jae: Because I don't know what I'm doing. Right. Not like I don't have a relative with a fitness degree whom I consult about ANYTHING fitness related, and of course you know better than the many consultants that the military has on staff to make up their conditioning drills, no sir, no sir. You know everything, I bow to your INFINITE knowledge, truly, truly impressive. I salute you sir, YOU TOLD ME!
Deadlifts put the spine at risk (done wrong as so very many people do), yet it's recommended. Inclined situps with a medicine ball are the exact same motion as a damn crunch with an incline, recommended. Honestly bro, take your Men's Health fitness education. I've been at this for years =/.
Also, we use certain grips, hand positioning to target different parts of the same muscle as although you don't get full isolation it rips it up more than any other hand grip or position. Same goes for your abs.
The damage to the spine comes from PULLING yourself up. That's improper form, you simply raise and lower your shoulder blades, there is hardly any movement at all.
refrain the flame man.
No, the damage isn't from the exercise. It comes from working a muscle in isolation which is never (ever) worked in isolation in any possible scenario besides PT tests and Combat training. both are severely flawed. Having an imbalance is more dangerous than slipping your spine out of whack for 3-4 seconds with only your bodyweight on it, so in that sense a crunch is worse. At least a situp works the obliques and hip flexors. But neither compares to any compound lift for function of strength benefit, they will more likely hinder process even if they do benefit aesthetics slightly.
Military fitness personal don't even have a degree, the only qualification they have is completing the course. Then they teach it. That same course has never been revised since it's conception, sixty odd years ago. I'm sorry but if you're saying fitness hasn't evolved in 60 years you have no idea what you're on about.
your uncle has completed a six week compact course. I'm eligible to do that as soon as I turn 18 and my predicted score in it is 92 percentile, so yes I know what I'm on about. It doesn't matter if someone completes a TAFE course on fitness if they don't update those qualifications, this is something where you have to stay up to date with research. Obviously if you're supporting crunches you haven't. Again I really can't be fucked citing myself (but at least I admit that) so go into Google and search Dr.Stuart(sp?) McGill and look through his research. He's probably the biggest crunch proponent I've ever come across and even his own research says the move achieves less than 60% of the activation of a sit up, as well as only achieving 15% total core activation. A chin-up is more than 5 times more effective (300% activation of abs compared to sit up. In fact, all ab exercises fell incredibly low on all measures with the exception of plyo exercises, the Russian plank, hanging leg raises and wheel rollouts. Even if a crunch did, in theory, measure up against those exercises for ab activation the fact remains it is A) ludicrously easy and near impossible to progress in, B) pointless for any real life action, C) has no carry over to any other exercise and D)
only activates the abs. It's inarguable fact more growth and function is developed with compound lifts than crunches. BTW, who are these people recommending incline situps? I assume you meant the same people in which case I don't have to raise a separate dismissal. More research on core exercise can be found by Googling for ab activation during exercises, there was a big study done I can't remember the name of where I got most my statistics from. It wouldn't be hard to find though because it's the largest of it's kind, testing a dozen exercises three times each with thirty healthy males with ages ranging from 18-mid twenties. Another one that wasn't as extensive but had roughly comparable results in all except one case is:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20655245 this research however wasn't optimally designed and had a small sample of 10 highly trained males aged twenty-ish.
No the abs aren't the same as other muscles. Using different grip to target different muscles is retarded BB logic anyway, but even assuming you could; the abs a split by fascia (you must have missed that point) with the same origin and insertion, which means either the whole muscle contracts or none does. the muscle can contract to varying degrees but no research (mostly Russian so Google Pavel Tsatsouline and look through his citations if interested) conducted indicated this affected growth. It's common sense that it wouldn't unless the muscle was a group like the quadriceps of hamstrings. otherwise bicep "peaking" would work, any one who has completed an up-to-date fitness course since 2007 can tell you that's as retarded as static stretches pre-exercise, which coincidentally Military "professionals" do also.
