mentalisttraceur-fitness - Tumblr blog

[mentalisttraceur-fitness]

As my upper body strength has been improving lately due to a regular diet of pull-ups, I've suddenly discovered myself naturally enjoying the ergonomics of wide-arm-position pull-ups.

For years, I enjoyed the narrower arms-shoulder-width-apart pull-up more. It was easier, obviously, that was a big part of it.

Recently, instead of increasing reps or sets (which bores me), I made myself do more of my pull-ups the arms-wider-apart way.

And then something really neat happened - I could go a couple inches higher with the pull up. At first I thought I just had gotten stronger past some threshold. But I've realized that it's a joints/angles/leverage/etc thing. When your arms are wider apart, it's much more ergonomic (much more mechanically possible, even) to keep the motion going further.

Which also made me immediately understand something which never made sense to me in parkour and parkour-oriented pull-up training - there's this movement where you're hanging straight down off a ledge/rail/branch that you're grabbing with your hands, and you're supposed to be able to smoothly pull yourself up until it turns into a push up which continues the rest of the way up.

Well I always had trouble with that - not practical trouble (I basically always had other ways to generate the upward movement), but trouble when trying to isolate the exertion to just my arms. But now I'm realizing that there's an inflection point where once you have a critical threshold of strength to comfortably do the wider-arm pull-up, you unlock greater mechanical efficiency (maybe) and range/fluency of movement (definitely).

[mentalisttraceur-fitness]

Another thing that's really good for my fitness? Virtual reality games.

Like, I am never going to hold up my arm for 10 minutes straight just for the sake of getting my shoulder muscles exercised.

But give me a VR game where I have to keep constantly shooting by holding up a bow or handgun with one arm, and I will work those shoulders til they give out from exhaustion.

I've done more squats in the months that I'd go to play VR games where I had to dodge stuff than I've ever done even back when I was doing regular workouts with professional trainers.

[mentalisttraceur-fitness]

A pull-up bar which can be attached to a door frame without drilling or hammering or tools is a huge life improvement for me.

I get to do pull-ups every day several times a day, working multiple muscle groups all at once (since the only pull-ups I do is L pull-ups), with basically zero overhead in my life.

A lot of physical fitness for me comes down to reducing the friction on doing exercise to the point that I can do just enough to not get bored. I am not a "hit the gym for an hour+ and rotate through sets of reps of a bunch of different exercises" kind of person. I am a "well since I'm already up, I'd love to do some [a specific exercise]" and then "well I've done [3, or 4, or 20, or 50, depends on the exercise and my fitness level] and I'm getting bored/tired for now" kind of person.

The thing is, the stronger you get, the more you'll naturally feel the desire to increase the reps sometimes, and the more you'll feel a restless craving for movement and exertion. Or at least that's how it works for me. Like, for a while I was doing 3 pull-ups per set, then as I got fitter and the movement became less conscious and faster, I naturally wanted to do 4. Or like today after some cardio and one set of pull-ups, I felt an urge to do a second longer set - I was thinking maybe 8 at once but as I got close to 8 I wanted to go longer so I decided to continue at least until 12, and ended up doing 16 by the end of it.

I like this a lot. It's a much more "natural" way to do it - I just go with what my body tells me, and while it won't be anywhere near peak, optimized gains, my body is clearly wired to enjoy and crave the feelings which lead to building it up. I think most of us are like this, but we can't discover it unless we give ourselves enough experiences with exercise.

As another testament to this approach working, I have better pecs nowadays than I've ever had my whole life. Pecs were one of the few muscle groups I used to always feel scrawny about, even after the eight years of martial arts and parkour that led me to the peak form I once had: shredded abs, kickboxer legs, thin yet well-defined hard arms and shoulders... but flat boy pecs. But after getting that pull-up bar, I slowly started to go "huh, those kinda look like man pecs" when seeing myself in the mirror. Don't get me wrong, those pecs have a way to go still, but they're actually going now.

[mentalisttraceur-fitness]

Due to what was probably an ear infection, which I never went to a doctor for and which was maybe caused in part by letting myself do too long of a cold shower and then stay naked for too long after, I had stopped doing cold showers for a year or two.

A couple week ago I finally resumed cold showers, or at least brief cold rinses, because my ear is better enough that I feel comfortable with it. Not every day, but most days, for at least a minute or two.

Words really cannot describe how invigorated and alive I feel after each one. Then for a long time after I'll feel a light but deep sensation of lingering inner warmth just radiating out and keeping my skin comfortable from within.

But the more important benefit for me is that I end up feeling more comfortable with ambient cold at other times - not as much as right after a cold shower but it is a perceptible improvement.

If I let this subtle aspect of physical fitness go, I feel sensitive to cold all the time, and it makes my life kinda miserable. Really glad to finally start chipping away at this again.