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Aunkai Discussion

Apr 09, 2009 aunkai, fitness, health, strength and tenchijin

Finally - a new on-topic post - it’s a shame it’s a short one today. I’ve written about Aunkai before and there is an interesting discussion thread over at Emptyflower on it at the moment.

Of course it’s Emptyflower and the quality of the discussion varies but there are some very interesting points.

In particular the apparent similarity of Tenchijin to overhead squats:

[youtube=lBEkWJ2ck-g,NOLINK]

I’ve given them a try and first up the overhead squats are definitely harder than you’d guess just by looking at them. They are not the same thing as Tenchijin but there are some similarities. It is quite plausible that adding these to your workouts would help with some of the same things that Tenchijin is aimed at helping. It is a different sensation and both exercises are very difficult (and both work your alignment).

It’s really just another exercise to keep in mind.

Scapula Pushups

Dec 31, 2008 health, pushups, shoulders and strength

My previous post on [cref 60 pushup variety] discussed several different ideas for making pushups more interesting. I’m not really sure that these count as pushups but they’re quite an interesting exercise (that has pushup in the name):

[youtube=X2BeMv3-vOw,NOLINK]

Apparently these are very good for your shoulders - not just to make you stronger but also healthier. Worth giving a go…

Pushup Variations

Nov 08, 2008 fitness, health, pushups and strength

Pushups are a fantastic exercise that builds strength that is useful and functional. Unfortunately pushups can be deadly boring. I would go further - I hate pushups… I see them as a really valuable exercise but one that I detest actually performing. I can’t escape that they’re good for me - so I’ve found some ways to make them more enjoyable, more challenging and better for you.

What I’ve found to make doing pushups much more enjoyable is to do different variations - doing more difficult variations means I can do less reps too as well as making the exercise itself more enjoyable. I have no idea, by the way, why I find pushups so unpleasant whereas squat based exercises I like. Anyway - I’ve stumbled on Hindu pushups as my least hated pushup but there are some others that I do that I quite like.

Hindu Pushups

This has a few variations that I really like:

Side to Side Pushups

Something a bit different, I really like this one:

Planche

This is just impressive as hell. I can’t do these but I’m working up to them there are some good tutorials on youtube as to how to build up to this (interesting note most planche tutorials show the hands pointing backwards towards your feet not sure it’s very signficant but it’s interesting):

Update - Spiderman Pushups

I came across these by accident just after writing the above. Well these are nice - I still prefer Hindu Pushups - they’re a little easy but they work some flexibility which is nice. Same for the spiderman lunges, my only gripe there is that they’re a little easy but still not a bad exercise that I can see being good as a warm up or cool down.