Transmutable Explorations

Tag: HIIT

  • Bodyweight Workout Routine

    Bodyweight Workout Routine

    I’ve tried many workouts over the years.  Cardio, weightlifting, calisthenics, only playing sports, it’s always been something that kind of annoyed me.  Some would work… others, only for a time and then a plateau would reach and no more gains could be made.  Eventually, I settled on a bodyweight workout routine that I’ve been able to progress that continues to work for me.  Read on if you’re interested in learning more about why I choose and how I perform my bodyweight workout routine.

    Why a Bodyweight Workout Routine?

    So why a “bodyweight workout routine”?  After trying just about everything, I’ve concluded that the best workout for me must include the following:

    • require minimal equipment; I travel a good bit and don’t want lack of access to specialized equipment to make it easy for me to skip a workout.
    • a way to do a full body workout in a minimal amount of time
    • maximize a full range of natural motion to minimize injuries
    • prioritize building muscle without a complicated means of altering the routine when hitting plateaus.
    • emphasize Functional Strength training

    The Exercises

    The Bodyweight Workout Routine that I follow focuses on a few core exercises.  These are arranged in such a way as to hit most of the major muscle groups with the fewest number of exercises.

    Push

    The push exercises I use are mostly pushup variants.  I alternate with dips especially when my pushups have not been progressing in order to change things up.

    Pull

    My pull exercises include pull ups, chin ups and inverted rows.  I also incorporate my ‘pull’ muscles in some of my core exercises.

    Legs

    I exercise my legs with air squats and walking lunges.  Even though I do these with a weighted vest, I’ve been working on being able to do proper single leg squats to progress further.  I do these assisted or alternate with shrimp squats at this point in time.

    Core

    I try to incorporate core exercises in everything I do.  This occurs by always being mindful of the ‘Hollow Body Hold‘.  In addition to this, I incorporate planks, V-Ups and hanging knee raises.  Hanging Knee raises also hit my pull muscles at the same time.

    Cardio

    My cardio is mostly walking and hiking/rucking.  I do sprints one day a week.  On my active recovery days, I do at least one High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session focused on the ‘Nitric Oxide Dump‘.  When I refer to ‘light cardio’, it’s either unweighted walking or rebounding.

    Mobility

    For mobility, I use both Yoga and the 5 Tibetan Rites.  If I’m stuck on a progression and I think it’s due to a mobility issue, I’ll often factor in something that I’ve learned from more in depth calisthenics programs.  This is the area where my routine changes the most frequently.

    Useful Equipment

    My core routine consists of bodyweight exercises that I can do anywhere.  This being said, there are certain pieces of equipment that make things easier when I am home.  Most of this equipment is focused on making the movements safer or allow me to increase the difficulty.  The equipment that I find useful (and alternatives if you don’t have them) include:

    • A Multi-Grip Pull-Up Bar – This is probably the most important piece of equipment.  Without it, you’ll need to find a branch or other outcropping to do your ‘pull’ exercises on.  Most of these alternatives won’t give you the variance in how you can pull yourself up (and you’ll probably want a pair of gloves to protect your hands🤣).
    • Wooden Gymnastic Rings – I prefer to use gymnastic Rings for my ‘rowing’ exercises.  You can also use them for progressing and varying your ‘push’ exercises.  Without rings, a Dip Station also works.  Without either of these options you can use a properly weighted table or two chairs.
    • An Extra Thick Yoga/Pilates Mat – This is especially useful for ‘core’ exercises but it’s pretty much required if you’re going to also incorporate Yoga.  It also helps with progressing single leg exercises like shrimp squats.
    • A means of making exercises more difficult with resistance and/or added weight – My favorite things in this area is to start out with a weighted vest and adjustable ankle weights.  To really build muscle, you’ll want to add an Adjustable Dumbbell and Barbell Set.  To make the most out of loading your full range of motion, nothing beats a Stackable Resistance Bands Set.
    • A High Density Foam Roller – Eventually, you’re going to go a bit too hard and need some help with recovery.  A foam roller is a good first place to start for this.

    Progressing Your Bodyweight Workout Routine

    Since I want to avoid injury and being constantly fatigued, I target rep ranges for each of these exercises in the high hypertrophy/endurance range.  My last strength day of the week is meant for attempting to break personal records.  More about all this below when I discuss my day to day routine.  Before deciding your own structure, you need to set a baseline for each of the main exercises.  If you can do 15 – 20 reps max for each one, that’s a great place to start.  If not, you’ll need to find an easier version of the exercise where you can do 15 – 20 clean reps and progress from there.  I use this basic guide to push progressions and have helped people do pull ups with this pull progression guide.  There’s no shame in doing these easier versions, it’s the only way that you’ll progress to the more difficult ones.  If you find yourself plateauing with one progression but still unable to move to the next one with the proper rep range there are a few additional things you can do.  

