Get Tougher

There is one thing that comes with fitness and that would be making your body tougher. There's a certain kind of fitness that makes you much tougher than regular old boring fitness. A time required task, with proper training and a good number of days spent being sore in weird areas of the body, you can get there.

This is a large topic to cover. I have a lot to talk about. But to begin with, we each have our own methods of empowering our bodies to resist what we want them to resist. It can go from being tough enough to handle a punch or two from a school yard bully, to being able to break a stack of bricks with your hand.

   Now, there is pain involved in becoming stronger and resilient to forms of pain and force that you want to avoid. The human body rather incredibly can handle a number of horrendous things with proper training and by the abuse it's put through, it strengthens itself and lasts even longer than if you do nothing to it.

   Now why is that? When something rebuilds itself, by courtesy of creation, makes itself even better and stronger. It's like when you remodel a house that's filled with press-board and hideous furniture and you fill it with wood, granite counter tops, and leather furniture.

   It's a lot like a home really. In fact, your body is a home. The housing of your soul and spirit is something you want to take care of, but you can abuse it properly and call that a form of care. It's like gutting a home and filling it with strong lasting materials. You hurt for a while, and things become depleted, but they toughen up every time they don't hurt anymore.

   Now I'll tell you why I say things when I refer to becoming tougher. When you become tougher, it's not just your muscle mass and density as such. Your joints, feet and palm padding, bones, muscles, and tendons all become harder, thicker, and stronger.

   Simply enough, you cannot achieve so desired "toughness" by just, exercising. You have a required style of physical exertion to incorporate into your exercise if you want to develop a shock resistant body that can offer any desired and controlled force as well.

   So, to be tough and build muscle at the same time, you can choose the form of exercise that gives that to you, or you could choose multiple forms which would offer it.

   Now as you know, martial arts is excellent to do to become tough. What if you want to be one of those super tough people that can fight and stand on their thumbs?

   Hardening your bones starts with a series of options. Weight lifting hardens everything, but what I've discovered does as well and does an incredible job at that is body weight training. Repetitive motion from plyometric push ups hardens your rib cage, turtle freezes and elbow levers toughen your stomach, bar workouts give you a wall of muscle on your stomach, and there's so much.

   Body weight I can tell you gives you strong, flexible, bones that are very hard. Weight lifting gives you strong hard bones that are thicker and more powerful. Combined together, it causes your bone and muscle structure to remain in a state to where you body can easily lift itself, but is also dense and hard enough to remain steady and strong to support your weight and much more.

   On top of this, you will also have the power to offer immense force in any shape fashion or form if you combine strength training with explosive exercises. You have the force of a low geared truck, but the speed of a jet fighter with this kind of combination, and if your physic is strong enough to deal with that kind of power, it's tough enough to receive what you need it to.

-The Fitness Cookie

The Mindset For Becoming Fit

There's a place in your mind you reach when you want to get fit. Then there's a place in your mind you reach when you start doing it. And then there's another you reach when you make it a habit and it takes effect on your lifestyle and physic.

So there's the weight you want to lose if you're heavy, there's the weight you want to gain if you're a twerp, and there's the physic you want to achieve if you're somewhere in between.

   So how do you get somewhere with this mind set? There's a lot to it. I'll begin with the habits of good and the habits of bad that many are quite unfamiliar with but ought to be.

   To begin, you have bad habits. I'll talk about these first. A bad habit is something hardwired into the mind. It's the design of the natural man to follow bad habits, and they're easy to fall into. There's a thing, you call falling out of a good habit falling out because it's easy to leave it, and then you call breaking a bad habit breaking it because bad habits bind you.

   The psychology behind bad habits is simple enough. You fall into it without an issue. Bad habits are easy, because the mind looks for something easy, so it's easy to fall in,  but it's harder to keep it up without even realizing it.

   You may get tired from a healthy lifestyle, but that's supposed to happen. If you over consume food, don't sleep enough, sit around too much, your body becomes lazy and gets tired from the energy  you consume daily because it can't feed it enough and you're not restoring it properly.

   Being overweight causes discharge of too much energy because you also have excess body mass to carry around and that's hard on the system. Everything from your bones  to your heart having to pump all of that blood everywhere. It's easy sitting around to your mind because you don't have to push and work mentally. But physically in the places you don't have to conceive thoughts and such, your mind and body are in overload.

   So on that, I'll go to good habits.

   Good habits take work to keep up, and work pays off with time. It takes a while to get into good habits, you don't fall, you climb. Climbing is good for the body, did I mention that?

   A good habit requires time, dedication, and motivation. Your personal dedication should be enough for your motivation, consider it a concept...

   To work yourself into a good habit, you work one step at a time. The first step would be wanting to get fit. The second step is getting the idea of what you will be doing. The third? How to start. The fourth is when to start. Fifth is starting. Sixth is doing something. And they keep going on as you move into changing your habits and physic. It's all hard stuff, working there, getting there,  and staying there.

   Once your there, it's easy to stay there. Progression feels good, motivation is fun, and strength is something that you don't use when you open the mayo jar.

   So your mindset all begins with thinking about it, and then step by step as you build yourself up, you notice changes in how you feel, look, and see yourself. Perspective changes, life becomes brighter, your world looks better, and even on rainy days the sun shines.

    The trail to fitness, is learning how to strengthen your body,  anywhere and in any way. Step along, there's stones and such to cross, but you work your way over and around them, and you get better with each one.

   A day can be changed with just a little bit of physical exertion and training for a few minutes, makes all the different, you're not tired anymore, and you feel better.

   Join the trail, it's been tread on many times, left, and found again, lost forever, and found until death, and will stay around for forever. It's never too late to do your body good, and you can do it that good now. Let the light of fitness shine on your day, it fixes many ailments and changes your body to something you love and  cherish because you take such good care of it.

   You can turn rocks into gold, and you can do the same with your body.

Exercise No. 31 Pike Walks

So this is for those of you who hand balance and are looking into it. Pike walks are challenging to get right, core intensive, and they help out with flexibility if you're having trouble with that for your hand balance variations requiring hip mobility and upper body flexibility in certain such as I do. It's excellent and helps a lot, and I've found it induces progression quite well into many other exercises.

Regardless the picture of the pike stall, I do not require you to hold that position. But! You will be going into it for a short lived amount of time. Performing this properly isn't difficult, just hard to keep going.

   So the pike walk is easy to explain. I made it up myself, I'm not quite sure if other people use it, but it helps. So you lean to one side, and put your hand on the ground. Only one, lift your hips up, and move your feet forward.

