What are your top 5 push up variations?

Hey guys! What's up!? How many months since I've updated this blog? 3? 4 months?  In that case, here is a video I found in youtube that you can try. Different variations of push ups. I, myself have my top 5 favorite push up variations: normal, wide, archer, explosive, diver bomb.

Hope you guys enjoy this short post of mine! To be and to last!

Comment me below what's your top 5 favorite push variations! :D

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Quick Bodyweight Workout

Hey guys! It is almost a month since my last post. I've been busy doing something lately, so I wasn't able to write a post. Now, I'm going to share to you my quick bodyweight workout on busy days. I called this 10X (hehehe, I don't know what to call it). So this is how it goes. But before that..

10X is a circuit workout that you can do as quickly as 10-20 mins. So basically, its compose of 3 body weight exercises: push up, sit up, squat. 10 sets, 10 reps each with 10-20 seconds rest between sets. Try as many variations of the exercises as possible.

1 set : 10 normal push up, 10 normal sit up, 10 squat; rest 10-20 seconds.

2 set : 10 triangle push up, 10 crunches, 10 jump squat; rest 10-20 seconds.

3 set : 10 knuckle push up, 10 scissor , 10 lunges( 10 left, 10 right); rest 10-20 seconds.

4 set : 10 wide push up, 10 russian twist, 10 pistol squat( 10 left, 10 right); rest 10-20 seconds.

5 set : 10 diver bomb, 10 v up, 10 squat; rest 10-20 seconds.

.....

up to 10 sets. You got the logic right?

This workout targets 3 major muscle groups, upper body, abdomen and core, lower body.

You can create your own combo with this workout. It is fun and quick to do. For complete beginners, I suggest you do 5 reps each set. That's it! Enjoy! 

 

Any suggestions? Comment me below. :) 

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5 Reasons Why You Should Practice Parkour

Parkour has given me a lot of benefits. I've been doing parkour here in cebu for the past 2 years and 11 months. I really want to share with you why you should also practice parkour.

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

A Full Body Workout

Am I right? A full body workout? Yes! The discipline itself is a full body workout. Even without the conditioning part of parkour. You climb, run, sprint, jump, roll, vault, and other different stunts when you are doing parkour. Then add parkour conditioning. :)

Parkour is Fun

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

Parkour is just like playing. You were a child once. It is like bringing out your inner child. When you were a kid, you are running, climbing, and doing other physical activities, and it was fun, right? But to know how fun parkour really is, you must try it.

Self Awareness

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

The longer you practice parkour, the more you will understand the environment around you. A traceur (parkour practitioner) must adapt to his/her environment. This kind of awareness reminds me of a saying, "If you want to change the world, start with yourself". Parkour makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a person and your overall personality. 

Increased Confidence

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

Practicing parkour increases your confidence. Why? Parkour training and conditioning not only trains you are body, but also your mental and emotional aspect. Parkour push you to do your limit. In doing your best you feel more accomplish, and when you feel more accomplish, then you feel more confident. When you lack of confidence on something that you are doing, just remember your training in parkour.

Makes You a Better Person

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

In a sense, parkour is about obstacles. Just like our problems which can be an obstacle of what we want to have or to be. Parkour gives a good mental pattern on how to handle a situation. How you handle obstacles in parkour is somehow like in correlate on how you handle your problems in your life or in a given situation.

Thank you Parkour Sugbo for letting me use some of the photos. Do you want to be part of the parkour community in Cebu? Do visit their facebook fan page and facebook group page.

Do you have any questions or anything to add? Comment me below. :)

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My Top 5 Bodyweight Exercises to Get your Body Parkour ready.

If you want to learn parkour, you need to build your body. Build your muscle strength, coordination and other factors the will affect your performance.

If you don't condition your body chances are, you may always come up short when you are doing parkour moves like wall run and climb up, you will or might struggling climbing up a wall or the worst get injured.

You will feel unnecessary feelings, like scared in jumps and low in confidence to your movements. You need to hack that away. Building up your body will get you far in parkour, your movements will be fast and smooth. You won't be scared in big jumps because you know yourself you train  your body to react fast. You will avoid many injuries. You will be doing parkour for a longer time.

What kind of muscle and strength you need to build in learning parkour?

Picture a gymnast, not just an ordinary gymnast, but an olympic gymnast. Fast lean muscles, agile, flexible, and very strong. You want that kind of body, lean, ripped, very efficient. 

How do we build that kind of body?

ta-da! taken feb 2014

We need to train in bodyweight exercises a lot. Yes, a lot! Build your strength, flexibility, and endurance. 

