This month’s challenge goes like this:

4 rounds of:

12 chin ups
12 push ups
12 jumping power squats
12 body weight dips
12 knee raises on dip bars

Going into the challenge I was a bit hesitant to do the jumping power squats, again because of their potential knee implications, but other than that everything else seemed totally doable.  Having the reps for each set at 12 didn’t sound very daunting.

I had watched a number of 20 by 12 attempts.  Some of the elite level guys managed to do the entire circuit in less than 10 minutes, the not so elite have taken over 20 minutes.  I figured I would wind up solidly in the middle.

Well after one rotation through the 5 exercises I knew this was going to be tougher than I anticipated.  By the fourth set I was gasping for air and just looking desperately for the finish line.

The only exercise that I could not do all four sets unbroken were the chin ups.  I had to break my last two rounds into a couple mini-sets.  I was pleased that the jumping power squats went relatively well although they are indeed tough.  In the later rounds I felt quite light headed after completing them.

Watching the attempt back I saw several spots where I could have saved decent time by just being smarter about taking breaks.  I probably wasted close to a minute resting where I shouldn’t have.  For instance, although I was panting like a dog after doing dips, I should have jumped right into the knee raises since it utilizes a different body part that wasn’t as fatigued.

It took me between 18:15 and 18:30 to complete everything.  It wasn’t a great number, I was hoping to get closer to 15 minutes.  I am pretty confident if I try again I will be able to shave a couple minutes off based on my experience the first time around.

Although I wasn’t thrilled with my time I was happy with my form during the exercises, it was spot on pretty much the entire time.

At lunch time I did an accurately timed 5150 practice run.  I discovered my timing must have been inaccurate on Tuesday as I only got 38 pull ups and 80 push ups this time around.  Oh well.

Well putting that number in print and the good natured ribbing of my friend regarding the number was enough to motivate me into action.

Sure it would have been easy to make excuses for the weight gain, shrugging my shoulders and attributing it to just “getting older” but deep down I knew better.  When I took an honest look at myself I realized I was using my extended amounts of endurance training as an excuse to eat poorly.  It’s a very common trap people fall into, rewarding themselves with food for exercise.  The problem arises when you wind up totally negating the benefits of the exercise by doing so.

I remember when I was young one of my baseball coaches was a very regular runner.  I always thought this was odd because despite his running routine he had a HUGE beer gut on him.  Later I realized it was because he drank like a fish and used his running as an enabler to justify even more consumption.

Anyway, when I saw the 190 pop up on the scale I decided I was going to take more responsibility for that number instead of blaming other things for it.  I started doing more conscious eating where you actually think about what you are sticking in your mouth instead of just slamming calories down the gullet mindlessly. “Hey I worked out, now I can EAT whatever I want!” just will not work for the vast majority of people.

I teamed up my cleaner diet with more diverse and intense exercise routines.  The end result has been my dropping 20 pounds, down to my lowest body weight as an adult and maintaining it for the last 5-6 months.

It is no coincidence that my slew of personal PR’s have occurred during that time period.

I broke the pull ups into 10-10-10-8-5 and the push ups into 25-20-20-20.  I wish I knew how close I was to the 5 minute time period.  I’ll have to do another run at home soon.

I had ideas about trying Lee’s February 20 by 12 tonight after work but I am stopping to pick up Valentine’s Day pizza for my wife so I don’t think I will have time to do it.  I need to have fresh legs for this one because of the jumping, deep power squats.

Yesterday I was quite excited to see a package that arrived from Newfoundland.  It was a Crossfit Islander t-shirt from my buddy Dawalli (James)

I knew about James a lot sooner than he knew me.  His muscle up tutorial on YouTube was one of the first ones I ever watched.  It remains one of the best examples out there.

James has a very interesting background, having lived in Korea for a number of years before recently returning to his native country of Canada to open up his very own Crossfit Gym.  It’s been very cool to see his dream come to life.

I identify with Dawalli not only because of his similar interests in the bodyweight/bar community, he also is of similar age to me, only a couple years younger.  He can do some amazing things physically and is much more advanced than I am.  Watch his 250 double under jump roping exhibition if you have any doubts.

Aside from his impressive physical accomplishments James seems to be just a good all around guy who oozes support and motivation at every opportunity.