Deadlifts put the spine at risk if done wrong obviously. So does any exercise, so can sleeping. Anything done wrong can lead to injury, that's a stupid point to bring up.
If you would like to argue this further please at least research into it rather than referencing word of mouth.
Norway:
"The brief summary is that force is force. Thus, if we can apply the correct stress to the muscles through various exercises we can see increases in both strength and mass.
Rather than increasing weights or adding weight to the body, gymnastics and other bodyweight sports provide structured progressions through which the stimulus on the muscles can be increased without increases in body mass. This is done through decreasing leverage.
Decreasing leverage in exercise is primarily employed through two different methods.
1. Changing the body position is the obvious way to decrease leverage. For instance, both planche and front lever have changes in body position to make the exercise more difficult.
What happens is through extending the body position, the center of mass is shifted further away from the fulcrum (joint angles). This increases the torque which is the force applied around an axis of rotation. Since our bodies are built on leverage methods (muscles move our bones), all forces on the muscles can be thought of in terms of torque on the muscles at certain joint angles. This is the basis of biomechanics.
2. We all know that muscles are strongest at near resting length as that is the point where the most contractile fibers overlap. Thus, if we lengthen or shorten muscles and then place the same load on the body, we are effectively requiring more force from the muscle when it is weaker.
Typically this is seen with more advanced strength moves on rings where the arms are held in straight arm position. The straight arm position places the biceps as maximal length and thus requires significant amounts of strength and mass to do the skills safely.
Similarly, in the planche the primary shoulder muscle (anterior deltoid) is placed in an extended position (compared to an overhead press where you get more leverage out of it). This requires more force output to perform.
Note: Increasing reps increases endurance! This is not the answer. We who try to develop bodyweight strength primarily stick to the lower repetition ranges just like training for strength in barbell lifting."
-Basic summary of all BW training done by Coach Sommer, Google him he is golden.
Hmm its paleolithic, so it must be not working because we dont hunt and search bushes for food anymore, anyway even food from supermarket is not what food used to be..
Sorry for borrowing your thread, but i see that here are some people who know what they are talking about, so im interested if bodyweight exercises can get you any muscle mass increase?
Yes. It's exactly like barbell training, just get rid of stupid misconceptions about increasing reps and stuff.
Here is a good bodyweight template for increasing mass in 15-30 minute sessions 3-4 times weekly:
Planche hold/L-sit hold/Back lever hold at variation one can do for 4x15 seconds
Front lever hold/Straddle L hold for same.
Handstand pushup/pushup/dip progression 3-6 sets 3-6 reps. when 5x5 is reached progress to next most difficult variation.
Pullup/Front lever pull (icecream maker)/Front lever pullup/inverted pullup progression
Some sort of bodyweight core exercise (completely optional and will only improve results by a very small amount. Skip if the workout is only 15 minutes)
Another bodyweight core exercise, this one focusing on a different movement direction (ie if first is Bridge
www.infobarrel.com/media/image/311_featured.jpg then second might be Russian plank, which is a normal plank except with elbows as high as possible keeping back neutral or hollowed out depending on goals)
For me this worked slightly better than weightlifting, allowing me to gain 8 kilos in about three months compared to 7 kilos from the same length of weights, same diet in proportion to weight. the weightlifting came first. I never do one pure any more though, but I lift mainly bodyweight with shoulder press, squat and deadlift variations being the only exception.
BTW rep scheme is pretty much arbitrary, the magic number is 24 total reps per exercise and whatever you do to hit that besides the extremes (24x1, 1x240 will make you grow. Doing stupid shit like 10x10 will shock your muscles but the you will only grow if you can recover and that's very difficult when you're doing 4 times the normal volume. This goes for weights and bodyweight both. For this I looked through Chad Waterbury's citations, I cbf finding them as per usual so Google if interested.
If you have any questions about where I got my information from Google everything I said to Google. then you won't. I won't reply to anything which I've already mentioned in either of my posts.