   Once your feet come forward, they must come onto the ground, once they touch the ground, you lift you hand and put it out again and lift your feet and move them once again. For results, repeat the process about ten times on each side for every set. Enjoy!

-The Fitness Cookie

Exercise No. 30 Handstand Push Ups

This is something I failed to touch up on early into things, it's an excellent base exercise that prepares you things like planches and such because it gives you strength and balance which are both necessary means in the feats of strength I talk to you about in this blog.

Handstand:

   It's considerably a somewhat difficult move to master, the handstand push up that is. You have to go from handstand push ups with bent hanging legs and more of an arch in your back so your body will spring with the movement, to handstand push ups with just hanging legs, to handstand push ups with straddled legs, all the way to full form handstand push ups. It's about a four to six month journey for the stronger of you. So we shall begin.

   So first, master your handstand. Get a good grip of the ground, hold it well. Get to about thirty seconds. Next, do not have a terrible handstand where you can't stop moving or your elbows bend inwards! You will not, I repeat myself, will not! Be able to do handstand push ups with bad form.

   Another thing is, learn the tuck planche. Learn the freaking tuck planche, so many people ask why they can't do handstand push ups, so I ask them to do a tuck planche and they fall over. That's the main problem here, is lack in deltoid strength, something not many people have is the stability for such a movement. Tuck planches shouldn't be that hard either if you're training for handstand push ups and such, because that's where you actually start with the handstand push up.

   A handstand press up out of the tuck planche prior to handstand push ups is a necessity for handstand push ups because it's not the full motion, but it strengthens you properly, makes everything steadier, and you have the core control.

   How you do this, is you start out in a tuck planche and lean forward on your hands until your legs are facing upwards and you push your feet out and up until you are in a full handstand as well as you push straight up with your elbows.

   Another thing is, I advise handstand push ups training without the wall because that doesn't teach your body anything other than getting strong because you don't have to counter balance your weight. Sorry, but I'm knocking hard on a lot of these terrible techniques people use to learn solely because they don't progress anywhere nearly as fast as they could if they followed the proper way of doing things which will get you a handstand push up in just a few months compared to a year, year and a half, maybe two. I progressed past all of my friends who were good at handstands the day I started training these the right way.

   So next once you get your press out of the tuck planche, you can go from kicking into a handstand and doing handstand push ups. First, go into a handstand, and slowly but surely go downwards until you're on the floor. Practice this a number of times until you get comfortable with it.

   After you figure out your handstand drop down and the press out, the upwards part of the handstand push up shouldn't be hard. Mainly because of the press from the tuck planche. So, go into a handstand, and go downwards, once your elbows bend right up to your limit of strength handling, just push up as hard as possible with your deltoids and your triceps.

Tips:

   It's also good to learn handstand push ups in the beginning with a somewhat wide handstand stance, not to the point to where you're using your deltoids and your biceps only to hold you up, but about a shoulder widths and a half, at least. Once you get that down, and you're holding handstands in that position decently, well, have fun and keep practicing.

Good Luck!

-The Fitness Cookie

Joint Shock and Stress

I discussed this previously a time ago, but I have a few more words on the matter since it's generally important. A fair amount of movements that people are concerned about mastering from time to time are incredibly taxing on the joints. Since I'm discussing all around fitness in the body calisthenics area, I'm going to offer some important tips on this subject that you must follow carefully to avoid damage.

First off, I'll give you tips on getting used the movement and making your body stronger. To begin, you need to build yourself up to these things, because things like one handed turtle freezes and hammers, flips, whatever it is, are incredibly rough on the joints if you don't know what you're doing or you're not prepared.

   For both ankles, knees, and wrists since those tend to be the main pressure spots in fitness, you need to build up to it as usual. But you need to strengthen your ligaments, and build up some dense muscle in the areas that you are going to be using. For concerns of break dancing and parkour and such since those are becoming more popular, you really should build up some forearm muscle before getting into handhops, any kind of turtle power moves or freezes, and airchairs as well.

   Your forearm muscle decides how long there won't be cartilage destroying pressure on your joints. The under part of your forearm, and the most meaty part of it, should have very decent strength. Build it up doing pull ups or lifting weights. If you build that muscle up you have more control on the ground and can push out with your hand relieving a fair amount of the pressure on your wrists.

   Another thing is, don't workout to pain or pure exhaustion in these movements, you will destroy your body if you do. Sure, weight lifting, calisthenics, all that, it's a good thing to work out until you're fully exhausted and will be nice and sore the next day. But, you should not work to full exhaustion in holding freezes and positions on your hands that are taxing on the wrists. You only need to practice enough to become good, and trust me when I say that tiring yourself to just resting on your joints is way more practice than needed to get good. Rest between sessions and come back with renewed power as well. Three, four minute breaks in these things are very important.

   For the knees, and the ankles, well... I can't say too much but that if you want to learn how to flip, sticking things in practice unless you're a gymnast is kind of stupid, and even then it's stupid. The thing about flips is that it's an entirely different kind of momentum compared to that of a regular high jump or run because when you rotate, it's more like you're jumping from an object that's about your height plus half of that because when you flip you go higher with the block and rotation causing more joint stress. Move after your flips. Before you get into flips, build yourself up. Prerequisites are dearly important, learn what comes first, and strengthen your legs. Toughen up your calves, run a mile three times a week, do one foot calf raises, and about one hundred squats in a row for a good leg workout. The strength preparation makes your muscles stronger for learning things such as flips. If you land a flip but your body isn't very strong, the momentum and the power does not go into your muscles as it should, but into your joints which is dangerous and unsafe for your body causing problems later on.

   Another tip is safe practice. Don't show off, don't do stupid things, teach yourself first hand, learn what you are going for, study it, and build yourself upwards. The Fitness Cookie himself, (me) has never shown off. Only have I practiced and shown what I know and can do. Build upwards, don't work until exhaustion or pain in the joint taxing movements, and safe practice and performance.

-The Fitness Cookie

Exercise No. 29 Flag Pole Push Ups

Ever wanted to know how to do flagpole push ups? They're a great workout. But here's the secret to getting results from them, you have to be able to do them on both sides. Got it? Great. Let's get to work!

So, how do you learn? First, you need a good flag pole. You ought to be able to hold yourself out with straight legs for a good ten to fifteen seconds. It's hard, I know, but this will give you the core strength and stability for this challenging movement.

   This is a very involving movement. You need to hold your body in alignment with the pole. If your stomach is facing upwards, you will either dislocate your shoulder, it's going to hurt, or you are superhuman. But then again, I'm super human too. :D

   I recommend before you do these you be able to do a solid amount of handstand push ups, and window wipers. Your core strength is about three quarters of this. And then from there it's your upper body strength.

