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Strength & Flexibility Expert

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The Constant Awesome

The Quest for the One Arm Pullup

The One Arm Pull Up (or One Arm Chin Up) was never a goal of mine until very recently and I’d like to talk about my foray into this journey. The r/bodyweightfitness forum goes through seasons where the userbase brings up the same theme repeatedly and it has been very pulling-oriented for the past year. Last year it was all about Pavel Tsatsouline’s Fighter Pullup program (detailed below) and recently there’s a lot of talk about one-arm training. The userbase is collectively getting stronger and it’s infectious in the most positive way. It is now a goal of mine to do a pullup or chinup with one arm for the sheer fact that it will make me much stronger at pulling in general.

My Recent Pullup History

Near the end of 2017, I did the fighter program which is a pullup program where you slowly increase the number of pullups you’re doing day after day and it has been proven to be beyond effective. I shared a detailed log of my experience here but the gist of it was the following:

I went from being able to do 18 pullups (in a day) to 39 pullups in exactly two months time. The program was supposed to be done in a month but I did it in two months cause I kept surfing and swimming and doing other shit in between so I had many more”rest” days. (I’m never in a rush and not going to follow a program blindly when my body is saying you need rest, especially because swimming is already extremely upper back intensive.)

By the way, speaking of pullups, if you’re still new on your pullup journey, I have created a couple YouTube videos here that might help you:

What is Pavels Fighter Pullup Program?

Click here to see expand

Why does Pavels Fighter Pullup Program work so well?

Well it’s very simple, really. Let’s say you can do 5 pull ups. So you begin with 5-reps which is at or near the max of what you can normally do. Then you’re resting as much as you need to (anywhere from a few minutes to few hours) and the next time you’re only doing 4 reps, which is less than before, so psychologically it feels very achievable (especially cause you’ve rested plenty) so you can’t psyche yourself out. And you do that until you’ve done 5 sets. And the next day, all you need to do is add only ONE rep on only ONE set, so it’s not very difficult at all. But you’re getting way more reps in… and it’s building week after week… and next thing you know two months goes by and you’re starting at 14 pullups and you’re like WTF I’M A BEAST.

My Current Pulling Strength (as of August 2018)

For many years I’ve maintained basic, decent pulling strength. I can do L-Pullups and V-Pullups and ring muscle ups at any given time. And while this is definitely above-average strength relative to the general population, this is barely intermediate-level for what’s possible with calisthenics or bodyweight exercises.

As for my front lever, which is very relevant to this discussion because it’s a straight-arm pulling exercise… In my previous blog post, I wrote partly about how I was constantly holding single-leg front levers at home in between computer breaks in the months of June and July. Given how difficult it is, I’m super happy with my current level as I can pull into it from a dead hang and into inverted hang repeatedly. Here’s a video demonstration after doing heavy pulling work for 5 days with no rest days (turn speakers on for the funny bit):

Pulling Strength Beyond Basic Pullups

Since I had such a great time doing Pavels Fighter Pullup Program last year, I decided to apply the structure of it to towel-assisted One Arm Chin Ups. According to Mathew Zlat, he says that many OAP/OAC video tutorials are incorrect because the people explaining how to achieve them have not achieved them themselves and in his video he says that most teach the assisted-version incorrectly because they don’t put the towel or band directly under the pulling arm. Doing it directly under the pulling hand mimics the rotation and pull just like true one arm versions.

Below is me performing some Towel-Assisted One Arm Chin Ups. You can do these with either a shirt, towel or band:

ProTips: It’s very easy to overdo reliance on the assisting arm, so only initiate the pull with the non-assisting arm and use the assisting arm only as much as you need. When going down, don’t freefall down, instead try to resist going down as much as possible (and again, use the assisting arm as little as necessary).

The other exercise Zlat recommends are negatives. I cannot do negatives at all. So my goal for this training cycle is to continue progressing the assisted version until I can do at least 1 controlled negative on each arm. (Note: You can intensify the towel-assisted version by simply holding the lower end of the towel.)

