Limitation? No! It’s Opportunity

I wasn’t intending on writing this article. I had an article written out on a completely different topic, but then all of a sudden in a seemingly negative event both a personal evolution and this article revealed themselves. A few days ago I injured my left knee, possibly in a big way. As I am training as a serious athlete and aiming for some pretty big and lofty goals, this at first appeared to be a negative event, but then as I reminded myself never to judge any situation as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but instead just see the perfection, the seed of opportunity shone through brightly like the sun.

Here was a fantastic opportunity to develop some FREAKY upper body strength whilst I rehabbed my knee. The strength stuff was already being covered with the help of the services of Andrew Read. But then I thought, well what about conditioning? What about metcon stuff? For my conditioning I typically do a lot of gymnastic type circuits, push ups, pull ups, squats, box jumps, sprints, burpees and the like, and I rely a lot on burpees as many of you may have noticed in my previous article they are one of my favourite exercises! So how the hell was I going to be able to perform high intensity metabolic conditioning without the use of my legs? Ah but in not resisting what was, not fighting against anything, but simply going with the flow, being present, I was open to my own intuition, the voice of the universe could speak through me.

No Legs? No Problem

So for the last few days, for my conditioning I’ve been playing about with these very simple but highly effective routines to get my heart racing. You can try and use these routines for your conditioning even with injury free legs; they will blast your upper body.

Push ups vs. V-ups

Very simple - perform a set of 20 push ups and then flip straight onto your back and perform a set of 20 V -ups, then straight back to push ups…

Continue this for 10 sets. That’s 200 of each in total. Try to do it without rest for increased conditioning effect. These can also be done in ladder style - 20-1 etc…

Tabata upper body

Tabata is an amazing interval protocol for conditioning work, for those of you who don’t know it, it’s 20 seconds work, followed by 10 seconds rest, repeated 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. This is usually seen used in conjunction with squats and burpees but I have found the following just as difficult.

Tabata push ups
Tabata pull ups
Tabata V-ups
Tabata dips
Tabata chin ups
Tabata back extensions
That’s a 24 minute workout and believe me - it kills.

Density training

10 push ups then 10 bodyweight rows and 10 V- ups for as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes.

This could easily be more strength orientated by using harder exercises such as dips and pulls or handstand pushups and weighted chins, but as I am looking for a conditioning effect I want it fast paced so the lighter exercises serve me better.

There are countless combinations of the above you could perform, these are just some I’ve been playing with. The whole purpose of this article was simply to demonstrate that there are no limitations, only opportunity. As I have spoken about many times here and on my blog, everything happens for a reason, everything is guiding you on the perfect path, every seeming stumbling block is actually a steeping stone if you can open your eyes to it. How a situation is, any situation is simply the way you choose to perceive it. Every bit of it is your training, so smile, enjoy it.

How freaky strong can I make my upper body?

Let me see…

The adventure awaits…
David Kels