   When you go into the flag position, you can't let your arm on the top go limp. Hold everything tightly, but control your muscles. It's like a mixture of a pull up and a handstand push up really. In fact, that's what'd I say a human flag pole push up is. A handstand push up and a pull up. Huh, who knew? There you go. Go from there! Enjoy! And practice safely.

   -The Fitness Cookie

   

Muscular Stimulation

I hear questions on how to get bigger, people ask me how to get rid of their chicken arms, how to get six pack abs, how to do all of these things to bring up their physic, make it stronger, bigger, and better looking. So then I'll get questions on why they aren't progressing very fast. Well, to be truthful, it takes time to stimulate your muscles and make them big.

First, we'll check your workout. What are you doing? Is your workout, kind of intense? A bit powerful? Not too hard? But you are getting sore once in a while?

   No, that's not how you do it. With exercise and gains, you have to do things that hurt. Things that leave you sore. After every workout, you need to feel accomplished, powerful, like your body hates you the day after, but when you get back into things for another workout it's thanking you.

   Your intensity level distinguishes the way your muscles are stimulated and the way that they grow. The harder you workout is, the more your muscles will grow. Making your workout harder means you have to change things up every few weeks and make them hard for yourself. That is your objective in working out. You have to challenge your body. The more you challenge your body, you will stimulate muscular growth.

   Over time, you will start to discover that when you do something like, five pull ups, you won't get sore, because it's easy. But say you do, ten front lever pull ups in four sets. The next day your lats and your biceps are going to be a little sore. Well gee, I wouldn't guess! For gains and stimulating your muscles you have to go the rout of high intensity and hard work. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. It's very simple.

Exercise No. 28 Front Lever Pull Ups

This is a hard but very intense movement that gives you massive amounts of strength and is one of those exercises with body weight that gives you big arms and a big back because it's so difficult. The strain of this move I would say goes through most of your body. It's incredible what it will do and the results it gives you. The muscle groups it works out are your forearms, biceps, lats, shoulder blade muscles, a little of your traps, your abdominals, for holding your legs up your quads, and your obliques.

Also to keep your arms comfortable together your pectorals are slightly engaged.

   Would you like to know how to do these now? I would presume you do. Let us begin.

   First off, for prerequisites, you need to learn how to do a regular front lever and be able to crank out some serious pull ups. Many of the exercises I provide in this blog will give you such benefits and abilities to progress to this movement.

   So first, you must go into the front lever position, for this movement you may need to tuck a leg in at first. Step one is to hold your core tight and strong. When you pull up do not bend your elbows to the side, they must directly go forward in the direction that they face as you go upwards. Keep your chest somewhat rounded and continue on.

   There you go. Front lever pull ups. They're a little simple, but they take time to master because of their difficulty. Have fun and safe practice.

-The Fitness Cookie

Wrist Care

A question from time to time is, "How do I take care of my wrists during exercise?" Not hard. Follow the simple steps The Fitness Cookie uses.

To begin with, your wrists are pretty valuable to you. Everybody has a lifestyle that requires their wrists. Gamers, office managers, chefs, and anyone who goes to the gym. Right? Correct. And everybody else requires their wrists.

   Keep them in good shape, don't abuse your wrists. When doing things that are hard on your wrists, make sure that they are able to stand up to that kind of abuse. As well as you can get wrist supports. A bit of compression and comfort helps a ton.

   Recently I wanted to get some wrist bands to keep my hands dry when I was doing things like flares and power tricks on wooden  floors and when I was on the pull up bar, so I bought some and noticed that just that tiny amount of compression helped them with support and comfort when I was doing jackhammers and flares which are incredibly taxing on the wrists.

   As far as weights go, if you feel the need for wrist supports because of some discomfort during your presses, give it a go.

   Now another thing is, don't hammer relentlessly on your wrists. That's mainly an issue for people who break dance, but build your wrists to the point of being able to take that kind of abuse, don't just jump on and start beating yourself up. You have to built up to everything to avoid injury.

   Good luck and safe training.

- The Fitness Cookie

One Handed Planche Tutorial

As of being a person to watch street workouts and Asian's break dancing from time to time as well as I've subscribed to some incredibly abstract channels on youtube, I've seen this form of exercise successfully mastered by only five people. Three of them didn't have a leg condition. So yes, there are extra terrestrial life forms on this planet. Myself being from Jupiter, I will teach you how to convert to the ways of the others by knowing how to do the one armed planche as I do.

So first off, you can't come from earth. Just doesn't work. Second, you have to be pretty confident in your planches.

   I can't stress being confident in your planches. Get a bit of a shoulder warm up done as well. You really ought to make those muscles a bit warm because this move is massively taxing on whichever is your fully dominant arm.

   To begin, you need to have a good understanding of your planches. You need to learn the full planche, every variation of the finger tip planche, your one handed handstands must exceed normality, you have to learn flag freezes and get those down, you cannot go on and do this without being able to do planche push ups, you have to be able to planche with fully straight elbows for more than ten seconds, and the word planche must be your free time expression. Let me demonstrate, "What's up man!" "Oh, not much, how about you?" "Just hanging out at the house, doing planche push ups and planches."

   You want to be cool and do on armed planches? Do you want to be superhuman? Well here's how you do it after you've earned your confidence, your planche badge, and the motivation to do this.

   We'll start from the one handed handstand. Hold your balance arm out, lean to the side like you're doing a flag freeze, once you're in the flag position, you have to hold your body to the side of your dominant arm for the sake of your balance, but it gets hard here. You have to bend your elbow, crazy I know, it's superhuman, but you have to bend your elbow in the one handed balance position, lean more on to the heal of your hand, pivot your hips, and flatten your butt out. Hold your body straight as possible, it can be at a bit of an angle.

   When you come in from the flag position, your dominant foot should be considerably close to the ground, but when you pivot your hips, it should lift up and become parallel with the ground. 

   Your hand positioning in this should be to your comfort, try it out in different ways. When you feel the need to attempt in different ways, such as coming off of the ground, hold your body straight, bend towards your dominant side, and lean up onto your hand. Good luck

  

-The Fitness Cookie

Core Workout (From the Top Down)

A strong core is valuable thing in today's society. Just as it was a thousand years ago. So why make it strong? It keeps you out of back injuries and being able to pick yourself up easily, full body control since your core is the main support of your body other than your back. Now lets make it stronger!

I've got some simple core conditioning exercises for on the ground and on the pull up bar. Surprisingly, I'm going to leave crunches out of this because they are entirely useless in my opinion.

