A month ago, I had the idea to hang on the horizontal bar every day and track the results. Now I understand how much this idea has radically changed my life, informs Ukr.Media.
I loved pull-ups.
I haven't been good at pull-ups since my student days. I was great at long jumps, 100-meter jumps, and vaults, but I avoided pull-ups in every way, because I could never do them better than a three. Even after getting stronger after freestyle wrestling and the Soviet basement gym, I couldn't do pull-ups. When I was a student, it even made me a little angry; skinny guys could do ten or more reps without much effort, while I could barely do 6-7 reps, and every rep except the first one was noticeably difficult. Literally every time I went to the bars, I was upset. Things got off to a good start when I fell in love with deadlifts. It would seem, where is the deadlift and where is the pull-ups? But the pull-ups strengthened my forearms (grip) and I began to feel much more confident on the bar.
The forearm is the smallest muscle group involved in pull-ups, but it is the one that holds the entire weight of our body and is often the weak link, unlike the large muscles of the back and biceps.
Having remembered this, I decided to measure my result before and after hanging on the horizontal bar. At a weight of 82 kg and a height of 179 cm, I performed only seven pull-ups without training. After a month of hanging, my grip became stronger and even without pull-ups (I didn’t train pull-ups for the whole month, I only hung) I was able to pull-ups 9 times. The maximum hanging time increased from one minute to one minute and forty seconds, which also affected the number of pull-ups. How can I pull-ups 10 times when I can’t hang without moving for more than a minute? No way. A strong grip is the foundation for pull-ups. This is a great help for those who can’t pull-ups, or the result has been at the level of 3-6 repetitions for years. Most likely, your biceps and back muscles have sufficient strength, but your forearm muscles are not, because they are the smallest of all, but they need to hold the entire body weight.
The neck pain is gone.
I can spend up to three hours a day in a car, in traffic jams. Working in front of a computer monitor takes at least six to eight hours. Eating, watching movies, and even reading a book are most often done while sitting. In total, out of 24 hours, I spend more time sitting than sleeping and walking. That is, my spine is much more often hunched than straightened (during sleep and walking), the balance is shifted, which means that deterioration of posture is inevitable. I try to eliminate deterioration of posture by strengthening the muscles of the lower back, the latissimus dorsi, trapezius and posterior deltoid, but pain in the neck began to appear more and more often. Hanging on a horizontal bar, despite all its simplicity, surprised me with its effectiveness in maintaining spinal health. A minute of hanging at the end of the working day relieves tension from the lower back and cervical region. It is not surprising that the spine is in a completely relaxed position for the first time in 24 hours.
Problems in the cervical spine often affect cerebral circulation, leading to increased fatigue after mental exertion.
Even a minute of relaxation is a breath of fresh air. The pain in the neck has decreased by 3-4 times, and most importantly, its intensity has decreased and it no longer turns into a headache. There is still something to work on, but the changes in posture are visible to the naked eye, which many friends have noticed. Probably, a more even posture has led to improved blood circulation in the neck and better blood circulation in the brain center, as well as oxygen access, because I began to get less tired from sitting work and do not feel pressure drops if I get up suddenly from a chair – a month ago, darkening in the eyes after getting up from a chair was the norm.
The most important thing
The best thing that a minute of daily hanging has done for me is realizing that even small habits can have a dramatic impact on your life. I simply have no reason not to hang on the horizontal bar, 60 seconds a day. I haven't missed a single one in a month. Usually, when implementing habits, we subconsciously resist them. Some of us try to “start a new life on Monday”, lose weight, remove our stomach, find a good job and so on, but sometimes it's a piece of change that we can't swallow – we need to take less. Microhabits don't cause such rejection, it's easier for us to do them than to look for reasons not to do them.
Is it difficult for me to do a minute of exercise in the morning? It was difficult for me to force myself to run in the morning, but it was not difficult to warm up for 60 seconds after waking up. And I feel much better after such a warm-up. Is it difficult to learn five foreign words every day? In half a year I learned to understand German by ear. Only five words a day, a few minutes, but what is the benefit over the long haul.
Water sharpens stone, and good habits create a personality from an individual.
Джерело: ukr.media