    • Add more reps to the progression that you can do cleanly
    • Add some more weight to your current progression
    • Add resistance bands to the progression you’re trying to move to in an ‘assistive’ fashion
    • Sometimes, bouncing down to a lower progression with far more reps is necessary in order to correct form issues that you have that are preventing you from using the muscles necessary to progress

    I recently started using blood flow restriction (BFR) training with lighter weights to get more from my workouts.

    My Bodyweight Workout Routine Structure

    Now I’ll describe what I do each day of the week.  If something comes up, I’ll shuffle days if necessary, but I avoid having three of the same ‘types’ of days in a row.

    Every Day

    There are a few things that I strive to do every day.

    • Start every morning with the 5 Tibetan Rites.  This really gives me a burst of energy to start my day.  I’ve also been incorporating Pigeon Pose into this routine recently.
    • Walk a minimum of 11000 steps.  I do the bulk of this during three periods.  The first is after I’m done consuming my caffeine for the day.  The other two times is right after my meals for a bare minimum of 15 minutes.  I try to walk outside whenever possible.
    • Incorporate Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT);  I try to get as much ‘exercise’ that doesn’t look like exercise into my day as possible.  I’ll walk when I can drive, park at a distance, climb stairs, etc.
    • Bring glucose transporter type 4 to the surface of muscle cells before eating.  This is a ‘trick’ that I picked up from Tim Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour Body.  I mostly use air or isometric squats for this, but have played around with all the techniques that he mentions. 

    Day 1

    • Warm up with 5 min of light cardio
    • 3 sets of straight pushups 70% of your maximum number of reps
    • 3 sets of rows 70% of your maximum number of reps
    • 2 sets of walking lunges 50 reps
    • 2 sets of hanging knee raises 15 reps (each side)
    • 2 sets of V-Ups 15 reps

    Day 2

    This is an endurance/recovery focused day.

    I do one HIIT session (often with BFR) for about 10 minutes

    I do an additional workout after recovered that consists of:

    I’ll do a short Yoga session on this day as well.

    Day 3

    • Warm up with 5 min of light cardio
    • 3 sets of most advanced pushup progression 75% of your maximum number of reps
    • 3 sets of most advanced rowing progression 75% of your maximum number of reps
    • 2 sets of chin-ups 75% of your maximum number of reps
    • 2 sets of walking lunges 50 reps
    • 2 sets of hanging knee raises 15 reps (each side)
    • plank for maximum hold time

    Day 4

    This is an Active Recovery day.  I do one HIIT session (often with BFR) for about 10 minutes.  Otherwise I focus on longer walks and/or rucks.  I’ll often do a short Yoga session as well.

    Day 5

    This is the day for setting new records.  Getting 90% of your maximum reps is the minimum. What we really want to do here is move to a more advanced progression or add clean reps to the maximum that we can do in our current progression.  We then use this to reevaluate our plan for the next week.

    • Warm up with 5 min of light cardio
    • 1 set of pullups to 90% of your maximum
    • 1 set of most advanced pushups to 90% of your maximum
    • 2 sets of straight pushups 70% of your maximum number of reps
    • 2 sets of rows 70% of your maximum number of reps
    • 2 sets of walking lunges 50 reps
    • 2 sets of hanging knee raises 15 reps (each side)
    • 2 sets of V-Ups 20 reps

    Day 6

    • Warm up with 5 min of light cardio
    • 5 sets of sprinting as fast as you can for 100 meters with no more than 2 minutes rest between sets

    Otherwise, this is an Active Recovery day.  Focus on longer walks and/or rucks.  Do a short HIIT session if recovery for the week has been good.  Do some Yoga otherwise.

    Day 7

    Active Recovery

    • Longer hikes and/or rucks
    • Yoga and mobility exercises

  • Oura ring review

    my oura ring

    I’m fanatical about tech gadgets, but even more so for wearables and things that reliably fulfill my needs as a “Quantified Selfer“. Good quality sleep data has always been elusive. Many devices that I’ve tried were so intrusive as to ruin any chance of actually getting good sleep. Others just did a terrible job of reliably collecting the data that I wanted. I backed a Kickstarter for the Hello Sense. This was one of the first devices that really generated useful data. Not only did it track my sleep activity, but the base unit also collected data about my bedroom light levels and air quality. Sadly, the company went bust and the device ultimately became unusable after the cloud servers were shut down.

    Multiple Generations of Oura

    While looking for a replacement for my sleep tracking fix, another Kickstarter project caught my eye… the Oura ring.   I initially held off on backing the project since I’ve been burned by so many crowd funded tech gadgets in the past.  Despite this, I kept a close eye on its progress and saw many great reviews on the original ring from people I trusted. When Oura announced a gen 2, I jumped right in to purchase one as soon as I could.

    I used the Oura gen 2 for years and immediately purchased a gen 3 when it was released.  Many people panned the gen3 initially because it required a subscription in addition to the cost of the ring.  Fortunately, as a long time backer, I was given a lifetime subscription.  Both the gen2 and gen3 have experienced pretty much everything I can throw at it…. I am a HUGE fan of this thing! There isn’t much that I can complain about and I feel that it is worth every penny.

    The Oura Ecosystem

    The Oura ring system consists of the ring, a mobile app, and the Oura Cloud.