So here are my top 5 bodyweight exercises to get your body parkour ready like gymnast:

1. Push-up

Push-up is a basic bodyweight exercise that most people can do. For beginners, you can do normal push-up, progress it to do different push-up variations, such as diver bomb, handstand push-up, etc. Push-up builds strength and endurance  as well as your chest, back, triceps, and shoulders.

2. Chin/Pull-up

Do the pull-up and chin-up. Honestly, this is where I am weak. I am still struggling to do 50 pull-ups. But I'll be there soon. Pull-up and chin-up is a great bodyweight exercise with a lot of variations you can play with. It is good for your back, shoulders, triceps, biceps, and other muscle areas.

3. Dips

To complete your upper body workout. Dips is good bodyweight exercise. It builds your chest, shoulders, and triceps. The more you get use to it, the more variations you can play. Always do the proper form for best result.

4. Sit up

Sit-up is a good exercise to build your abs and core muscles. If you want to have an ab, then do a sit-up. Again, there are a lot of variations you play with sit-up. There are v-ups, russian twist, etc. For beginners, do a simple sit-up and progress to advance variations.

5. Squats

The King of Lower body exercise, Squats. It is the best exercise for your lower body. Some say that when you are doing a squat you should not go beyond 90 degrees. Don't listen to them. I've been doing squats beyond that range for more than 5 years now, and nothing bad happen. But instead, it makes my knees stronger. Squats is good exercise to build your leg muscles.

That is my top 5 bodyweight exercises to get your body parkour ready. All these exercises are calisthenics. If you want to know what calisthenics is, then frequently visit my blog for new updates and posts or you can just search about it. :)

If you have any questions or anything, Comment me below! :)

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How to Start Parkour: Parkour Basic Movements

In my previous post, you know what is Parkour. But what are Parkour basic movements? 

There are a lot of basics of Parkour, but what I will write today are the general movements that you will usually use while doing Parkour and some of my opinion as a traceur. I put some videos so that you got a better picture of the basics. So, the basic movements of Parkour are the following: 

• Running
  Running is consisting in every movement with you are doing parkour. From going to one place to another, vaulting, etc. Practically, in every movement or technique execution in parkour there is always running involve.

• Rolling and Landing
  Rolling is used to avoid injuries when landing. It is used to assist the body in absorption and impact by spreading the force upon landing. When used correctly, rolling saves your body from wear and tear suffered from trying to absorb the impact  on the legs from a landing. Executing it correctly, rolling can be performed painlessly on concrete at high speeds.
   
  A safe landing assist you in reducing the wear and tear on joints associated with jumping and vaulting consistently. Landings without rolling are only advised on smaller drops. Once you start to add momentum and height into your movement it becomes necessary to roll.

• Climbing and Climb up
  
  Climbing is used to move vertically (in many cases) either up or down. Climbing is one of the fundamental skill of Parkour, and as the same with other fundamentals, you can always improve it. Not only that, climbing builds strength, endurance, agility, and coordination.
  
  Climb up is used to get up over a wall in either with run up or from a hanging position. Correct climb up technique will allow you to get up and over a wall fast when applied correctly. 

• Precision Jump
  
  Precision jump is to jump in one place to another in a safe manner.

• Tic Tac
  
  So Tic Tac is often used when you need to gain height by jumping from one to another, to clear an obstacle, or to quickly allow redirecting your momentum.

• Quadrupetal Movement
  QMs are excellent strength, endurance, and coordination builder. The ability to use all of your four limbs accordingly is quite useful.

• Vaults
  
  Vaults are techniques in Parkour that used to quickly get over to an obstacle. There are many types of vaults there is. All for different types of obstacles, speeds and movement directions.

That's all the parkour basic movement that I know of. If I miss anything or something comment me below. So this is all for now.

A quick saying:

"All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns."

-Bruce Lee

resources: http://parkourpedia.com/

                 http://parkour.wikia.com/

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What is Parkour?

me jumping around. taken in danao park, 2012

Parkour or also known as the Art of Movement is a holistic art or discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training. Traceurs (parkour practitioners) aim to get from point A to B in the most efficient way possible. They do this using their bodies and surroundings to propel themselves; furthermore, they try to maintain as much momentum as possible in a safe manner. Parkour  can include obstacle courses, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, rolling, quad movement and the like, depending on what movement is deemed most suitable for the given situation.

Parkour is a non-competitive activity, which can be practiced alone or with others. It can be practiced in any location, but is usually practiced in urban spaces or areas. Parkour involves seeing one's environment in a new way, and imagining the potentialities for every movement around it.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour

Parkour promotes the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth of oneself. It is how you view the art or discipline as a practitioner. The consciousness of oneself and the environment around you give you a sense of freedom in some ways.

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