Fitness

Get off the machines:

What you really want is functional fitness. This means that you are fit to do all the activities that you want to do in life.

In real life, when you lift a weight off the floor, it engages all the muscles in your lower body, it engages your core and it engages multiple muscles in your upper body.

The best way to get functionally fit is to replicate those real life motions and muscle engagements with bodyweight and free weight exercises.

Think about it – how often do you lift a weight – in real life – that is constrained to move in one or two dimensions. Let’s go with “never”.

Get off the machines – do bodyweight and free weight exercises. Don’t have free weights? – here’s how to make bodyweight exercises harder. The same principles apply for free weight exercises.

A Few Words on Reps:

I started using the 5×5 workout theory for my legs some time ago, with great results, but I had kept doing 3×8-12 for  my upper body. I’ve since seen this  info:

5’s: The Magic Rep Range

Focusing on the big lifts is important, but the rep range you train in is critical as well.  One of the biggest mistakes trainees make, is not changing their rep ranges often enough. They fall into the pack mentality and end up doing years and years of work in the 8-12 rep range, when on the inside their body is craving a workout that pushes their limits a little bit more.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
Max Strength
Strength, Speed or Power
			Functional Hypertrophy
							Structural Hypertrophy
											Endurance

As the table above shows, the more reps you do in a set, the more likely you are to get bigger — but not necessarily stronger. 8’s, 10’s and 12’s are great for building muscle and stripping away body fat, but they’re sub-optimal if your primary goal is getting strong.

At some point, you have to take advantage of that muscle accrued using higher reps and focus on your nervous system. The continuum below should help:

Neural 1-6 Reps	Metabolic 10+ Reps

If you think about training in lower rep ranges (i.e. the left side of the continuum), you’re going to focus on becoming more efficient via your nervous system. World class powerlifters and Olympic lifters can often improve upon their lifts for years (while maintaining the same body weight) because their nervous systems have become extremely efficient at the competition lifts.

Take More Rest

People who aren’t familiar with getting stronger often take pride in taking short rest periods. After all, resting is for the weak right? If your goal is serious strength development, though, it’s flawed thinking.

While the muscular system recovers quite quickly, the nervous system takes much longer. Did you ever wonder why powerlifters or Olympic weight lifters take so long in between sets? It’s not because they’re lazy or out-of-shape. Well some are, but definitely not all of them!

Instead, they’re waiting to fully recover from a neural perspective. If you’re training in the 4-6 rep range, take a minimum of three minutes between sets, and as long as five minutes if you’re really pushing it. Lower rep ranges should be accommodated by even longer rest periods.

Since my primary interest is in getting strong and not in hypertrophy, I’ve since switched to 5×5 at the highest weight I can move for upper body, too. After the initial spike of soreness (if one can call 2 weeks a spike, ouch), I’ve noticed an immediate change for the better.

Build a Bomber Lower Body:

Number one for mountaineering is strong legs. Also number one for rock climbing.

If your knees are hurting – as you get lighter and your legs get stronger, your knees will likely feel better too. Mine did. YMMV.

If you’re of the mature age sect, chances are your legs are unbalanced. The perfect way to expose and correct this is to do single leg exercises. Also, it’s safer – you can work single leg with less weight in your hands or on your shoulders and protect your upper body – compared to double leg work.

1. Bulgarian Split Squat. If you haven’t ever done these or haven’t done them for a while, your butt will be sore in the next couple days! Thank me for letting Coach demonstrate instead of making my own video
2. Advanced Bulgarian Split Squat – same exercise only elevate your front foot on a step or something and bring your back knee down to the floor when you squat.
3. Front Lunge. Back Lunge. Lunge in any direction. Use weights when it gets easy.
4. Pistol Squat
5. I’m experimenting with adding a high step-up with dumbbells and a knee raise to my chest with the “off” leg.
6. Side Lunge. Hold weights in your hands if this is too easy.
7. Standing calf raise. Do this with each leg individually and you’ll be doing a standing single leg calf raise. Hold a dumbbell in your hand and you’re doing a weighted single leg calf raise.

Upper Body:

Pulling / Pushing / Lifting.

1. “Diesel” rows. I like these ’cause they will develop functional fitness for rock climbing.  Advanced: Do them one-legged to simulate that heel hook. Do them one-armed. Use only a few (or one) fingers to hang on. Equipment: That useless Smith machine bar. Gym rings. I can imagine rigging a fingerboard and doing these.
2. Dumbbell rows.
   

   Go big and do 5x5's

3. Pulling – number one is the pullup. Hang a bar, hang gym rings, use  your climbing fingerboard. Get some bands if you need an assist. Add weights when it gets too easy. Put towels over your rings and pull on the towels. Pullup with knee lift. Pullup with leg extension.
4. Dips – between two chairs, bench dips, ring dips.
5. Pushing – pushups and the 100 variations thereof. Too easy? Add weight / do offsets / do twists.

General Fitness:

A nice list of excuses not to exercise. You know you’ve used them.

The single most important factor in sticking with exercise. Reader’s Digest version – “comparison is the thief of joy”. In other words, focus on yourself and your own improvement and forget what others are doing.

Your number one fitness exercise – and you don’t need anything but the will to do it. Here’s a table to tell you how you measure up. The One Hundred Pushups program.

“20 exercises you can do at home”

Exercises you can do in a prison cell (chances are you have more room and stuff at home).

Think you’re too old to get fit?:

This guy is 67 years young: