“How many pull ups can you do”?

Because Captain America could do hundreds of em, and then go out and kick some Nazi ass. Of all the body weight exercises that have ever been invented, pull ups, and all its many variations, are one of the toughest. Its an exercise that gives you big time results. A stronger back, and make no mistake about it, a stronger back is hugely important to your health and well being. Not to mention a great looking back. Are there any guys out there who have never done a double take at a woman with a backless dress that shows off a well defined, back? It looks great! Many years ago strong men were judged by the strength and the look of their backs. Old sayings like “put your back into it” came from the days when men needed a strong back. Not to mention strong hands, shoulders and forearms which incidentally are also built through pull ups. It is, in fact, a total body exercise. Legs are tense. Abs , low back are working. Yes, the upper body works hard but you are NOT doing real pull/chin ups if you don’t feel the muscles working in the rest of your body. Yeah baby!

Today the emphasis has shifted. Nowadays guys want the big man boob chests. (Once they get on in years will they need to wear the infamous “Bro” or “Manzier”?)  Plus of course the venerable bulked up shoulders and arms, but their backs get shorted in the whole deal.

Women who want to “tone up,” jeez I HATE that term, let’s call it tightening up shall we? At least until I can come up with something better. A back with definition sounds much better to me. There really isn’t such a thing as “toning up” anyway.  Back to what I was saying….women who want “definition” in their back. You know, the kind that a dancer might have, will also find pull ups and all the variations VERY useful.

Ok…… so if pull ups are such a fantastic exercise then why doesn’t everyone do them, and do them well? The main reason is because they are hard! Yes, I will admit it. Pull ups, chin ups, parallel grip, behind the neck, wide grip, towels grip etc,  are tough. There is a wonderful trade off though. This is an exercise that stimulates a lot of muscle fibers. It necessitates the use of big muscles too. That’s good news for tightening, definition AND fat burning. I also have some disheartening news for you weight machine people out there too. Compared to pull ups those “pull down” machines are a distant second. Better to have to tighten your entire body for a pull up than sit on your butt with your knees locked under a pad pulling the weight towards you instead of you pulling yourself up. It’s a MAJOR difference, and involves many more muscles. Plus it gives you big results for short sessions.

I love this exercise because of the strength and definition/tightness it builds, but like any exercise there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Most people (including many guys who think they can blast out 20 pull ups or more) do it so badly that it can be painful or funny to watch. If you have watched episode 7 you will see what to do. Here are the ground rules to get the most bang for your buck out of this exercise and keep your shoulders and elbows healthy.

To get the most bang for your buck:

Your chin must clear the bar on each and every rep.

You must lower yourself all the way down on each and every rep. That means elbows straight at the bottom of each and every rep.

Abs stay tight, pelvis slightly tucked.

Legs straight. No excessive piking or swinging to cheat!

To keep your shoulders and elbows healthy you must:

Keep your shoulders away from your ears. At no time must you allow your shoulders to jam up into your ears. That means pulling them down a bit as you are lowering on each and every rep. This all starts in your upper back. Around your shoulder blades. Pull your shoulders down and back.

You must PULL your shoulders down when you are at the top of each and every rep.  If you hunch your shoulders upwards at the top of your pull up you are asking for trouble in your shoulders. Once again this starts in your upper back. Around the shoulder blades. Once you get to the top of the bar give an extra effort around your shoulder blades to pull them downwards a bit.

Keep the pits of the elbows “screwed in.” If you have watched Episode 3: the Burpee/Push up you will learn about the elbow position and “screwing the elbows in” so the pits of your elbows face forward. This is the same position in the pull ups. It will look different though because now you are hanging from a bar so your elbow pits will face behind you, but they are still in that same position. If you are confused please make sure you watch Epsiode 3. You’ll know you have gotten it when everything screws into place as you are hanging from the bar.

This directly relates to the last paragraph. Never allow your elbows, at any time, to flare outwards. This puts excessive strain on the fronts of your shoulders.

Patience, patience! It takes a while to build the strength in this exercise. You may have to stay with the modifications in Epiosde 7 for weeks or months before you can do even one full pull up.

Start with chin ups (underhand grip). This is what you see Jen doing in Episode 7. You hang from the bar with your palms facing towards you. This method is easier. Steve Maxwell says it is about 20% easier so please…start with these. Pull ups are done with your palms facing away from you (overhand grip)

If you have been doing pull ups you may find that these rules will make your numbers go down. That’s great because it means you were doing them incorrectly before. Keep working them and you will get back up there again eventually. Also avoid doing all your pull ups/ chin ups to failure. That means to total exhaustion each time. It’s always better to leave a few in the bank on each set so you can practice more of them with out too much fatigue to screw up your form.

