NOT QUITE MY TEMPO

What the managing editor learnt about the vagaries of progress when it comes to physical fitness

WHEN SINGAPORE IMPLEMENTED the Circuit Breaker to combat COVID-19, I found myself at a loss as to how I’d exercise. For the longest time, I’ve followed a routine of twice-weekly sessions at the gym. With every single one across the country closed to enforce social distancing, however, this was no longer an option.

Weightlifting has always appealed to me for various reasons, not least because I am a creature of habit. Routine aside, I like how things are quantifiable. Every exercise can be measured by the amount of weight it was performed with, as well as the number of sets and repetitions that were done. In turn, this data can be logged to track one’s progress over time. Suffice it to say that feeling stronger and having the numbers to prove it is a very satisfying thing. The functional benefits of resistance training are well-documented too; I can personally vouch for its improvements to my muscle and joint strength, as well as its effects on my general mood and even sleep quality.

ADAPTING TO THE NEW NORMAL

Clearly, alternatives were needed. The easiest and most obvious option was to shift my routine towards running, and focus more on cardiovascular fitness while the Circuit Breaker was in effect. But surely more could be done?

Since I had a pair of gymnastics rings hanging from a pull-up bar at home, I thought to set myself a couple of goals and subsume them under the August Man Circuit Breaker Challenge, which our editorial team was running on Instagram.

I settled on three targets eventually.

The first two were to perform a front lever and a muscle-up on the rings respectively. These are classic gymnastic moves that require both muscular power as well as balance and coordination ‒ a balance of “strength” and “skill” work, in the parlance of the bodyweight fitness community. My final goal was a kicker: I hadn’t been able to bend down and touch my toes for over two decades, and I wanted to regain my flexibility with this simple milestone.

As it turned out, my progress on these three fronts varied substantially. Over the next few months, I also discovered the efficacy of having a variety of workouts, with which one can develop the different aspects of physical fitness.

STEADY GAINS

Progress in weightlifting isn’t just measurable, but also follows a common pattern for most people. Initially, a beginner on any decent routine can expect to advance rapidly in strength. This is commonly known as “newbie gains”, and is characterised by its linearity. For instance, one can conceivably squat an additional 2.5 kilograms at every gym session just by performing the exercise consistently. That was exactly my experience when I first adopted a beginner’s weightlifting programme ‒ barring the occasional hiccup, my five-repetition maximum for the squat went steadily from 50 to 92.5 kilograms as I added 2.5 kilograms to the bar at every session. This was done while my own weight remained constant at 66 kilograms, by the way.

By the time linear progress begins to stall, a person has probably reached intermediate levels of strength and exhausted his potential for newbie gains. I was, however, new to the rings, and had never actively worked on my flexibility. Because of this, I naively believed that I’d make linear progress towards each of my fitness goals. Alas, things were far less straightforward

than I had imagined, and not for the lack of trying.

FRONT LEVER: UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY

I thought it prudent to approach my three targets systematically, beginning with an appropriate programme for each. Not surprisingly, there are various recommended progressions that chart courses towards achieving a front lever and a muscle up. These road maps are linear in so far as the advancement from one stage to the next is concerned. Neither was quite so straightforward in practice though.

First, the front lever progression, which begins with the tucked front lever. This exercise is similar to the “full” front lever, but with the legs tucked towards the chest to reduce the leverage on the arms, back and core, thus serving as a less difficult variant of the real McCoy. The idea is to start with the legs fully tucked in, then work on extending them in stages to reach the final position of having a straight torso and completely straightened legs.

I ran into problems immediately. For a start, although I could pull myself into the tucked front lever comfortably, I had no idea if I had the right form, which entails having a horizontal torso suspended parallel to the ground. Unlike exercising in the gym, there were neither mirrors nor cues to rely on at home. Instead, I had to depend on my partner for feedback, or record myself with a smartphone. It took time to develop the necessary body awareness before I could tell if my form was correct.

