It’s basically a normal pushup, except your feet aren’t on the ground ha. The only two contact points your body has with the ground are your hands. If that’s not making any sense, then check out this planche pushup progression video.I just found out about these a couple of weeks ago and they look intense. I think Nash and I are going to try to follow the progression in the above video, or something similar, and see how long before we can actually pull off one of these bad boys.

In order to keep my muscle development balanced, I normally wouldn’t focus on training for one body part, or for only one exercise, but this is a little bit of an exception and will be in addition to my normal workouts and not in place of.

Since the pushup is such a proven and trusted exercise, which really does work many different body parts (especially with different hand positions and foot elevations) I don’t feel bad about training to do a harder version of it, because it almost becomes a full body workout at that point. Every “core” muscle you have is going to be working to balance you and keep your legs elevated. Also, your chest, shoulders, triceps, biceps, forearms, are all going to be getting to killed while trying to push you up and keep you balanced at the same time, your upper back might even get a bit of a workout too.

I just started “training” for this within the past couple of days. The “pseudo pushup” is really a piece of cake, you’re just doing a regular pushup, only your hands are positioned down more towards your waist. This is where your hands are going to need to be positioned if you have any hope of balancing yourself well enough to do a planche, so it’s important to get proper form and technique, and to start getting your muscles used to the new movements and positions.

I dabbled with the second stage of the progression (being a wall-aided planche) and it’s definitely a little awkward. Figuring out where your feet should be, how much you should or shouldn’t rely on the wall, and having your feet slipping and sliding everywhere all take some getting used to.

I’ll continuously post updates as a reach more advanced stages in the progression, but for now I’m opening the door to the yogymbo planche pushup challenge. If you can do them, or want to try them, or have any questions, or anything else for that matter, leave a comment.

One last note…really make sure you work your upper and lower back if you’re going to train for these. That just goes back to making sure you have a balanced workout routine and aren’t neglecting any part of your body.

Let me start by reiterating that fact that I really don’t like cardio, unless it’s for a purpose. I’ll explain. I don’t mind running down field to catch a pass or sprinting down the court for a fast break, I just don’t like doing cardio just to do it. I did run track in high school for a year, not sure what I was thinking - apparently I wasn’t.

In this post I will focus on conditioning for football - I will get into other sports in future posts.

Football Conditioning

To get started, it’s important to make sure you’re running the “proper way.” Form running is a very effective exercise used to help develop or improve your running skills. The workout consists of: high knees (10 yards down and 10 yards back), butt kickers (10 yards down and 10 yards back), high jump skip (10 yards down and 10 yards back), stride outs - just like Deion Sanders which is why this is my favorite (20 yards down and 20 yards back), and lastly put it all together and sprint for 15 yards down and back. This workout is great as it effectively dissects the running motion and allows you to work on each individual aspect of the movement.

Read on for more!

Football is a game where you are constantly changing speed, or gears, as I like to put it. You need to be able to give that extra burst of speed at any given moment. As another conditioning workout, go to a nice open space (track, football field, parking lot) and jog out the first 15 yards, then sprint the next 25 yards, and then jog the last 15 yards. It should end up being roughly 50 yards in total to put it into perspective. Do about 10-20 of these depending on your fitness level. This can also serve as a great HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout.

As a football player, you are responsible to cover a lot of ground - end-zone to end-zone, sideline to sideline. A great conditioning workout to help build your endurance is to run 300 yard shuttles. Again an open space (preferably a football field) would be best. Run out to the 50 yard line, touch the line, turn around and run back to the goal line. Repeat that 2 more times. Try timing yourself and work to beat your previous time. If you aren’t in shape, start off slow - trust me, otherwise do 3 or 4 of these shuttle runs to improve your stamina.

Changing direction is a huge part of football which is why shorter speed shuttles are key. Line up on the 10 yard line facing the sideline. Sprint to your right and touch the 5 yard line, then turn, sprint and touch the 15 yard line. Next, sprint and touch the goal line and finally sprint through the 20 yard line. It’s important to focus on planting your feet, opening up your hips, and accelerating in the opposite direction. These movements are a common denominator in almost any sport. Mastering this will set you apart.