Training Log for my Towel-Assisted One Arm Chin Ups:

I started with 15 reps (5,4,3,2,1 on August 3) and 2 weeks later I am at 23 reps (6,5,5,4,3). My fingers are fried to hell from gripping the towel. This is strengthening a huge weak point for me: my fingers. So it’s like I’m training two goals in one. (It’s interesting to note how varied grip strength can be. My one-arm-grip is amazing on the rings but poor for performing the rope climb, which the towel mimics.)

I am extremely wary of the signals my fingers are giving me.

My fingers are very sore from gripping the towel and that warning sign is not to be ignored because the tendons of the fingers are tiny and take a lot of time to recover. If this strain becomes a tendon rupture, it will take more than a year for a finger to recover, so I have two options here:

Continue training the assisted-one arm pullups…

  1. But instead of using a towel, hold onto a shirt or sarong or band as it’s not as taxing on my fingers.
  2. But instead of doing the fighter pullup program (which has a constant increase in volume), stay at this level of sets and reps and apply a steady state cycle to it where the sets/reps are the same for 2 months. The intensity stays the same the entire time which allows for the tendons to recover and catch up to the muscles.

For now, I choose the first option because using a sarong isn’t taxing on my fingers as much as gripping a towel, so I am going to continue the fighter pullup program using that instead of a towel. If my fingers become painful again, I will reassess the condition and update this post.

A Note About Safety of One Arm Work

One Arm Pullups & Chinups are NOTORIOUS for causing elbow pain if the exercise is rushed through. This exercise is very hard on the joints and it seems as though most people run into some sort of elbow issues when training for it, especially when they get to one-arm negatives, because if they run out of energy to control the descent, they propel rapidly down into a dead hang on one arm, which fucks your elbow up, especially in a supinated/chin-up position.

One Arm Chinup (OAC) versus One Arm Pullup (OAP), which is easier?

  • Chinup mean the palm faces you (supinated).
  • Pullups are when the palm faces away from you (pronated).
  • Many people find chin ups to be slightly easier than pullups.

So following that logic, you’d think that a One Arm Chin Up (OAC) would be easier than a One Arm Pullup (OAP), right? But reality says otherwise: The reason for this is that on a bar, a one-arm dead-hang with a supinated grip (chin up grip) is very difficult and awkward to hold as opposed to the pronated grip, so initiating a OAC is very difficult and most don’t actually start from a dead hang on a bar. So if you are using rings, train the OAC first because you can start in a neutral position and end in a OAC. If you’re using a bar, train the OAP first.

This drives home the importance of knowing who you are taking advice from. Hopefully advice from someone who has been there and struggled throughout the process.

If you read the old GymnasticBodies forums, that forum was full of people constantly regurgitating whatever everyone else was saying: Everyone who never had a One-Armed-Anything, said that the natural route is to learn OAC first, then OAP. And those who had the actual achievement said OAP is easier but they were drowned out by the noise of others saying otherwise. Those few people saying the truth were on-point but you wouldn’t be able to know it given how firmly and eloquently the others were saying that OAC should be learned first and because they were going against the hive-mind.

Also, I won’t name any names, but there were many people on that forum who acted like they knew everything, but years later I found them on Instagram and realized that these people were and still are novices in their abilities and all that talk was literally just talk. Yet on the forum, masked behind a cryptic username, they were speaking of elite moves as if they had been there, done that. So it goes to show you, there’s great merit to taking advice from someone who you know has achieved the actual goal you’re after and has gone through the process through and through. There are some athletes who have achieved some difficult moves without ever training for it. These people are often not the most qualified to give advice to those struggling as well, cause they somehow cheat-coded their way past all that. That is why I feel my height and weight is a blessing in disguise. I am not short, nor too light, and thus struggle with the harder moves in calisthenics, and have a lot more experience figuring out how to bridge gaps in progression exercises and thus, pass this knowledge onto others who are struggling at any phase of their journey.

Soooo… long story short: I’m currently working on towel-assisted One Armed Chinups using pavels fighter pull up rep scheme, but I should probably be working on the pullup version instead because it’s counter-intuitively easier (on a bar), and if my fingers or joints yell at me, I will instead implement a steady state cycle to ensure my joints don’t run into any issues as well. The goal is to be able to do this until I get to slow and controlled negative One Arm Pullups.