Stay tuned for ladder style exercise sessions to see how to spread this exercise out over many sets for better and faster results.

Best,

Robert

Yoga has its place. Like any form of exercise (and make no mistake the asanas (Yoga postures) were originally designed as physical exercise back in India many, many years ago) it has its plus and minuses. It’s great for relaxing your mind. It really does make you more flexible in your muscles and tendons. It is a wonderful way to develop breathing muscles. A for sure way to help you “pay attention.” A good way to recover from a workout, or warm up for one.  It even helps build a base kind of strength and stamina. One thing it doesn’t do though…is give you that Yoga “toned” body that some ads claim. Madonna didn’t get that way from Yoga my friends. She got that way because she danced her a%$ off for years!

The problems you have to face with Yoga are:

The static muscle contractions. This means you hold a pose for a while tensing certain muscles. For example, if you are stretching your hamstrings the quad muscles are held tight.  This teaches you a different way to harden your muscles as opposed to other types of exercise.  It is quite different from the type of hard contractions you will need to do a full Burpee for instance. It can get in the way of lifting weights too. How do you get around this? The best way is to shorten your Yoga time. Doing the full monty twice a day, like I once did, is not the best way. 20-30 minutes is best. Maybe 4 times a week. I learned this the hard way when I took up Kettlebells and had to re learn how to “tense” my muscles for that kind of work/exercise.

Overstretching of ligaments. Some Yoga positions are not a good idea to hold for any length of time. Some put quite a stretch on your ligaments. Knee ligaments for example. Ligaments are tough tissue that act as “bands” to help hold a joint in place. They respond best to more rapid, controlled, short stretches. Such as you might get with jumping rope. When ligaments are held in overstretched positions for a long stretch they tend to lose their tightness. Once that happens they do not go back to their original length. What is bad about that? Your joint become loose and that’s not a good thing.

Doesn’t build “mobility.” Flexibility is very misunderstood. Flexibility means your muscles and tendons are holding a static stretch. Putting your leg up on a chair to stretch your hamstring and leaving it there is an example. Staic flexibility  is good to have but it is not the whole picture. Once you start moving around mobility comes into play. This means your joints have to have the strength to move through all the positions you put them through. Take a full Burpee as an example. When you lower into your squat, jump back, then jump forward again, ou need the strength to do so. A more common example would be bending over to pick a heavy box up off the floor. I found out for myself that Yoga training never built the strength I needed to do this stuff very well. I was sometimes surprised at how weak I felt when picking something up or moving furniture. Don’t worry though. Tai Chi or Qui Kong help with this area AND there are many, many great joint mobility exercises and programs to help you out here. We hope to have Z health (A great program) featured on our show someday.

Nowadays Yoga has found its place in my life. I sometimes use it in the evening to wind down.  It almost always helps me recover from harder workouts. It does a great job in helping to loosen up a tight back , hamstrings hips, shoulders, and calves. The breathing helps to calm things down. Taking “rest” (as is the tradition) at the end of the practice feels great. My mind is calmer. Just realize that Yoga, like anything, has its place. In any exercise program you are constantly giving a little something to get a little something. A well though out program balances all of that out. Use Yoga for its purpose and you will be better off.

Best,

Robert

I want to say that again. AHH! The 6 count Burpee. I feel more fit just saying it.

If you have already watched Fusion Fitness TV episode 4, you may have gotten an inkling that there are many ways to develop your own Burpee. Once again though. Why should you/would you want to ever include Burpees in your busy life?

1- You build strength, stamina, cardiovascular, flexibility/mobility, agility and coordination all in the same exercise.

2- Burpees are very economical within your busy schedule. You get a lot of bang for your buck in a short amount of time.

3- When you are doing the above body fat takes a holiday. A “shape”  comes back to you. A very good leaner-upper. That means smaller belts, smaller dresses and pants, readjusting your seat belt to the smaller size, getting curves back again—— AND NO BLASTED TREADMILL OR OTHER BORING MACHINE.

4- Once you have improved at an exercise like Burpees you’ll gain some confidence in yourself. You have done something difficult. Proud of your achievement. What’s can I do next? You ask your self.

Once you make them a part of your exercise routine you will probably think of more reasons. However, let’s remember. You don’t HAVE TO start with full blown 6 counts. As you saw in the episode there are steps to take and variations to do.

