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