captain paleo's ultimate body weight routine

That's right, I've finally discovered the ultimate workout. The day finally came when I finished a newly built routine and said to myself, "That was absolutely perfect." I tried different muscle groups on different days, I tried some no-rest weeks, I tried heavy rest weeks... I feel like I've tried everything. I started becoming interested in body weight workouts after watching this video and reading the Nerd Fitness blog. While I still believe that weight lifting has its place, body weight workouts tend to be simpler, quicker, more intense, and just feel more natural. They seem to more effectively improve agility, nimbleness, and movement.


Also, some people might claim that you need weight to properly stress your body. I disagree, and challenge those people to do a few instances of the routine I'm about to outline.


I'm getting ahead of myself, allow me to get into it.


Introductory Points


First, I feel sort of obligated to point out that even though it's my opinion that this routine is expertly designed, with weeks upon months of testing, it may not be right for you. If there is someone else in your life that routinely gives you fitness advice that says I'm totally off-the-mark, then so be it. Moreover, you can't expect any routine, let alone this one, to be a miracle. In order to see results, you have to have the determination and willpower to stick to it. Getting in shape, in my humble opinion, is more a test of your mental prowess than your physical ability. Also, I will always maintain that your diet determines 90% of how well and fast you shape up, just as I will always maintain that the absolute best option for this is the Paleo diet. Chances are that everything I ever post up here about diet or fitness is going to be built around the Paleo diet and lifestyle.


Second, for those of you who may not know what a "body weight routine," is, it's essentially a group of compound movements using nothing but the weight of your own body. Think push ups, pull ups, lunges, etc. There are no free weights involved in a body weight routine, and barely any equipment necessary. Any equipment that you would need can usually be substituted with something that is commonplace, that you probably have around your house.


Finally, this routine is a "circuit," which  means you'll do a group of exercises, and then repeat the group, and then possibly repeat it again. In between each individual exercise, I encourage you to only take an extremely brief rest, but I know that everyone is different. Don't hurt yourself, and if you need to rest, do it. If you need to take a drink of water, do it. While I'm happy to tell you to ignore what your mind tells you (that inevitable "I deserve a break), you should never ignore what your body tells you. Stress is OK, pain is not.


Keeping all of that in mind, here it is! Enjoy!


Captain Paleo's Ultimate Body Weight Routine

1. Get right into the action with 20 jumping jacks. If you feel like stretching before your workout, go ahead. Personally, it tires me out, so I tend to only stretch afterward.
2. Take care of your chest first with 8 push ups. Keep your back straight and make sure your nose hits the floor. With most exercises, push ups included, form is everything. Make sure yours doesn't suck.
3. Keep your heart racing with 10 more jumping jacks.
4. Since you just worked your front, now work your back. Do 10 dumbbell rows. If you don't have a dumbbell, use a 1-gallon jug (filled with water or sand) or a rock that you can get a good grip on. Be sure to do 10 of these on each side (both arms).
5. That's right, 10 more jumping jacks. 
6. Oh hai legs. Do 10 prisoner squats. Your legs tend to need more love, since they're like your foundation, and everyone is obsessed with working out chest and abs. Follow the prisoner squats with 10 lunges. Be sure to do 10 on each side, and if you need them to be a bit harder, put your hands behind your head.
7. 10 more jumping jacks.
8. Let's go back to the chest a little bit, and take care of arms at the same time. Do 5 decline push ups. Make sure your legs are on something pretty high (bed, chair, stairs, etc.)
9. 10 more jumping jacks.
10. Almost there, but first do a 20 second plank.
11. Go out with a bang. Do 20 jumping jacks.
12. Take a 2-3 minute rest, and then repeat steps 1 - 11. After you've gone through the steps three times, be sure to stretch. Remember, rest is important. You should be doing everything above rapid-fire, one right after the other, so enjoy the small breaks!

Closing

One fairly important point that I forgot to mention: do not attempt to do this every day. Watch the video I linked at the beginning of the post and follow its advice. Intense workouts should be random, infrequent, and intense. Humans have learned how to condition our bodies because we understand how to confuse it into becoming more efficient. Switch it up week-by-week, and do some cardio in between. As an example, I roll a six-sided die three times each week to decide which days I do this routine (1 - 6 is Monday through Saturday).

Finally, there are ways to progress beyond this workout, but I am confident that this routine would even stress veteran weight lifters. I do plan on writing an "advanced," version eventually, that includes pull ups, and some more ab love (although planks are really the best love you can give them). If you feel that this routine is too easy for you, increase the repetitions within each circuit, or add another instance of the circuit before you finish. Personally, I do a bit more than what I wrote above, but not by much.

