Physical Fitness

Mar 18, 2023

Talk to your doctor before beginning to exercise. Let me repeat that: talk to your doctor before beginning to exercise. If you jump in to serious exercise, it is possible that you'll injure yourself. You might have a pre-existing issue that you're not aware of. See my experience with injury below.

“Those who do not find time for exercise now will have to find time for illness.” -The Earl of Derby, 1873

Alan Thrall – Training 1x per week - To get started on excerise, go to the gym once per week. Do stuff that you like. Get used to it.
Mark Rippetoe – Training vs Exercise

Exercise is physical activity performed for the effect it produces today — right now. […] Exercise is physical activity done for its own sake, either during the workout or immediately after it’s through. Training is physical activity performed for the purpose of satisfying a long-term performance goal, and is therefore about the process instead of the workouts themselves.
Matt Beecroft – Five Ways to Gauge Calishthenics Progress
Rapitude – The Best Deal in the World Right Now

I think most of the resistance boils down perceiving the cost as higher than it really is, and the rewards as smaller than they really are.

….

In other words, the best deal in the world looks like a bad deal from the outside — i.e. when you’re not taking the deal. I’ll unpack that in an upcoming post, but for now I’ll say this much: the number one thing is to never do an exercise you truly hate.
Dr. Mike Evans – 23 and 1/2 Hours

Tracking

TimeAndDate.com Family Calendar
TimeAndDate.com Yearly Calendar

A frequent problem for those who want to workout either do not know how to set goals or simply do not care about setting goals. This is a mistake. Goals are an integral component of an effective program, as they give guidance in structuring a workout plan. Sure, one can make progress without goals, but by setting high quality goals your performance increases will skyrocket. –Overcoming Gravity, p. 26

Juggling

My notes on juggling.
David Naylor’s Essay in Three Parts: The Best Way to Practise Juggling

Footbag

Calisthenics

vyguo’s overview

Gymnastics Rings

Random One Month Progress Vid
Short Introduction
- Exercise #1 Ring Stabilization: Setup rings to hip height and try to get stable.
Mastering Top Position: Deep-dive on the first step of rings.
- Initial learning progression
  1. Feet flat on floor
  2. Knees bent
  3. On toes
  4. Toes slightly behind
GMB Fitness: Rings Tutorials
- GMB PDF (local)
- Warm-up / Cool-down
- Exercises
  - Top Position Hold – 3 sets of 5-10 seconds. A deceptively difficult position that is far from easy to perform, this exercise challenges the strength and stability of even the strongest people in their first time on the rings.
  - Dips – 3 sets of 3-5 reps. This classic bodyweight exercise for the chest, shoulders, and arms is made harder by the instability of the rings.
  - Reverse Row Sit Back – 3 sets of 3 reps. This move combines a row and chin-up, and teaches coordination and body control; it also strengthens all areas of the back.
  - Tuck/L-Sit – 3 sets of 5-10 seconds. A first step into leverage holds; there are hardly any better exercises than this for your core.
  - Chin-Up/Pull-Up – 3 sets of 1-3 reps. Just like dips, this is a standard bodyweight exercise for a reason. It’s the most efficient way to strengthen your entire upper body and core. Tighten your butt and legs as you do it, and it turns into a full body move.

Gymnastics Rings Exercises

ExRx: Suspension Program
ExRx: Suspended Bicep Curl
ExRx: Suspended Rear Delt Row
ExRx: Suspended Single Leg Squat
Assisted versions of big moves:
- ExRx: Suspended Assisted Dip
- ExRx: Suspended Assisted Pull-Up

Gymnastics Rings Injury

In the summer of 2023, I bought some gymnastics rings and hung them in my basement. (They’re a lot of fun. Mira and her toddler friends love playing on them.) However, after several months of working on them I began to develop persistent shoulder pain in my right shoulder. It would be triggered even on non-work-out days and last throughout the day. The only thing that seemed to help was extensive stretching and warm-up in the morning. Eventually, I had to stop working out on the rings. The pain persisted, even once I stopped working out.

I went to a chiropractor, who told me that I’d injured my rotator cuff.
This is a complex of muscles that allows the shoulder to rotate in a bunch of directions. We figured out that I had damaged my supraspinatus and teres minor muscles. My supraspinatus was previously injured due to wearing a heavy single-shoulder bag for many years.

These muscles had gone from doing essentially no work to stabilizing my body weight. It was a massive jump in stress on them. I hadn’t thought through what I was doing, and didn’t know why my shoulder hurt so much. So, I found myself in a position where I had to talk to a chiropractor about my shoulder.

The chiropractor prescribed some specific physiotherapy exercises, and they helped a great deal. The right shoulder now feels fine most of the time, and the injuries are healing. It looks like I’ll be able to resume something like normal workouts in a few months.

Lesson: if I’d talked to a doctor or chiropractor before playing with the rings, I would have saved myself a lot of time and pain.