   So to begin with, I have beginner, intermediate, and very advanced. Shall we begin?

Beginner:

1. 3 sets of 5 Hanging leg raises. Bring knees up as far as possible to chest.

2. V sit hold for 20 seconds.

Intermediate:

1. 2 sets of 10 extended leg raises. Do not bring knees up, keep legs straight and extend to a hanging L position.

2. 2 sets of 10 hanging leg raises. Knees to chest.

3. 15 Ground leg raises.

Advanced:

1. 2 sets of 10 Toe to bar leg raises.

2. 10 Pull up position leg raises.

3. 5 Window wipers.

4. 15 Swinging window wipers.

5. 30 Ground leg raises.

Very Advanced:

1. 2 sets of 25 Toe to bar leg raises.

2. 20 Pull up position leg raises.

3. 2 sets of 20 Window wipers.

4. 25 Swinging window wipers

5. 15 L sit leg raises.

Shoulder and Elbow Pain With Calisthenics (body weight)

Now I'm going to talk concerning you calisthenics lovers and street workout addicts. I have a deep passion for working out with body weight, but sometimes, your shoulders and your elbows hurt when you learns something new, have over done it, or done something with a cramp, it goes on and on. But I'll point it all out.

There are a lot of bad and messed up things you can do to your body in body weight training. To be honest with you, weightlifting dangers are bigger and scarier because those are more dangerous, but you can wreck joints, rip tendons, fracture bone structures, and tear muscles just as easy in calisthenics.

   So when you have joint pain, you take care of it. You don't just keep going, you're going to make it worse.

   I'll start at the elbows like I did with the last post. Your elbows are important, and connect your forearm which is connected to your hand which either holds onto stuff or pushed you upwards from the ground.

   First, I'll start with the presses and push ups. Your shoulders have a series of tendons leading down to your elbows and then your hands. The tendons in your elbows will sometimes shift, pop, and move around. If they're doing that during a workout, you need to rest a bit, check your form out, and fix things. I really haven't found much in the ways of push ups to cause elbow pain unless it's damage from too many of them, or from something else that happened that has nothing to do with exercise.

   I'm not physician, but when it comes to pull ups and levers, those are dang hard on your elbows if you're doing the super advanced sets and workouts!

   To begin with, one armed pull ups. Those are essentially one handed handstand push ups (I've seen them done) but in reverse. So if you think about it, one handed handstand push ups are incredibly difficult, you're balancing your body, as well as the crushing force of every ounce of your being is resting on your elbow. You're going to want to be careful.

   In a sense, one armed pull ups are harder on your joins than one handed handstand push ups, (hypothetically) because you don't have to use so much of your core balancing yourself which allows you to put more energy into pulling yourself upward, therefor allowing you to exert even more strain into muscles which breaks them down, makes them stronger and denser, but it also puts more strain on your joints.

   Goes for your shoulders too. If you jump into one armed pull ups, you simply aren't able to do them without conditioning your shoulders. But you can mess your shoulders up with these. Bad form in the one arm pull ups is possible. If you hold your shoulder just right, you can mess your rotary cuffs up and hurt yourself. So be prepared, keep a safe number until you know you can handle the worst, and good form. When the injury does happen, (you're working out, something somewhere somehow some way will need some kind of repair time no matter what) you need to give it time, and let it repair itself. If you can work out around the injury, great, keep going.

   Now concerning things with hand balancing techniques and odd and awkward positions for your body, you need to baby your shoulders. For those of you who do hollow backs, or just generally enjoy doing bridges, or possibly bridge push ups, (tutorial for later) because of the position that you are in and your body is not used to that, you can mess your shoulders up.

   I certainly have. I would do hollow backs with straight elbows and the moment I put my shoulders to the max and bent my elbows to get close to the ground, my right shoulder would pop and go out, as well as even if I tried pushing back for shoulder flexibility practice in the bridge.

   In a case of this, don't push yourself to that point of discomfort so you can make yourself tougher and get used to the pain, that's incredibly stupid and I've seen it done. Where you go from here is you work around it. If it corrects itself like my issue did, I'm back into hollow back push ups for instance, but I had to wait.

   Time is medicine here, and if it's a permanent issue, you might as well ditch that exercise and stick to the ones that don't cause you problems. Work around your problems, fix your problems, and you will have no problems.

   The Fitness Cookie

Shoulder Pain For Gym Rats: look at my previous post.

Shoulder and Elbow Pain For Gym Rats

Your common workout issues consist of joint pain. Muscular soreness is something that comes from breaking your muscles down and making them stronger, denser, and bigger with any kind of exercise. But joint pain is something you really have to watch out for because if not handled with care, it can lead to permanent damage.

To begin with, shoulder pain is really something you need to pay attention to. Your shoulders are generally a fragile joint. Nowhere near capable of amounts of shock resistance that your hips and knees are capable of. Obviously because you stand on your feet all of the time, but how many times a day do your stand on your hands unless you're a hand balancer or a a break dancer? Even then.

   Dealing with shoulder pain is simple, as of having past minor afflictions with my shoulder joints just from general working out too much or getting used to a new movement, I talked to my doctor and the best medicine for your shoulder pain, is time. Your body miraculously rebuilds itself, and repairs itself if something is wrong.

   To begin with, you're already experiencing pain, so that's a sign that your body knows something it wrong, because by pain, that triggers weakness, which will also keep your muscles from overworking themselves and making you heal.

   It's seriously stupid to train with shoulder pain, you can destroy your body that way. Now if you realize you have a lot of pain in your shoulder or shoulders, it's advised you talk to your doctor. But if it's just some simple you can get over it pain, my personal waiting time is two weeks, but yours may be a little more. So I'll repeat it again, time is a very good medicine when it comes to joint and muscular discomfort.

   Also, if your shoulder pain is repetitive, you might want to work on your form. Something is wrong, and your form is bad. This is mainly an issue in weightlifting because it's far easier to do something very wrong in weight lifting than it is in calisthenics. I speak from both experiences as of having the issue of doing too many handstand push ups and making the transition into new weight over the course of two days and having to take a two week break because it pushed my upper back out of place.

   Also, if your shoulder pain spreads to your back, you need to see a doctor. That's just a given.

   Let's move on to elbow pain.

   Surprisingly, this is common. I've never had it because I've made sure my form is good and my elbows have become ridiculously tough from training for certain movements such as the handstand flip and so forth, but for a lot of people who just lift weights, are going through the process of their skeletal structure becoming denser, or just plain bad elbow genetics, I've got some good tips on that.

