January is one of the worst months for fitness regulars – gyms are crowded, progress has been lost, and there is never quite enough time to hammer out the details of your schedule.
This year we’re planning to sidestep this sluggish step entirely with a straightforward plan: Do a ton of pushups and pullups
Bodyweight exercises are much joint-friendlier than the low repetition weight lifting we normally stick to, but are arguably less exciting to set personal records on. This video recaps my solution at about 12x actual speed and without any of the whining.
Most of our workouts will be less intense, but we’ll be keeping ourselves honest by tackling this one every weekend with an eye to get through it faster next time.
Let me know how you’re starting off 2015 in the comments, or read on for a few more details about the video –
For anyone interested in the details:
Song is Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Dillon Francis Remix) by Daft Punk
Each of us does 100 reps total of both pullups and pushups, but instead of straight sets (10 sets of 10), we followed a ‘wave loading’ scheme 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, etc.
At the end we each did a final set to failure which was recorded, so we can measure individual as well as group progress (the time).
The math works out to 1 rep every ~9 seconds, which is more generous than it sounds
Since our goal for this next month is to prepare our bodies for our next lifting cycle we picked this particular setup to keep our form a little cleaner and increase the cardiovascular requirements (which is also why we alternated pulling and pushing – reduces time spent doing nothing).
This article was written by Michael Chronley, CSCS, Fitness & Nutrition Advisor.