Hope you enjoy! I give you permission to curse my name when you feel the burn at any point during this routine!

obligatory

भगवद्गीता

“One who does all work as an offering to the Lord, abandoning attachment to the results, is as untouched by sin as a lotus leaf is untouched by water.”

updates & i suck

I really need to start updating more often, I have found throughout the years (even back when Livejournal was the thing to do) that I suck at maintaining online writing projects. Since I have become much more neurotic about schedules since I started my job, I should really just write it in to my daily schedule to update. For now, I'll just go through my post tags and write.


I am still die-hard into this Paleo thing... So  much so that now I feel like it's becoming a lifestyle for me. I watched a video recently (Lynx) that sort of spawned a new philosophy for me. Exercise should be intense and infrequent. The more I think about this, it satisfies me physically and psychologically. There's something about mimicking "the hunt," that makes exercise much more purpose-driven, and therefore bearable. I've always liked working out, but it seemed that before I adopted the mindset outlined in that video, I always felt like there was something missing. I'm finding that by understanding exactly how and why I'm doing each particular form, set, repetition, mile, etc., I am confident that I'm improving something important (whether it be endurance, agility, strength, power, etc.) instead of idly lifting weights and wondering if something will eventually happen. 


Granted, I've been technically "in-shape," for a while now, I proved to myself that what I'm doing is working about two weeks ago, when I hiked the Appalachian Approach, a 17-mile knob trail in north Georgia.

That's at the top of Springer Mountain, 8.5 miles and 4 mountains away from the starting point at Amicalola Falls. My good friend Matt and I did this 17-mile monster hike in 2010, when we were both eating poorly and out of shape, and it was possibly the worst experience in our lives. Now, in 2011, we're both eating Paleo and training non-stop and this hike was a breeze. Very enjoyable, and we were both very proud of ourselves. And yes, those are Vibram Five Fingers that I'm wearing on my feet in the picture. If you haven't gotten a pair yet, then you haven't lived!


Anyway, to wrap all of that up, I weighed in last week at 187 lbs., which is only a mere 12 lbs. off from my ultimate goal. It's astonishing to see people online ranting about how Paleo is a fad diet that doesn't work... Almost six sacks of potatoes worth of fat gone from my body begs to differ.


Apart from being totally absorbed in my personal fitness, I've also been flexing my mental muscles quite a bit lately with Book of the Fallen (a tabletop RPG I'm designing). It's astonishing, in my opinion, that this game is homegrown from the ground up, and we are up to four (yes, four) different campaigns being run on it. Rarely do we find a rule or mechanic within the system that completely doesn't work. Furthermore, the game is incredibly fun. I've played a great many tabletops in my life, and not a single one (D&D, GURPS, Palladium, etc.) have been more fun than Book of the Fallen.


Within the last two weeks, I revamped the combat system of Book of the Fallen to include 250 "Advanced Maneuvers," which are basically cool shit your character can do with a weapon. So now, our pool of content includes the Book of the Fallen Game Manual and the Advanced Maneuver Compendium. Our little homegrown game has two books?! Win.


I haven't been doing much in the writing department lately due to the combat system project detailed above, and my new found love of working out, but trust that it's coming. My goal for this week is to plan out my brand new Book of the Fallen adventure, which will involve quite a bit of creative writing. I won't be able to post everything, since some of it is secret GM stuff, but I will definitely post snippets.


That's all for now, I intend on updating much more frequently, so you will hear from me soon. Until then, over & out!

the borderlands

They took to the granite corridor, moving swiftly to sleight the diseased shamans hiding in the architecture. From the shade, the Lotus Eater turned to the desert to consume a potentially final glance at its grandeur. What greeted his eye was not the shining magnificence of what the sands once were, but a perversion of life, a phantasm twisting from the grey sky. A gate was open, spilling darkness from the heavens, rebuking the insipid souls that swim in the sea of sand. The inexplicable titan swirled and jerked, slowly making its way to the east, toward the cathedral by the I'jinn.


He said to himself, "They are doomed," just loud enough to be audible to the others, who gestured to him to hurry.

progress

I've been dieting and working out for 5 months now, and I'm going to get over my fear of judgement and post a progress picture. I really have nothing to say about this except that I'm embarrassed, even though I am proud of my progress, haha. Here goes nothing:

some other cool paleo things

The last article I posted contained the Paleo basics, but there is a world of little things you begin to realize when you eat healthy. I'll describe some of them in this post. This is, in some sense, a way of getting ahead, because most Paleo eaters have to discover these little nuances. You'll see what I mean...


Paleo Breakfast
Paleo breakfasts can get weird. I am of the opinion the breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Trainers across the world will tell you that you should eat as mcuh as you can possibly stuff into your mouth during breakfast because it jump starts your metabolism and improves immune function. Here's how Paleo makes this fun & interesting.


