@abasket, you can use Dumbbells, exercise bands or even chairs to do a lot of arm and shoulder work. Use chairs for assisted dips and plank push-ups that will hit triceps, pecs and deltoids. Dumbbells and exercise bands can be used for shoulder presses, rowing, and curls. Exercise bands can be mounted over a door for standing pushaway, rowing and tricep push downs. Dumbbells can be used for tricep kick backs.
Before you run out and buy anything (unless you have a real itch to do so), I would suggest just doing body weight exercises. Push ups with your elbows in either from a full plank if you can do so, from a modified plank from your knees if you need an easier version, or using the back of a chair or a table to do it from a more standing position for the easiest version. Keep your elbows in and do full range of motion with a 2-3 count down and a 2-3 count up. Hold the up and down plank positions for 1-2 count before transitioning to the next movement.
Do the dips with your hands on the seat of a chair and your legs bent with your feet on the floor. Keep your butt just grazing the front if the seat as you lower yourself and push up. Keep your elbows in. Same kind of pace as push up. As you get stronger, extend your feet further away from the chair so your arms are supporting more of your body weight.
For both the push-ups and dips, start out with what you can do but at a level that enables you do do at least 6 reps. Work towards 12 reps and ultimately 3 sets of 12. These exercises alone could keep you challenged for quite some time.
Michael - that was super helpful. I belong to CorePower Yoga and also to a studio that offers private Pilates (which I’ve taken for years), barre and DaVinci Board. The CorePower Yoga isn’t terribly mind-body/meditative (which is fine for my purposes) other than thinking about your intention at the beginning of class and savasana at the end.
And I am awesome at savasana! In fact, I’m willing to see who can stay in savasana the longest!! Maybe I’ll go for a streak like MOWC!
I will take you up on the savasana challenge, pg. It’s my best yoga pose
I enjoy the mind/body connection of yoga much more than I expected when I began practicing 16 months ago. I have noticed that I am less stressed at work and at home.
Thanks a million MK - I do have some lighter dumbbells at home and an exercise band. I will NOT be in any hurry to purchase new equipment - at least until I am better committed.
One of our local running stores had a New Year’s Day special - all apparel (well, not socks, not hats or mittens, not shoes) BOGO free! D and I went and took a look - they don’t carry tons of apparel (unless everyone got there before me) but I picked up these fun Saucony shorts that are going to be my beach running shorts - now I just need a BEACH!!- now!!! http://shop.runnersplus.com/istar.asp?a=6&id=SA81250!SAUC&color=TWOX&size=S&
Got a matching Nike dri fit lightweight bright yellow shirt to match my beach bun running shorts.
Love those shorts! I have a goal of 1650 running miles and the rest of my 2016 will be walking.
I did 2000 miles running for several years, but in 2014 I decided it was too much for me.
Happy New Year!!! Lots of good stuff happening. kudos to MOfWC on a successful run! With hills, cold, and New Year, 30 min 5K is blazing fast.
No, I did not stay up until 4 am. We are in the Pacific Time zone. After the party, we fetched the kid and went to bed around 2:30 am. But I made sure to remember to do the pushups! Did a set in the morning, then did the weights, then later in the day went for a 30-min run on the Precor - it was below freezing all day long in our neck of the woods. Feels good to start the new year in motion.
My pleasure abasket. If you have any questions about how to do any of the exercises I suggested, I’ll be happy to provide a more detailed description. I really think you could get everything you want from the body weight exercises I suggested . No special equipment, can be done almost anywhere and is easily scalable for a wide spectrum of strength and fitness .
Bunsen, the science and functionality of body weight training has become increasingly fascinating to me. All my life I’ve been a devote of free weight training. Free weights provide the easiest way to provide muscle overload targeted to specific muscles. When muscle specific exercises are combined with whole body exercises like squats and deadlifts, impressive strength gains are possible. The downside to traditional free weight training is that with the exception of a couple of movements like squats and deadlifts, it doesn’t provide much in the way of functional movement training. However, “conventional wisdom” borne out of the culture of weight lifting has held that you can’t build muscle size and absolute strength (as opposed to relative strength) without using free weights. Putting aside for the moment the fallacy of that conclusion, a fundamental problem with using heavy weights to build strength and muscle size is that as we age, our joints and tendons become less capable of safely handling the stress caused by single muscle exercises performed at high muscle overload intensities (i.e. heavy weights and low reps).
