Some eaiser variations of push ups to help you build the strength to do a traditional one!
I was always frustrated how my P.E. teachers wanted all of us to go “all-or-none” and basically hurt ourselves without letting us build up from square-one like in the first gif. Then they’d fuckin yell at us for not doing it right >:|
Knee-pushups is not square-one.
When I got my first personal trainer, she had me doing push ups almost standing upright in the weight lifting bars so that I could do 15 reps and 3 sets of them. It’s more about the technique of the push up, and if you’re pushing too much weight, you can’t exersize the correct muscles within their tolerances. This post is pretty important to know cause of that.
I’m reblogging this here because as someone who spends almost the entire day on bedrest, it is incredibly difficult to find exercises I can do at my strength level.
Please ignore this if it is not for you. I know that exercise is not for everyone or every illness.
Loads of reps of something gentle can work your muscles pretty hardcore if you do enough of them.
Part of intro to P90X (DEATH TRAINING) is just standing, making a fist with each hand, holding your arms perpendicular to your body (like a kid ‘flying’ around as an airplane) and then moving your arms in tight circles for a minute, then reversing direction of the circles for a minute, then doing BIG, slow circles for a minute, then repeating the reversed version that. Like, full ‘60 seconds’ ‘minute’
At first its like ‘lol just my arms whatever I can do this all day’ and then it turns into ‘omg my arms are going to fall off this is terrible gravity plz no’
Also, water bottles can serve as light dumbells for gentle repetitive lifting (bro do you even lift) if you don’t want to dump cash into exercising. Having a bit of air in the bottle will help your forearm no matter what you do, as you try to keep it steady.
Laying on your back and lifting one leg up – just keeping it hovering over the ground with your toe pointed can work your abs. Hovering both legs at the same time is harder. Hovering both legs while making little ‘swimming kicks’ is stupid and i hate ithard.
Hell, even just tensing your abs and keeping them tensed for periods during the day will work them – no need to flail around a ton, or set aside a bunch of time for it.
This! Even if your muscles atrophy so severely you can’t fight gravity—and mine have, bring bedridden for six weeks will do that—you can still exercise and get stronger. (And if/when you do finally get strong enough to lift $bodypart against gravity it feels AWESOME. Everyone can see that you did it, including you. Take that, gravity!)
I go to a yoga class for disabled people, so some people are doing chair yoga, some mat yoga, some against the wall
and some days I’ve done all of those – and my teacher repeats this a lot
your body is not a machine – it is constantly changing, and you’re going to have good days and bad days
so if you normally can do 100 reps and one day you can just do 80 – that’s not a bad thing, you’re not letting yourself down, maybe the next day your form will be crisper and you can do more, or maybe it’ll be 80 again, you do as much as you are comfortable doing, because every little helps
if it aches a bit that’s not bad – but if it hurts stop
if you mention health in your recipe, i will assume the recipe is Austerity Food and does not taste very good. i will not give the recipe a chance. i will not try it. there are fifty thousand other search results. i will continue searching until i find a recipe that appears to be written with the intent of making food that tastes as good as possible, and also doesn’t expect me to do something like scramble three eggs in a single teaspoon of flavorless oil.
by the way, a piece of life advice: a generous splash of olive oil will keep the eggs from sticking to the pan (i know you burnt three or four batches before you got that pretty picture), taste really good (FAT IS FLAVOR say all the real chefs), is good for your heart (yes really), and if you’re on a diet (which you shouldn’t be) you can burn off that many calories by folding a basket of laundry. it’s not like you shanked an orphan. please calm the fuck down.
It takes far more than that to burn a “generous” amount of olive oil. While it may not be terrible for you, it’s still an increase in caloric intake.
i can’t believe i was reblogged by a blog with the tagline ‘anti fat acceptance, obesity kills’. i am honestly furious, and that’s hard to do on the internet these days.
take your pro-eating-disorder, anti-feminist, anti-health bullshit far away from my posts. SHAME KILLS.
fatphobia is the reason I didn’t know until Jesse started posting about it that most of my weight gain is from not getting ENOUGH calories.
fuck blogs like the one up there. fuck em.
since adding ~200 calories a day to my food intake i have had more energy, had an easier time working out, done longer and more productive workouts, and in 2 weeks i have gained noticeable muscle tone. not from trying to live on chia seeds and kale, but from eating regular food like egg and toast for breakfast, pbj and fruit for lunch, chicken and rice for supper, and adding a high-protein snack like yogurt and red bean jam or cheese and nuts.
diet culture is just purity theater. calorie counting is cargo cult medicine. your body wants to be active and healthy, stop punishing it and start cooperating with it.
i’m gonna bring this back. if you’re struggling with your weight, try ADDING a small snack to your daily intake. your body is probably in famine mode and conserving energy, storing every spare calorie as fat under the assumption that you’re experiencing famine conditions and the food is running out.
repeat: dieting convinces your body there’s a famine.
your body responds by hoarding calories.
this is an evolved survival trait.
you will be fat and fatigued because your metabolism is preparing for weeks or months with no food at all.
stop starving yourself. it’s not working.