Strengthening your reflexes are an important aspect of football. You need to be able to take a hit, and be able to hop up and make a play. Want to change it up a little bit? Start at the goal line and chop your feet, every time you move up 5 yards, drop and touch your chest to the ground. Jump up and sprint 5 yards. Do this every five yards up and down the field.  I highly recommend a verry light meal before performing this one.

Picture 7:30 am on a summer morning in August, birds chirping, grass still wet from last night’s dew, humidity so thick you could cut it with a knife, andfully strapped with football pads head to toe. You know where I’m going with this. Now picture this. Setup 5 stations all around the field. The stations would be as follows: push ups and sit ups (alternate every 10 reps), sled (hit the padded sled and drive it 10-15 yards), back peddle, shuffle, sprint, karaoke shuffle (all in the shape of a box outlines by cones), weave in and out of agility bags, and lastly run through the high ropes (ropes that are preferably elevated off the ground, otherwise draw boxes with chalk on pavement). Do every station for 2 minutes NONSTOP and a 30 second breather in between stations. Don’t worry, you won’t need to utter a word afterwards - this workout speaks for itself.

In the off-season, you should focus more on building stamina, strength, and endurance, while during the season your main goal should be to maintain that - same goes for weight training. If playing football was easy, everyone would do it.

The first thing this directly relates to is will power. If you don’t have the will power to avoid these foods in your place of work - you probably shouldn’t be on the diet to begin with, as everytime you “cheat” its like taking a step backwards.

I understand that will power isn’t easy, so let me try to make an analogy that you can think about to make things easier for yourself next time:

When you’re driving a car, everytime you step on the gas - you make a purchasing decision. Equally so, everytime you step on the brake you’re also making a purchasing decision. With both motions you’re essentially spending money. Just like with your diet, when you eat healthy food you’re consciously making an exercise & body image decision - which says the same for eating unhealthy food. So its something to consider everytime you’re going have that cookie, slice of cake, etc.

I know what you’re probably thinking now. “Its just not that easy, if I don’t eat the cake or pizza like everyone else - they give me shit. Why aren’t you eating this cake? What you don’t eat cake? Who doesn’t eat cake? What are you a health nut? etc. etc.” Its really easy to fall into these traps and just give in to the shit food. The bottom line is this - nobody feels good about eating the cake if they’re concerned about their health or how its going to help them - but they certainly don’t want to be the only ones doing it. Could you imagine being the only one to eat cake if you were surrounded by health nuts? Of course not! If you and one other person decided to eat the cake, it would seem much more acceptable however.

From my experience, the best thing to do in these situations is just say you don’t like cake, or you’re allergic to something in it, or you can see you’re working towards a fitness goal. You might get some pokes here or there, but if you can’t stomach that level of commitment, maybe you shouldn’t be working out anyway.

One of my common theories about working out & diet is, if you’re going to do it - do it all the way. Half-assing anything doesn’t have the same effect. Do an exercise till failure, don’t cheat more than one day on your diet, and most importantly - don’t be a damn baby.

-Nash

I was always the smallest kid on the field. I used to eat anything and everything in sight and could never put on a pound. I wrestled at the 112 lb weight class my freshman year of high school! Going into my sophomore year of college i recall weighing in at 135 lbs. I packed on some ”bad” weight, I guess you would call it, my freshman year of college. I started lifting during the second semester with little knowledge of working out. I started using a protein supplement and used to watch the exercises the bigger guys were doing. I started to see changes in my physique very quickly. Soon it became addicting and you could find me in the gym 4-5 times a week. I began to feel more confident about myself and had more energy as a whole.

I remember some of my friends coming up to me saying, “Hey Jim, you workin out or what kid?!” I’m not gunna lie, it made me feel good seeing that other people noticed some of the work I was putting in.  At this point I didn’t really have a set routine in terms of a lifting schedule and exercises. I would just go to the gym and just experiment trying different machines and equipment. At first, I felt like an idiot because I didn’t know how to work some of the equipment and wasn’t really sure how much weight I could do, so it was a little embarrassing to say the least.

