Exercise No. 15 Elbow Stand

I would consider elbow stands a lot of fun. Easy to learn if you already know how to handstand, and somewhat impressive. So, to learn, you must know what to do.

I'll quickly note that I intend no copyright to How Cast for the picture.

   You can either stand with one elbow on the ground, or both in the elbow stand. Your basic handstand balance is technically just at a lower center of gravity, and if you just get into these, I recommend being a little careful so you won't hyper extend your triceps.

   

Elbow Stand:

   The first variation is to put one elbow on the ground, and your hand on the other side. hang your legs as needed, or split them, and find your center of gravity. It's a lot like a handstand, so the center of gravity in your elbow will be further back, in your lower forearm and actual elbow.

   The second variation which is both elbows, a little more challenging, for those of you who have your elbows bending backwards in handstands, be a little careful in this. Your center of gravity once both elbows are placed on the ground in your lower forearm and elbow. Not to mention when you start out, I strongly suggest you first try it with your legs hung over because when they're straight up you don't know exactly how to balance them out fully yet and lean them at the right angle. Full  elbow stands require a bit of arch in the back. So enjoy and good luck!

- The Fitness Cookie

Lung Strength

Your lung strength plays a big roll in fitness. Keeping your lungs strong is really important if you like running or riding your bike or anything to do with that. Stamina in cardiovascular has a lot to do with breath as well. You're lungs have to be strong enough to push enough air in your body so your muscles and your bloodstream will be rich with oxygen to supply your system to work properly.

Lacking in lung strength is usually a sign that you lack seriously in fitness. To have strong lungs, you have a strong body because they're used to being used quite often. If they run out of the ability to supply themselves with a lot of oxygen for long periods of time during exercise, you really should start to do something like run or ride your bike. 

    The stronger your lungs are, the stronger you are.

Continuing to Eat Right

I'm going to ask you right now, have you been eating good lately? Check yes, or check no. If you've checked no, we've got a problem that has need to be dealt with.

I like that picture there because it has lots of colors...

   Working out requires food that gives you energy, and when you work out, the food you're eating should not only give you energy, but it should feel like a charge from the very circuits of a nuclear power plant. I'm being dramatic here, but white pancakes or captain crunch is suicide for weightlifting and running.
   If you don't give your body something to burn as well, it starts to burn muscle. I'm not sure if burning muscle for energy causes pain, but it definitely causes physical difficulty. Severe, physical difficulty. If you're burning muscle, you get weaker, and instead of muscular progression, you will see muscular digression.
   Also, in working out and eating healthy, if you're doing things like pull ups, eating healthy gives you stronger skin so things like blisters don't happen so much. Also, eating healthy gives you the ability to have quicker muscle repair time and less adjustment time. You see, with certain exercises, you get sore for a bit, and then you stop being sore and just get stronger the more you push yourself with those exercises. For me personally, the only thing that can really cause me to get sore is weightlifting, really really hard weight lifting. Like a crap load of reps with hundreds of pounds and then hitting up the dumbbells rather violently after the barbell and more crap loads of reps with lots of pounds on each side.
   Now for you, the person reading this blog, you might very well have a serious problem with getting really sore. Eating healthy can help with that. When you don't eat fat cakes and preserved foods and stuff all day long, and your diet is hearty grains, fish, not stake and potatoes all day, and fruits and veggies and all that good for you stuff, you won't have a need for that whey sharze that makes your muscles grow back together because your body is lacking those things that put it back together.
   You shouldn't have to take some kind of protein supplement to make your muscles grow back together and get stronger than last time, your food that you're eating should be doing that for you.
   So healthy eating adds to stronger better muscles, quicker repair time, stronger skin, stronger teeth, a definite better complexion and just feeling good in general.

Progression.

I'll talk to you about this as of being a pretty important topic. Your progression depends on how much you work at what your doing and how hard you work at it. Me for instance, I'll give you a quick example. I've been break dancing for almost two years as I write this post. Practice? Six days a week. I don't work out on Sundays as of being my day of rest, so I just work out six days a week instead of seven. You're probably thinking at the moment, "This guy is not mentally sound."

You can make slow steady progress, fast messy progress, slow messy progress, and fast steady progress. The latter I would say is my favorite. 

   To make progress, you need to motivate yourself. If you see something that you want to do, you need to motivate and inspire yourself into doing it. To make progress, you can also make yourself a routine, a chart to mark off, something.

   I find what works best for me, is making it a habit to practice doing things that are new that I want to learn. If you make your exercising a habit, and a big one at that. You will really start to see progress. An every day exercise habit is something that will make you live a very long time. 

   Now don't kill yourself trying to get some fast progression. That would be bad. If you're trying to progress, and you want to do it every single day, you should be in good enough shape to get in that kind of good shape. 

   Before I started working out anywhere from three to four hours a day every day, I had been doing things previously like riding my bike four to five times a week and I did about five or six miles each time, and I also did a lot of pull ups and push ups.

   So, close to two years ago, I started break dancing, and I started lifting weights, and I started to do other things like ride my bike further, ride a unicycle every day, and just do all of these crazy things. I've only been doing handstands for eight months, but because of that progression from my every day habit and practicing planches and everything, I'm leaning backwards, and I'm doing other things as well with my dancing, learning power moves, and everything else.

   Because I was in pretty good shape before I started, I wanted to progress further, get stronger, and become faster and more powerful, not bigger, just better. So I started going onto more exercises keeping those same old exercises that keep me in super great shape.

