Archives for posts with tag: Progressions

How I’ve Helped

02022-05-21 //
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If you know me or are following this website, you’ll have noticed by now that advertising myself is not my strong suit. I’m still learning how to do that because I have the habit of enjoying generosity more than making money. So I thought a good post would be things I have helped people achieve or written plans for that they have achieved.

1. Friends and family losing a combined weight of 400lbs healthily (it may be more, but this is from the most noticeable people I’ve helped)

2. Helping strengthen healthy relationships

3. Helping people build the courage to look at and decide on their own if a relationship is abusive and how to get out of that if they ask. Including non-romantic relationships like bosses.

4. Helping people build long-term resilient responses to suicidal ideation and attempts. Especially youth in the LGBT community. Too many to count.

5. Overcoming debilitating anxieties.

6. Teaching people to drive

7. Teaching children to speak English as a Second Language(job)

8. Teaching people to cook nutritious food that is delicious

9. How to alleviate, prevent, and rehab joint and muscles pain without the use of pain killers.

10. How to be ethical yet charismatic when dating.

11. Teaching effective, resilient, and timely ethics in general.

12. How to adapt to change, temptations, and harassment when they can’t be planned for.

13. Dog and Cat training. (Cashew now knows how to “Highfive” as my most recent thing)

14. One time I helped a parent and their preadolescence kid learn how to have real communication and cooperation.

15. How to learn quickly and efficiently.

16. My favorite thing is teaching people how to ask better questions and develop better answers.

This is a quick list of what I can think of in 10-15 minutes. If you read it and think “Harper, you are not a therapist…” I’m not! So I can’t talk to you about your past and how it has influenced you now. I CAN help you with the pain or confusion in the present moment and moving forward though. In the same way you don’t think about your past weakness in order to get stronger in the gym. Instead you focus on how well you are doing your exercise and eating each day to reach those kinds of goals. Almost everything else also gets better if you take action, make the plans, and work on what is immediately in front of you to find what will work. So schedule a session with me, and I’ll help you while you help me add to this list ^_^

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Categories Uncategorized

Thoughts on Progression

02014-09-18 //
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Okay, so I have become frustrated with how I am making progressions to harder exercises. What happens is I finish a progression standard, like 3 sets of 30 full squats, and the I move to the next step in Convict Conditioning. When I move up to Close squats, if I do a warm-up, I ed up moving from 90-100 squats in a workout to 30 squats total. This makes my workout easier but it takes all the accomplishment I felt before and throws it out the window. It feels tiny and worthless for me, and I am not convinced that the next step is so much more difficult that it can make up for the drastic reduction in Time Under Tension.

I was also watching some youtube videos that explained the directions in Convict Conditioning more clearly than I have ever understood. The idea that I should begin with 1 set of the beginner standard and then not add another set until I reach one set of the intermediate standard. Example: Begin Wall-ups at 10 reps 1 set. Do one set until I can perform a solid set of 25 reps. Only then do I move up to doing 2 sets. This makes much more sense than the random ways I was adding on reps or trying to interrupt the text.

So now I have a few problems with my progression:

  1. Loss of psychological reward
  2. Loss of Time Under Tension
  3. Unstructured increases

What is my solution for this?

I will adopt the above described method of increase my reps before my sets. When I reach a progression standard, the next workout, I will repeat that exercise and on the end I will add as many of the next Step as I can. When I reach 1 set of the beginner standard I will drop a set of the previous step and continue working on increase reps in the 1 set of the new step. This will continue until I replace all of the previous step with the new step.

Example:

Yesterday I did 3 sets of 30 full squats. Next Wednesday I will do 3 sets of 30 reps AND as close to 5 reps of Close Squats as I can get. Let us assume I reach 5 reps. The following Wednesday, I would do 2 sets of 30 full squats and 1 set of 7-10 Close Squats.

02014-09-17

3:30 Full squats

02014-09-24

3:30 Full Squats

1:5 Close Squats

02014-10-01

2:30 Full Squats

1:10 Close Squats

02014-10-08

1:30 Full Squats

1:10 Close Squats

1:5 Close Squats

This would continue till I reach the Progression Standard of  2 sets of 20 reps. Now, would I get rid of that first set ever? No. It would become a more strenuous warm-up. So for Uneven Squats I would end up with 1 set of 20 Close Squats and then my Progression Standard of 2 sets of 20 uneven squats.

Right now I am thinking of how to make a structured progression method for the Handstand Push-ups, but that will require much more thought on whether I want to progress against a wall or stop and master away from the wall handstands.

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Categories Fitness