Reigniting the will to blog

Hello dear readers. This major purpose of this post it to break the writers block and paralysis that has consumed me as of late. My thoughts will be all over the place, which is good, cause variety is good. Treat this as a stream of consciousness style post, the practice of which is to help my thoughts flow, to share what is going on internally inside me and to possibly reignite the flame as a writer.

Here goes nothing…

The evolution of content-creation

When I first started this website, I posted anything and everything that came to mind without any hesitation or fear of criticism. A lot of content in the first year were very short, low-effort posts. Posts just for the sake of posting. They were completely random. Sometimes it would just be a funny image (or 10)… sometimes they were deep reflections and so on. There was no YouTube channel back then.

Eventually, the posts started to get more refined. I started to make blog posts with thousands of words in length. I started the YouTube channel and now all of a sudden, I had a way to share information with video. I started with a little camera and was editing using Windows Media Movie Maker.  The quality was complete shit as I had no idea what I was doing, but the only way to get it better was to keep doing it.

At one point I had a good balance between creating blog posts and videos, but it was a great struggle to maintain that. Fast forward a couple more years and my focus has been on video-creation and I feel I’ve neglected my blogging behind far more than I like. I like to write, I like to type, share my thoughts, yet I am not doing it much.

Part of the problem is that I always need to one-up myself and the massive compendiums that I’ve created in the past were so lengthy and thorough, that I feel that is the standard I should up-keep… and inspiration to create such a massive article doesn’t always come.

Inspiration & Motivation versus Discipline

If the inspiration to do something comes out naturally… the work doesn’t feel like work. It feels effortless and fun. But the inspiration to do something isn’t always there, and therefore the motivation isn’t either. And now that I’ve been trying to do this more full-time than ever, I know I cannot rely on inspiration or motivation. It is unreliable. Discipline, on the other hand forces you to get through the thing you need to do. So…sometimes the inspiration is not there and I have to force myself to do it. I call this “Forced Motivation” because that’s exactly how it feels.

What helps me tremendously is to make a to-do list and prioritize it and do the thing I have most resistance to doing, first. So even though the motivation to do the thing that requires creativity is not there… if I simply “fake it till I make it” by diverting attention to the task at hand, it actually works. I might not necessarily enjoy doing so initially, but I do enjoy it eventually because the reward of having been productive, especially towards something I had a lot of resistance to doing.

By the way, I created a video series on these topics earlier this year, in case you missed it:

Now, the problem with forcing this motivation through discipline is that my work requires creativity. And doing creative work without the actual inspiration feels extremely dull and sometimes impossible. But the alternative (not doing anything) is worse.

Fractured attention… Spreading myself too thin

Back for a minute about content creation. Since I also have an Instagram account, I post there in spurts and I’ve found that sometimes I will post an Instagram “story” (which expires in 24 hours) when I could’ve made that a whole blog post… or even YouTube video, and this has zapped my ability to produce content consistently.

I avoided having an Instagram account for years, and I think I had better focus since I had less social media to post to and content was going to be funneled to very few platforms. (And now that IG created “IGTV” to rival YouTube, there’s even more potential fracturing, but ultimately I’m going to continue my focus on YouTube because ain’t nobody got time for making horizontal and vertical videos.)

Private vs Public life

A couple months ago I made a video-update where I shared that I was busy moving and that’s why I wasn’t posting for those past couple weeks. This move was quite a big change in my life because my girlfriend and I moved into a new place together. (I have never lived with a significant other before and this is quite a divine experience, by the way.) The move overall has been smooth but it took me a good month to get into the groove of being able to do things efficiently again, as well as visiting the beach.

Also, despite exposing myself publicly a lot, I do tend to prefer to keep my life somewhat private. I want to share what I’m doing with my life, but not so much so like those vloggers do where they are literally just taking video of themselves going throughout their day, everyday. (Unfortunately, for me, people love watching that kind of stuff because it’s mindless, easy to digest, gives insight into another persons life and helps people to connect with them.) But then you have no privacy and the question then is: What are you sharing, really? I like to share things that will help lift others up, so I’m not going to just share myself going to the market or going about my day for no reason other than to share myself as if I’m some sort of celebrity.