First you can use a support such as a sturdy box or even a chair. Put your hands on the support and go to town. You can leave the jump back out and walk back. You can leave your push up out and just walk or jump back. You can walk forward and leave that jump out too. You can jump one walk the other. You can simply stand up or jump up.

A quick word about jumping into the air. Its not usually the jump up that’s the problem. Its the landing. Make sure you land with soft feet. Listen to the sound of your feet. If they hit the ground loudly you have a crummy landing and are asking for problems. Once your feet the ground you have two choices. You can bend your knees and sit straight back into your squat. All in one motion OR you can land softly with bent knees, take a split second and then lower down into your squat for the next Burpee.

You can also do all these variations with your hands on the floor in the way you saw Jen doing them. Any way is fine. Start where you can handle it. NOT where you can’t handle it. How fast you do them has a bog impact on this. At first take them slower. Get the rhythm down. Then (and this is important) GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN. NOT AS FAST AS YOU CAN”T. Got it? Good.

Another variation is the deep knee bend version. This one also has it pros and cons. It can be harder on your knees since they bend much further, but it can make Burpees more doable for those that have lots of trouble with the flat foot version. You may feel this version more in the front of your thighs too so if you want to alternate these with the flat foot version then be my guest. To learn the deep knee bend watch episode 4. Experiment with where your feet and knees feel most comfortable. You may feel better with your feet angled out (but not too far) to the sides. OR better with your feet pointing straight ahead. Any way you choose to do it you MUST BE SURE to keep your knees in line with your toes. No exceptions. This protects your knees. Don’t argue. Just do it.

Practice deep knee bends for at least 2 weeks before you try incorporating it into your Burpee. As you lower towards the ground, lift your heels up so you are up on the balls of your feet. Put your arms out in front of you for balance. Keep your back straight and as vertical as possible. Think of lowering straight down not forward. Think of sitting back a bit. A big mistake is to fall into the deep knee bend with out any control. This puts a lot of stress on your knees. Instead….use your strength to PULL DOWN. Actually pull yourself down. Use the muscles in the front of your hips to help with this.

As you come back up use your hamstrings (muscles at the back of your thighs) and your glutes (your butt muscles) to squeeze back up. If you can’t get this to happen try putting your hands on the backs of your thighs, once you are at the bottom, and make your muscles harden as you come back up. Touching the muscles helps bring awareness to them. You will even be able to feel them harden as they work. When you reach the top return to the flat foot position. That is one rep. Work up to where you can do 50 of these. 100 is even better. Then incorporate it into your full Burpee. Just do your Burpee the same way except your do deep knee squat instead of the flat footed one. This version won’t make your hips as flexible, but it is still a very good way to do your Burpees.

The deep knee bend version you see in episode 4, done with a ball squeeze, is very good to help with weak knees and thighs. Use something soft that keeps your knees at about hip width and squeeze it with your thighs. Don’t let up at any time, and do those deep knee bends. Don’t worry…you will soon start feeling it! Lower only as deeply as you can manage, but the more you practice the deeper you will be able to go. If the fronts of your knees feel  stressed…then don’t go as deep! Its very simple to tweak the exercise at any stage of fitness.

If you peruse the web you will find many, many Burpee videos. Some are good, some are crap. You’ll see young studs doing tremendously difficult variations too. Don’t worry about all that stuff. Stay with the basics and learn it real good. Most people can do some version of a Burpee. Just get started.My advice would be to start with sets of 10. Recover for as long as you need between the sets. As you improve add sets. Add as many as 5 sets. When you have improved do sets of twenty but do only 2-3 sets. When that has improved work up to 5 sets again. When you are able to do that go back to 3-5 sets of ten but time your recoveries. Start w/ 30 seconds and work your way down to 10 seconds. By this time you should be noticing a very big difference in the way you look and feel. Good luck to everyone. I also want to thank some of my teachers especially Steve Maxwell. He knows this stuff better than anyone.

It’s been fun breaking this exercise down and now you have it. Practice the parts. Practice 2 of the parts strung together. Then practice the whole thing. You will be amazed at how quickly you will feel winded. That’s good! Your fitness will take a leap upwards and after a while you will look a bit trimmer and firmer. Seriously. I really mean it!

Best,

Robert

Sigh….push ups. I get all misty eyed and sentimental. You may remember doing these back in grade school. Everyone has seen them , tried them, heard of them. Many do it wrong.  A fantastic stand alone exercise and as you become stronger and more fit you can add many cool variations. That’s jumping the gun though. Let’s start where most people need to start, and that is with the basics.