   For gym rats,  your presses are probably the cause, and it's probably bad form. From what I understand, perfect your form, and learn how to engage the right muscles in your presses. For say, elbow pain in the bench press, you would need to get the right arch in your back, not too much, and not too little. If your chest is barely at an angle, not a ton like those cross fitters and power lifters, (they do their own thing, but here we talk about good and safe form) just right, okay? Because what you want to do, is avoid pain, but workout your muscles just right and break them down. So form perfection on the bench press is fully essential, and try out different positions with a light weight to see which your elbows most prefer, and it comes from when you go really heavy, just stick to doing what you're body doesn't mind and build up that strength. There are people out there just like you who can't max out because their elbows can't handle it.

   The overhead press is also common. Check your form, go a bit lighter, learn how to hold your elbows right, and proceed. For barbell overhead presses, if you put your elbows out to the side with heavy weight, it hurts anybody. Stick your elbows out mostly forward, it's okay if they stick a bit to the side because that's the way they were designed, but mostly facing forward would be what you want. For the dumbbell overhead press, go a bit lighter, straighten your body, and do them entirely parallel with your body. It's a different kind of lift and one that requires balance, so if you don't balance the weight right, your elbows will hurt. that goes for your shoulders too.

   The repetitive shoulder pain for gym rats is important to pay attention to as well because you're obviously training wrong somewhere.

   Because your shoulder connect your arms to your body, there are a lot of things that can be done wrong. If you're doing barbell calf raises, and you bounce, and you have shoulder pain, you're probably yanking on your shoulder ligaments which you really don't want to do.

   Your back work outs are important as well, if you do a row too heavy, a little wrong, it's going to make your shoulder hurt. Perfect your form on rows, to find out if you're doing those wrong, just watch yourself in a mirror, or take a video of yourself working out.

   Your presses can very easily connect to shoulder pain, in fact, those are the other half of the cause. Without engaging the proper muscles, you can cause some serious shoulder problems, put too much strain on the joints, and certain heads of your deltoids, it goes on and on. So watch for your form and keep an eye on it just to make sure your not doing anything wrong.

   If it's from overworking yourself, take a break, your body needs to heal.

Mid Back Workouts With Body Weight

Now I understand that some of you don't have the resources for weight training, so you weight train with your body. Obviously, some muscles are a little harder to work out than others without weights. How can you build those muscles and make them stronger? It's not too hard, you just have to know what to do.

It's entirely simple. Well not really. But if you're into serious body weight workouts, your mid back is fine because of what you're already doing.

   The control you put into your mid back doing things like squats, pistol squats, burpees, flips, things that require force from your lower body because you're mid back has to support the rest of your upper body and hold it steady and erect to avoid and damage.

   To continue, things like supermans, or dead bugs, whichever you like to call them, are good for your mid back. It's like an reverse abdominal workout. But the better things for your mid back would be hollow backs because of the control you need, planches to hold your legs up, and back levers to hold your legs steady as well. Anything really though, something that requires you entire body to support itself in an unnatural way is a form of working out your lower back.

   Believe it or not, I've seen break dancers with a mid back who don't lift weights. How? Because of the hand balancing, the hollow backs, the planches, it's all things that require strength from the back to hold you up and about. 

   Some thoughts and ideas.

The Top Priority

So there are some things you have to make a priority. What would those things be? The things that aren't as good as the others.

Now I'm not talking about the ridiculous and unneeded things, the things that are imbalanced. Say, you have great shoulders and pecks! But your back is small and useless. Right? How do you make that better? You make it a priority. Sometimes you have to make it more of a priority than the others for a while. Just to get things balanced out. But over time, your muscles will adjust to your program, and growth and imbalance will no longer be a problem.
   Now another case is that sometimes people will leave out certain workouts, and they don't make them a priority. It's easy to balance that out as well. Just put in the workouts that you don't do that you should be doing.
   Not to mention, sometimes certain muscles are very large, and the others are considerably normal. It doesn't necessarily make you look like a freak in every case, but generally speaking, you may look a little imbalanced, or somebody will say, "Dang man! You've got big shoulders and tiny traps!" What do you do? A little more shrugs and dead lifts. It's not too hard, just pay attention to your muscles, and you'll know which ones need perfecting.
   Enjoy you're training. - The Fitness Cookie

Longer Breaks

So once in a while, we have to take a week break, or maybe, sometimes even longer than a week break. What's going to happen? Are your muscles going to shrink? Will they become weaker? Softer? Will you lose your tone? Your power? Your energy? The list is limitless, but it depends on how you take your break and for how long.

So sometimes, you just have to take a break that's more than a week long. Why? There could be plenty of explanations. But so to speak, sometimes those breaks are good for you.

   Now I don't advise, workout a month, take the next month off, and then rotate your exercise programs. But you have to take a week break as said every two to three months.

   As of suffering injuries in the past, and things of the like, I've had to take two, three, and sometimes four week breaks myself.

   Usually during the holidays with all of the hullabaloo that's going on and how busy things are, I personally take a two week break once a year. It's a good time to rest the body, let the immunities reevaluate themselves, and gives your muscles a break from that constant stress that's put on them. 

   Sometimes, if not all times, with a break that lasts more than a week, you're going to see gains in your muscles because they will have time to completely rebuild themselves. They won't be entirely accustomed to your workouts as they once were at the beginning of your break, so you will be pretty sore at first when getting back into things.

   Sometimes your joints could use a rest, your tendons, ligaments, bones, all of it. It's good to just take a rest that lasts more than a week once in a while. Find that time, maybe once or twice a year where you let your body completely repair itself, and when you get back into your workouts, you'll be a bit back, but feel a little better, and a little stronger each time. It's not like your muscles will go away, or get a lot weaker. What's a ten pound difference? You can get that back in a week. Take a break once in a while, let things get stronger where they need to. It's good for you.

The Leisure Time Hobbies

So as a person who loves fitness, you find joy and love in fitness as you make your body become stronger. But what about your leisure time and breaks from fitness? Don't you do something? I'd just like to talk about that.

Why not find something you like to do between workouts? There's plenty of opportunity if you have the time. Filming, music, art, writing. It's all there for you, you just have to explore your world of opportunity. Why not do it if you have the time? Nobody minds, it won't upset anybody if meanwhile when you're on a day off, you're sitting at home working on that novel, editing videos, doing photography, there's just a world of opportunity out there.

   And your leisure time hobbies don't have to be average. Unicycling? Breeding birds? Volunteering at homeless shelters, it doesn't matter much with what you do, if you put your time to good use, and don't end up feeling like all you do is, work, school, working out, ect...