Salsa and Partner Dancing

One of my biggest dreams was to be really good at partner dancing but I never thought I’d be able to be good at it, ever. But I was inspired because my girlfriend is a good dancer, but I’m not, but to help her be that dancer, I need to lead her… so I took a bunch of salsa classes on my own for a few weeks.

At first I thought it was impossible to learn all these moves and figure out combinations and all that because it’s so complex. (Dance is the ultimate in movement complexity and skill work.) Turns out, it’s very common for men to suck really hard at dancing for a long time (because they have to lead and essentially think for two people) and woman start out naturally more capable. But as this chart below shows, if I pass this “beginners hell” stage, when enough things click and neural patterns get established where things become automatic, my abilities will eventually accelerate exponentially and I will surpass the lady in ability.

Front Lever, I’m coming for you!

Franco Colombu holding a full Front Lever.

For the first month in my new apartment, since I didn’t have as much beach time and had just a pull up bar and rings at home, I mostly kept practicing the front-lever obsessively because it’s one of my dream goals.

I cannot hold a full FL with straight legs, but I can do so with one leg tucked at the moment. And I keep practicing this single-leg front lever repeatedly (casually, grease the groove style throughout the week) and can now, far more easily do a few pulls into it from dead hang, and also up to inverted hang which was not possible before the move. It’s been really good just focusing on one move repeatedly over and over. I never feel exhausted or over-spent and can keep training daily.

I first started playing around with the front lever years ago but never had a strict regiment toward training only that. It was also always very demoralizing with how difficult it always felt, especially for my giant bicycling thighs/butt and long legs which make it harder.

Height makes a huge difference for levers. To put it into perspective, some people who are 5’4 or lower didn’t even need to train for it directly to achieve it. And then you have people like Lachlan Walker who is an absolute beast but he’s 6’2 and I haven’t seem him a full front lever. Even Yuri Van Gelder, who is a world champion gymnast, doesn’t even include it in his routine as it takes away too much energy for his other moves. So, the move can be exponentially harder for those that are mechanically disadvantaged.

But you know, the fact that I’m not short has been a blessing in disguise because while progress is slower with bodyweight exercises (and it takes a lot more muscle mass to look aesthetically buff compared to my shorter brethren), this has allowed me to become very well acquainted with which exercises are the most effective at every level and which ones are a waste of time. People who are very short and progressed toward the final move with minimal challenges or requiring intermediary progressions to help bridge the gap are more out of touch with being able to teach the move to those who have trouble. So all in all, the extra challenge makes me a better teacher ultimately and that’s great, cause I love teaching.

Blessings in disguise

I’ll leave that with my final point. I always try to look at issues and problems as blessings in disguise, because otherwise life would be too drab and dark. For example, I found a place to live in an amazing home for a really affordable price several months ago but was annoyed that the landlord didn’t want me there. So I was really sad that it didn’t work out. But then fast forward a lot more time and instead of me moving to someplace alone, my girlfriend needed to move out as well, and we ended up finding a place together. So the rejection of the “amazing home” was actually a blessing in disguise. I think of almost all scenarios like this because your perspective is everything. Perspective creates perception, perception creates belief, and belief creates experience. So I try to find the silver lining to everything. And with that, I bid you adieu.

No wait, before I leave… I’ll just say a quick spiel about what’s coming up to keep you in the loop and to keep me accountable. I have a lot of projects in the works right now. A nutrition blog+video series. A self-developmental blog+video series. A small video on how I take care of my dog Medax since I’ve had her for 15+ years. As well as working on a hip-flexibility program since the hamstring-flexibility program is a great success. With that said, I hope that I have broken the curse of not having generated any in-depth blog posts for a long time.

The BEST Foam Roller Stretch!

So for most of 2018 I’ve been making YouTube videos but falling behind on making the corresponding blog posts or updating old blog posts to match the YouTube videos… and enough is enough! So here goes…!

As you probably know by now, I love foam rollers as a self massage tool and even have a guide on which one you should buy.

But other than self-massage, the foam roller is incredibly useful for increasing your thoracic extension (the ability to bend your upper back backwards) and stretching your lats, shoulders and chest. Here’s one of my favorite stretches!

