Holy intercostals!

[Ford Prefect]

I've been doing that gymnastic routine from the article Iron Fist linked to on dragondoor for about two weeks now. I glanced at the mirror when I was getting out of the shower and my freakin intercostals were huge compared to what they normally are. I figure it's from those tuck front levers.

[rubthebuddha]

for those who don't know, intercostals are the happy muscles between the ribbies. now ford, repost the link next time you say something worked. :p

[Ford Prefect]

What was I thinking? ;)

http://www.dragondoor.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode3&articleid=229

The beginning exercises were harder than I thought, but you catch on quick. I started only being able to do the frog stand of 5 seconds or so, but I'm already up to 25-30 seconds. I figured I'd try 'em since they literally only take a few minutes every day.

[IronFist]

lol I don't even think I read that article. I just posted it because of the first picture of that kid with the crazy shoulder flexibility.

[IronFist]

wtf??? The article says this:


How strong is it possible to become with bodyweight exercises? Amazingly strong. In fact I would go so far as to say, done correctly, far stronger than someone who had trained for the same amount of time with free weights. Want some concrete examples? One of my former students, JJ Gregory (1993 Junior National Champion on the Still Rings) developed such a high degree of strength from my bodyweight conditioning program that on his first day in his high school weightlifting class he deadlifted 400lbs., and this at the scale breaking weight of 135 lbs. and a height of 5’3”.


wtf??????

I wanna call BS but I want Ford's opinion first :D

[Ford Prefect]

Dunno. Plenty of people believe what they hear because they want to believe it. I wouldn't doubt that this kid told his coach, the author of the article, that and he believed it. 400 lbs is a lot of weight and I don't think his body would allow him to pull that in his first time lifting even if he had the capacity to.

Then again, gymnasts are freakishly strong because the muscle tension and coordination that they require. I could see doing insane bench and weighted pull-ups, but I have trouble seeing where the legs and lower back would be trained to deal with a weight like that. I call BS too. :p