Contrary to the “conventional wisdom”, body weight training, if structured and done correctly, can produce very real growth in muscle size and absolute strength let alone relative strength. One need only look at gymnasts who develop significant muscle size and strength without using free weights. A key advantage of body weight training over free weights is that all of the fundamental core movement patterns that any exercise program should train are addressed using functional movements involving multiple muscle groups.
So instead of doing bench presses, one can do push-ups which are a whole body exercise. Progressive overload can be achieved from a beginner level of doing assisted push-ups building through 1 armed push ups. If even more resistance is needed to achieve overload, weight vests can be worn which is just a way of increasing your body weight. Instead of Lat pull downs, pull ups can be done which again involves the entire posterior kinetic chain and can be progressed from assisted pull ups to pull ups with weight plates hanging from a dip belt or to 1 arm pull ups. Chin-ups can be done to hit biceps with the same approaches to maintain progressive overload. The list could go on. I’m having a lot of fun exploring the theories of how to substitute body weight training for free weights while still building muscle and absolute strength. What’s cool is that I’m doing things that involve multiple muscle groups and functional movement patterns and that what I am doing can easily be scaled for a neophyte newcomer to fitness to an experienced athlete. And a lot of it can be structured as fun skill development and just not the drudgery of the gym (like my parallettes training and my outdoors finess playground).
Worked out with the trainer yesterday, walking today, and yoga (flow class) tomorrow. Feeling like a good start for 2016. I’ve got a couple of goals for the year–to continue working toward bench pressing 100 pounds (right now I’m at 75 lb.), meeting my step goal (10K) each day, and to try to do a yoga streak. My studio usually has a challenge at the beginning of the year.
BB–glad your feeling better. MOWC: I heard part of an NPR interview with a guy who is a member of a running streak group (think it might be a national group) and thought of you.
Ahh January 1. Walked four miles, did a ton of cleaning, and worked in some planks, pushups, kettle bells. etc. Best of all, I resisted the leftovers and junk foods being devoured by my boys. And, I made and ate kale with dinner. Day 1 done.
Great start to the new year. Did 75 minutes of parallettes training (30 sets spread over 5 skill movements/exercises), followed by 3 sets each of weighted chin ups and dips, TRX “table position” curls, dumbbell curls, TRX horizontal push-ups with one leg supporting on a weight bench and the other leg raised, and finishing with assisted 1 armed rowing in a table position using a lowered Smith Machine bar. I’m beat, lol!
I was very tired this morning but got in a little over 5 hilly miles. 90 minute Barre class yesterday about did me in! It was a nice combination though - mostly a traditional barre class but also included circuits and planks plus a nice 10 minute yoga sequence at the end. The thing I like most is the flexibility with the weights you use - I am starting very light simply because you do so many reps. It’s very fun though!
For the challenge I’m definitely going to have to include pup walks as part of my totals. I easily get 3-4 miles walking them daily. Speaking of which…
Got an OrangeTheory down! I did power walking on an incline versus run, though. Off to get coffee, then I have a strength training session at 9 and depending how I feel yoga later on.
Sabaray, it’s like you were reading my mind! I realized this morning that I have a pretty high step count daily and tend to take brisk walk breaks at work - even inside, there is the space/paths to do it) so I think I too will sign up - between my pup walking, brisk walking and running it will be fun to rack up the miles! And since I set a heftier running goal for the year, I need to be seeing progress on at least one of the goals that is not defeating!!!
And, got that pup walk in this morning followed by a COLD - 28 - 30 minute run. Did. Not. Want. To. Do. It. But, DID.
Great, abasket! That will be 3 of us! I ordered all the swag, too. I figured as long as I’m doing it…
I’m struggling with how to log the walking miles without counting the “walk around the house-daily living” steps that are recorded on my fitbit. I am obsessive enough about my running and the steps without getting anal about what “counts” for me and what doesn’t. I think I’ll use the FitBit mileage but lop off some each day to eliminate the not-really-walking/walkiing stuff.
First XC skiing of the year. About an hour, it was nice out there. We are going to another spot tomorrow with snow, you never know what next weekend will bring so have to ski when you can.
I think my D has a spare Fitbit, I like adding my walking milege to my running mileage. It’s hard in the winter to track milege because I’m on the treadmill or XC skiing, things I don’t record on my garmin.