This will feel quite good if you haven’t tried it before and make your shoulders a lot more “open” to have a nicer handstand or bridge, to boot! I used to do this daily for years before I exhausted the stretch. On the other hand, people who have impeccable thoracic extension won’t feel a thing. If you’re curious which roller is used above, it’s the TriggerPoint Therapy roller which is one of my favorite basic ones.

BONUS VIDEO + TIP!

Use the weight of your pupper (or anything, really) to increase the pressure of the roller against your upper back!

Hope that helps!

Inspirational Index

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” -John Muir

Inspirational

Educational

Productivity

Yearly Reflections

Fitness Index

Previously I published the Nutrition Index. And now… I’ve now organized everything I’ve written about fitness all in one place! Enjoy!

Training Tutorials

Free Bodyweight Training Routines

Premium Bodyweight Training Routines

These routines are much more in-depth and thorough than the free ones above. Countless hours of work have been poured into creating each and everyone and they are often updated:

Flexibility and Yoga

“Saying you’re not flexible enough for yoga
is like saying you’re too dirty to take a shower.”

Free Flexibility Routines

Premium Flexibility Routine

If you have poor flexibility, tight hamstrings or just want a simple program that will help you to get looser in a gentle, non-painful manner, here it is!

Compendiums

Injury / Recovery Related

Deep Thoughts

Self Massage

Equipment Setup

Previous Challenges

Most Popular Bicycling Posts

“Adjust your mode of transportation by the scale you want to experience the world at”

Health Related

Random Blog Posts About Movement and Fun

Nutrition Index

About a month ago, a wonderful redditor suggested that my website needs index pages. They were so very right, and I thank them graciously from the bottom of my heart for telling me that. Sometimes the simplest things go by the wayside and we lose the forest from the trees. I guess that’s what happens when you go from worrying about making content, to having too much content and not making it easy to find. Anyhoo, here’s a basic index of all blog posts related to nutrition that I’ve ever written. The next one will be on everything fitness/movement related! Then the website will be updated and revamped quite a bit to make it even more easier to access the gobs of information now buried within this website!

Basic Nutritional Guides and Information

Fat Loss / Psychology / Weight Regulation Specific Articles

If you say you can’t lose fat because you love food ‘too much’… then you should learn to respect it!

Low-Carb / Ketogenic Diet Compendium

Antranik’s Initial Weight-Loss Journal from 2013

Random

Latest Thoughts and News for February 2018!

I’m doing this completely full time now

I have decided to fully invest into my Internet presence and make this a full time job. My main passion in life is to HELP people and it’s crazy to think that I am already a trainer to thousands of people, but it’s the truth! I’ve firmly realized that the best way I can lift as many humans up, as efficiently as possible, is to focus on all this foundation I have built up. So I will be focusing on making sure my YouTube channel and website are up to date, as well as the other social media outlets such as Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. By the way, I also started a Discord chat-room in hopes of building up a chat-community of like minded individuals as well.

The 50% Discounts End Today

As a result of discovering my self-worth, the three programs on my website that have been on sale for a year at a 50% discount, end their discount today, Sunday. It’s about time I know my own self worth and know that the content I produce is worth a lot more than what I’ve been undercharging.

Links to the current paid programs:

  1. Rings Routine: http://antranik.org/register/get-rings-routine/
  2. Slackline Program: http://antranik.org/register/slackline-program/
  3. Hypertrophy Routine: https://antranik.org/register/hypertrophy-routine/

The January Yoga Challenge was a Success!

I persevered through the January Yoga Challenge and created 20 solid follow-along yoga videos for free! And if you missed it, watch my vlog on sticking to commitments that I made before the final week of the yoga challenge where I shared my personal struggles which brought about a lot of support out of the woodwork.

Flexibility Program is Next

Along the same lines, I am in the works of creating a paid flexibility program focused on loosening up the hamstrings and overall body that will consist of a few quality follow-along videos you could rotate and follow as many times as you want per week to get more flexible. If this sounds like a good idea to you, please let me know!

Update: Here’s the Hamstring Flexibility Program

Expect two to three YouTube videos a week now!

