bodyweight exercises?

[Andy62]

http://www.bronzebowpublishing.com/

[Chief Fox]

what is pistols?

a pistol is a one leg squat where your free leg extends out in front of you. So when you are in the low position you kinda look like a pistol.

Like this --> http://spidersport.com/photos/exerci...ol_galya_3.jpg

[Mo Lung]

There are various ways to do push ups. Wide grip push ups will work the chest and biceps more. Hands in close, running your elbows along the sides of your body will work the triceps. Try doing 10 regular push ups then flip over and do 10 good crunches (crunch up and squeze the abs) then flip back over and repeat. Do a total of 30 push ups and 30 crunches. Make all of them slow and controled.

There is an exercise on www.noweightsworkout.com called an "arm grab". This exercise will increase your punching power by 50%. The Chinese exercises are all meant to increase fighting strength, so a arm grab is putting tension in the same manner as your punch, much like swinging 2 baseball bats when you are in the "on deck" circle, then you put one bat down and you're swinging the 1 bat with more speed and getting more power.

The arm grab is pushed out in line with your sternum. When you punch in line with your sternum, your pectorul muscle becomes hard. That's why kung fu people punch at the sturnum, karate people punch at the solar plexus.

Hope this helps
www.noweightsworkout.com

So you're Steve Hamp are you? I was wondering what sort of fitness/strength/conditioning training you've had.

Also, your site says you're a 6th degree black belt. In what style?

[Mr Punch]

There is an exercise on www.noweightsworkout.com called an "arm grab". This exercise will increase your punching power by 50%. The Chinese exercises are all meant to increase fighting strength, so a arm grab is putting tension in the same manner as your punch, much like swinging 2 baseball bats when you are in the "on deck" circle, then you put one bat down and you're swinging the 1 bat with more speed and getting more power.

The arm grab is pushed out in line with your sternum. When you punch in line with your sternum, your pectorul muscle becomes hard. That's why kung fu people punch at the sturnum, karate people punch at the solar plexus.[/url]

With most bodyweight exercises resistance from your own bodyweight stimulates the muscles no? So how is doing this exercise with your imagination going ot be better than doing it with a dumbbell in your hand? Not being a smartarse, just wondering about the mechanism of it.

[Ho Chun]

To add light weight to these exercises are great. They have to be done without weight in the beginning to strengthen the tendons and the ligaments. Be careful not to injure the joints though. If you use weight with these exercises too early you will be building up the "belly" of the muscle. Doing the exercises without weight will build the tendons and the ligaments AND the belly of the muscle from the inside-out. Weights build the exterior of the muscle first, Chinese exercises build the interior of the muscle first.

Also, to double up on this post. I am a 6th Degree Black Belt under GM Gene L. Chicoine. Hsing-I is my favorite, but I also love Tai Chi, Shuai Chiao, and my first style, Preying Mantis. I am a ranked 6th Degree in Hsing-I and Shuai Chiao.

I have done the Chinese exercises as well as, Iron Vest, Muscle Restructure (also known as Muscle Change), the Iron Buddha program (which in my opinion) makes you go through forms with more power and helps with your endurance. I have trained my hand in Iron Palm for many years, and started Poison Hand about a year and a half ago. There is also a 2nd part to the Muscle Change, that I have been doing for the last 4 years.

I hope this helps,
www.noweightsworkout.com

[Andy62]

According to Pavel Dynamic Tension and virtual resistance exercises will build muscle andf strength,but you have to work against real ressitance from time to time to build bone and ligament strength.

[Ho Chun]

but you have to work against real ressitance from time to time to build bone and ligament strength.

Really?? On www.noweightsworkout.com those pitures are of me, how I look today. I've only done the Chinese exercises. I am 43 years old, and have been practicing the CMA since I was 12. I only learned these exercises and the Muscle Restructure (both 1 and 2) since meeting Teacher (GM Chicoine).

What I have gained and what I've seen others gain from these exercises are second to none. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with people who lift weights, I think weight lifting can be good for you-but, I don't think too many people lift correctly and for the right reasons.

What I mean by the last statement is this: I am a MARTIAL ARTIST, I want to build strength for different reasons, the main one being to enhance my fighting skills.
Will weights do this for me? Sure, but with limitations. I dare any of you who are not farmers to go and work on a farm for a week, let's see how strong you really are (me included). None of us would look strong to the farmers.

This is what they do, they have to be strong for the particular discipline that they do. We are not bodybuilders (unless this is your goals) this is not what we do. We are all MARTIAL ARTIST first.

