Let's Be Realistic...

First off, I'd like to say: tomorrow is my twin's birthday! She's turning 17! Now doing some complex algebra, trigonometry and a tad of physics you should figure out that it might just be my birthday as well.

Anyway, this post is about being realistic. I think I chose a quite unrealistic goal for this year: a planche. I've done some work on it and realized: this is going to take more than a year, maybe more than two years. I have decided to put that in the back of my training scheme because of this. I will do a little bit of work on it, but not too much. So, what's a better goal? A handstand. Not one of those cheating feet-on-the-wall hand stands, but a real, free standing one. This will still take a ton of practice, but no where as near as much as the planche. I've also decided to work on back levers, front levers, one hand pushups and maybe the flag pole to build some more core strength which will help with just about everything. I would explain all these exercises in detail, but I'll save that for a different post, for now I'll talk a tad more on goals.

So, have you set some goals? You better have. Goals keep you more motivated and make training fun! I'm not here to tell you why to set goals, I did that in an older post, go and try to find it if you haven't read it yet.

So, you've set a goal. Is it too unrealistic? Is your goal some thing like: lose 50 pounds this year? Gain 30 pounds of muscle this year? Do a planche this year? Run a marathon this year? Do 100 pullups this year? Well, the first one I doubt is very healthy. You'd have you loose nearly a pound a week. Lots of salads and running... The second? That's a huge stretch. If possible, you'd need perfect dieting, resting, and lifting. You'd probably gain quite a bit of fat with it from all the meat and carbs you'll need to eat. The others? Really tough things to do. So let's be a bit more realistic.

Losing 10-30 pounds of fat. That's more realistic. 1/2 a pound a week, or 2 per month. That's pretty easy if you eat right. You might not even need to run much!

For gaining weight? 10-15 pounds. That's a good goal. Eat a lot of protein, use big lifts (squat, dead lift, pull ups, and bench press or weighed pushups or dips) with a decent amount of weight, and rest. Should be good. Your endurance might suffer, because running might take away some of your lifting gains.

As for athletic tricks (if you want to call it that): slowly build up to harder and harder tricks. Aiming for something like the planche will be demoralizing. Training for one thing for 1-3 years can become depressing when progress lags. Handstands, levers, and other easier 'tricks' help build up to a planche anyway. So why not do them?