After years of making videos at a slow pace, I finally feel like I can publish videos at a faster rate. The yoga challenge forced me to make 5 videos a week and I think I can create 2-3 videos a week without sacrificing quality.

  • You should expect two or three of any of the following topics:
    • Tutorial of a bodyweight exercise, stretch or feel-good tip
    • Vlog-like monologue sharing my inner musings
    • FUN video (these will be surprises that show even more of my real self)

It’s taken literally years of work to get good at understanding how to record quality video footage, clean audio, edit it all, figuring out how to make decent thumbnails (I have no experience with any of this before) and have a system in place that allows me to be self-disciplined enough to be able to organize all of it and intertwine it with my blog, Instagram, YouTube,  subreddit and Facebook page without going crazy.

Here are some of my latest videos in the last couple weeks alone!

This latest video below explores why DEPRESSION is a normal part of the creative process which is an emotional rollercoaster that can be broken down into 6 steps. Be aware of the LOWS so you can reach the HIGHS!

This was more of a fun vlog of my workout, which is a first for me. The response was great, so I will definitely make more. (Hint: next one is at muscle beach!)

Quick one minute video: Stop driving like an impatient fool! Instantly reduce stop & go driving with this one “weird” trick! Videos in regards to driving tend to bring about a lot of arguments, so I’m not too fond of the divisiveness this creates in the comments.

A two part series on how to do pullups properly and how to do your first pullup if you can’t do any:

What about my interest in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies?

Everybody talks about the price of bitcoin and altcoins but nobody seems able to explain what it actually is. So I made a video presentation that explains what is bitcoin in great detail, for those who don’t know what it actually is and what gives it value. I also made a sort of rant talking about Bitcoin “crashing” and upon analyzing my YouTube statistics, I see that I lost over 200 subscribers just from those two videos alone.

I suppose my audience simply doesn’t want to see any videos in regards to cryptocurrencies. So, I will move those videos to a new channel called Crypto with Antranik which currently has ZERO subscribers. Care to be the first? Link to the new channel is here. That’ll be more of a side-project. I don’t know if it will grow, but I can definitely share my wisdom regarding crypto with others there without feeling like I’m alienating the current audience. Also, don’t be surprised if you see blog posts on this website regarding cryptocurrency as well, but it won’t be the main focus.

Anyway, those are all my thoughts for the evening. Hope you’re all doing great. Thank you all for the continued support.

8 Ways to Stop a Cold in the Early Stages

Hey everybody, I’m not one to brag, but when I start to feel symptoms of the cold or flu, I’m able to stop it dead in its tracks almost everytime. The reason I’m writing it now is because it had been a couple years since I got the flu and just two days ago I started to feel the symptoms and I was able to stop it completely, again. Meanwhile, everyone around me this winter has been talking about how awful their flu was, lasting over a week and the pharmacies being out of antibiotics! So here are all the tips I have to share with you!

The Sore Throat is the first sign! Gargle Salt Water!

One of the first signs of any infection is a sore throat. Infections start around there and move down to the lungs, where coughing and congestion will present themselves. You don’t want to experience the latter stages. When you feel even the slightest bit of a sore throat, that’s the sign that your body has been fighting something down there and losing the battle. Add some salt to water, stir it until it dissolves and gargle it with your head tipped back for 20-30seconds and spit it out. You might feel relief from the sore throat almost immediately sometimes but you should do this multiple times a day for good measure. The salt kills microbes and helps you get the upper hand. (This is why processed foods have tons of sodium: they won’t spoil cause bacteria won’t grow easily and it increases the shelf life.)

Bonus: While we’re on this topic, another thing you should do is scrape your tongue with a tongue-scraper to remove the excess bacteria off your tongue. If you don’t have a tongue-scraper, you could use any metal object usually, like even metal tweezers or the dull end of scissors (just be sure to disinfect it) and just sliding that on your tongue will scrape off nasty communities that have been building up on your tongue (which is the real source of bad breath, too, by the way).

Avoid Candy or Sweets! They will worsen the infection.

