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.