Anyway I immediately put on the t-shirt to do some post work wall HSPU’s. The shirt will immediately go into the elite rotation along with my Crossfit Clitheroe hoodie, and Tough Mudder and Bar-barian shirts.

I have always had a cyclical thing going on with my physical abilities.  When I was real big into bench press I was always frustrated when one week a certain weight went up easily and then the very next week it would feel heavy as hell.

I also have been one of those types of person that has their moods affected by the cycle of the moon, to a pretty dramatic degree at times.  Well I theorize that my strength/endurance level ebbs and flows on a similar monthly cycle.  It feels like I am definitely in an ebb right now although I seem to be able to knock out 20 pull ups come rain or shine.

Neill who runs the Incite Fitness YouTube channel, one of my favorites, did a couple videos outlining using static holds to build killer abs.

Now to many people it seems strange that you can get defined abs by simply holding still but it’s true. Static holds will really help your abs.

For years and years my ab routine was just crunches and work on the various ab machines at the gym.  I never had much ab definition at all.

Well since I started with serious body weight training I really had some big improvements.  The fact that these improvements came about after my 40th birthday is an even stronger endorsement of the technique.

Now of course if you abuse your diet, no amount of ab work is going to help you get a six pack.  I am walking around a full 20-25 pounds lighter than I used to be for most of my 30′s.

Take the time to watch Neill’s videos and try the routine, scaling it to your ability.  I guarantee you will get some impressive results.

It may be some degree of burn out. After all, my 5 day a week lunch work outs paired with my after work sessions with various endurance activities and contest challenges wedged in there makes for a pretty full exercise plate.

My head hasn’t felt positively focused for a few days and when that happens everything suffers.

On a side note, I still have been doing juicing primarily for dinner 4 or 5 days a week.  We also found a decent alternative for those looking for some of the benefits of juicing without buying a juicer and investing the time required to make juice.

The brand is called Naked.  They have a variety of juice combinations and they are basically just pure juice with no bullshit added although the product is pasteurized for shelf life.  I’ve tried 4 or 5 varieties and all of them were fine.

We have been using these instead of our crack of dawn juicing sessions that were becoming a large pain in the ass.

The bottles aren’t cheap, Ali reports they are roughly $2.50 a pop. However if you compare that to the time/effort and cost of the raw materials used in juicing it will be pretty much a wash.

If you see them at the grocery store grab a bottle or two and try it out.

Well one thing I have noticed that doing the GUTS routine before any conventional weight work out will significantly reduce the amount of weight I can push/pull/lift.  The 5 or 6 minutes of GUTS seems to adversely affect my performance for the next 30 minutes or more.

Well I believe today was the first time I tried to run after doing GUTS.  I found it had the same side effect to endurance work as well.  I STRUGGLED to do the first mile at the same 8:34 pace I did for three miles the week before.  In fact I was very close to just stopping altogether., I felt that lousy.

I compromised by bumping the treadmill back to a slow 6mph pace before bumping it back up to 6.5 for the last mile.  I just felt very low energy.  It only makes sense to attribute it to just another post GUTS side effect.

My hope is if I continue to combine the two exercise types that my body will slowly be able to recover better from the intense aerobic GUTS work out more efficiently instead of having it carry over for the majority of my gym session.

I had some improvement over my initial attempt where I netted 35 pull ups and 75 push ups in 5 minutes.  This time I managed 40 pull ups and 75 push ups.  My pull up sets went like this 10-10-8-7-5 , my push ups were 20-20-20-15.  I liked these set reps, they didn’t totally gas me early but were big enough chunks to add up to decent toals.

I’m only 10 pull ups and 25 push ups from the magic 150 number.

My one arm static chin hold is really improving, at least on my right side.  Yesterday I held what felt like a solid 10 seconds on the right.  With my left arm I still am only able to pause briefly above the bar before my strength fails.  The disparity in strength between my left and right side may explain why my muscle ups always fade on my left side when they start to turning into “one overs”.  I am hoping my continuing to work the OAC hold on the left I can even out the strength level between the two halves.

With as active as I normally am, even one day of abnormally low activity, paired with less than healthy eating (Super Bowl),  can send me into a tizzy.  I feel lethargic, grumpy, lazy and just annoyed with the world.

