View Full Version : Opinions on a few unspoken exercises.


Hulking Lummox
January 10th, 2007, 08:28 PM
I've begun to incorporate a few new things into my workouts and I was wondering if anyone else has tried these, if they are dangerous, or if they are hidden gems.

Firstly, and I've never heard of or seen this before so I'll name it the Spear Curl. It is a single arm lift performed by picking up a barbell at your side with your hand gripping just off center so that the portion of the bar in front of you angles down toward the floor. All you do is lift it upward at your side with emphasis on balancing the weight forward with your triceps. You can do this with even amounts of weight on each end as long as there are strong clips available to have on each end. I tend to feel this mostly in my triceps and partially in the traps and deltoids. My concern would be if this is hard on the wrists. I've had no problems so far after about 3-4 weeks.

Secondly, my friend who has the thickest calves I've ever seen on someone his size touted jogging on his tiptoes. This is a guy who up until recently did no other legwork than jogging. I began this today, jogging for about 5 minutes until my calves got tired and then continued the jog as normal. I don't know what injuries are likely from this but I'd love to hear opinions.

The next two are core exercises that are pretty standard but I never see them mentioned on these or other forums as essential in a workout. Instead I only see squats and deadlifts... But hey, my core has almost no endurance and it isn't tending to get any stronger or less easily fatigued when doing situps and oblique crunches, etc... just those lifts are getting better.

1) Trunk twists with a bar on your shoulders. I did tons of these today and my obliques seemed to like them for a change of pace.

2) Medicine ball... uhh how to explain? Holding it up high above your head and then making huge alternating circular motions from high to low. After I fatigued doing those I held the ball at hip level and did more twists.

Are there better standing core exercises to be performed? I don't have access to a roman chair and deadlifts and squats are about the only other core work I do. Opinions on these exercises would be lovely, thanks everyone!

chicanerous
January 10th, 2007, 08:33 PM
Trunk twists with a bar on your shoulders are essentially worthless. The direction of force is straight downward, so the only added challenge to your muscles comes from controlling the rotational inertia / angular momentum. The biggest gain you're likely to receive is a strained / pulled muscle.

Substitute some type of cable twist or chop.

zenpharaohs
January 10th, 2007, 09:54 PM
1) Trunk twists with a bar on your shoulders. I did tons of these today and my obliques seemed to like them for a change of pace.

2) Medicine ball... uhh how to explain? Holding it up high above your head and then making huge alternating circular motions from high to low. After I fatigued doing those I held the ball at hip level and did more twists.

Are there better standing core exercises to be performed? I don't have access to a roman chair and deadlifts and squats are about the only other core work I do. Opinions on these exercises would be lovely, thanks everyone!

1. I don't think the trunk twists with the bar are that good.

2. The medicine ball move you are describing is part of an excellent exercise called a figure eight - you do what you describe but lunge and recover along with it. By the way you can do those with a dumbell when the medicine ball isn't heavy enough any more.

As to the trunk twists, I would go with Russian twists, possibly even Russian twists in V-sit (which gets nasty). Use a plate or dumbell.

Other standing core exercises which are excellent are:

Cable twist.

Cable row on single leg.

Single leg barbell deadlifts.

Pistol squat with diagonal raise.

Leg raise with twist, dumbell lower, and lift over the raised leg.

There are a ton of great lunge core exercises too.

Lunges with twist and dumbell shoulder press.

Lunges with dumbell twist.