After freshman year was over, I moved back home for the summer and didn’t have a gym membership. I also didn’t have much money to get one so instead I borrowed some equipment from my cousin. He gave me an old bench which was adjustable (incline, flat, decline), a bunch of plates, a pair of dumbbells and some other random stuff like an ez bar and other old equipment he never used. I worked out of my garage where it would get scorching hot during those summer days. I tried to convince my mom to let me move the equipment into the basement and turn my brother’s room (he moved out) into a weight room…..she was not having it. I used that old equipment every winter break and summer until I graduated college. It wasn’t worth it to get a membership somewhere when I was just going back to school anyway. The toughest was during the winter months. I used to wear hoodies with layers underneath and winter gloves (the barbell would be cold as ice!!!) It was a little ridiculous but I did what i had to do and toughed it out. If I could, I would workout outdoors all the time during the summer - you get a really good burn when it’s warmer out.

I didn’t get realllly serious about weight lifting until I graduated college and came home. Freshman year I weighed in at 135 and when I graduated I weighed 150. I’m proud to say that I put on 15lbs and no it wasn’t the freshman 15….. it was 15lbs of SOLID muscle by the end of my college career. When I got home in December (I graduated early) I decided enough is enough. The old equipment wasn’t doing it for me anymore and it was time to get serious. I joined a gym nearby and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Currently I go to the gym 5 times a week and have a very healthy diet. It’s sooo much easier to eat right when your at home - thanks mom.

So everyone and their momma’s been talkin’ about High Intensity Interval Training(HIIT). What’s so great about it? If you’ve ever seen a sprinter, they don’t look like scrawny long distance runners, they’re usually ripped. This logic applies to HIIT, it effectively helps you keep muscle/pack on lower body muscle while burning fat. In test groups of runners, HIIT vs. steady-cardio, those who train using HIIT burn more calories, lose more body fat, and lose less muscle. So do it to it.

The way HIIT works is by (much like weight-lifting) creating a post-workout state where your body continues to burn calories. As a result, although the 20 minutes of HIIT on the treadmill may look like less calories, the overall effect of the workout is greater. The simple way to put it, what gets you bigger in weight lifting? 800 reps of low low weights or a much lower amount of heavy weight reps? The same applies for running, you push your body to a new max(speed and VO2) when you do interval or sprint training of any kind.

With that being said…it’s time to put some pep in yo step…and let this be said, if you have bad knees, use a bike or a cycling machine.  Elliptical trainers are fine for your steady-cardio, but it may be tough to do any kind of high intensity sprint on them, so i suggest cycling or the treadmill(or swimming) for your interval training. 

Beginners:

So, if you’re not a runner AT ALL, then I suggest beginning at a very low pace walk(3.0 on the treadmill) and gradually speeding it up. For example, if you’re doing a 20 minute run, start at 3.0 and gradually increase your speed so that by the last few minutes your going at a nice running speed(6.0-7.0) and try to give it your all and sprint the last 10-30 seconds(8.0-MAX). As your speed builds up, try to start implementing small sprints throughout, for example every 2-3 minutes doing a 10-30 second sprint.  Depending on you’re dedication levels, you should be able to increase your speed/intensity of these intervals significantly over the course of several weeks to two months.

Intermediate-Experienced Runner

Now that you’ve become somewhat skilled/trained at running at high speeds we will start the actual HIIT. First start with a five minute warm up, followed by a 30-60 second sprint. You will want to sprint full speed for each of these sprints, followed by a 2 minute jog(even if your exhausted you MUST at least walk), continued this for five to ten sprints(depending on your experience levels). Remember, this isn’t a casual workout, this is an all out interval sprint that should push you to absolute exhaustion.

Things To Consider:

A) Hydration

B) Proper pre-workout nutrition(not the time to cut carbs, but don’t binge on junk carbs either)

C) Don’t calorie count. (In regards to how much the treadmill says you burned.)

Let me reiterate, the diet is the most important part.

