Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Rest Day

I decided to lay back today and let my body recover a bit more before hitting it hard tomorrow. Instead of a standard workout, I spent about 45 minutes stretching and playing around with some gymnastic skills. I’ve decided that these exercises are going to form a new portion of my programming: Every Day Drills.

This is a term my high school football coach used to use for the fundamentals that were to be done before every practice. I want to use this idea to work on bodyweight skills that are either indirectly important to major movements, personal weaknesses, or just things I want to be good at. 15 minutes per day is all I plan to spend on these things, and I want this time to serve more as a building/practice period than a test of intensity/repetition/volume. My list of EDDs as of now looks like this:

Planche pushup progression 3 x 5

Weighted dead hang holds 3 x 30 sec

Static handstand holds 2 minutes total time

Pistol squats 3 x 10

Back bends using a wall 3 x 5

Each of these exercises should be done for technical proficiency and not to the point of major taxation. I don’t plan to limit or alter my standard programming at all to accommodate EDDs.

If anybody has any ideas for other drills built to improve grip strength, unilateral strength, or balance, please share them.

From Dec 21, 2009

3 comments:

  1. One handed pushups are amazing for building unilateral strength and control and amazingly scalable. You can do elbow out or elbow in, balance on one foot, feet close together or far apart, and also fun to do with a ring instead of on the ground to add in that frictionless plane of motion.

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  2. Balancing on tightrope is perhaps the ultimate balance drill.

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