Push ups are much more than an arm exercise. I need you to trust me here. Try it for yourself. Abs get probably as much work, if not more for some people, as your arms. Unless you do them….well, I uh, really badly. About 10 years ago I used to teach at a small Yoga studio in Manhattan. On that same block was a well known martial arts franchise, and they had large windows so pedestrians could stand there and watch. Sometimes I would catch a class during their “conditioning” section, and those push ups were ugly.  Some people were lucky if their chests even dropped halfway to the floor. Like this.To get the benefit out of a push up you got to go through the full range of the exercise. Halfway gives you half results…if that.

The guys were the worst. Many looked like this. Never going all the way down, thinking they were getting low by drooping their head like a crane. Then they didn’t even push all the way back up. Hey what!? These are called push ups right? Crank out 100 like this and the result is mainly tired arms. Not much stronger, not more mobile, but an ego that is now fed with junk. One of the great coaches/trainers I know, Steve Maxwell, says guys that do these kind of “hit the numbers,” half baked push ups get any results, if any, by accident.

Look, we get all caught up in numbers and start forgetting about the quality of the exercise. Quantity is NOT better than quality if the exercise is done badly. Much better to do 15 quality push ups than 50 pieces of junk. Not only will you build better strength, and become more efficient, but shoulder, elbow, back, wrist or neck pain may be visiting you if you do nothing but junk.

What is quality? Let’s go over it quickly. Start in Yoga plank. Elbows straight. Neck long and straight. Fingers pointing straight ahead. Your abs engaged. Long through your back. Upper back flat. Pits of your elbows facing forwards. Tips of your fingers in line with the tops of your shoulders. Hands spread about shoulder width. Read those last few sentences over a few times. There is a lot going on and you haven’t even lowered towards the floor yet. You may find that holding here is a lot of work. That’s great. No need to rush off. Work on this first. Get good at it. Hold for time. You may hold for 20-30 seconds and start shaking. Great! You are developing valuable strength.

Once you are ready to lower down remember to keep the pits of your elbows facing forwards. That means pulling your elbows in towards your ribs. Also keep your shoulders away from your ears.  Use your back muscles here. Try this. Bend your elbows to 90 degrees, then squeeze your arms into your sides. Squeeze them in and downwards. Feel the muscles behind your armpits? Say hello to your lats. A big back muscle, and an important part of your push up. Now squeeze those muscles to help pull you down towards the floor, or box or chair or whatever stage you are currently at. Remember to keep your abs tight so there is no hip sagging going on. You may find this to be very difficult, and you need to be able to find a height that you can almost touch with your chest. NOT YOUR HEAD, but your chest. Inhale as you descend. You can stay at the bottom and work on this position (called chataranga in Yoga). This may be even more difficult but if you keep working at it you will gain strength and it will become easier.

As you push back up use those lat muscles, and keep your elbows in against your ribs. Watch out for flaring elbows. I don’t really like that style of push up. Its much tougher on your shoulders as it can pinch them. Yes, your chest muscles will feel it more, but you miss out on developing healthy shoulders. Exhale as you press up and keep the pits of your elbows facing forwards. Everything comes up together as one unit. Your head, back and hips. Once you get to the top keep your self in your long Yoga plank position. Avoid sticking your butt up into the air. Its called plank because that is how you are supposed to look. Long and straight like a plank.

I apologize if this article is too caught up in details but this is Fusion Fitness TV where whole body exercise is king, and push ups, if done well AND with concentration are definitely whole body. Once you get it down you can learn how to put up big numbers too, but that is actually more advanced as you have to learn how to alternately relax and tense your muscles with a good breathing rhythm. More on that in another episode? Stay tuned and see. Push ups are one of the most important exercises you can do. They work your abs, arms, shoulders, chest and back.  Once you get good at them you can incorporate them into your full 6 count Burpee. Fat loss, leaner, fitter, stronger, slowing down father time, confidence. The benefits are muc more than if you were to do nothing. Please trust me on this. It’s gold.

Best,

Robert

Let’s see what spoils it first. There is a lot going on in a jump back. You are rapidly changing from a squat to what is essentially the top portion of a push up. This is also called a Yoga plank position. It’s called plank because you are solid and straight like a plank. If your shoulders are weak and/or tight. If your low back and hips are tight or if your abs are weak you are going to struggle. I have also found that many people, especially women nowadays, have weak and painful wrists that don’t like supporting weight this way. Have no fear there are exercises, drills and solutions for all of this. Well, ok you can have some fear, but do it anyway. Ok?

