How to Regenerate Your Body, Joints, and Nerves for improved Health, Performance and Longevity – Part 2 As far as workouts go for this program the guidelines I have set for myself are: 1. Little or no warmup. Tough workouts require warm-ups to get your body ready to perform at a high demand level, regeneration workouts regenerate the body from the beginning, hence there are no warm-ups. I mean if your first exercise is two minutes of Slo-Mo Squats, what need for a warm up is there? The only exception is the Uphill Sprint workout where we ease into the intensity of the sprints gradually. 2. Use your body as one unit as much as possible. The goal is for the body to realign itself, when doing Slo-Mo Squats you are thinking of elongating the spine, when doing Slo-Mo Push Ups you are holding the plank, tying all the movements with the breath. During Kettlebell swings and snatches the goal is to feel and activate the whole posterior chain and use the body as one unit. 3. Aim for perfect balance and integration in each movement. Since you are using your bodyweight most of the time and you are going slow you can easily see when you go out of alignment. It is my belief that when we go out of alignment, either when knocking out hundreds of reps in a devil may care attitude or when we go for that super human max lift, that nagging joint pains and injuries start to develop or can happen. As I go slow I am able to quickly detect when I am off alignment, for example in the pushups I will quickly feel it in my shoulders, but since I am also going slow I am able to correct it immediately. Pain or discomfort will be your instant signal that you are out of alignment. Same applies for squats with knee/hip alignment issues. 4. Focus on quality, there is no quantity. Each rep should be a perfect rep. For example when I work with the 35lb KB I can easily knock out 14 snatches in 30 seconds. However, since I am focusing on perfect form and on integrating my whole body as one unit I am only doing 5-6 snatches per 30 second period. I really focus on breath, alignment, getting under the weight, and gently tensing the spinal erectors at the top of the movement, holding and integrating the whole body under the weight for 1-2 seconds. Done correctly the Slo-Mo squat takes 20 seconds, that means you will do 6 reps in 2 minutes. 5. Feel GOOD damn it! After every workout you should feel really good, for example after doing snatches in the manner I described above it IMMEDIATELY improved my posture. My wife did it with me in the same manner and she felt her posture improved as well right then and there. 6. Quick workouts. Total workout time should be 30 minutes or less. 7. Spend as much time in recovery as you do in training. If you worked out 30 minutes you should have 30 minutes of recovery that day, either right after the workout or at a later time during the day, for example doing joint mobility, stretching and a foam roller in the evening to help you recover, relax and wind down from the day. OK, now let’s see what a typical Slo-Mo workout looks like: 1. Slo Mo Squat – 4 sets of 2 min exercise/1 min rest 2. Slo Mo Pushup – 3 sets of 1 min exercise/1 min rest 3. Slo Mo Bicycle Crunch – 3 sets of 1 min exercise/1 min rest 4. Slo Mo Burpees – 3 sets of 10-12 reps, key is one movement per inhale or exhale and landing so soft you are completely silent while keeping perfect alignment in your body at all times, if you do it right you will catch yourself every time you land in a disparate manner and/or favor one side over the other, but you will also be able to CORRECT it as you go, improving with each rep. This is merely a guideline, if you want to look at these exercises and a lot of variations you can use then consider getting Extreme Military Fitness Basic where I go into a lot of detail in explaining and demonstrating these and a lot more advanced exercises. ericguttmann/extreme-military-fitness/ Now I start my recovery portion and do 20 cycles of the Crane’s Nest which is an isometric wall sit mixed in with some Microcosmic Orbit meditation which not only strengthens the body at a deep inner level, but also speeds up recovery. My goal is to keep on increasing 1-2 cycles per week. You could also do a wall sit for 30 seconds to 1 minute and when that gets easy you can start adding dumbbells on your thighs to increase the tension. Finally, I end with the spine recovery and elongation routine: 3 sets of the following circuit done back-to-back: 1. 2 min hold bottom squat on bosu 2. 2 min hanging inverted with gravity boots 3. 30 seconds on gymnastic bridge stretching sternum and ribcage as much as possible I have other variations of this workout using pistols, one arm pushups, leg raises, etc but this is the main and simplest version. On my next article I will cover a sample kettlebell workout day. You can use the exercises I recommend or plug any movement you prefer, gymnasts could do Slo-Mo Handstands and Slo-Mo Tiger Bends. Also you can change out the burpee at the end for an exercise that is part of your particular sport or discipline if you practice one, for example Slo-Mo golf swings to see if you are connected and aligned at every part of the stroke with no gaps throughout the movement. The self-knowledge you gain is awesome! Very respectfully, Eric Guttmann For increased recovery I do joint mobility every day. To get the exact program I follow you can click here: ericguttmann/moving-freely/
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:08:08 +0000