Here’s a quick update after a long time without blogging.
As the two or three readers of my blog may have noticed, I haven’t been very active on the internets over the last couple of months.
I had to undergo surgery last October and will have another one next year.
While my training is pretty restricted at the moment and quite different from before, I never stopped with it and trying hard to recover while at the same time improving all the other things I’m allowed to do at the moment.
Yesterday I took some pictures and a very good friend of mine suggested putting them on my blog. I guess if any of you are also going through some hard times right now or in the future, they can serve as some kind of motivation to keep going.
After all the research I did concerning Shaolin and Chan I’ve learned that it is much more than just Kung Fu or a simple religion, it is either in everything or it is nothing at all.
I promise when I’m done with all of this I will come out stronger and wiser. Never give up and keep fighting! It is just about how bad you want it…
Here's the link to an interview I did with Dominik Feischl and Jürgen Reis for their great podcast called Power-Quest a couple of months ago. We talked about training, nutrition, my past development and future plans.
I want to say a big THANK YOU!!! to Dominik and Jürgen for giving me this great opportunity, I really appreciate it and enjoyed the interview.
Oh, and by the way, Power-Quest is the biggest German speaking fitness podcast and they have interviewed famous top coaches from all over the world, it's a true gold mine for everyone interested in real training and nutrition!
Yesterday I decided to work on my active flexibility again. I haven't practiced martial arts for a couple of years now and it seems the isometric stretching using the horse stance (which focuses mostly on the inner thighs) combined with the lack of kicking have created some muscular imbalances in my legs. My physical therapist told me that my inner thigh muscles are crazy strong and my adduction ist too strong compared to my abduction. I always wanted to be able to hold a high kick so this is a very good chance to achieve it. I did a video yesterday to have a starting point to mark my progress. I was surprised that my active flexibilty is not too bad considering I haven't realy practiced it.
At the moment I couldn't care less about a certain number of reps in my training (for the most part). I just like to try challenging BWEs and experiment with them. A couple of days ago I started to play around with my pushup bars again. I'm also slowly and carefully re-introducing one arm pulling into my training. Seems like I didn't lose too much strength and I feel the dynamic tension exercises certainly helped to preserve it!
PS: The pants are the same as the Chinese team was wearing during the Olympics in Beijing 08, maybe that's why I had such a good session :)
I'm still working on the planche and making slow but constant progress. Seems very close :)
More over, I can finally do pull ups again, I don't dare to do one arm work or weighted stuff yet. Shoulder still feels awkward but it's cool to be able to do them again!
I've also discovered bodyweight biceps curls with my gymnastic rings, awesome exericise that can be adjusted to any level of strength and will make your biceps grow like weed ;) You can find an excellent tutorial on youtube by a strong guy named slizzardman.
I also started to do a high volume of shoulder prehab like scapular push ups (which also help the planche) and rotational stuff with elastic bands. Feels good on my shoulder :)
Finally, I really enjoy walking on my hands and playing around with the differnt handstand positions. I don't know the name of the following exercise but it's great for lower back and core strength. Still lots of room to improve but that's the great thing about training, right? ;)
First of all, my friend Dominik just announced the Gorilla Camp II. Dominik just returned from a training vacation in Costa Rica with Steve Maxwell and brought back a wealth of new awesome knowledge. This is gonna be AWESOME! For more info make sure to check out his blog:
Also, my favorite blogger in the nutritional field is by far Dr. Kurt Harris. He recently returned to blogging with a couple of super awesome and interesting, no BS blog posts. IMHO all of them are MUST READS, but especially the latest one:
Finally, Don at Primal Wisdom (who recently posted about the (non) importance of Omega 3 supplementation) put up a very nice and entertaining post about raw vegan diets, a great read:
PS: The only forum I used to participate in was the Fighter Fitness Forum, set up by the great Björn Friedrich. I’ve been using it for quite a long time and thanks to Björn, got introduced to lots of great training information. Nevertheless, while there are a handful of super cool and strong guys, the amount of negativity and bad-mouthing has become more and more in the last months. Lots of very strong keyboard warriors there, I can understand people like Dominik and Jürgen who avoid message boards and I finally decided to do the same. As I get quite a bit of PMs via the forum, please use my email or facebook if you want to stay in contact. :)
The pull-up, many times called the upper body squat and recently named the king of upper body exercises by famous strength coach Charles Polliquin may be THE missing link in your training and completely deserves those titles. While many untrained folks can always crank out a couple of push-ups, most of them struggle performing even a single pull-up.
Being one of the harder bodyweight exercises (and with virtually no limit to make it even harder), many people develop a love-hate relationship with it, some of them, actually and unfortunately the majority even discard it and go back to useless and ineffective machine training. As a result, they miss out big time on the benefits of this exercise! I can’t emphasize enough how important and awesome this simple and very primal movement is! I can tell you from my own experience with pull-ups, that adding them to your tool box will result in amazing changes in body composition. When I started doing them more than a decade ago I gained quite a bit of lean mass in a few months and many folks noticed and commented on it.
Besides the obvious cosmetic effects, the pull-up also yields tremendous results in usable or functional strength and what many don’t realize, it’s also one of the best abdominal exercises out there. As mentioned above, many people struggle with the pull-up and give up on it. That’s exactly where Dominiks and Tills new product comes into play. Step by step they explain and show progressions that will lead the trainee from zero to hero. If you put in the effort, it is guaranteed that you will get the promised results! The approach and methods they use are structured in a very intelligent way, time-tested and well researched (unlike some other bodyweight programs out there…). What's more, numerous clients can prove the effectiveness of the program. Besides the different progressions, there’s also a very detailed introduction where Till explains proper pull-up mechanics to make sure you get the most bang for your buck and don’t get hurt. Moreover, he explains some important details, for example where to look to pull stronger, and I think even experienced folks can benefit from this.
Finally to complete the course, Dominik and Till describe four great and highly effective training templates that keep training for your ultimate goal interesting, varied and (quite;) challenging. By the way, there’s also a PDF manual included in the product that explains all the hints, progressions and templates again!
Summing up, while the program is definitely more geared towards beginners in the pull-up game, even advanced trainees will get new ways and hints on how to incorporate the exercise into their training. In my opinion, Till and Dominik have done a great job and many people can benefit from this program! Also, with the extremely fair pricing and the 100% money back guarantee you can’t go wrong. Give it a chance!
I'm currently doing my Master in Sinology at the University of Vienna.
I'm the first IKFF certified Austrian kettlebell trainer (CKT). I love training and try to improve myself everyday.
Here's my youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/jingangquan
