this caliber!
Rusty
February 20th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
@Rusty – Thanks for the kind words. I’ve been a regular reader of your blog for some time now so it means a lot to get some feedback. Thanks for helping out and submitting the article. I know what you mean about Youtube as well, I find myself watching some really random junk when I’m supposed to be finding something useful. Men, eh?
February 27th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Great article and excellent advise! There’s only one thing I do not agree with, either because my own training proved me that chin-ups are better than pull-ups and would you know it, I stumbled upon “Common Exercise Misconceptions Part 2″ on t-nation.com describing the same finding. http://www.t-nation.com/article/most_recent/common_exercise_misconceptions_part_2&cr=
(part one is a good read as well!). Keep up the good work!
February 28th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
http://www.crossfit.com
Its basically what you just spoke about, but 1000 times better. Give it a shot!
March 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Ok, I’m not a guy… but this post was very inspirational. I’ve bookmarked it.
Thank you for writing it and sharing it, you’ve done well!
Em
p.s. I’ve also seen most of the 100 most manly movies…
April 13th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
dude wat the hell is rong with ross he aint human
hey i can barely do 1 proper pull up (im all walking no watever with the arms)
what would u suggest as a suppliment until then and i cant do many push ups so thats probs not the best idea
April 17th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
There are some pretty wierd, but effective workouts. They help alot!!!!
April 18th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I really liked your post about body weight exercises. I have done Judo for years and I always noticed that actually weight training messed me up rather than helped me. I always wondered why. When I concentrated on the body weight exercises I felt way stronger and fitter. I agree the “burpees” are the best exercise on the planet. We called them suicides. Whenever, I do them in a park I usually get an ex military guy coming over to me asking me if I was in the special forces or something. I think the problem is that everyone is trying to sell some new exercise gizmo. You can really get in shape right in your local park for free.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Great great great. Me: minus 70 lbs, 3 years ago. First 45-50 was lost from diet (no more booze) and dumping crappy job (stress). Last 25, lots of bodyweight exercise research… thence hard work, 1 hour 5-6 days a week.
I am convinced bodyweight exercises are the best. Way more natural, and superior flexibility. Super fast, super strong, and more to go!
Excellent advice!
April 19th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Willz, to enhance your strength enough to do pullups : first begin with chinups, it’s easier. If you can’t do more than 5 chinups straight, then work it out doing reverse chinups : use a chair to get in position up on the bar (palms facing you on the bar, your chin over the bar) and let yourself go down as slowly as possible until your feet touch the ground. Repeat 10 to 20 times three time a week to every day. After two to four weeks, you’ll be able to do 5 to 10 chinups straight; so then do three times 5 to 10 chinups (pause for a minute between sets) three times a week to every day for 4 weeks again; then you’ll be able to do 20 chinups, go on doing pull ups instead. Program length : 3 months
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
There are definitely some great exercises you can do without ever leaving your home. However, free weights and variable resistance machines are also important in developing a great physique. Sometimes the gym, even with all of its negatives, is the best place to get the best workout.
July 15th, 2008 at 4:47 am
nice healthy post.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Great article dude!! Also the fun part is you can play your own music too!!
http://www.ekhichdi.com/general-healthcare/a-happy-mother-makes-a-better-mother
Tina
January 7th, 2009 at 7:22 am
those are cadio exercises very effective but those are the hard parts in exercise…
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Good article we do a lot of that type of training here in our facility at physio fitness. Check us out at physiofitnesswayne.com
March 1st, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I really liked the way they came off