For the weak shoulder problem you need to watch Fusion Fitness TV episode 2. In that episode you will learn about the walk out.  Walk outs do a lot to strengthen weaknesses around your shoulders. Funny enough this goes back to being a kid again. Just like squatting. When we were very small many of us begin strength development in our upper bodies by crawling. Fast forward many years ahead and you may find that kind of strength is pretty much gone. Walk outs help build some of that strength back. I get a kick sometimes out of having adults do “crawls” as part of their work outs. Keep in mind that this is crawling with just their hands and feet on the floor. Their knees don’t touch. Well, heh heh, they may get about halfway across the room and become very surprised with how difficult this is. It’s a real eye opener, but it works. Arms, shoulders, abs and legs are all working. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. We may even feature this exercise and a few of it’s many permutations here on future episodes of FFTV.  Back to the walk outs.

This was how I did it!

In FFTV  episode 2 there is a lot said about shoulders and elbows. A lot of people exercise their shoulder wrongly. Painfully. One reason is because many of us walk around all day with all kinds of muscular imbalances and then try to pile exercise on top of them.  At the very basic level there are really 2 shoulders positions. Disconnected and connected. You want your shoulders to be connected to you.  I am sure you have seen people with disconnected shoulders. Their shoulders are rounded forward, and hiked up towards their ears. The pits of their elbows facing each other, and upper back slumped forward. Rounded, kind of like a camel. As you are doing your walk outs be conscious of pulling your shoulder and shoulder blades down towards your hips. Be aware if they are riding up towards your ears. Next, practice the drill seen in Epsiode 2. Squeeze and rotate the pits of your elbows forward. To help with this place your right hand right behind your left armpit. Now, hold your left arm in front of you with your elbow bent. Now lower that left arm (keeping your elbow bent) down towards your left hip. Actually squeeze the left arm down using the muscle you have your right hand on. Do you feel it working back there? This is the lat muscle. Now go back to Yoga plank and squeeze that muscle. It may take several tries but squeeze it and use it to help you rotate those elbow pits forward. Both these movements should help straighten out any hump in your upper back too. If not stay tuned for future FFTV episodes for more upper back training tips. For now hold a yoga plank and practice the shoulder position. Hold for time. See if you can eventually work up to 60 seconds. You may be very surprised how much your muscle will start shaking!

Tightness in your shoulders is another matter and while there are some very good shoulder stretches you could do, they really should be shown to you in, person, by someone who knows how to teach them. You may instead want to enroll in an Ashtanga, Bikram or Iyengar Yoga class. Also please make sure to watch future episodes of FFTV as there will be cool stuff about shoulder tightness and what to do about it.

If overall tightness is a big problem then once again I would recommend a yoga class. I myself, am partial to Power Yoga (the real name for it is Ashtanga) because that is how I learned to do it, and teach it. A great book on Power Yoga is available and written by Beryl Bender Birch called Power Yoga.  Easiest place to get it is of course Amazon. Squatting will begin to help you with the tight hips problem but you might have other issues that squatting doesn’t address so please don’t be shy to ask questions on the Fusion Fitness TV comment board. Once again though, Yoga (especially at the beginning of your fitness quest) will hit all these areas very well. Stay tuned to FFTV for more episodes on all this stuff.

If you have the painful wrist problem an easy way to get around that is to simply find your self a low and sturdy box of some kind. Something that is narrow enough so you can place your hands on the sides of the box. Your palms are on the top of the box but your fingers wrapped around the sides. This can take a lot of stress of the part of your wrist that is troubling you. All you need to do is use the box whenever you practice Burpees or walk outs or push ups.

The second part of the jump back is jumping forward to return to your squat. This might be the most difficult part of the jump back/forward. All the flexibility you are developing will be needed here. If you are not yet at that point what do you do? Walk outs of course! Practice walking in and out of your squat. You may need to put your hands on a box for quite some time as your hips open up and strengthen. Work to always come back into a good squat position. This is the stage of the Burpee where people usually get very sloppy and miss out. As you are walking forward into your squat pull your self down into it. Instead of  rushing things and excessively bending in your back work your hips here. Work then down under you to get there. Don’t try to bend and contort in your back first and then allow your hips follow and adjust. Use your powerful hips to help pull you into your squat. Of course…once again…..mobile/flexible hips,  legs, ankles and shoulders will help get there.