    Oura Cloud

    Oura Cloud is a web based equivalent of the mobile app which allows you to dig a bit deeper into the data.  It also includes an API that you can use to write apps for the Oura Cloud or pull the data collected by your ring into other systems.  You can also participate in crowdfunded research projects through apps that are written for the Oura Cloud.  I’ve participated in a few of these.  The most notable was in using the Oura ring as a COVID early detection device.  Ultimately, this lead to the ring being used in the NBA and UFC for this purpose.

    Oura Hardware

    The ring looks like… a ring… much more so than the first generation.  It doesn’t make you the focus of a room like wearing Google Glass did.  This is a pretty amazing feat considering all of the sensors that it packs and the fact that you can go days without needing to charge the battery. It’s waterproof and fairly resilient… I’ve definitely pushed mine to some limits that I probably shouldn’t have and it’s survived. 

    Oura Mobile App

    The ring connects to the app on your phone via Bluetooth.  You can put it into airplane mode and still have it collect data for quite some time before needing to sync it.  The Oura App displays a timeline of your data summarized by day.  The Oura app is divided into four sections: Readiness, Sleep, Activity and a Dashboard that surfaces your ‘scores’ from the other three.  You can then drill down into each section for more details.  There is also an ‘Explore’ section that contains meditations, breathwork and sleep exercises as well as additional learning material.

    Sleep Tracking

    The sleep tracking of the device is rock solid. I’ve done tons of things to wreak havoc with my sleep in order to test the ring’s ability to detect it. Every morning after destroying my sleep in the name of science, I’d check the app. It would basically tell me, “Dude, go back to bed, you need it”. There really was no fooling its sleep detection.  This has continued to improve with the third generation device and they are now beta testing a new sleep algorithm that seems to improve things even more.

    I bought the Oura Ring mainly to track sleep time and sleep quality (as measured by the amount of time spent in the different stages of sleep), but the ring is so much more than ‘just’ a sleep tracker. The Sleep section tracks a few additional items above and beyond what I bought the ring for. These include a resting heart rate trend and sleep latency.  The latest version of the hardware also includes breathing regularity (blood oxygen sensing).  After using the ring for a bit, a ‘body clock’ which displays your personalized sleep chronotype is generated.  You can use this to better align your circadian rhythms.


    Activity Tracking

    The Oura Ring is also an activity tracker. I’ve been wearing various activity trackers since the first versions were commercially available. I’ve never really been a fan of wearing anything around my wrist since they always seem to get in the way, but I’ve always overlooked that in order to get the activity data. The Oura app has recommendations for how much activity you should be getting (this changes daily based on your ‘Readiness’ which I’ll discuss later). It also tracks your progress toward your daily goal and the intensity of the activity that you do. You can also turn on notifications in the app to remind you to get up and move on a regular basis.

    For activity that gets your heart pumping, the ring does a pretty good job of tracking. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t always do the best job of tracking activity that is less vigorous. The app has the ability to manually input this type of activity.  Additionally, the Android app has Google Fit/Health Connect integration.  Most of the activity I want to track tends to get picked up by the ring, but there are certain activities (i.e. impact martial arts) where I remove the ring and need to manually track the activity. I like the fact that I can get near real time feedback about my activity intensity. This has allowed me to develop a routine that I can do frequently throughout the day that gets me into a high intensity level of activity very quickly (this is a must for any practitioner of High Intensity Interval Training).

    Readiness

    The ‘Readiness’ section of the app really pulls together information from the other two sections to give you a general idea of how much you should push yourself on any given day. It takes into account how well you’ve been sleeping and how active you’ve been and combines that with trends regarding your HRV, body temperature and respiratory rate in order to provide a suggestion for ‘pushing your activity to new levels’ or just ‘taking it easy’ on any given day. I’ve found this to be great for me to figure out when are the best times during the day for me to workout and also what supplements seem to help me recover faster. It’s also pretty effective at giving me a heads up when I might be coming down with something and gives me an extra verification point to rest instead of pushing through it.

    Expl-Oura

    The ‘Explore’ section of the app contains several guided meditations and breathwork routines that are categorized by goal.  You can also configure ‘unguided’ sessions.  This is useful if you use other meditation apps like I do.  In either case, the Oura ring tracks your HRV, Heart rate and skin temperature during your session.  There is also a ‘Learn’ section containing videos and slideshows containing information on how to use the many features and improve your scores.

    One of the most valuable features for me is the ability to add ‘tags’ throughout the day regarding things that I do with the aim of improving my scores.  You can then filter based on these in order to see the impact of these practices on your scores over time.  I would LOVE to see alignment between the Oura tags and similar functionality in Google Fit in the future.

    Conclusion

    So there you have it… my Oura ring review. It’s an awesome piece of hardware. Besides the fact that Android functionality often lags behind iOS, my only other real complaint is that I wish it came in half sizes… that would make it even less obtrusive than it already is! If anyone is interested in getting an Oura ring, let me know, I have a few discount codes that I can provide.