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Last podcast, I started talking about what I describe as fundamental and foundational bodyweight exercises that are important for everybody who uses bodyweight exercises to master first before moving to more advanced stuff. I’ve gotten quite a good response in particular from my Macon Telegraph columns on these exercises, so I hope that you keep on following along.
I encourage you to go back and listen to part one of this series where I talk about push-ups and squats, if you haven’t listened to it already. If you have, let’s go ahead and hop into this next podcast.
Pull-ups
The next bodyweight exercise that I want to discuss is indeed a bodyweight exercise, but it requires equipment – a bar to be exact. It is a highly revered and often feared exercise that turns boys into men and girls into women. What am I talking about? The one and only pull-up.
Pull-ups are a serious exercise, involving grabbing onto a bar that is over your head with an overhand grip, and pulling your entire body up until at least your chin clears the bar.
Now, difficulty aside, pull-ups are an excellent upper body exercise, and they specifically target the muscles of the upper back, the rear deltoids (back of the shoulders) and the biceps (the muscles you flex when you bend your arms). They are hugely important for individuals who engage in exercises that work the opposing muscles (chest, front deltoids and triceps), often referred to as “push” muscles (“pull” – back, biceps; “push” – chest, triceps). The reason for this is that, folks love to work some chest, but they often fail to work the opposing muscles. The unfortunate result of this is what I call “concave back”, where your tight chest muscles pull your shoulders in and give you a hunched-back look. Not cool.
So what if you can’t do pull-ups? If not, don’t be bothered about it, first of all. I couldn’t for a long time, and the only reason that I can do several now is because I’ve worked at it for years. My initial reps were sloppy and terrible, but I dedicated myself to working a full range of motion and doing as quality of reps as I could possibly do. Keep in mind that my “full range of motion” was not initially full range, but I worked from where I was. Over time, I got stronger, and my range of motion increased.
Let me give you a couple of options now to help you get that first pull-up:
Threshold Pull-ups – Stand in a doorway of your home and grab the threshold on both sides at approximately shoulder height. Slowly extend your arms and allow your body to go backwards as your arms begin to support more of your weight. Keep your feet planted. After your arms are fully extended, pull yourself back to the starting position.
Short Bar Pull-ups – Find a playground that has a pull-up bar that is approximately waist height or lower. Bending down, grab the bar with an overhand grip, and walk your feet under the bar until your body is totally straight, and your body weight is being supported by your arms. Pull yourself up until your chin or chest almost touch the bar, then lower yourself to complete one repetition.
A client of mine told me that there is a bar that you can purchase and place in your doorway at approximately waist level and use it for pull-ups. If you have access to this kind of thing, it is a great tool to work those pull muscles and to work up to the pull-up. It’s actually one of the best progression moves that you could do.
Practicing the above pull-up variations should have you on your way to mastering the almighty pull-up. Remember, pull-ups are a great way to balance out your musculature and to keep your posture correct as you age. And don’t count yourself out; I witnessed 80+ year old bodybuilder Ernestine Shepherd doing a pull-up on my pull-up bar a couple of years ago at the Georgia Wellness and Fitness Festival. If she can do it, you can, too!
Sit-ups and Planks
So by now, we’ve covered fundamental exercises that target the chest, shoulders, back, arms and legs. The muscle group that’s left is arguably the most important muscle group to train in your entire body, and that’s the core.
Your core includes the muscle groups in the middle of your body between your torso and legs that hold your body together, and that provide your entire body with stability. The core also holds in and protect your guts and all that kind of stuff.
Now, truth be told, your core is worked with almost any bodyweight exercise you can think of. All of the exercises we’ve talked about up to now – push-ups, squats and pull-ups – use the core extensively. And it makes perfect sense, when you think about it. If your core stabilizes your body as you move, it makes sense that it would be used during these kind of exercises.
In contrast, free weight exercises – ones that use dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells and other external weights – and machine exercises don’t all necessarily engage your core, and the reason for this is because they tend to confine your body into restricted ranges of motion. For example, with a push-up, you’re going to engage chest, triceps, shoulders and core. However, with the bench press, it’s going to work everything except for the core. That’s because by lying down on the bench, you are putting the resistance solely on the chest, triceps and shoulders, and disengaging the core and everything else below. With a pull-up, you work back, biceps and shoulders, and you get a mean ab workout, but with a lat pulldown, you work back, biceps and shoulders, while your core gets little to no activation. I’m not saying weighted exercises are substandard, because they have their advantages (isolation, more weight), and some of them do work your full body, but when it comes to bodyweight exercises, almost all of them work some of everything.
So the first thing I’ll tell you if you want to know how to do bodyweight exercises for your core is, just do bodyweight exercise in general, because they all do a decent job on the abs. I would sometimes get sore in my abdominals just from doing several sets of pull-ups.
For those wanting to focus the resistance a bit more on the abs, let me give you the two fundamental exercises that I use to work them out.
Sit-ups
Sit-ups were my first go-to ab exercise. My brothers and I would go running with my dad, and when we got back home, we’d put our feet under the couch and do 50 sit-ups. These days there’s a little controversy around them sometimes because they can irritate your back if you have previous injury, but for the most part, I’ll say that if you place a pillow under your lower back, cross your arms over your chest instead of pulling that neck, and practice careful form, they’re a pretty safe and effective exercise.
To execute, sit on the ground with a pillow under your lower back, and place your feet under a couch (or let someone stand on your feet). Bend your knees to an angle of maybe 30 to 45 degrees and lay down on the ground. After crossing your arms across your torso, use your abs to pull your torso towards your bent legs. Come all the way up, then return to the ground to complete a repetition.
Plank
Planks are a much safer alternative abdominal exercise for almost anybody to do, but don’t let the word ‘safer’ fool you. They are a great ab exercise. Another advantage they have over sit-ups is that, while sit-ups target more of the rectus abdominis (the “6-pack”), planks generally target the rectus abdominis, the lower back, and the inner core muscles that you don’t see, including the transverse abdominis which is the core of your core, and which is where your insides are enclosed.
Perform a plank by getting into the top position of a push-up, with your arms extended, hands and tips of the feet on the ground, and your body as straight as a 2”x4”. Hold the position as long as you can. If you want to make it harder, instead of having your hands on the ground, rest your elbows and forearms on the ground.
As I end, I have to mention this. Remember that it is imperative that you keep a strong core, especially as you get older; however, also know that all the ab exercises in the world will not get you a defined 6-pack. If you’re doing hundreds of reps on those abdominals but your diet is junky, your abs might look really good, but you’ll never know it because they’re covered with 2-3 inches of fat.
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The post YHATC029: Fundamentals of Bodyweight Exercise (Part 2) appeared first on Your Health At The Crossroads.