Best advice of all is to practice, practice, practice. Any client that I have ever worked with has always shown improvement when they are persistent and consistent. Work up to 50 walk outs if you can. Just like your squat you can begin with 10 or a number that you can handle. Then add one or two a day. Build up slowly until you are able to do 50. If that is too difficult break your walk outs up into 2 sets of 25. Rest between sets or even better. Do a set of your squats as a rest. Your legs will be working while your shoulders catch a rest. This is the kind of workout that is real time saver too. Make sure you watch for next week’s article on the Burpee part 3. The often done, but not often done well…Push Up!

Best,

Robert

Squatting sounds and looks like it should be simple, but in my experience many people have all kinds of problems getting it back. You see, we all were able to squat as a kid, but for more reasons than you would want to know, it becomes more difficult. Especially as age advances. So what you say? Why do I need to squat like I used to? Of course if you don’t have any knee cartilage anymore squatting like you used to is probably NOT a good idea, but for everyone else? Well——-
Here is a short story about myself. I used to be a competitive runner. I raced 5ks, 10ks, the Marathon and sometimes even the mile run. I was in great “running shape,” but all that training also gifted me with a tight back, legs and hips. The short running stride (the notorious distance runners stride) also made me more “quad” dominant. I was actually training my quads (muscles in the front of my thighs) to take the loads and my all important backside (hamstrings and butt) to take less loads. Muscles became so tight that any kind of decent squat was out of the question. One of the results were that all those tight muscles couldn’t put my joints through the kind of movement they needed to feed and nourish themselves. All the joints in your body can actually be “oiled”, so to speak, if they are put through full range motions. Squatting is DEFINITELY one of those full range movements. When (back in 1992) I began Yoga and actually tried to squat it was NOT pretty. I worked at it and over time got most of it back. Thanks to that open minded approach in my exercise I now feel better than I did 20 years ago. And last month I turned 49.
The bad news is you don’t even have to have run like I did to feel that way! If you sit around all day like a sloth. If you have had an injury. If you don’t exercise. If you don’t “practice the move” you will lose your “kid” squat. Especially as you age, and I hate to tell you this—–your back will not like that either. Your back and your hips have a connection. You need to move your hips to keep your back healthy.
You will also want to get closer to your “kid” squat because it is an exercise that works the biggest muscles in your body. That is exactly what you DO want if your goal is to dump some fat off. Your muscles are the engine where fat burns off, but you got to use those muscles to run the engine and burn it off.
How do you do that? First, check out episode #1 of Fusion Fitness TV. Then try some of the stuff in there. You may be one of those people who are able to get “down into the hole,” as they say in weightlifting, with your but to your calves, and your back pretty much straight.  Although, in my experience, the odds are not in your favor and you aren’t one of “those” people.
Anyway, see what you can do. A mirror can help. Stand in a profile and watch yourself squat from the side. Here is a great tip I learned from Pavel Tsatsouline, kettlebell trainer extrordinare. Flatten your hands like a Karate chop and put them right where your hips need to bend. (see pic #1) This is where you need to start from. Bend from this point of your hips first. Throughout the squat keep thinking “move from your hips.” Think of sitting back on your heels. A great way to practice this is to sit back on a chair and stand up again. Just tap your butt on the chair and stand up again. Work up (over time) to 50 of them. (See pic #2). Once you can do 50 you can increase the speed of your squats. This will be harder, and build more strength. You will also be even better prepared for that full, 6 count Burpee.
As you descend, hold your abs flat and tight while holding your low back in a neutral position. Your low back may want to round  so you will need to practice patience and only go as deep as you can with out your low back excessively rounding. Keep sitting back. At first you may feel like you will fall backwards. Slow it down and pull yourself into it. Try not to relax too much when you descend, Try instead to use a bit of strength and pull your self down and back. Use the muscles in the front of your hips to help you with this.

PIC #1 Fold in your hips at the "hinges" shown here.

PIC #2 Sit back and tap your butt on a chair. Then stand up. Notice how vertical the shins are.

How deep should you allow yourself to go? As soon as your low back starts to round that is the point to stop. You are at your current limit. More than that might eventually aggravate your low back. Find a chair or a box to mark your current depth and work it there until it become easier. Don’t cheat yourself. Make every squat the same depth. That is where a marker like a chair or box will pay big dividends for you. As you improve slowly progress to using lower chairs, stools or boxes. An inch or two at a time. I have found that piling a couple pillows on a chair gives you something to remove as you improve. Don’t be in a hurry. Work the groove. Train your muscles to squat again.
Once you are down in your squat (wherever that may be for you) stand up, press through your heels and immediately push your hips forward and up. Watch out for the temptation to bend forward (see pic #3.). Instead work hard to always keep your hips under you (see pic #4). This will require a lot of strength in your midsection. (abs, back, hips) Keep watching future episodes of Fusion Fitness TV for ways to keep that area strong and stable.