   If you're looking to progress further, don't just drop all of the easy exercises, those are the basics and the base of how you do things, and how you keep in good shape to do those other things.

   Said well? Leave a comment about your progress, I would go further, but I'd like to hear what everybody else has to say about it.

Leg and Back Strength

A lot of people talk about how their back is bad as well as their knees are bad. I've heard excuses such as, "I have inherently bad knees." Crap! It's your choice to have bad knees! Unless you were born with some serious lack of cartilage in your knees, it's your choice to have bad knees. And for some of us, that choice can be made so far back that it's an irreversible problem.

   Your back too, it's your choice to have a bad back and cause yourself to slip a few disks. I'm just going to say it, if you're stupid enough to lift that box or that log the wrong way or if you know it's too heavy or it is too heavy and you won't put it down until you're done, you're going to responsible for your own problems. And if you're so out of shape that if you bend over and it hurts your back, well you have a lot to rethink, such as all of that deep frying and those three thousand seven hundred eighty five visits to McDonald's in the past ten years. 

Strong legs provide a strong back and good knees and a good back. Look at Arnold here in that picture, that guy will probably never have any knee or back problems for the rest of his life if you think about it. Don't worry though, to keep a good back you don't have to have a regular deadlift of over eight hundred pounds.

   You're good if you just stick to things like regular squats, regular deadlifting, regular rows, and things that require your back will keep you in better shape than most people. Unless some epidemic started and America somehow miraculously lost most of it's obesity. Wouldn't that be a sign of the second coming.

   I love back exercises and leg exercises. In fact, to maintain a strong back and legs, you don't even need a barbell. Go ahead, a lot of people use dumbbells and just straight up body weight. Now if you want to have the strength and results weightlifting provides, lift weights. If you do this body weight, your have to work out each group of muscles in a different way. But the thing is with deadlifting and squats, is that two exercises work out your legs and back at the same time. Squats you are required to hold the barbell on your shoulders, requiring back and core strength. I covered the core topic, so no worries on that. In squats with a barbell, you back has to hold that up as well as your legs have to push it up. 

   So next up in the deadlift, your really working out your legs and your back all in all. Because the bar goes on the ground instead of on your shoulders, you can usually up the weight but about twenty to thirty five percent. That's just my estimate.

   Because the deadlift requires you to straighten at the waist and knees, you are working out everything down low, and everything up top in the back. This is a pulling exercise and not a pushing, so it's the back, and it's the legs.

   The deadlift saves so many people from bad backs and knees because of how it works you out. You can also do this exercise with dumbbells as well. Just presume the same position required, you just hold the dumbbells in a hammer position and stand up. I like the barbell personally a whole lot more since I'm pretty young and I can still lift over three hundred pounds without an issue. When I'm not using the dinky back porch bar that is, when I pay a visit to the gym.

   Also, don't overwork yourself on these exercises when you start out, because you're going to hurt yourself. You really need to edge your way into it. No more than progression by five pounds a week until you're at a comfortable weight, and when that weight gets easy, you move to a heavier set.

   The legs themselves are among that of the strongest muscles in the human body. I've seen people do hip lifts where they put a super strong belt around their hips, chain a barbell to themselves and pick twenty four hundred pounds up an off the ground without an issue. But those guys still work out their back, just saying.

   Your back and your legs are the strongest areas on the human body, if they're weak, they'll serve you poorly, if they're strong, they'll serve you very well, if you're Arnold, well I don't know. Just work out your muscles because it really helps in health and avoiding injury and being strong. 

The Power of The Core

The core is a problem that a lot of people deal with. Anybody can sit up, and anybody can twist to the side, but most have problems having complete control of their core. My idea of somebody who has good core control and power, is somebody who can lift any part of their body with their core.

We have a number of muscles in the core that are required for sitting up, lifting our legs, and twisting. They need to be worked out in different ways. If all you do for your stomach is sit ups, you're probably going to lack in all of the other magnificent core muscles. So no to sit ups and crunches, if you're going to do those, twist a little.

   You're lower back, your abdominals, and your obliques are super important. If we didn't have those muscles, we would not be able to perform any kind of regular task that we carry through. When you're pulling something or pushing something, you're core holds your upper body erect and stable. So that means no opening the fridge, and as far as America is concerned, that's something that can't happen, if we didn't open the fridge, how else would we be happy?

   Things like leg raises offer a powerful core, because you're working out every core muscle up front and a little bit of your lats. Back levers, and supermans, as well as planks, handstands, planches, tuck planches, and anything requiring hold your feet up in a non sitting position, will work you back muscles. 

   It's important you balance out the way your muscles are worked. I'll tell you right now, core hyper extension is among the worst things you can do to yourself because it hurts so bad.

   So work out your core, get those abs, don't just work out your core though, nothing looks weirder than a person who works out their core but no other part of their body.

   The balance core strength offers is very important to have, if you don't have much core strength, you will probably have very poor balance. 

   To everybody out there who likes to ride their bike, your core is what keeps you balanced, to everybody who runs, your core is what keeps you balance, to all of you people who love to do handstands, your core keeps you balance, to all of you people who love to sit in your office chair without falling out of it, your core keeps your balanced, to all of you people who love to do pull ups, your core keeps you balance, to all of your people who like to lift weights, your core keeps you balanced, to all of you people who love life in general, your core keeps you balanced.

   Your core is the center of your balance. Without your core, your body wouldn't work. It protects vital organs and keeps you from hurting your spine. Work out that core, the stronger it is, the more balance and protection you have.