Во-первых, вообще во всех подобных книгах налито огромное количество воды и мотивационного сиропа. Если отжать книгу как следует, там останется 2-3 странички.

Во-вторых, не очень внятно сформулирован подход к тренировочным программам. Я бы сказал это место близко к пустоте.

В-третьих, turist, а что вы ожидали, начиная с самых простых упражнений? Надо было делать то, что сейчас представляет трудность, либо минус один уровень.

Сам я книгу нашел и прочитал случайно, когда искал описание и отзывы на одни чудодейственные "пилюли", года 3-4 назад. Для себя вынес из нее идеи о совсем низком темпе выполнения (раньше даже не задумывался), увидел для себя новые упражнения, которых ранее не знал. Ну в общем все равно как полезняшка пошла.

беру пачку: 56-60.

бэд граммар! Ну и как вариант The universe could not care less about you.

И еще много мест где потеряны апострофы. Вообще использование контракшнов везде кроме прямой речи - bad style.


said. Во-первых: to speak (spoke, spoken), во вторых speak имеет другое значение: означает процесс говорения, а say/tell - результат.


is worth.


"A typical letter I have received from a reader". 1) Не надо обобщать people/a reader (I receive/am receiving a lot from readers - как вариант) 2) артикль 3) время. тут место для perfect

Pardon my being blunt, я не знаю как там мой перевод, но вот День 50, это ж надо все переписывать по новой. Я это читать не могу.

Заодно вычитал немного свои мифы о кардио и некоторые другие тексты. правки внутри постов.

А считается ли за площадку вот такой комплекс, или похожий (рукоход, брусья, турник как сторона рукохода, детские перекладины на низком уровне)


Там обычно почему-то еще наклонная доска без упора под ноги
У меня вокруг дома таких было две штуки, одну снесли во время очередной "реформы" площадки... Каждые два года перестраивают.

Усё пока. Жду фидбэка!

Day 54: Lunges revisited

Last but not least in our training program: lunges. Now we talk about what variables are in lunges and what
these variables might affect.

Lunges are great if we talk about one-sided exercises that is the exercises that allow to work only one side of the body. For instance, to work the left leg without touching the right one. With lunges you can eliminate your
imbalances as well as shift load from one muscle group to another.

To understand this idea better look at the picture, where muscles worked by lunged are highlighted:

<picture with a lunge>

Stride length: A shorter stride moves stress to quads and relieves hamstrings. If you do it otherwise and lengthen the stride then you stress hamstrings and glutes more than quads.

Four sides: lunges can be done in all four directions not just back and forward. These variations shift stress inside quads and glutes and to a lesser degree outside quads.

Lunges can be done with a step up. That makes it harder and more intense and hits quads even more.

Day 53. Push-ups revisited.

We keep posting on our base exercises. After pull-ups and squats now it is time to look at push-ups.

It might seem that we have already covered the topic quite well in our video. Nonetheless, push-ups are one of the base exercises in building the upper body and particularly the chest, triceps and deltiods. Someone might as well notice that parallel bar dips are better but they produce a bit different stress so we will get back to them later.

<pic 1>

<pic 2>

To understand this post better first let's take a tour through chest muscles.

There are three muscle bundles constituting chest: lower chest, middle chest and upper chest.

Different push-up stances can stress different bundles. Only using this approach you can develop good balances chest muscles like the ones Nick Auger has:

<pic 3>

To reach this state of development you need to use different kinds of push-ups all the time (I am not talking about 100 Days, since we do not use variations for now). If one of the bundles is lagging behind you need to stress this bundle more and focus on its development.

Depending on the relative position of legs to chest muscles you can train different bundles moving stress vertically. When the chest is lower than the legs then you stress the lower chest more, the higher the legs the more you train the upper chest.

Paraller bar dips are the extreme position where legs are right below the chest that is the dips ultimately work the lower chest. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that dips are the only way if you want to shape up the lower chest.

Then I would like to bust another popular internet myth on chest muscles. Quite often you can read on 'inner chest muscles' and 'outer chest muscles' depending on how close is the muscle to the centre of the body. You have already seen it on the picture above there is no such distinction that is there are no exercises to work either inner or outer parts of the chest because the muscle strains equally along itself.

Ok, then why you feel muscles in the centre or on the sides during the exercise? This happens because you feel the points where muscles are attached to bones and these places are put under strain too and these places are painful, not the muscle itself.

That is there is no difference on the width of the hand stance for all chest bundles but there is a difference how hard chest muscles are stressed.

