WHY SQUATS? Squats strengthen every muscle in the lower body. Everyone squats whether they realize it or not. Getting out of a chair, a car, or a low couch is a squat. Building strength in squatting carries over to any athletic endeavor in which you push with the legs: rock climbing, rowing, slack lining, picking […]
Category Archives: Partner Workouts: Gravity and Rope
Travel workouts incorporating elements of gymnastics, circus and acroyoga with no equipment other than ropes
WHY PUSHUPS? Push ups strengthen the entire “anterior chain” including the chest (pec major, anterior deltoid, and triceps), anterior core (rectus abdominus, internal and external oblique and transversus abdominus) and the quadriceps. At a summer camp that I worked at in college there was a challenge to do 3,000 pushups in two weeks. Over the […]
WHY THE FISHNG POLE? The fishing pole is a partner exercise in which the flyer is in a side plank and the base is in a straight legged dead lift position. The base works all the muscles of their lower back as well as their gluteus maximus and hamstrings. The flyer works their obliques and […]
WHY THE DOUBLE BIRD DOG? I like to use the double bird dog as an introductory drill in partner strength and conditioning. The move is low risk but requires a lot of core stabilization. It works well as a warmup for acrobalance and acryoga, and has enough variation to be a stand-alone core stabilization drill […]
My Hip Flexibility Experiment While traveling through the Amazon and the Andes last summer I was often obliged to sit on the floor as tables and chairs were infrequent in these rural areas. I wrote a post about this phenomena with some pictures of the various sitting positions I had tried and how long I […]
After 25 days of biking through the Andes, Jessica and I arrived in Cusco anxious to regain the upper body strength we had lost on the ride. Across the street from the apartment of Jessica’s parents was a playground belonging to a school for the mentally handicapped. Jessica and I took to this colorful training […]
What happened to my strength and mass during10 weeks of travel in Ecuador and Peru? They both plummeted. I lost 25 pounds. I went from averaging 199.4lbs, 16.8% fat to 175.1, 16.6% fat on the same bio-impedance scale. While this scale may not be accurate as to my true body fat %, I had conducted […]
Have you ever been traveling for several weeks or months, being active all day walking, and sometimes running to catch taxis, buses and planes? At the end of each day you lie down exhausted and think, “wow I am getting way more exercise than I did back at home. But when you return to your […]
Earlier on our trip Jessica and I spent a week on a “cruise” up the river to Pucallpa from Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon, on a three story river boat (think Mark Twain Mississipi but made entirely of steel and without the paddle wheel). The galleys of the river boat were crammed with 250 passengers, […]
Posture Movement Pain 