   Discover what there is for you to do out there. There are plenty of opportunities and ideas. The things you will find yourself doing and loving may shock you. Find out if you like writing, maybe you have an easy time with numbers, you have the patience to make films because your work looks so good, it can go on and on. Just have fun with life, you don't have to spend it completely bored, find something productive to do with what you have, it's good to find something you like once in a while.

Fingertip Conditioning

There's good reason to condition your fingertips. Planche push ups, handstands, making your fingers more resistant to breaks and possible injury that life so generously provides us fitness lovers with. And really, being able to say you can stand on your fingertips without lying, is pretty cool! I've got some good exercises that helped me out and a few other things I've been learning lately for progression in my fingertip balancing. And I'm more than glad to share these things with you!

The first exercise to start out if you have considerably weak fingertips, is going back to push ups on your knees, and your fingertips. Easy enough? Continue with those for about a week, let things get easy, because if you jump right into things, you can hurt yourself pretty bad to point of causing permanent damage to your hands.

   But bringing your hands to point of withstanding your entire body weight on your finger tips, is pretty incredible and beneficial to your body.

   So where do you begin when conditioning your fingertips for the superb strength you so desire? It's pretty easy, girl push ups. You know, the ones on your knees? It's not hard, and you can have control of the weight being dispersed into your fingertips simply by use of your back muscles if you're not quite there yet.

   You can do half of these exercises if you're not looking to stand on your fingertips but simply strengthen your hands.

   So when you get to the point of regular push ups but on your finger tips, do multiple reps, but not too many to the point of severe discomfort. It will hurt at first because your hands are getting used to your body weight being dispersed in such an unnatural way, but over time they will become stronger, more resistant, and less irritated by the movement and force being exerted into them as natural adaption to what they're being put up to.

   If you can't quite do things like, planches, or fingertip handstands and you're training to get into them, simply enough, you can stick to fingertip push ups, or just sitting on your fingertips in push ups position. Also if you become accustomed to those movements, you can try fingertip tuck planches, and fingertip L sits.

   Now for those of you looking into becoming more advanced with your fingertip balance, I'll offer some ideas and tips from my own experience in this.

   To reduce the amount of fingers you have on the ground with performing a planche or something, simply do the beginning exercises by reducing your finger count. You can easily bring yourself to a tuck planche or  straddle planche on three fingertips with each hand. It just takes time and practice, you can subtract a finger from each hand as you progress, and slowly but steadily advance.

   Now for the even more advanced terms of balancing on your fingertips, things like two finger balancing, thumb balancing, and balancing on your fingertips without your thumbs is incredibly difficult. But don't give up because you're going to be able to do it with hard work and determination.

   Now with the fingertip balance without your thumbs, just stick to push ups without them. I quickly figured out on my own that the thumb is the equivalent to about, four fingers. So just start out with push ups.

   Now two finger balance, the third finger that you have out acts as a stabilizer, so also consider some hard work with just doing the same exercises as advised with two fingers on the ground until you feel comfortable enough to support all of your body weight on them.

   Thumb balance? Well, that's up to you. Go through everything except for the thumbs free balance, even then do that because it teaches the control required, and work hard. 

   Good luck.

The Hardest Workouts

So maybe you've asked the question, what is the hardest kind of workout? An intense street workout? Or an intense weight workout? The answer is neither.

It doesn't matter if you're the man who can fly or the man who pick up a truck, the hardest workout you can possibly do, is the one that pushes you to your furthest limits for the longest time, also to be known as the workout that makes you progress, and become stronger.

   So when you start out, you can already be doing your best and getting the hardest work out! Because if you test your limits each and every time and take the time to make your body sore and respond to what you're doing with it, it doesn't matter if you lift weights, throw tires, do yoga, spin on your hands and head, or do triple back flips, (seen them done) it's all a matter of, are you working your hardest? Are you doing your best? Are you making what you can with what you've been given? That is the hardest workout, when those questions are all answered as yes. 

Stretching Thoughts

I've got some good questions that I've been thinking about on this. And have come up with a few conclusions throughout studying things concerning these matters. It's some obvious things, but just a few thoughts.

So generally speaking, if you want to be flexible, you have to stretch and do movements that improve flexibility. But there's a few reasons why some people have the issue of not being as flexible as others.

   It's pretty simple, some of us do not have muscles that are as soft as other people, or as loose, as stretchy, or as long. Generally speaking, if you stretch a lot though, you'll get a little stronger too in some ways since you're putting your muscles to their maximum potential like if you're doing a max weight lift or something.

Becoming Superhuman

Really though, superhuman is only a label, but the concept of it can be taken differently. When you become strong in some way that takes you to the point of being the exact opposite of average, you can consider yourself superhuman. You brought yourself to that point, and you can be proud of it.

You can reach your own limits of power. It's not too hard. The only thing that humans can't do is fly, and even then, we can come close to it!

   It doesn't matter how you access your power. You can do anything! Become so disturbingly flexible that you can go over a counter without touching it, or become a calisthenics king and learn how to squat on one foot on a tight rope, or go to the gym and learn how to pick up a barbell that weighs more than your car.

   I'm going to say all of this as if it's nothing more than just progressing to another grade in middle school because to me, becoming superhuman, is just second nature. I see it happen all over the place, and as I observe it, it makes sense to me, the human body's limits aren't what people think they are! They are so widely dispersed that it's incredible!

   It's pretty easy to become superhuman, you just have to work hard and you can do it. It's that simple.

Back Building

The back is probably the most powerful part of your upper body. You may think the opposite considering you cannot pull as much weight towards you as you can push away, but there are some things that your back does that your chest simply cannot do.
   Also, this is a post for weight lifters, so if the thought of iron plates and a long metal bar makes you faint at heart, you can still read this post.

Looking at the shape of your back, and how defined it becomes from exercise, and how powerful it looks, and the progression from it, is pretty amusing at times.

   You may not be too concerned about it, but when you think about it, you may not be able to see your back, but everybody else can. So why not work on it? There's plenty of reason to work on your back.

   Let's talk about aesthetic appeal first. When you work out your back, it gives you a powerful appearance, a large back will also result in a powerful look, and substantial pulling strength since the muscles in your back contract to make you pull.

   There are a series of exercises for you to do with a barbell that will make your back become large. Also, working out the back works out your rear deltoids and your biceps. So larger shoulders and biceps, every man wants that! And the occasional power lifting woman. You thought I was going to leave you out, didn't you?

   A large back ads to your upper body girth, thickness without having a big gut, and a powerful look. You also looked more balanced out with a strong back.