I had some ideas about trying Lee’s February 20 by 12 challenge on Sunday but my knees were a bit sore to tackle 4 sets of jumping deep power squats.  I definitely do want to give it a shot and soon.  I am curious how long it will take me to complete.  I have seen times ranging from 8 minute something to over 20.

I did a GUTS session today. It feels like I am on a plateau, nothing is getting any easier and I am still utilizing a very slow pace at the end of the dip and push up sets.  I don’t know why I bother trying to bench press after doing GUTS.  I have absolutely no pushing power at that point.

My current GUTS numbers stand at 36/20/49.  (dips/pull ups/push ups)

I had my first troll/hater to deal with on the Bar-barian forums.  On this month’s challenge thread this guy unleashes on me, Lou and several of the contestants.  He had several criticisms.

He said that several of the contest participants were using junk form and that Lou and I were not being tough enough as judges.  In reality we disqualified double digit attempts during the month due to form or break timing issues, including two of my own.

The troll went on to question my elevation to forum moderator since I am clearly not an elite bodyweight athlete at this point, evidently he views that as a requirement to run the contests.  He also scoffed at Lou, taking shots at his form as well.

Well I tried to be a professional as I could, asking other forum members to not “feed the troll” (react to the post).  I intended to simply use my power as moderator to delete his posts and move on.  Well it turns out that there were some problems with my moderator rights, I couldn’t moderate.  I contacted Rick about the issue but in the mean time sent a private message to the guy to address his complaints.  Here was my response:

Hey bud I’m not sure who you are or who pissed in your Cheerios. I have been scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what the point of your rant is? Are you an elitist that thinks that only the upper echelon in the body weight community are worthy of posting videos of their efforts?

How does trying to degrade someone on the board accomplish anything positive at all? Do your proclamations make you feel better than others?

I am actually very much a tell it like it is person myself. However when I see a world that is filled with a majority of fat and lazy couch potatoes the last thing I plan to do is discourage someone that actually gets “it” and understands the importance of self improvement and the benefit of challenging yourself physically.

if you had a problem with the way a contest is run you should have contacted me instead of dumping your insults all over the board. I’m a big boy and happy to take it.

I am asking that you discontinue your forum rant.

Do the challenge, do it well and I’ll be happy to give you your props and if you turn out to be an epic poser I’ll be happy to tell you that you suck since that seems to be what you like to hear.

The guy responded mostly positively to my PM however he wasn’t very positive when I finally got my full moderation rights in place and deleted all of his posts and anything related to it. Oh well.  I deleted his complaint about my deletions as well.

For whatever reason my mostly cynical, negative viewpoint of the rest of the world does not seep into my participation on the Bar-barian forums or my dealings with the bodyweight community in general.  I value being involved with a group of like minded individuals that understand the importance of pushing yourself physically, not matter what your current physical limitations may be.

This is a bunch of people that speak via their actions and I respect that more than anything in this world.  There is way too much talking and far too little doing going on elsewhere.  The BBR forums are my little bright light of goodness I keep in my pocket.  I have no intentions of letting anyone take a dump all over it.

I took my first crack at the 5150, 150 reps in 5 minutes challenge last night.  It was tough, maybe even a little tougher than I expected.

I tried this once before, instead seeing how long it would take me to get all 50 pull ups and 100 push ups.  It took almost exactly 7 minutes.  For this challenge once 5 minutes expires you are done, counting whatever reps you did complete.

When I did the 7 minute attempt I broke the reps into 10 sets of 5 pull ups and 10 push ups, thinking keeping the sets small would help me not gas completely too early.  Well the problem was the 20 transitions between exercises just ate up too much time.

This time my plan was to do each exercise to the point where I would normally pause before cranking out a few more to save time and avoid blowing too much energy too early.  My first set of 15 pull ups and 30 push ups went ok but I was already feeling more spent then I would have liked, especially with the pull ups.

For the rest of the attempt I did whatever pull ups I could manage and did sets of 15 push ups.  I wound up with 35 pull ups and 75 push ups, 40 total reps (15 pull ups, 25 push ups) less than I eventually want to achieve.

I heard from Zef that he is hoping to have special shirts made that are exclusive to the forum challenges.  This will a be a very cool addition and will surely drive up participation.  Having prizes for contests also means that more stringent judging and rule enforcement will need to be in place.