Running on - Upper Body Strength...
Read a great article about why upper body strength is so important to runners. Since I've been working my upper body, I don't slouch so much while out running. The article also talks about the push/pull exercises...interesting as I just did a bunch of reading late last week about splitting my weight workout into push and pull days.
Let's face it - there's not a lot of hours in the day. And not a lot of strength in these spaghetti arms. So alternating the push/pull exercises lets me shorten the workout and focus on a few exercises in order to get stronger.
Here's the article - it also has a list (and demonstration) of what they believe to be great upper body exercises.
As I've said before, I have a chin up bar that Ron got for me and put up in the closet doorway. I've been (almost) diligently working my way toward a full chin up. As an aside, I read a great article yesterday on the difference between a pull-up (overhand grip) and a chin-up (underhand grip) and how pull-ups are harder. I am working on a chin-up...must have known it was easier ;)
So, I started with my step aerobics bench, four 'rungs' and hauled myself up from there. Then, I moved it down to three and worked at getting stronger. A woman on twitter was doing a happy dance about her progress on the chin-up bar and mentioned jumping (OK, said woman said it took her three years to be able to do a chin-up - that wasn't very encouraging, so I've wiped it from my memory). Today, I left the bench where it was and tried the jumping...
I could almost get my chin up to the bar! The drop was controlled. 5 times! This is huge progress for when Ron first got me the bar, I couldn't jump anywhere near the bar. And I dropped back to my feet like a stone. I am getting stronger!
Yay!
J
Let's face it - there's not a lot of hours in the day. And not a lot of strength in these spaghetti arms. So alternating the push/pull exercises lets me shorten the workout and focus on a few exercises in order to get stronger.
Here's the article - it also has a list (and demonstration) of what they believe to be great upper body exercises.
As I've said before, I have a chin up bar that Ron got for me and put up in the closet doorway. I've been (almost) diligently working my way toward a full chin up. As an aside, I read a great article yesterday on the difference between a pull-up (overhand grip) and a chin-up (underhand grip) and how pull-ups are harder. I am working on a chin-up...must have known it was easier ;)
So, I started with my step aerobics bench, four 'rungs' and hauled myself up from there. Then, I moved it down to three and worked at getting stronger. A woman on twitter was doing a happy dance about her progress on the chin-up bar and mentioned jumping (OK, said woman said it took her three years to be able to do a chin-up - that wasn't very encouraging, so I've wiped it from my memory). Today, I left the bench where it was and tried the jumping...
I could almost get my chin up to the bar! The drop was controlled. 5 times! This is huge progress for when Ron first got me the bar, I couldn't jump anywhere near the bar. And I dropped back to my feet like a stone. I am getting stronger!
Yay!
J
Comments
Post a Comment