   Now let's move on to the actual results and requirements for a large back and building one.

   To begin, your back is built up out of multiple muscles. If you look at your chest, you have two muscles, and those are pectoralis majors. Excluding your arms of course. But I'm only talking about the chest right now.

   Your back has about sixteen major muscles in all that work together to pull things and hold them in place. And different ones work in different positions.

   So lets go from the bottom up. First off, you have your lower back. How do you work that out? Dead lifts and squats! And lots of them! As well as rows. Pretty much any kind of exercise where your upper body has to support weight while it's bent over. 

   The main exercise that works out your lower back is dead lifts. Your lower back doesn't get very big to begin with as of it just becomes incredibly powerful because it's a very dense muscle compared to others, it's the one that controls about half of your hip movement  if not more.

   Now to your middle back, that's also worked out with squats, but best with dead lifts and rows. If you ever look at weightlifters or bodybuilders from the side, they have a middle back from their various exercises that require support of serious weight.

   Now to get to the latissimus dorsi. There are some great exercises for that muscle. You have bent over rows, pull ups, lat pull downs, reverse dumbbell flies, T bar rows, and a number of other exercises. Your lats are triggered by three motions if I'm correct. Being bent over and pulling up towards your body, pulling down towards your body with your hands above your head, so either lat pull downs or body weight pull ups, and pushing downwards with with your arms. So that body weight lat pull up exercise I gave in one of my previous back workouts post, is a great exercise for that.

   Next you have your shoulder blade muscles. Not quite sure what to call those other than their commonly used name. Those are mainly triggered by the arms being pulled back and extending the pectoralis and contraction of the back muscles. Obviously. Also by the pulling motion done in pull ups.

   Then you have your traps, also known as the trapezius. This is one of the strongest muscles in your body to think about it. It's what holds your shoulders aligned and on your body when you are picking up heavy objects such as a barbell in a dead lift. So they can be worked out with shrugs, dead lifts, rows, and a number of other fun exercises.

   I would say that the reason the traps are so incredibly strong is because of how strategically they are placed compared to all of the other muscles in the body. For reasons of remained compact and not being hideous shapes and blobs of muscular structuring, the muscles in the human body are illogically placed, but made so incredibly strong that they can perform the challenges they are required to stand up to. But the trapezius is placed right on the shoulders, and contracts for a pulling motion bringing things upwards resulting in immense power.

   So just some thoughts on back workouts, enjoy!

The Fitness Cookie.

Parallel Body and Straight Elbows

So in a previous planche tips post, I gave some good strength requirement tips and all, but it turns out I have a few more words on this.

So first off, in the picture, his toes aren't weird, it's just angle he's holding his feet at.

   To begin with, out of discovery for seeing things my self, the planche is so much of your frontal deltoids that it's rediculous with how strong they actually have to be to be able to hold you up in the first place with the position your put your hands in.

   To begin, if you want your elbows to be straight, your hands need to face diagonally outwards, to the point of your thumbs facing towards each other. This is for when you're still getting the finger tip planche down, but later on when you're comfortable with that, feel free to start experimenting with different hand placement and positions.

   Get the handstand and handstand push ups down for basic strength as I also said earlier on. But to be able to hold your body parallel with the ground, either try it out of a tuck planche, but lately I've been noticing it's just better if you lean forward onto your hands or fingertips and push your feet from the ground to the point of your body being parallel and holding that position as long as you can. The progression has been coming along a lot faster than when I started training.

   It's the general motion that you're trying to get down. At first it will feel like an entirely illogical motion because you won't be able to hold it even a second, but after a few weeks of practice you will start to notice differences and progression.

   Continue on my friends.

Strain Resistance and Recovery

So occasionally you will get into an exercise that is something you have never done before that is entirely new and different to your body and the strain and energy required will you leave sore and exhausted. So I'll give some tips on the recovery and how to build a resistance to it so it won't hurt anymore.

There's really a lot that will do this. And the worst is when it makes your bones hurt because of how hard it is on your on your body in the beginning.

   There are different things that makes us all sore and break our bodies down in individually different ways. Say you jumped right into super intense calisthenics. You do a series of different push ups that require your hands to leave the ground, you jumping squats, pistol squats, explosive pull ups and everything your body will allow you to do.

   You do so many of these things that by the end of the day, you're so fatigued and exhausted that you're limping to the car when it's time you go home and you can't walk right the next day, your body will be going through an massive recovery process.

   Exercises that are jarring to the body cause it to break down and then rebuild itself to the point of being able to recover from that exercise and also withstand it.

   There's a point of exercise where your bones will become sore as well as your muscles and you have to take a short break from things. What happens is that your bones have been broken down in small areas and sometimes micro fractures can develop. So you really have to be careful about certain things and take a nice long rest to let your body repair itself.

   But the good part about it is, is that once you are fully recovered your body is twice as strong. The same amount of exercise you had previously brought upon yourself will now be done with ease.

   Occasionally though, you will have to go through the same process of breaking your body down before you get into progression.

   You can also think of recovery as progression. Because when you recover the second time from something, it should not be as bad as recovering the first time. Make sense?

   So with recovery comes your resistance to the strain you put your body to in the first place. Making daily tasks and the occasional things that life puts you up against less of a hassle and even non tiring.

Lower Body Workouts With a Bad Back

There are a number of ways you can mess your back up and not be able to work out and do things like say, squats and dead lifts. Surprisingly enough, you can still work your lower body out with a bad back. The simple steps are to be followed carefully. Keep in mind, I'm only concerning soreness and light injury that won't be strained any further in the following steps. If you're back is really out, or damaged, I recommend you see a specialist.

Yeah, sadly that picture isn't me. I don't have tattoos and my Chuck's are black.

  So if you end up with a bad back, and can't work out, you have plenty of options. I've personally discovered a number of them when my back went out a while back due to a muscular injury and I could not do much that involved my lower and mid back supporting my upper body with more than ninety pounds. So what did I do? I used light weight and did things that you can only do with light weight.

   For instance, regular squats. If you're not much of an endurance specialist in your work outs, give it a try if you ever get in a bad situation with your back or something. Do a few hundred body weight squats. Also pistol squats, they build muscle and teach your body balance and control.

   Jumping squats as well, jumping lunges. Find a field at the park or something, and just jump across it until you literally can't move your body any more. Take a rest, and do it again.

   These are high circuit exercises that don't offer too much stress for your back to deal with. You can maintain a strong and toned lower body during the time of a not so bad back injury with exercises that don't require any kind of weight transfer into your shoulders.