The diet and fitness health industries are basically a two-man con. Diet says: you’re so fat, cut your calories. Fitness says: you’re so out of shape, you need to exercise more. So you cut your daily caloric intake to 1500, and you go to the gym, and you can barely go fifteen minutes before your heart is pounding and you can’t catch your breath and you’re about to fall off your treadmill, what is wrong with you? How do you fix this?
Diet says: You’re so fat! Cut calories!
Fitness says: You’re so out of shape! Exercise more!
You need energy to exercise. The energy content of food is measured in calories.
It’s a brilliant way to part people from their money, and also slowly suck all the vitality out of them. Like, seriously. The average adult human burns over a calorie a minute just paying the metabolic rent on having a warm-blooded body. There are 1440 minutes in a day. If you want to get fit, that’s a great goal, but don’t do it while cutting your caloric intake down to starvation levels. Calories are literally energy. You need energy to exercise. You need energy to live.
this is a great addition. between all my disabilities, it’s hard for me to get enough food, even with barb and seebs helping. when i’m having a good day and can fill in the gaps myself, and i get up somewhere near the 2600 calories an adult male my age needs, i get this amazing rush of energy. if i can keep this up a few days running, i noticeably put on muscle.
after that last run of prednisone ended, when i was feeling so healthy, i ate everything in sight for a solid three or four days. a week later, when they weighed me at the clinic, i’d lost ten pounds.
why? because instead of having to twist my own arm to exercise, i stayed an extra fifteen minutes in the pool, then took a walk in the evening. just because i felt energetic! i helped more with chores, played more with the cats, got next to seebs more, and in general just did more stuff, then slept better at night and woke up easier in the morning.
now, a lot of that was the prednisone. but my arms are bigger and i can lift more than two weeks ago, and that doesn’t come out of a blister pak.
eat enough. you will exercise more.
by the way – if you’re about to add a comment reminding everyone not to stuff their face with cake, or flatly stating that something i’ve said is wrong without providing any evidence or counterargument, ask yourself what your motivation is.
because the comments and reblogs are absolutely full of those, and the smug/desperate combo going on there is really telling. do you need to identify yourself as being on the socially acceptable side of this ‘debate’? do you need to double down on calorie restriction to justify the effort and suffering you’ve already done? do you just feel like taking a cheap shot at what you percieve to be an easy target?
if i remind you that i’m not a soft, anxious, plump young woman like the one you probably envision when you see fat-acceptance posts, does that change how you feel? if i point out that i’m an adult male built along the lines of maui from moana, does your urge to argue fade?
the diet industry is an industry built on misogyny.
fat-shaming is bullying disguised as concern trolling disguised as friendly advice. fat people are an Acceptable Target because we’re seen as weak. weak-willed, physically weak, morally weak. the fact that this is not true is something a lot of people don’t want to hear because we’re the only ones left you can make mean jokes about in public. and now we want to take away that last precious outlet for petty assholes’ innate cruelty. of course they’re gonna fight us on it.
ask yourself if that’s you. ask yourself if that’s what’s making you feel like this issue is about you and requires your commentary. because if it was REALLY about being so very very concerned about our health, you’d listen when we told you what goddamn works, you ankle-gnawing garbage trolls.
For Traitor: neck retraction exercise. While lying in bed with your head flat against the mattress, give yourself the biggest double chin you can. Repeat 10 times.
For Jackass: stop hiking your shoulders up to your ears. This is pretty much a stress thing, it’s human instinct to protect our neck when we’re under stress so that predators can’t get at it. Easiest way to do that is be elevating the shoulders, so. Periodically take not of where your shoulders are at.
Absolute Fuckwaffle: stretch out your chest. The rhomboids on the back work to keep our shoulder blades back, so when we’re hunched forward they are constantly straining to do their job. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as telling you to stand up straight, since our pectorals get chronically tight and prevent us from doing so. Step one: pectoral stretches. Hold for at least 20 seconds.
Asshole: Superman exercises. Like the rhomboids, the ESGs are straining against the slump. Stretching the chest will help them, too, but then you e got to strengthen your back. Do 20 of those per day.
i'll apple your turnover 