Thursday, January 12, 2012

Jungle Fit On The News!


Here's a little interview I did with the local Kingston Ontario News about free fitness! Check it out =) !

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Friday, December 9, 2011

How To Increase Your Pull Up Numbers Today!!



If you're one of the many people frustrated because you've hit a sticking point with your pull ups/chin ups, if can't seem to increase the amount of reps you perform, then I've got some suggestions for you! There are a number of ways to go about improving your chin up / pull up reps but today we'll look at four different ways that just might help you in your quest!

Switch Up Your Grip: Try palms facing towards your body (chin ups) and palms facing away from your body (pull ups). Try narrow grips (hands close together) , regular grips (shoulder width for chin ups, just outside the shoulder for pull ups), and wide grips (neutral grip for chin ups, way outside shoulder width for pull ups. By mixing your grips you'll put a greater emphasis on different muscle groups that my be neglected during your regular pull up or chin up workouts. It will also help you break out of the "same old, same old" of your basic workout routine.

Try Drop Sets: Drop sets are a great way to perform a high number of repetitions that you wouldn't normally be able to perform in a straight set. And example of a drop set would be to do 10 chin ups on your first set, rest 30 seconds, then perform 9 chin ups on your second set, rest 30 seconds, then 8 on the third set. Continue in this fashion until you hit 1 or 2 reps. If you were to perform this drop set as described you would have pumped out 55 chin ups in total!

Embedded Pauses: Adding embedded pauses to your chin ups and pull ups is an excellent way to eliminate any weakness you may have in a certain area of the pulling or lowering phase of the exercise. If you're weak in any area of the pull up or chin up than it could result in a lower number of reps than you're truly capable of performing. Try performing your pull ups/chin ups with a 3-5 second pause at the top, eye level, 3/4 of the way down, and full hang of positions of the exercise. Think of your pull up as an elevator stopping at 4 floors on the way down.

Practice, Practice: Remember, that sometimes all you need is to treat your training as practice to increase your reps. Try performing the "greasing the groove" method. This would involve performing a few pull ups/chin ups multiple times throughout the day, not during your actual workout, and not any where near your maximum amount of reps. If you were to do 6 chins in the morning, at lunch, in the evening, and before bet that would add up to 24 chins during the day and some quality practice without maxing yourself out at all!

Just remember that with practice and dedication you can reach your goals regardless of what they might happen to be.






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Friday, December 2, 2011

The Easiest Way To Achieve The Muscle Up!



 A little while ago I made a post on here about getting your first muscle up on rings. It was pretty detailed and included a great video as well. However, I did forget to mention one very important method of helping you achieve the muscle up on rings. Using a resistance band to help assist you through your muscle up is excellent way to work towards performing your first muscle up!

 I've found this method to be one of the best ways to progress towards performing a "no kip" muscle up. The use of the band helps reduce the percentage of your own body weight that you're actually lifting. I used simple yoga/pilates bands that you can pick up from a local Wal-Mart, they come in three different levels of tension strength. Simple use the band with the heaviest tension at first, and then move to the medium and light tension bands as you become stronger.

 Check out the video above for a detailed instructions on how to use resistance bands to aid you on your quest to performing your first muscle up!

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Thursday, November 17, 2011

How To Gain 30lbs Of Muscle With Body Weight Workouts!


"How do I gain muscle fast and without gaining too much body fat?" , that's easily on of the most common questions asked by young men (and some women) to any fitness expert in the world. Regardless of where you live, if you're a fitness expert you've been asked that question in one form or another. This subject has been covered countless times in magazines, online articles, videos, books, and just about any other form of media know to man. Yet, people keep asking the same question time and time again. Opinions vary from person to person , from expert to expert, but some things remain constant.

- You need to eat, A LOT!
- You need to lift heavy
- You need to rest
- You need to avoid too much cardio

There's also a strange stigma attached to both body weight training and primal/paleo diets being unable to build any significant muscle mass. So, with this in mind I decided to take it upon myself to experiment and see just how much muscle mass I could put on following these rules and without deviating from my "primal diet" too much (other than allowing for dairy) and using a body weight based workout program. I needed to see just how much mass you can build using the foundation that I have built Jungle Fit upon. So starting early June 2011 and running through to the end of Sept 2011 I followed my program and the results were surprising to say the least.

By following an intense body weight based program, upping my calorie intake of my primal diet a lot, adding around 1L of milk a day, extra protein powder, and some sweet potato, my body weight shot up from 145lbs to 180lbs!

That's a 35lb weight gain in around 3-4 months! I out grew all my clothes, I had to buy all new shirts because my back, arms, and shoulders were too large, and my pants went up only one size from a 30 to 32. Not too bad for a 35 lb weight gain!

In the video above I've talked about it in a little more detail and displayed pictures as for the change. In the future if you guys want me to go into greater detail on the subject then please leave comments on youtube or this blog and I'll provide workouts, meal plans, or even create an ebook detailing everything involved.

So long story short, anyone who says you can't gain muscle mass or impressive strength from body weight training is completely misinformed.


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Thursday, November 3, 2011

The "Immortals Workout"




The internet is buzzing with talk about what kind of workouts the actors in the upcoming "Immortals" movie did to achieve their lean physiques. It's not rocket science, they eat clean and worked out like dogs for hours each day. When they weren't in the gym they were on set training fight sequences, so all in all it ended up being around 6-8 hours of physical work per day! Now granted only around 2-3 of that may have been from actual planned gym time with a trainer, but still it's a insane amount of work!