   I will say that it takes time to get used certain exercises, but all in all, they really do work until you can go back to the gym to snort and groan and throw plates all over the place.

   So yes indeed, it is possible to get a good lower body workout with a bad back. You just have to look around at exercises and think until you find the right ones that leave you sore.

A Little Motivation

There are normal techniques for motivation, and abnormal techniques, and then there are that one and only brainchild. So what do you do to get motivated for a workout? Let's figure that out for you.

Personally, myself, and friends, will just go on youtube, watch a few videos, get in the mood, and think, "I want to do that!" And we go work out and get ripped and stand upside down on our hands and crud.

   Other people, they go to the gym, see somebody really good looking of the opposite gender and something happens to their muscular structure and they can suddenly lift six times their weight. Whereas others they just simply have the idea of, "do it or get C.O.P.D."

   So it's up to you. I usually think a lot about how great I look after my workout and how great I feel as well. That's usually the main motivation process with your average Joe who likes to workout. So just find your brand of motivation, what's the one thing that makes you feel like doing something impressive? Soon enough you'l find it and you'll get to where you want to be soon enough with your hard work and dedication.

The Fitness Cookie

Softer Muscles Vs. Harder Muscles

Do you ever wonder why your chest gets sore a whole lot easier than your calves when your calves are  actually smaller? I've got a good explanation for that.

So your calves are the hardest muscles in your body. That's obvious unless you're not to familiar with human anatomy, then surprise surprise.

   Look at your chest for example, you only have to spend maybe thirty minutes out of your day working on it, and then the next day you're sore. Now take your calves for example, you spend your day standing on your feet, your calves are the first muscle to work in your legs when you walk, they take in the shock of each and every step, and when you work them out, you have to use three times the weight you use on your chest, plus your body weight, and twice the amount of movement to get the same results as you would see in your chest.

   If the muscles in your chest and your arms were as dense as the muscles in your calves, the average human being would begin chest and arm workouts with about three or four times the weight and about twenty times the endurance.
   Now I'm not positive if that's entirely correct, but from what I gather, the strength differences would be incredible.
   Therefor, you require far harder, far more demanding, and far more endurance requiring exercises to break the harder and stronger muscles than to break down the softer ones.
   If you think about it, during a workout, your muscles are flexing, stretching, and being brought to their utmost potential. So when they stretch like that, there are multiple little strands of muscular tissue that snap and break with each and every press, push, pull, lift, and raise.
   Your muscles that are harder than others, like your calves for instance since those seem to be the densest of the group, it's a very requiring process to get those muscles to break down and get those tiny strands to break and pop so they come back together with more and make themselves larger and stronger.
   Now your softer muscles, like your lats, lower back, and biceps, require a less stressful workout. Because those strands aren't as thick and hard as the ones in your legs. If you did the same workout that you do with your legs with your upper back, the size differences would be immaculate because the softer muscles that require less strain to become larger would react in a more dramatic way, resulting in massiveness and your leg muscles would be equally strong, but in proportion, nowhere near as large.
   Imagine when you started running, the first two miles your legs were pretty sore, but imagine if you did that exact run on your hands. Which workout would make the most sore?
   So there's a reason for heavier leg workouts, your legs are designed for constant twenty four seven every second of the day use, your upper body isn't quite like that, it's meant for holding smaller things, that aren't all of you, and picking up stuff, helping out with balance.
   It's just something to think about.

The Fitness Cookie

Fingertip Strength

So you may have a concern as how to make your fingertips stronger for things like planche push ups and so forth. Here are a few tips and ideas to follow.

For those of you who are obsessed with body weight weight training, your fingertips are sure to be an important factor in your exercises.

   I advise you build up into this because the moment you try a fingertip planche for the first time without any fingertip strengthening back ground, you'll fall, and might possibly injure your fingertips or your hands. Maybe even both.

   You can strengthen your fingertips by doing regular push ups on your fingertips, and then move into regular push ups on three fingers on each hand and things like that. If you can do hopping push ups on your fingertips, you ought to be ready to start attempting fingertip planches and fingertip planche push ups.

   Also, a small pointer, you may be asking why I emphasize on the planche for exercise so much. That would be because it is the best exercise for body weight training that involves your pectorals and shoulders. And also it's a heck of a lot of fun and there are a ton of variations I have yet to teach you.

Exercise Replacement?

So I've been looking around, and seeing some questions, "Do you replace regular push ups with those kinds of push ups after a while of doing them?" And, "Do you replace pull ups with your other kinds of workouts like that?" It goes on and on.

Generally speaking, we calisthenic kings get to a point in our thrones where we think that regular push ups are no longer necessary. I'll tell you right now, that's up to you.

   Say all you can do at the moment is handstand push ups, you're working for planche push ups, but you notice that your shoulders are becoming far larger than your chest, and that's not something you want to happen.

   So what are you going to do? Push ups. They will give you the structural balances that keep your body working normal up until you can do those exercises that you want. Afterwards though, it's up to you to drop the conventional exercises, but adding those with the more strenuous exercises that you can't do so much of yet, help a lot and keep you progressing faster and easier up until you are where you want to be. So really, it's your choice.

Tips on Jumping Height

There's a good deal of preparatory exercises to help you build up to the point of being able to jump as high as you want to. Here are some tips.

Jumping is like one big squat. It also helps a deal with your flipping height. Exercises that you can do are things like squats, pistol squats, jumping squats, and jumping lunges. Also, weighted squats help with jumping height. Since squats are a jumping motion without your feet leaving the ground, I'll stress those the most since they're the best exercise for jumping.

   If you don't have access to weights, there's always the body weight alternatives. You have squats, jumping squats, pistol squats, and those weird lunge variations. Doing things like jumping as high as you possibly can as many times as you possibly can across your backyard or something would be great for getting height gain. Practicing the motion helps a lot.

   Now that I've covered stationary jumping height, we'll talk about momentum now.

   Do you ever see people break dancing, doing parkour, tricking, gymnastics, or just plain showing off and wonder how they could possibly get so high? There's an art to it.

   Momentum is where it all comes from first of all. Running is the key part to getting your height, but remember that punch I talked about in front flips? Same thing with running and jumping as high as you possibly can. Slam dunking a basketball is a different story because you can't throw your hands, but with general jumping height to do something like a divers somersault where you run and jump as high as possible and dive into a somersault.

   Or generally running and jumping over something. How hard could it be? It's not very hard, but to gather momentum and get some decent height, you have the glide, the punch, and the crunch. The crunch is when you crunch your legs in to avoid additional objects or whatever. Usually it's a natural response, so it's not too hard.

   Good luck.