Firstly, I exercise 7 days a week. It’s easy after the first few weeks and you start to notice results. For me, the best part of my day is the end of my workout - when I can really just feel great about what I’m doing for myself. That is a really intrinsic motivator.

read on for the details…

Anyway, I lift about 4 days a week:

Monday: Off
Tuesday: Chest
Wednesday: Back
Thursday: Shoulders/Legs
Friday: Bi’s/Tri’s
Saturday & Sunday: Off

Then for cardio:

Monday: Boxing workout
Tuesday: Boxing workout (after lift)
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Boxing workout (after lift)
Friday: Off
Saturday: Boxing workout
Sunday: Running/Football/etc.

Now I’ll tell you a little bit about the boxing workout:

Warm-up: 10 minutes of jump rope with 25 push-ups in three minute intervals.
Speed bag: I alternate arms and patterns for 5-10 minutes
Jump Squats: 25 reps
Lunges: 25 reps
Shadow boxing: 3×20 reps of different combos (throwing different types of punches)
Heavy bag: 3×20 of shadow boxed combos
Abs: 25 situps, 10 push-ups, 40 bicycles, 10 push-ups, 30 leg raises, 10 push-ups, 25 compound crunches, 10 push ups

The most important part of this workout is no breaks - and try to make it last for 60 min. You should be totally dead when its done. I also switch it up each week. Maybe we’ll get a video up of the different parts of the workout soon.

I’ll also be posting before and after images on my third and final post of this path to six pack abs series, where you can see the changes I went through.

Keep lifting

-Nash

That being said, I always used to tell myself and others - that I had a 6 pack at one time, and that if I really wanted to - I could get one again. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I questioned myself, “could I really commit to that kind of diet and exercise regiment again??” I remember hating it, and never wanting to do it again. And I thought about how much I loved crap food.

Well - as you can guess, I decided to go for it. If you’ve read any of my articles about abs, than you know I had to start with the diet. I know I’ve said it 1000 times already, but you’ll never see abs without a proper diet.

FUEL FOR YOUR BODY

As I worked on my diet, I consulted Team Scivation (which is made up of professional bodybuilders). They put me on a diet which essentially eliminates carbs. One thing I really took away from the diet plan, was they said carbs could be considered “cheap gasoline” while the proper fats could be considered “rocket fuel.”

That one analogy put everything into perspective for me. I cut out the grains and all other obvious carbs.

To get a better idea of my diet:

I eat a lot of chicken, tuna, almonds, avacado, shrimp, (some steak), apples, vegetables, and protein shakes.

And one day I week I eat a lot of disgusting food, and drink a lot of alcohol - i refer to this as my “cheat day.”

As I’ve followed this diet for about a month and half, I’ve gotten down to a four pack, but I’m still slowly trimming away.

After finding an appropriate diet which is working for you - I can’t stress enough, be strict.

In part 2, I’ll discuss my current workout regiment.

Anyway, if you don’t already know…I like pull-ups…especially wide grip pull-ups. The problem is that you hit a wall at some point. You can keep doing as many possible and trying to increase your max number of reps, but what does that really do? Eventually your muscles get too used to it, your rep increases plateau and you stop seeing results. I have encountered a similar issue with dips, but fear not, I have a solution for both.

I recently started using a weight belt for the aforementioned exercises. Well I’ll tell you what bobby, strapping 50lbs around your waist and trying to do dips and pull-ups is freaking great. If you’re looking to shock your muscles and get size and strength gains, a weight belt can be a huge help. It will let you bust right through those walls and plateaus that have been holding you back and making your workouts potentially boring. I’ve only been using it for a couple of weeks, but I’m doing pull-ups tomorrow and I can’t wait to try to muscle up the extra weight, it brings you to a whole different level.

In terms of the product itself, I feel like it could be of a much higher quality. While I’m sure that the chain won’t snap, I’m just waiting for the nylon (or whatever they use) parts to start to fray and rip, but we’ll see. I haven’t really tried to stack it up and I’m not sure if a 45lb plate will fit on there (may depend on the style), but it looks like the most you can fit on there might be 3 25’s…not that I’ll ever use that much though.