You can possibly remember from the first post on push-ups and from the video that one the major functions of the chest is shoulder adduction. If you put your hands narrower than the shoulder width then your shoulder is already adducted and most of work happends at the elbow. Narrow hand stance push-ups are practically done by flexing at elbow by elbow extensors like triceps, not with chest muscles. That is the wider your hands are the more you stress chest. It is hard to explain without pictures and I hope you grasped the gist.

One more thing. Another variable in push-ups is the relative position of hands to the body. By default you put your hands on shoulder level. However, the closer the hands to the stomach the more stress is moved from chest muscles on shoulder muscles, posterior deltoids particularly. Moving hands closer and above the head works anterior deltoids more. This is another useful piece of knowledge to make push-ups even more functional and effective than you used to think.

I want to underline it again that training is always based on biomechanics and physics. That is all you need to know is to learn how th body works and to handle it.

As I have already mentioned before, if your goal is muscle mass you need to feel muscles at work otherwise you are just wasting time and effort. It is more important while doing push-ups variations because it is the only criterium for assessing how correct your form is. Do not be afraid to experiment with different positions of hands and legs to find new effective stances when your (sic!) muscles will work at their maximum.

Another thing worth mentioning. Do not let yourself copy famous athletes word for word. They do what works for them. Use videos and programs on the Internet as a source but not a bible, always apply thought to it and look for what works for you.

Day 52: Squats revisited

In the second information post of the ADVANCED block I keep giving out additional information on base exercises making the foundation of 100 Days. I think you have already found out what I will be discussing now from the header of the post.

Well, now we are talking about squats. This exercise is the key from training the lower body but very few try to make variations of it. While our legs have several muscle groups and they all can be worked only by combining difference stances and feet positions. That is what I am going to discuss.

First of all, no matter what stance or variation you use, you have to do squats with proper form. Do not forget that the whole body should be tense, you look straight ahead, the chest is leaned forward. The depth of the squat is what you decide on yourselves, to 90 degrees or lower but when you straighten up do not lock your knees, it can be harmful and the intensity of the exercise suffers because the muscles involved are getting relaxed for a moment.

Secondly, the standard stance supposes that the feet are at shoulder width, give or take, and are parallel to each other. This is the initial stance from which we will deviate some. With this stance quads are loaded evenly and that is fine. If you want to shift the stress then let's start with changing feet position. If you point your toes inward then you will move the stress onto exterior muscles. If you point your toes outward, you will stress the interior muscles. If you point toes more outward completely then you will use interior muscles. Please do not think that there are only three feet positions (parallel, inward, outward), on the contrary, you have a whole range of positions, with moving through the, you can change ther amount of stress on different muscles.

Let's talk about the leg position. Depending on the width of the stance you can change stress from exterior quads to interior quads as well as moving stress from glutes to quads. With a shoulder width the stress is spread evenly but the wider the stance the more you stress glutes and less quads. The same principle applies to narrowing the stance. The narrow the stance the more load is on the quads. The best case scenario for quads when you feet are set together. Although it is hard to do squats in this position but you can you a smooth wall for help as it is shown in the picture below:

<картинка>

Put your feet together and try doing squats like this. Use the wall only for support and put as much weight as possible on legs to maximise the effect.

Finally, let's talk about pistol squats or pistols. I really think that pistol squats are very hard and not very effective (непонятно – силу отлично развивает, не эффективно для мышц – противоречние). You have to keep your balance on one foot and that can be an issue. It is hard to make pistol squats intensive because of the need to keep balance and it reduces the stress on muscles. If you want to eliminate imbalances between legs you'd rather do lunges.

That is all for today, do squats, train your legs because you can build a house only on a good foundation! Should any questions arise do not be afraid to post them.

Вычитайте меня пжст, мне это важно - насколько получается. с английского переводил, но что-то на английский не приходилось пока.

думаю, что прямо сейчас для меня это очень полезная практика, но надо посмотреть насколько это качественно. Наверно покажу еще и нейтиву, который не спец в теме совсем.

Day 51: Pull-ups revisited.

Our ADVANCED block starts with the analysis of all the exercises used in this program but we will be looking at them from a slightly different angle. Now we will look into how muscles work depending on variations of an exercise and how to engage different muscle groups.

Actually there are only two things you need to know which were missing from the previous post on pull-ups during the BASIC block.

Firstly, there are different grips and everyone should know that to attain maximum effect you need to alternate your grips.

Let's look into grips and what makes them different. Imagine your spine. The narrower your grip (that is the closer your hands are to each other) the more you stress the muscles along the spine. The wider the grip the more you stress the muscles further from the spine. Practically, with changing grips you can shift load from one muscle to another, stressing the whole back.