I hope this helps

[Andy62]

Steve I totally agree with you. Different things work for different people and you can get strong and develop a good build without the use of weights-even Arnold Schwartzenegger said so in his book "The Education Of A Bodybuilder" John McSweeney, A member of the martial arts hall of fame didn't use weights and taught a system called "Tiger Moves" which was based on the ancient Kung Fu Tensing Exercises. John Peterson of Bronze Bow Publishing [link below] currently promoting that system. I am glad I came across your site. Andy

http://www.bronzebowpublishing.com/

[Ho Chun]

Chinese Power Exercises are a great way for a mother or father and their kids to workout together. I have taught these exercises to children and adults who have been confined to a wheelchair. Most bodyweight exercises that are out there are push ups and squats.

I hope this helps
www.noweightsworkout.com

[Andy62]

They appear on the various bodyweight sites from time to time

[Vash]

. . . oh my.

[Chief Fox]

Ho Chun: After looking at your site a little more closely, specifically the Arm Grab work out. First I notice that there is no explanation of the benefits of the Arm Grab. I can only guess that it strengthens your entire arm and a little of your back chest and shoulders. Indicating the muscles groups that an exercise targets would be helpful. Second, I see the the full arm grab workout takes 20 minutes, then I see that there are 45 exercises total that make up the No Weights Workout. So lets say that each of the remaining exercises only take half as long as the Arm Grab. That's 460 minutes to complete the entire workout. That's over 7 hours to complete the full workout. Who has 7 hours to do a workout and then practice martial arts too?

I'm not trying to discredit you or in any way belittle your acomplishments. I'm just looking for some clarification. Thanks.

How often do you do the NWW and long soes it take you? Do you break it up over a few days?

[Ho Chun]

Chief Fox, great question.

The arm grab program takes a while to do. You do 30 arm grabs on each arm for 30 days. Then increasing them by 1 each day until you reach 100 arm grabs on each arm. Then you do 100 arm grabs on each arm for 100 days. This program alone takes about 6 months to complete. Other exercises can be done while doing the arm grab program (some of the lower rep. exercises). After completing the arm grab program, just maintain what you've developed. Chief Fox, I've explained this for others who might not know what your question was about.

The No Weights Workout, isn't a "20 minute workout" or a "5 second abs" thing.
Muscle restructure is nothing new, it is what the Indian Monk Da Mo, brought to the Shaolin Temple. It's a series of 12 exercises, 49 repititions of each exercise.
But it is time consuming. Some of them are daily exercises and others are programs that must be done daily for a certain amount of time. Some of the exercises like pull overs, which simulates throwing, will take perhaps a minute or a little longer to complete a day, doing 5 to 10 reps.

The biggest benefit of all of these Chinese Power Exercises is the lifting of the organs that occur. Iron Vest is a program that does just that, (that's not all it does) but all of these exercises do it also. Teacher has said that, "when your gut goes out, your organs come down". One thing that I have said is, even if your gut doesn't go out, won't gravity still yet pull them down? Look at all of the face lifts and breast augmentations that are being performed in this country. When those organs start drooping, and the veins that are delivering blood to those organs start stretching, and you sprinkle in a little bit of cholesterol, you're got major problems.

I could go on, I am very long winded, but I don't want to bore.

I hope this helps

[Ho Chun]

Thanks for bring this to my attention, I'll have to have my web designer make some changes.
I'm not much of a marketing wizard.

[AndrewS]

Ho Chun writes:

>The biggest benefit of all of these Chinese Power Exercises is the lifting of the organs that occur. Iron Vest is a program that does just that, (that's not all it does) but all of these exercises do it also. Teacher has said that, "when your gut goes out, your organs come down". One thing that I have said is, even if your gut doesn't go out, won't gravity still yet pull them down? Look at all of the face lifts and breast augmentations that are being performed in this country. When those organs start drooping, and the veins that are delivering blood to those organs start stretching, and you sprinkle in a little bit of cholesterol, you're got major problems.


Drooping organs? *sigh*

Ok, blood flow is a good thing and abdominal obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

That being said, making the leap that sucking in your gut will make you healthier is a far stretch, indeed.

You're advocating dynamic tension work. That stuff seems to elevate the blood pressure much like heavy resistance exercise can. However, the spike in blood pressure during a heavy squat lasts a couple of seconds, while you're doing these exercises from prolonged periods. I'd recommend taking a look at 'The History of Karate' by Morio Higaonna. Okinawans are the longest lived people in the world, yet the number of deaths due to stroke of senior Goju players mentioned in that book is somewhat dismaying. Goju's sanchin is the place where dynamic tension really took off as a training method, and went from a tight lower body and relaxed upper body to full-body tension (as I understand it). Maybe the Uechi guys would claim differently- dunno. Nonetheless, I'd be keeping a pretty close eye on my cardiovascular risk factors if I was doing a bunch of dynamic tension work.

Andrew