When you've been eating Paleo for two weeks to a month, you've probably radically changed your macronutrient balance in your diet. You've probably gone from high-carb to high-protein. High-protein almost inherently means low-carb. Low-carb is, in my humble opinion, the way to be because it forces your body to do really cool, efficient things. One thing that low-carb tells your body to do is called Ketosis. When your body produces energy through this process, your metabolism skips "expendable energy," that it used to get from carbs and goes to "active energy," which it gets from stored body fat. In other words, you burn fat just by being alive and awake. Pretty awesome.


One of the weird sensations that Keto produces though, is the "eyes are bigger than the stomach," thing... You know when you think, "I'm going to eat 30 lbs. of food right now, I'm soooooo hungry," and then you end up with half a plate of food that could feed Tokyo for a day. The thing you have to remember though is that if you're eating Paleo food, then that food is good to eat whenever you want! Paleolithic era man wouldn't toss half of a giant plate of food just because he didn't finish it - he doesn't know when his next successful hunt will be. The advantage that we have over him is that we have refrigeration. Store it!


Which brings me to the breakfasts. One thing that veteran Paleo eaters will do often is use the leftovers from the night before in breakfast. Because Ketosis is so common, this behavior is actually written into the diet. It can lead to some pretty weird breakfasts, but this is also a good opportunity to break the stigmas. Some people literally cannot imagine eating grilled Tilapia in the morning because they're conditioned to biscuits, bagels, cream cheese, bread, garins, grains, grains, and more grains... But it's so very good for you. High-calorie, good fat, high-protein seafood for your body right when you wake up? Yes please!


So save your leftovers and eat them in the morning. Your metabolism will thank you!


Coffee
...Has no nutritional value. Drink it. Love it. Embrace it. The reason why most diets restrict coffee is because 99% of people load it down with heavy cream and sugar. If you can drink it black, do it. If you can't, get one of Coffee-Mate's 40 million delicious flavors and only use 4 teaspoons or so. It's plenty, and it's only around 50 calories. I cannot endorse the use of sugar in coffee. Cane table sugar is so incredibly bad for your body, and for weight-loss and a lot of the Coffee-Mate creamers are sweet by themselves.


How can I be suggesting using a dairy product? Well, if it bugs you, consider it part of your 15%. Also, coffee creamer is one of the easiest things I found I could wean myself off of. It was about three weeks until I started drinking my coffee black. Most people don't drink coffee for the taste, they drink it for the warmth and the caffeine addiction. Chances are, if you're a chronic coffee drinker, you have a psychological need for it - the warm mug in your hands, the smell of it brewing, even the process of making it is pleasurable for you. The cream and sugar are are just added bonuses to make the addictive satiation taste better. 


So, what the hell, use cream. But work toward weaning yourself off of it. It's easier than it sounds.


Taste Bud Training
For your first few weeks of eating Paleo, you're going to have severe cravings. Mine was ice cream... I felt like I would die if I didn't eat some ice cream. 


One of the coolest things about Paleo is that unlike other diets where you exercise willpower for a month or two in order to lose a few pounds, Paleo is designed to train your body to eat right and use energy efficiently in the long term. One brilliant side effect is the physical change that your taste buds undergo. Let me explain.


You have crazy ass cravings for sweets, usually grainy sweets like cinnamon buns, or cheesecake. Maybe you indulge during your cheat meal. Go for it, that's why there's such thing as a cheat meal. Next week the cravings begin to fade, but are definitely still there. You start to substitute your previously beloved high-fructose corn syrup pastries with natural sources of sugar alcohol like fresh strawberries or apples. These sweet snacks are Paleo, but are "to be enjoyed in moderation," because of the high natural sugar content and high-carbiness. Your second cheat meal comes with another indulgence, where you finally satiate that craving you've been having all week. Bonus! It's metabolically irrelevant. Now week three comes along and you notice your sweet tooth is gone, but instead you're craving something else: strawberries, apples, lemons, blueberries, bananas, star fruit, cantaloupe, honeydew. Your body physically changes to taste nature's sweetness at an advanced level, and therefore your mind changes too. Now all of those HFCS treats you enjoyed before are too sweet. You start to wonder, "How did I used to eat that?" You remember the sugary film it left on the roof of your mouth and the ultra-sweet taste that didn't go away for hours. It was way too much. Your new, healthy sweets are the exact right amount of delicious, and to your great surprise they aren't killing you.


Well, that's it for now. I'll likely be doing a lot more of these in the future. Thanks to Marcie, my new nickname is Captain Paleo so, I feel I will need to continue doing my civic duty!