PIC #3 Here I am shifting my weight forward to try and stand up. You go to fix it!

PIC #4 Here I am standing up by pushing through my heels and moving my hips foward and up. You got to get your hips underneath you as soon as possible.

This article is becoming kind of long in the tooth so I leave you with a couple of last tips.  First. Please do not hold your breath. You can experiment for the best way to breathe for yourself, but if you are having trouble holding your abs and back in place I would recommend to inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up. Inhaling on the way down will hold some pressure in your center (abs and back) so you are more stable there. Take deep breaths and don’t be afraid to sound funny when you do. Gasp, yell whistle or whatever you want. As you practice it will get easier and better.

Second. As you lower into your squat you may have to stretch your arms out in front of you for balance. If you have already watched the episode you will know what I am mean. Make sure you keep your upper back open as you do this by squeezing your shoulder blades together. Another way to think about this is to keep your chest open. If you are more flexible and strong you can isolate your legs a little more by holding your hands clasped behind your head.
You may also feel a lot of tight spots. Ankles, back, hips, legs. Heck, even your neck. You may feel like your entire body is locked up tight. Keep watching future episodes to learn how to help unlock these areas and see how it feels to do free flowing squats again. You can also read the blog called, “Ankles and calves, what a pain” for advice on a very common tight spot.
Remember——-I preach this correct posture stuff  so YOU can go about your exercise healthy and enjoy the results. Seriously. It is not something I just come up with to make your life harder. This is stuff I have learned from great teachers and then experimented with on myself.  I will never ask you to do something that I have not first done myself. Exercise is supposed to make you better not destroy you. Once you are able to squat better, and have incorporated it into a Burpee, you will get a hundred times more the benefit out of a truly great exercise. Your fat won’t have a choice. You are telling it that it has overstayed its welcome and its time to go.

PS – You can also read this interesting article on how people in third world countries squat and how that kind of squatting  improved weightlifters.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/the_thirdworld_squat

Best,
Robert

Here’s a good one. You are on vacation in Italy. You are visiting the Vatican (a pretty spectacular place BTW). You, and your significant other, have taken the elevator to the top of the dome, from where you spy a beautiful view of Rome. It is time to go back down and you decide you will take the stairs and race the elevator down. You tell your significant other to time you. Off you go! The stairs are those old, long ramp style stairs and each one is a little different than the other. About halfway down you land off kilter on an ankle, and you get a bad pain. You take a few minutes and limp down the rest of the way. As you walk around Rome it becomes more and more painful, and swells up like a balloon. Then you try to find ice to put on your ankle. An impossible task in Rome! They should make it an event in a reality show. “Your job, here in Italy, is to find a bag of ice and bring it back to the group.” It can’t be done! Anyway, you finally manage to find some at your hotel and spend the next couple of days trying to stay off of your ankle. The swelling goes down and you continue on with your vacation. You, in fact, go back to running within three days.

Fast forward a bit. You never bothered with any kind of rehab. It feels better so you just carry on as if it had never happened. Years later a knee starts giving you trouble. You keep running on it. One day it really hurts. It stiffens up and you have to go into surgery to have a bit of cartilage removed. Sigh. In case you haven’t guessed, yes, that was me. 20 years ago. It was at that point of knee surgery that I really had to question if what I was doing was smart exercise. My decision was that it wasn’t smart at all. That was when I branched out and learned everything I could about other forms of training and exercise. Yoga and running worked well for several years but I realized there was a LOT more to learn. One of those was about the flexibility/mobility relationship in all the joints of our bodies. In my case one of the big trouble spots are my ankles. If you have ignored old injuries remember—-they don’t just go away. They have to be fixed and put right again. I remember my Yoga teacher, Beryl Bender, telling me very early on that she had seen many people begin her class, and soon after develop sore areas. Areas where they had injured them selves sometimes 3o years earlier! Ankles are a very common trouble spot for this. You get injured, it alters how you walk, and joint and muscles adapt (not in a favorable way) to the new range of motion. Time to fix it don’t you think?

Your ankles may be locked up tight. I can’t tell you how many clients I have seen with bad ankles. They had either twisted them many times in the past, or constantly punished that area by wearing high heels every day. Some miraculously walked around with twisted, collapsed feet and no pain, BUT if I asked them to squat their ankles stopped them dead. Weak/tight ankles can do more than just prevent you from squatting right. They can be a major contributor to knee pain, back pain, even neck and shoulder pain. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that your feet and ankles might hurt. Let’s see if we can start to fix it.

