Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Pushups - Beginner to Advanced

At Who Needs a Gym I want to make exercise accessible to everyone irrespective of age or level of fitness. Unfortunately some people have said to me in various forums that some of the workouts I have put out there are a little difficult for the the entry level person. So to enable you, the BEGINNER, to do more pushups, I want to introduce the 6-week 100-pushup program. WHAT! OK, to be honest it is highly doubtful people will be able to hit 100 reps after 6 weeks BUT, if you want to do MORE pushups you have to START doing pushups.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Park Workouts - You can be fit at any age!

Here at Who Needs a Gym I will be highlighting and emphasizing park & home workouts and that it is possible to be fit at any age. Park/home workouts are easy to do and cheap. When I did P90X a few years ago, I did it all in the small park near my house (except the Yoga and Stretching). I will speak about that more later. For now I want to emphasize that here in Asia many people (and especially old folks) often exercise in the park. We saw the guy in the picture below exercising in a park in Osaka, Japan. Look how in shape the guy is. I don't know if the kendo stick is his only workout program, but still, it is great to see people his age out there doing a pretty intense workout.

Osaka Samuraii - Tennoji Park
Cool In-shape Older Man Working out in Tennoji Park

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Pullup Program - Starting Tomorrow

So you want to improve the number of pullups you can do huh! Well, me too! Pullups are tough (yes I know, very tough). Right now I can do about four narrow grip pullups, two wide grip pullups and eight chin-ups, but I am not really happy about those numbers. Would like to up the numbers. Ideally I would love to be able to do 20 pullups of each type but have been struggling to improve the numbers.

Also, if you CANNOT DO ANY PULLUPS, no problem, you can also start doing this program, but just do the program using assisted pullups (e.g. with a chair) OR by doing negatives i.e. jumping onto the bar and then slowly lowering yourself down. Do note that pullups are important for building back muscles and are probably the king of all upper body exercises (second only to power-ups). So anyway, what is the program?

Friday, March 22, 2013

Take a Walk - Up Elephant Mountain

Here at Who Needs a Gym I want to encourage you to get out and exercise at home and in your neighborhood. You don't need to go to a gym to get fit. You just need to be creative. One of the best exercises you can do is to take a good walk everyday.

On Elephant Mountain
On Elephant Mountain

A 10-Minute Workout

A simple 10-minute Who Needs a Gym Friday home workout routine that includes squats, pushups, chair dips and leg raises.

OK admission time: this was meant to be 10 sets of 10 reps each for a total of 100 reps for each exercise. However, I had to stop after 4 sets. My body wasn't feeling right and sometimes, when that happens, I do stop. Never put yourself at risk! And I mean NEVER. 

So this workout was 4 sets of Chair Dips, Squats, Pushups and Squats. Each set had 10 reps. Total movements: 160. I managed to complete the workout in a little under 10 minutes.

Round 1 ~ Round 4

10 x Chair Dips
10 x Squats
10 x Pushups
10 x Leg Raises

 Try it for yourself and see how far you go and do post your results in the comments section below.


Cheers
Paul

Tens Workout - Pushups and Squats

A simple 20-minute Who Needs a Gym home workout routine that includes squats and pushups.

Simple workout really. 10 sets of 10 reps each of both squats and pushups. My time, 20 minutes and 42 seconds. Total reps of each exercise: 100. Total number of movements: 200.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Countdown Workout - Pushups, Squats and Leg Raises

A quick 12-minute Who Needs a Gym home workout routine that includes squats, pushups and leg raises.

Quick workout that took me 12 minutes to finish. If you finish it you will do 65 reps of each exercise (a total of 195 reps) and hopefully you will feel the burn too. If you are brave you can head all the way down to 1 rep of each exercise (a total of 15 rounds) and a total rep count for each exercise then would be 120 reps.