If you’re interested in this, also look into a weight vest. It’s much more all purpose, you can do much more with it in terms of workout variety than you can with a belt.

Whenever someone asks me, what can they do to lose weight, I always tell them the same thing, “sure, you can do cardio - but the only way you’re going to see a change is through changing your diet.” Not to say its impossible to lose weight with cardio (its certainly not) - its just a lot more work, and I know a lot of lazy people.

For someone who is just starting to try and get healthy, running 10 minutes a day would seem like a good start. But if that person is only burning around 100 calories, they’re going to lose about 1 pound per month. Which I have a feeling is less than most people will aim for when trying to lose weight.

This is why eating healthy is so important. But for it to be really effective, you can’t just eat as much healthy food as you’d like, you need to eat proper portions (think the size of your palm).

Our parent/sister/relative site Excycle, recently launch an entire section devoted to health food recipes, which you can find here.

Whats really great about the way excycle, is the way they’re going about displaying the recipes. You can browse by food (chicken, beef etc.), by category (high protein, low carb etc.), by goal (fat loss, muscle gain etc.) and even by course type (dinner, lunch, protein shakes etc.)! This can help anyone trying to find exact foods to fit their diet!

Check it out and feel free to add your own health food recipe!

Cardio

Yayyy cardio! Everyone loves cardio, especially girls who go 2 mph backwards on ellipticals and bring their purse to the gym and fat dudes who swing one leg to cheat by using momentum(also ellipitcal). You will need to start a more serious cardio regimen, consisting of at least three days a week of cardio, and if time/fitness permits up to four to five times a week. Cardio should be at minimum 20 minutes and can be running, biking, basketball, soccer, hiking, swimming, or rowing. It must be at moderate to high intensity to actually burn a substantial amount of calories. Try to start out at moderate intensity and gradually increase your speed so that by the last thirty seconds to minute of your workout your doing a sprint. If you are in good cardio shape, move on to HIIT(High Intensity Interval Training).

HIIT is the king of cardio/weight loss workouts. It not only burns a tremendous amount of calories, it helps keep muscle on by hitting fast-twitch muscles and having the same calorie burning effect as lifting(the calories keep burning after your done). A warning: unless your on some kind of energy supplement(fat burner/Nitric Oxide - Caffeine product/etc.) you probably want to do HIIT at another point in the day to your weight lifting or on another day.

Weight Lifting:

The simple fact is that while isolation exercises may hit specifically targeted muscles they just aren’t as efficient as compound lifts.  Compound lifts hit more muscles with heavier weights and burn more calories. For all of the above reasons each lifting day should consist of more compound exercises. Below is a sample three(or six day workout) for the week. You can switch when you do Part 1 and 2 or do them on different days(e.g. Day 1-Part 1 on Mon, Day 1-Part 2 on Tues, etc.)

Day 1:

Part 1(or day 1):

Cardio 20 minutes, increasing intensity (e.g. casual jog, steadily increasing speed, to a full blown sprint for last 30 seconds to 2.5 minutes [depending on cardiovascular ability). For the more experienced or more motivated, check out High Intensity Interval Training.

Part 2(or day 2):

Barbell Squat 8 x 4, Deadlift 8 x 3, Lunges 8 x 2, Bent over row 8 x 4, Seated Row 8 x 3, Pull ups 8 x 3

Day 2:

Part 1(or day 3): Cardio (see above)

Part 2(or day 4): Arnold Press(or military press + front and side shoulder raises) 8 x 3, Upright Row 8 x 3, Shrugs 8 x 3, Chin Ups 8 x 3, Cable Bicep Curls 8 x 3, Hammer Curls 8 x 3

Day 3:

Part 1(or day 5): Cardio (see above)

Part 2(or day 6): Barbell(or dumbbell) Bench Press 8 x 3, Barbell (or dumbbell) Incline Press 8 x 3, Decline Bench 8 x 2, Cable Cross-Overs 8 x 3, Dips 12 x 3, Tricep rope pulldowns 8 x 3

These are just recommended workouts, you can obviously switch it up based on your comfort levels.