Fit for Dragon*Con

by Jonathon Cabot

“Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

It wouldn’t be overly melodramatic to say that the application of this one might just save your hide someday.

The pullup. Arguably the most effective and practical strength exercise in existence. A much more telling measure of the upper body than the standard pushup will ever be, and the one the Marines got right–the Corps is the only branch of the US military that tests their boys with this criteria in lieu of pressing the deck. But for far too many of us, this particular drill is a major chink in our fitness armor. A casual glance through the front window of most any commercial gym at its peak hour will be met with men benching. And incline pressing. Perhaps even decline pressing (DON’T do this one). There might just even be one or two working on the dip bars, and I’m not even going to get into the myriad of wacky machines. Based on my experience, I’d be willing to bet my pension that there are more double bodyweight bench pressers in this country than there are men who can chin themselves strictly twenty times, let alone those who can chin themselves with the benefit of just one arm; a rare feat of strength indeed.

Why is it so? Could be in part our culture messing with us again. The mostly unspoken perception that pushing away (against external forces) is “manlier” than pulling towards. It could well be an unholy marriage of our collective vanity and myopia–after all, pulling doesn’t directly target the big chest and shoulders we want to see in the mirror (although both are taxed by pulls more than we may think). But perhaps equally to blame is the fact that pulling our well fed masses up, up and away is HARD, no two ways about it. Case in point, I’ve seen way too many dudes who could bench over 300 pounds, yet couldn’t manage to chin themselves three times. Unfortunately, big egos are fragile things, and rather than confront this deficiency, too many of us will persist in failing to do anything about it. Yet denial, as comforting as it may be in fair weather, is absolutely worthless when the real world happens.

Could our very lives one day depend on our proficiency at pullups? It’s entirely possible. Plenty of good people have died when they discovered to their dismay that they were unable to lift themselves up and out of danger. Case in point, the unfortunate death of a Disney World custodian named Raymond Barlow. In February of 1999, Mr. Barlow was out sweeping one of the narrow platforms on the now defunct Skyway system in the Magic Kingdom. The ride operators, unaware that anyone was out there at that hour of the morning, fired it up. Spooked by the oncoming cable car and apparently lacking any other option, Barlow grabbed ahold and tried to climb inside. Not strong enough to do so, he fell 40 feet into a flowerbed after hitting a tree on the way down and died. Ultimately, Disney was fined for a major safety standards violation, and this incident should never have happened. But had the victim only been strong enough to handle his own weight, it wouldn’t have ended in tragedy.

Okay. Now that we’re completely bummed out, let’s say you’re sufficiently inspired to incorporate some pullups into your training. At this stage, our “gym minimum” finally acquires its first piece of a equipment: a good chinning bar. While they come in a few different styles, the best for our purposes is probably the simple adjustable style for a doorway that are available in any decent sporting goods store (for most of us, this does require that we lift up our legs and cross our feet behind us so that we’re off the floor during the exercise, but that’s alright). I do however STRONGLY suggest investing in the kind that secure into the doorframe with screws. Don’t let this be you:

While it’s been covered at length any number of times elsewhere, let’s go ahead and repeat here that properly performed pullups work the posterior chain of the human body like nothing else. Those lats; the “wings” of the back, take the lion’s share of the work, but there is very little of the upper body that is not involved. I’d go so far as to call them the best bicep builder out there, in particular once the trainee has advanced to weighted, and with a whole lot of dedication, one-armed versions. They’re also a surprising abdominal worker–you might be amazed at how sore your gut feels after your first few sessions.

Pulls, like all effective strength drills, are a compound exercise–they work a lot of muscles at once. Let the record show that so-called “isolation” exercises warrant being discarded on the junkpile of history, right next to communism and Crocs. While I feel obligated to reiterate that I hold no monopoly on wisdom, fitness or otherwise, I will insist that the notion of “isolating” a muscle, contrary to what the schmucks occupying the squat rack at the gym with barbell curls will tell you, is neither possible nor desirable. When we start regarding our muscular system as a unit rather than a collection of unrelated bits, we can really start to make some headway in our pursuit of strength and general physical preparation.

With our shiny new cylindrical friend installed in a doorway of our humble abode (humor me and make it the bathroom door, if at all possible), we’re ready to get to work. Once again, I’m going to venture to say that most of us already have the basic mechanics of the exercise, but just to drive home the finer points, I present this gentleman:

Time to find out where we stand. Get a good thumbless overhand grip, the kind described by the video, and give it your best shot. From arms just about fully extended at the bottom of the movement, to chin at least over the bar at the top (anything less tends to not be counted on Marine Corps PFTs, so let’s just get into the habit of doing ’em the right way from day one). How did it go? If you could bust out even one solid rep, that’s a start, and we can work with that. As with the pushup training hyperlinked last week, this plan is pure dynamite for getting pullup numbers from subpar to superstar. If you’ve humored me and installed the bar in your bathroom door, make it a point to practice a quick work set each time you leave. Just make sure you wash your hands first, of course.