The 2 words we need to clear up first are flexibility and mobility. There is a big difference between them. Flexibility is where muscles, tendons etc, stretch. A common flexibility problem in the ankle are tight calf muscles. They are often very tight. More on that in a moment. Mobility is the range of motion of your joints. This requires movement based exercise with strength. So let’s at least start to tackle the flexibility issue. If you have read the FFTV Blog  And on the 8th day was created the Burpee (part one that is) you have learned why squatting is so important for losing fat, getting leaner and feeling better. Tight calves will stop you from getting there. An easy way to stretch tight calves is the wall stretch. If you have read books on this flexibility or exercise I am sure you have seen this one. Trouble is it is always taught the wrong way. The magic of exercise always happens in the details. I have shown people the right way to do an exercise and it totally changes everything for the better. Here is the right way (see pic #1).  First and foremost you have to do this in bare feet. Running shoes, in particular are one of the absolute worst shoes to stretch or exercise in. Stay tuned for episodes about bare foot exercise and why it is so much more effective.

Calf wall stretch

Back to the calf stretch. Stand about a foot in front of a wall. Put your hands on the wall and step one of your legs back. How far back will depend on how tight you are back there so you will have to experiment. The calf of the back leg is the one you are stretching. Now lean forward into the wall. Lean from your BACK ankle. Do not lean from your back or hips. Picture yourself like the leaning tower of Pisa (speaking of Italy) and lean forward as one structure. Your heel (of your back foot) must stay down on the floor. As you lean you will feel a stretch.

Hold it right there! You are not done yet. Here is where the real magic happens. Remember how I said weak/stiff ankles can make for sore knees? In your case it may or may not be the reason, but better to fix what you can anyway. Check your back foot. Is it pointing straight ahead?  Is the arch of the foot collapsing and hitting the floor? These are the real fixes that all those supposed “expert” books miss. Here’s how to fix them. Point your foot straight ahead. Now glance at your knee. If its rotated inwards towards your big toe you need to get it to rotate out in line with your 2nd and 3rd toes. Squeeze the butt in that leg. Squeeze it hard. If  at first have trouble doing this keep practicing. Once you get it you will feel a much more intense stretch in your calf. It may even go all the way up your leg and that is good. See if the butt squeeze lifted your arch off the floor. If not work on rotating your lower leg outwards, but do this without moving your foot. Feel that? That is a much better calf stretch.

Knee turned inwards. It also collapses the arch of your foot. You have to fix this.

Knee rotated outwards. This also lifts the arch of the foot. This is good!

If you weren’t to do this you may miss the actual tight area that gives you trouble. Why? Because your body has learned how to avoid stretching that area and you have to gently force it back into line. Now hold the stretch for at least 30 seconds. If that isn’t enough hold longer. Learn to picture the muscle itself relaxing. Imagine warm towels wrapped around it. Imagine there are lungs in the muscle and you are breathing in and out of them. You may have to hold for several minutes. Hold until it has no choice but to relax. Now change your foot position. Turn your foot slightly inwards. Now do everything the same. You may feel a stretch in a different part of your calf. Now turn your foot outwards and do the same thing again. Find which position, or positions, causes the greatest stretch and work only those areas. If you are very tight in there you need to do this daily. For the absolute best results you may also need to”roll out the trigger points” before you stretch. If you don’t your results will be only so-so. Stay tuned for more episodes on how to “role out the trigger points.”  This fitness stuff is definitely an ongoing process.

There are other ways to work out the tightness in your calves. Other stretches or Yoga. For now let’s learn one thing at a time. Stay with this and let me know how it is working for you. There will be other Blogs and FFTV episodes that cover all that stuff too. Some of the episodes will feature real experts that you can finally learn how to do this stuff the right way. Your exercise will improve and if that improves so will your confidence and if your confidence improves you will take off like a rocket! Slimmer. stronger, leaner, healthier. It can be yours. You just got to learn how to do it.

That’s it for this…..oops sorry. What about the mobility you spoke of Robert?  Well—–do you feel a pinch in the front of your ankle as you do the calf stretch? If so, that is a mobility problem. The pinch you feel IS NOT tightness. It is your joint impinging. In other words it is not tracking smoothly. You have to re teach it how to track correctly. That funny enough is the subject of part 2 Ankles And Calves. What A Pain.

Best,

Robert Troch

This high school kid has tight ankles, and other problems. He has no business doing this exercise until he fixes things.

Now this guy has flexible and strong ankles!