Now, it's completely possible to achieve a lean and athletic body without killing yourself for hours on end in the gym. Remember these guys had a dead line to meet and had to look a specific way. Not to mention lighting, shading, and after effects help you look your best when on film. For most people a clean, paleo/primal diet, coupled with heavy lifting, and high intensity total body workouts will do the trick. Best of all these workouts don't have to be hours on end ... heck, they don't even have to be 30 mins!

I've put together a small sample of a workout that will help you build lean muscle and promote athletic development and you can perform it in about 30 mins or less. Remember that if you can't perform a specific technique to use a progression that is slightly less difficult. I've outlined a ton in the ebook "The Body Weight Solution" as well as on the Jungle Fit YouTube channel. Hope you guys enjoy the workout, let me know what you think!

- Tim





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Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Fast 50 Workout!!




The "Fast 50 Workout" is something I came up with the other day when looking to get a solid, well rounded, total body workout in a short period of time. It involves only 3 exercises but smashes every muscle in the body through large movements and full ranges of motion. If your looking for a fast and intense workout that can be completed in very little time, then this one should peak your interest. It also involves only one piece of equipment "The Jungle Gym", it's one of my favourite pieces of equipment and has multiple uses within your strength and conditioning routine.

The whole workout is made up of suspended tuck knee push ups, low body weight rows, and assisted pistol squats. You start the workout with suspended tuck knee push ups. The goal is to perform 50 suspended tuck knee push ups in total. You do as many as possible until you fail out, then move to your rows and perform as many rows as you did push ups, then move to the assisted pistol squats and perform 10 per leg alternating legs each time. Then without any rest move onto the tuck knee push ups again etc.

Again, you want to perform 50 total suspended tuck knee push ups, so in the first round lets say you hit 20 push ups, then you would perform 20 rows, and 10 single leg squats per leg. Then lets say in the second round you performed 5 push ups, then you would perform 5 rows, and 10 single leg squats per leg. So in those two rounds you've performed 25 reps of push ups, so you're half way there. All you have to do is try to complete the workout as fast as possible with perfect form.

I hope you guys enjoy this workout, let me know how it goes in the comments below!




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Monday, October 10, 2011

Crush Your Core With L-Sits!


The first function of your abdominals and “core” is to help stabilize your body/spine and ensure that you don’t break over back wards or spin all the way around during movement. There are numerous techniques and exercises that may be used to help strengthen your core/abs and today we’re going to be discussing one of my favorite ones, the L-Sit.

The L-Sit (or half lever) is a technique that is used predominantly in the sport of gymnastics, and I have borrowed to incorporate into my own (and clients) strength training and strength conditioning routines. The L-Sit helps strengthen the abdominal muscles, hip flexors, and absolutely crushes the “core”. On top of this, unlike many other “core” or abdominal exercises the L-sit places a tone of tension and demand on the triceps, shoulders, forearms, and quads, making this a truly total body and high tension technique. The L-Sit is an intermediate technique, so it’s important to be very comfortable with basic exercises such as push ups, planks, side planks, and dips (just to name a few) before attempting the L-Sit. The L-Sit is also a key exercise to master before moving on to more difficult techniques such as the front lever and human flag, two techniques that are covered in my upcoming e-book “Jungle Fit Advanced Body Weight Exercises”. As with any body weight exercise it takes time, practice, and the correct progressions to help you achieve your goal of performing your first real L-Sit. Let’s take a look at some progressions that I like to use in in my EBooks and  Jungle Fit Body Weight Training Method.

Tuck Knee Raises/Holds: To perform tuck knee raises simply set up your parallel bars or Lebert Equalizer about forearm length apart. Now grip the bars as you would to perform dips, press down into the bars and raise yourself off the ground, bend from your knees and raise your knees up towards your chest, then slowly lower them back down to the starting position. Go for a set number of repetitions or for a set period of time. Another great technique to help you progress towards L-Sits are tuck knee holds. To perform these simply raise your knees towards your chest as you would during the tuck knee raises except this time stop once your thighs are parallel to the floor. Hold that position for as long as possible. During both techniques try to keep your back straight and attempt to keep your hips/butt from poking backwards. Once you’ve become fairly confident with both of these techniques you can move onto performing single leg extended L-Sits.

Single Leg Extended L-Sits: An great technique to practice and become comfortable holding once tuck knee holds have become too easy is the single leg extended L-Sit. To perform this set yourself up the same way as you would for your tuck knee holds, only this time extend one leg as far as you can without compromising your form. It’s natural for most people to be unable to extend there leg fully at first, but over time you’ll be able to extend the leg a little further until you’re holding a single leg extended L-Sit with a fully extended leg. Hold for as long as you can, be sure to switch extended legs on each set. Once this has become far too easy, then it will be time to attempt the full L-Sit hold.

The L-Sit: The L-Sit is set up no different from the single leg extended or tuck knee hold, the only difference is that you’ll have both legs fully extended. The goal is to have your legs completely parallel to the ground and have your body actually look just like a floating letter “L”. Attempt to keep your back straight, toes pointed, and knees completely extended. This is an intermediate technique that can take some time to master and feel fully confident while holding, so take your time and treat your training as practice. Before you know it you’ll be holding your first full L-Sit and looking to bigger and badder techniques!


- Tim
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