In the event that the final score was a big fat zero, don’t throw in the towel and resign yourself to believing that you will never be cut out for pulling your own weight. This especially goes for you ladies. There are many good tools in the box to build you up to your first honest pull, but this would probably require its own article to do justice to. Some moons ago, I had the pleasure of training a young woman while on deployment. In five months time, I had coached her from zero to five solid pullups. Few things that tour brought a smile to my face like the way the entire gym would invariably stop what they were doing to watch each time she’d approach the bar. And I assure you, she was nothing less than 100% feminine in her grace and bodily proportions.

There isn’t much limit to just how far pullups can take a dedicated trainee. Once twenty good reps have been achieved, I’d recommend either the addition of external weight (think heavy training vests or a weighted belt), or beginning the journey to one armed pulling. For some inspiration, look up names like John Grimek and Olympic lifting legend John Davis, who could both knock off six or seven one armers with either arm in the ballpark of 200 pounds each. Eugene Sandow, the Prussian strength legend, could chin himself one armed with only one of any of his ten fingers at around 190. Another man named Marvin Eder turned in a score of eleven one armers, and 80 of the two armed variety (would’ve loved seeing that one–the best I can recall witnessing in person was somewhere in the 40s). And for the big dudes, look up Bert Assirati. A British wrestler, he could do three one armers weighing in excess of 250. Incidentally, I’ve heard that he is also the heaviest man on record to have performed an iron cross on the gymnastics rings. Keep in mind, all of these feats were accomplished long before steroids, protein shakes and the rest of our contemporary nonsense came along.

Get to it. And Happy Thanksgiving. Without getting overly preachy, I’d like to take a moment to remind my countrymen that as an American, you have little (if anything at all) to apologize for, and have a whole hell of a lot worth defending.

Let’s be careful out there.

by Guest Blogger: Jonathon Cabot

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
–usually attributed to Teddy Roosevelt

Let’s say you’ve made the decision to get stronger and/or fitter. Good on you. As long as a boy is still allowed to dream, let’s also say you’ve heeded my sage advice and are willing to give your training an honest go without necessarily being cloistered in a chrome and mirror-covered commercial gym. What is it we *do* need at this point, assuming we’ve already met those intangibles like the will and the guts to get started? Right here, right now? That would be just a few square feet of clear real estate on the floor.

The familiar and loathed pushup. Remediation measure numero uno in just about any boot camp environment or paramilitary academy you’d care to name (that wouldn’t be a pledge pin on your uniform, now would it, mister?). The old standby in PE classes, back when such programs were still commonplace, at least. The classic calisthenic that represents a key, albeit somewhat misguided, event in many an official fitness test, including (as of this writing) all but one of the PFTs for the armed forces of the United States.

So why the pushup as the upper body drill of choice? In the case of the largely bygone era of physical education in public schools, this exercise was, much like the gym teachers themselves tended to be, both cheap and cruel. All you really need is some ground and you’re in business. Much the same can be said for the brainwave of the American military–seems the physical fitness tests were also developed by the lowest bidder. While there are indeed superior measures of upper body strength and endurance that we *should* be testing our troops with, they also invariably require more time to cycle a group of participants through, not to mention some form of equipment, and also personalized coaching for quality control purposes. To say nothing of the unfortunate truth that oftentimes, the military is just plain stupid. They’ve been using pushups as the standard for so long, their minds would simply shut down to even contemplate any other method. And it is with a heavy heart I say that it just ain’t likely to change anytime soon. For this reason, among others, the grim reality is that getting and staying strong is entirely up to the individual soldier.

From the above paragraph, one might be lead to believe that pushups are persona non grata in my training philosophy. Not so. However, I would encourage anyone, in particular those seeking to increase their physical strength (which should include everyone that draws breath–there is no earthly reason to desire being nor remaining weak) to regard the standard two-armed pushup as an elementary exercise intended to be mastered, before progressing to more difficult variations. When is this mastery achieved? While we could ask ten trainers for their thoughts and come away with ten very different opinions (or perhaps less, since we can probably toss out “get the hell away from me” as anything of value), if you’re asking for my $0.02 on the matter, I would suggest these two benchmarks:

– 20 strict repetitions at a tempo of 2 seconds down, followed by a 1 second pause in the bottom position (chest lightly touching the deck), and 2 seconds back up to arms locked

AND

– 50 strict repetitions in 60 seconds or less.