It is also worth mentioning that the largest back muscle (latissimus dorsi, we talked about it earlier  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1_O7l565sM) is wide, large and always work as one in comparison to chest muscles which are three-part or the arm flexor (bicep), which is two-part. That means that different grips cannot work out different parts of the back muscle but they can move stress from the back muscles to other muscles.

There are funny pieces on the Internet stating that vertical pulls help to widen the back muscles while horizontal pulls, like australian pull-ups or back row pull-ups, target the thickness of the back muscles. I have already mentioned that in the post about strength training myths that a muscle either grows or shrinks and it does it evenly. You cannot make a muscle grow in one specific direction.

A good remark from ogrudko: I would say that grips and work in different planes is more important for shoulder joints. In a horizontal pull it is natural to use pronated grip, while with a vertical pull it is natural to use neutral grip. It is also worth to grips from time to time for the benefit of secondary muscle groups. While the main group remains the same, the stress on secondary groups can be shifted from one group to another. You should never employ uncomfortable grips. If a grip causes discomfort or even pain it should certainly be avoided.

Another remark from mtbrDot on the diameter of the bar. The thicker the bar the more stress is on the grip (and less on blisters!) thus hitting the arms more. It can be either positive or negative thing. It is positive because thicker bars would work out your arms and grip better but it is also negative because thicker bars would tire arms first thus reducing stress and training effect for the back and shoulders.

Secondly, pull-ups come in all sorts and colours thus you have to decide on your goals.

If you want to increase the number of pull-ups then you have to train in one way. If you want to gain muscle size then you have to use another way. If you want to be most effective you need to learn to feel how the muscle works. During every exercise, during every set, every repetition you have to feel how the muscle works. If you do not feel it then it either is not completely stressed or does not work at all!

In addition to that it is worth saying that the negative phase is more effective than the positive. Why is it so? All muscles are programmed to work in a positive way, to contract. They are more used to contraction and when you load them they are not used to it improves the effect of your training session.

The pace or speed is equally important and has to concur with your goals. The negative phase should be 2-3 times longer than the positive one. The slow negative phase can be used both with the fast positive phase and the slow positive phase. It depends on where you gain most (personally, the first one works for me). In any case the training sessions should be intensive! That is you cannot rest more than 60 seconds between sets (I prefer to rest for 45 seconds). If you rest longer than that your muscles will have enough time to recover and this will reduce the effeciency of the training.

That is it for today. Should any questions arise feel free to post them below.

Запишите на меня 51-54.

sorry gal... read the post above. did it in 5 minutes. That's it for today. I just need some practice

Day 49. The last day of the BASIC block.

Today is the last day of the BASIC block and this means that it is time to take a look at the intermediary results and achievements.

First of all, I think, that it might be interesing to find out your new maximums for each exercise. This is why I advise you to test yourself after the warm-up. If you want, you can do it only for those exercises that you are interested in.

It would be great if you post your results like this:

Pull-ups: then – 15, now – 20 (+5)
Push-ups: then – 30, now – 40 (+10)

and so on.

I am not a huge fan of going for the maximum right away after the warm-up because I have concerns that it might be harmful to cardiovascular system.

This is my idea how to perform a test for maximum. Warm up thoughroughly and do the first set with 30-50% of your possible maximum. Then rest for 5-10 minutes to calm down the heart and nervious system and make another go for 60-100%. I have tried this with pull-ups, this scheme is safe and does not interfere with your maximums. If it works for pull-ups it must work for other exercises too.

If your suggested maximum is about 10 then it is worth doing two warm-up sets of 3 and 6. If it is about 8 then you might as well warm up with 4 and then go for 8. The logic behind it seems to be like this. Anyway, try to listen to the body. For instance, with maximum of 25 I would go for 10 and then 25 but if the maximum is 30, then I would do 10-20-30.

I think you might as well agree that it feels better to know your stable new maximum.

Secondly, if you were willing to gain or lose weight, it is time to look at this aspect too. If you wish to share this information with us, we will be pleased and it's Ok if you don't.

Weight: then – 55 kg, now – 60 kg (+5)

If there are participants who are tranformed themselves so much that they think they can motivate others, it would be great if you share your photos then and now. Do not be shy!

Thirdly, we want to make the program more effective and useful. We want to hear your comments and opinions on the order of the information posts, on what was missing from the first half of the program or what was not necessary.

If you keep training but do not want to share your results just post a smiley to let us know that you are still with us.