Assisted Levers and Lever Pull ups

Oct 29-402, Nov 2 - 150

total push ups/chins 447,000

        I threw up another video of another variation of an exercise I like to do. Again I usually do this in addition to my regular push ups and chins ( that is I don'tr count reps of this exercise in my total).Levers are a great exercise as they work the core as well as really working the back. The advantage of this exercise over regular pull ups is that in chins or pull ups the arms/ biceps are the weaker muscle in the chain. They tend to fail before you can fully burn out the lats or back muscles. With the levers you almost eliminate the arms from the exercise and completely stress the back muscles. The down side of levers or lever pull ups is that they are a little harder to do, therefore an assisted variation can help you build up your strength for this movement. Using bands can give you a little extra momentum needed to get in a few reps. I can do levers and lever chin ups but I can't do a lot of reps so I like doing an assisted variation so I can get some higher rep sets completed.

Click to view assisted levers and assisted lever pull ups

Slump busting

Oct/5-430, Oct/6-209, Oct7-52

Total push ups/chin ups 439,943

        I have fallen into a slump in terms of push ups and pull ups. Until today I hadn't done any push ups/chins since the 7th. I did get up early this morning and pound out a few hundred push ups and I am planning on doing some push ups and chins tonight as well. I am determined to get back on the wagon.  Anyway not going to beat myself up about this -just going to get back to business.

Supplements for an old guy

Sept/13-360, Sept 14-390

436,403 push ups/chins

Not a bad couple of days, I think if I am getting at least 300 push ups and/ or chins a day, I will make progress towards my goal of one million. I think after I have been at it a while and I can handle the daily volume I will probably try to ramp up to around 1000 push ups or chins a day. I am a little older than I was when I first started this blog. Recovery is a lot more important to me, or at least getting some good rest and decent diet and supplements. My wife and I were working with a coach and personal trainer and he got us into a little more serious supplement program. He turned us onto a couple of things that I think are making a big difference in our recovery. One of the things he had us try out were BCAA or branched chain amino acids. The idea is that these help prevent muscle wasting if you are working out really intensely. They really seem to work but below is the link to a video where I talk about the overall supplement program we are using.

Supplement program