Now, this has nothing to do with my adoration for low-carb or ketogenic diets, but the reality is that bacteria and viruses thrive on sugar. If you have a sore throat and you eat some candy or sweets, you’re basically adding fuel to the bad guys. You can literally feel your sore throat get significantly worse if you eat some candy. And actually nobody knows why viruses, even though they don’t technically consume sugar, are able to replicate much faster when sugar is present. There are probably a lot more complex mechanisms at play here, but one thing is for sure: avoid sugar as much as you can. Speaking of food… let’s talk about food in general…

Don’t overeat and don’t snack continuously

Some people think that if you’re sick, you need to eat a lot so that your body has the “energy” to fight the infection. No! That’s not true at all! (Well, unless you’ve been starving yourself.) that isn’t true at all. Whenever you eat a big meal, the body has to digest that food. Digestion takes a serious amount of resources and time. Now it basically needs to fight an infection AND digest lots of food. The immune system can fight the good fight better without massive meals. This is one of the reasons why you lose an appetite when you’re sick! Your body has an innate intelligence, don’t go against it! Respect those signals. Also, try not to snack continuously throughout the day. Take more of an intermittent-fasting style approach to space out the times when you eat.

Have some Chicken Soup and Drink Tea

Yes, the age-old adage to have chicken soup. It’s true. Soup is very nourishing. It’s easy to eat. Not too painful to swallow in the case of a sore throat and easy for the body to process. The broth has a lot of minerals in it that your body might be craving for. If you don’t have chicken to boil and make broth with, you can easily buy chicken broth ready made for you already these days.

As for tea, there’s something extremely soothing about hot tea with honey and lemon. Don’t go crazy with the honey (remember what I said about avoiding sweets), but it does go very well with the tea and lemon combination. I prefer to drink herbal tea (chamomile is one of my favorite herbal teas) so I don’t get too much caffeine from the green/black teas.

Plus, soups and teas are hydrating, which is important if you have a fever… which brings me to my next point…

If you have a fever, don’t immediately try to suppress it!

Note: The following advice is for ADULTS. Infants and young children have undeveloped brains and if they have a high fever, that is serious.

This one is going to sound controversial but this is super important you understand this: Unless you have a very high fever (103°F and above), there’s no need to suppress the fever with medication! The fever is your body’s way of fighting the infection. Yes. It really is! If you’ve ever taken a microbiology class, you know that microbes have an optimal temperature range that they thrive in. The fever is your bodies way of making it so much hotter that it’s much more difficult for these little guys to replicate at an optimal rate, so your immune system can win them over. The body is smart as hell and the fever is a serious defense mechanism and by you suppressing it, you’re making it harder to win! (I’ve written about this in far greater detail in my physiology series: pathophysiology of fever.)

Get comfortable: When you go to lay down, yes it will be uncomfortable to be sweating through your clothes and bed sheets and pillow cases. What I suggest is to put a big thick towel under your body and head so that you don’t have to wash the sheets at least and you can just change the towels instead. That’s a little bit easier to deal with when you’re sick.

Good reasons to take anti-fever medication: You’re extremely uncomfortable, in pain, or your fever is dangerously high. (Side note: If I want some relief but not to completely get rid of the fever, instead of taking the full dosage of something, I’ll take half.)

Truly Rest when you feel fatigue

When you feel that uncanny tiredness, you need to respect that signal. Get off the computer. Go lay on the couch or in bed. And don’t use your phone. Just cause you’re laying horizontally doesn’t mean you’re resting as much as you could if you’re on your phone. Seriously, just disconnect from all that stuff, close your eyes and take a nap if that’s what your body is clamoring for. You want all the limited resources of your body to be going toward recovery. If you’re at work and you can’t rest, you should take the day off or cut it short. A lot of people won’t take work off until they’re REALLY sick. Well, if you can take work off at the early signs so you could have more time to take care of yourself, you probably won’t need as much time off in the future cause you’ll be normal again within a day or two!

Don’t neglect your hygiene

I know we tend to become quite disheveled when we’re sick, but I find that the simple act of trimming my hair (or actually shaving which I rarely do) will make me feel better. Then I’ll wash my face, floss and brush my teeth, file my nails, tweeze hairs if I need to, shower, put some warm cozy clothes on and feel a little better just from the simple act of being clean and looking presentable again. It’s just a mental trick. Looking presentable, even just to myself in the mirror, makes me feel like I’m already better.