I firmly believe that for anything above these two goals, the trainee (male or female) has reached the point of diminishing returns. Your continued strength gains will most likely be minimal, if progress would still be made at all. Chasing super high reps might be useful for very select segments of the population–boxers and infantrymen come to mind. There aren’t many methods more effective that I’m aware of when it comes to building the kind of endurance in the arms a fighter needs in order to keep his dukes up round after round. Incidentally, contrary to the Rocky Balboa mythos, if a knockout is going to happen in the ring, in all probability it’ll be within the first three or four rounds; when the contenders can still throw a decent punch. While a few years back someone made the decision to shorten bouts from fifteen rounds to ten, you can still see how tough it must be when the bell rings and both fighters emerge from their respective corners, barely able to keep their hands up any longer. For the boots-on-the-ground infantry types, endless pushups might give the kind of stamina needed to get on your feet over and over again while wearing full “battle rattle” when the bad guys start shooting and decent cover is going to take some creativity to reach. For the uninitiated, when the bullets start whizzing your way, you aren’t Rambo–you get down, and you do so quickly. But at this stage, I’m admittedly digressing. Point is, chances are you’re neither a boxer nor the fodder of our country (but bless ya if you are). Once more, very high rep exercises do next to nothing for our strength development, but they can and do lead to overuse injuries (learned this the hard way, so here’s hoping you won’t have to), as well as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy–in layperson’s terms, a useless increase in the volume of a cellular fluid in our muscular tissue; resulting in soft, worthless, “fake” muscle growth. Bad ju-ju all around.

Just so we’re clear, it bears repeating: the classic two-armed pushup is merely a stepping stone, the segue drill to harder styles of pressing the deck. What are the finer points of a good pushup? Glad you asked. I imagine most folks have the basic concept, so rather than risk further “Bueller……? Bueller……..? Bueller……..?”-ing any readers who haven’t yet started drooling on the keyboard into submission, I’m going to defer to the gent in this demonstration:

(Crystal? Good.)

Time to put our newfound knowledge to use. Situate yourself in such a way that you can see a clock of some description, or have a buddy time you. Hit the deck, and knock out as many QUALITY repetitions are you can manage in 60 seconds. Shake it out, and after a nice long break (take all day if need be), return to that “lean and rest” position, and see how many strict reps you can bust out at that slow 2 seconds down, pause with the chest lightly on the ground for 1 second, and 2 seconds back up to arms locked out again tempo. 50 in a minute and 20 for the slow cadence. Did you make those numbers? Probably not. Clearly we’ve got work to do. If you’re *really* struggling; say, you can’t even break into the double digit range with proper form, swallow your pride and work on them from your knees until you’re strong enough to do them on your toes–no shame in it, we’ve got to start somewhere.

How do we train to achieve those goals? How do we reconcile a quality strength workout with the arduous pursuits of X-Box? Well, while I’m not too hip on what kind of newfangled contraptions the whippersnappers are playing with these days;back in my time, we had a button clearly labeled PAUSE on the standard NES controller. I’d like to think something similar still exists. Every so often, give it a good push, and put *this* plan into effect until the 50 and 20 have been accomplished. (There aren’t many authors in the fitness community that I gush over, but if this particular gentleman is speaking, you had best park yourself and start taking notes.)

Some might ask why not the bench press instead? Fair enough. By all means, bench if you wish, and have the know-how. It is, however, a somewhat artificial movement for our bodies, and not a particularly healthy one at that (I’ll provide more details if anyone if interested). This also presupposes that you either own the appropriate apparatus or otherwise have constant access to it. However, at the top of my personal laundry list of reasons for anyone who is not a competitive powerlifter to pass on this specific weightlifting exercise, the most damning would be the fact that a strong man can have a truly awesome bench press, yet still eat his way into a heart attack. That just ain’t gonna happen once an individual has become proficient with one-arm pushups–advanced calisthenics enforce good body composition to strength ratios.

Still needing a little motivation to get you fired up and hitting the deck? While ultimately the reason for this flavor of madness has to come from within, few moments in cinematic history have endowed me with *this* kind of inspiration to build up those pushing muscles:

(Watch if you can stomach it. One viewing all those years back was all I ever needed, personally.)

Get to it.

Let’s be careful out there.

((((Editor’s Note: Once again, in an attempt to, somehow, be a part of Mr. Cabot’s incredible post, I have created an art. I call it, “Vampire Bear Joins the Army”. I picture Jonathon’s nemesis from last week, the vampire bear, joining the Army and it not being what he expected, sort of a “Private Benjamin” type story… except with a Vampire Bear instead of Goldie. Plus, he has to be in the sun, which Vampire Bears do not enjoy.))))

Private Vambear