I just came across a post by Jamie, over at the Really Useful Fitness Blog, about an article by Mike Geary from his TruthAboutAbs.com website – Unique Lean-Body Workouts for the Time-Crunched Individual
Read it, love it.
A few years back I became a half-fan of Matt Furey, and specifically his championing of the traditional Indian wrestling exercise moves, the Hindu Squat and the Hindu Pushup. I don’t agree with large portions of what Matt Furey proposes, but his fitness stuff is solid. Mostly.
In any event, I have found body weight exercises to be of paramount use to me over the years and whole heartedly recommend them. A few years back, while attending a gym and going to my Aikido dojo very regularly, my knees began to give me problems again. Due to my past weight issues, and my ‘push my body until it breaks’ attitude I have blown both knees out a few times over the years. A chiropractor finally clued me into the most probable agitator of the situation. She said I probably had what is called a ‘joint mouse’ in both knees – an errant bit of hard cartilage build up that floated around inside the joint, and when positioned near the middle of the joint was pushing the it open in a way that made it vulnerable to dislocation. She, and a doctor of sports medicine I had examine my knee after one really bad episode, recommended a strict program of strengthening the muscles around the joint and upper leg to keep the joint supported, tight, and strong. I already knew that squats were the single most strengthening exercise a human can do, and had read some of Matt Furey’s articles in Black Belt magazine about the wonders of Hindu Squats.
Ta dah!!
I began a practice of doing sets of both exercises throughout the day. At my peak I was doing 7 – 10 sets of 100 reps each and every day, often in my cubicle. Well, it worked, and my knees have never given me a problem since.
Later I went through a period of training with Jim Schmidtz for Olympic style power lifting, and again the daily squats were very useful. In five months time my weighted squat went from 8 – 10 reps of 120 pounds to 3 sets of 2 – 3 reps at 325 pounds. Not a bad increase. Jim had to move his operation after a falling out with the gym’s co-owner to a location I cannot fit into my schedule. But, the lessons I learned during my stint as an Olympic lifter have stuck.
In subsequent years I incorporated bodyweight exercises (calisthenics) into my routine more and more, and combined them with my sessions at the dojo as well. After not setting foot into the gym for a year while still paying monthly dues I finally quit, and have never regretted it once.
Bodyweight exercises work. Well. They are obviously not the best solution, but anyone who is suffering from waning motivation in there fitness quest would do themselves well to give these exercises a try.
One of my favorite routines for when I was bored with my regular routine is the Deck of Cards Round Up: Take a deck of cards with two jokers. Shuffle them. Pick three exercises, one of which should be a high-rep possibility. For me the exercises were – Hindu Push up, V-Up, and for the high-rep Hindu Squats. Flip a card. If it’s black do the first exercise that many times. If it’s red do number two. If it’s a joker, hit the high-rep. Face cards are sets of ten, Aces are 20s.