Keep your body warm

Last but not least, keep your body warm, even when you’re getting better and you think the worst is over.  I like to keep my body even warmer than normal to mimic a fever and kill the bad boys in the lungs (the coldest part of your body). If your body is struggling to keep the body temperature up to normal because you’re not wearing socks, or not enough clothes in general, you’re making your body work harder than it needs to. Oh yea, socks are super important by the way. I like merino wool socks a lot. They’re pricier than cotton socks, but they regulate temperature so much better and are just worth it.

I think that’s all the tips I have! Please leave a comment below with any tips that you have to help you recover quickly. Maybe for the next blog post I’ll write about the magic of merino wool since it’s currently winter-time for most of the land-mass on Earth (there’s more land in the northern hemisphere than south).

Which strength training routine is right for YOU?

I have a lot of routines on my website. Some are free. Some are not free. They may seem similar or overlapping, but they’re quite different. So… I will try my best at clarifying what is good for who… because as everyone knows nowadays, strong is the new sexy (regardless of gender) and you don’t need tons of equipment to do it! I’m a fan of minimal equipment, so… here goes!

Free: The first is the /r/bodyweightfitness recommended routine. I had created a video tutorial explaining the entire template for this routine (as well as many follow along videos), which I and many other mods on /r/bodyweightfitness helped to refine over the years. This basic template is the way to go when someone is starting out in their journey toward having a better physique and getting stronger using bodyweight exercises.

Free: The second is the intermediate push/pull split I had created several years ago. Instead of working out your entire body in one session like the recommended routine, this splits up the workout days into pushing and pulling and legs/core.  This is good if you’ve advanced enough where a full body training day is potentially slowing you down. It’s not the most optimal workout, in my opinion, but it’s free and different and has a lot of progressions that people may find useful.

Paid: The third is my Rings Routine. This is a rings-oriented bodyweight training routine. This is the first paid product I had ever created. To me, it is one of the best routines I have ever come up with, both in quality and fun. With a simple pair of gymnastics rings, you could potentially workout your upper body and core in a way that rivals weightlifting with this routine. It is a lot more gymnastics oriented because you learn straight arm skills such as front/back levers and planche and also learn skills such as skin the cat, inverted hang, shoulder stand and more. There are a lot of very cool progressions and the template is absolutely one of my favorites. Instead of a push/pull split, it splits the days into straight-arm and bent-arm days. Click here to go to the page to buy the rings-routine.

Paid: The fourth, latest and greatest, is the Hypertrophy Routine. This is purely a bodyweight training routine that is meant for getting maximally stronger. Whether you want to BE strong or just LOOK strong, this is the routine for you. It is not for rank beginners because the programming utilizes the concept of periodization that targets different rep-ranges and intensity depending on the workout-day. It’s not too hard to understand but it is more complex and downright fun if you are well versed with bodyweight exercises. It doesn’t have the skill work in the same way that the rings-routine does as it’s less gymnastics oriented and more for purely aesthetics and strength. Click here to go to the page to buy the hypertrophy-routine.

Note: If you are struggling with some of the skills or moves in the rings-routine due to a lack of strength, the hypertrophy routine is perfect to do for a 2-3 month cycle and then go back to the rings-routine to find yourself much, much stronger at the moves required for the rings-routine. This is one of the reasons why I switch between the two.

And here’s a little table which may help you make the right choice as well with slightly more detail:

If the text is too small, click the photo to see the full size (opens in new tab).

Anyway, hope that helps!

The REAL challenge behind the making of a yoga challenge

For the month of January, I’ve been posting a yoga video every weekday and decided to make a vlog sharing the internal issues associated with it. Turns out the REAL challenge behind a yoga challenge wasn’t the yoga itself but sticking to your commitments and just doing your best despite being your own harshest critic. Ultimately the responsibility is good as responsibility is a part of what gives your life meaning. And the creative process is an utter bitch of a process but you have to persevere! Thanks for the support, I got a lot of comments already on YouTube from this vlog!

And if you wanna follow the yoga challenge, the playlist is here.