As a static hold, the tucked front lever is just like the plank ‒ progress is measured by how long a person can maintain it.

The goal was to reach a 30-second hold before moving on to the next stage of the progression, but this proved to be challenging as well. I found my body too used to performing dynamic movements counted in repetitions, and altogether unfamiliar with isometric exercises like this one, which demands static strength. This

was exacerbated by the inherently unstable nature of gymnastic rings, which had me struggling to hold the position steady instead of swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

After two weeks or so, I finally managed to hold my tucked front lever for half a minute. The next step was the advanced tucked front lever, which brings the knees away from the chest and towards the hips. This was a sudden jump in difficulty, and I could barely hold it for two seconds despite being able to perform the previous exercise for 30 seconds. The progress that

I had made so far did not seem to transfer to this one, perhaps because of my longer legs, and I found myself floundering all over again; I’m still working on my advanced tucked front lever today. Well, so much for linear progression.

MUSCLE-UP: ASSEMBLING THE PIECES

The muscle up is an all-or-nothing exercise: you are either able to perform it, or you aren’t. I quickly learnt that progress here wasn’t linear either. Rather, the move involves three components that must be trained and mastered separately first before being integrated.

The first part of the muscle-up is the pull-up, which must be performed with a false grip on the rings. Unlike a regular grip, the false grip is deeper, with the crease between the wrist and palm in contact with the ring as well. This doesn’t just reduce the arm’s leverage to make the muscleup easier to perform, but also allows a seamless transition of the hand’s position during the muscle-up. This was far from pleasant because the false grip is a painful hold to learn, yet also the easiest, since I could already do over 10 pull ups.

While the false grip pull-up was being worked on, I was also training to perform the ring dip, which is the final movement in the muscle-up. This took a little more effort to accomplish, beginning with static holds to develop the shoulder and core stability necessary for balance. The actual dips came next, and fairly quickly, since I was already familiar with the movement.

The final piece of the puzzle was the transition, which swings the elbows over the rings to mark the shift from the pullup to the dip. By this time, I was under no illusion that any development here would be linear ‒ this was a threshold that would probably be crossed quite suddenly, not unlike one’s first pull-up. I’m close, but not there yet with this.

TOUCHING MY TOES: FAMILIARITY FINALLY

Bending down to touch my toes turned out to be the most straightforward goal to achieve among the three. The move is also known as the forward fold, and

requires adequate flexibility in the posterior chain, which includes the calves, hamstrings, glutes, and lower back. A quick test revealed that my hamstrings were too tight ‒ like most people who fail this basic test of mobility ‒ so I adopted a popular online routine designed to fix this.

The programme I followed recommends a series of stretches that target the hamstrings while also working on the other links in the posterior chain. With a clear, measurable target to work towards, things felt more familiar here. In my case, I started off with my fingertips 18.5 centimetres from the ground at my maximum stretch. One week and two 20-minute sessions later, I was already four centimetres closer.

The principle of newbie gains applied here, thankfully, and I inched ever closer to my toes for several weeks. I only had problems stretching even deeper when I was five centimetres away from success. To overcome this, I doubled up on the stretches (and consequently, pain) to finally succeed after 11 weeks.

LESSONS LEARNT

Most people have a vague understanding of what physical fitness entails, but struggle to define it. After all, a ballet dancer, a CrossFit athlete, and a distance runner are all be considered physically fit, yet have starkly different strengths and weaknesses. So what gives?

The devil’s in the details: physical fitness has several interrelated aspects that, as I’ve learnt, need to be developed holistically. The obvious ones are strength, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. Beyond these, however, lie several others. Power relates to a muscle’s capacity to apply maximum force in the shortest possible time, and determines how quickly you can sprint, or how hard you can punch. Coordination, on the other hand, is the ability to combine different movements into a single one, and necessary for skills from the jump shot to the pirouette. There’s also muscular endurance, which determines how much work your muscles can do over an extended period when performing a movement under lower resistance.

With hindsight, it’s clear a routine of weightlifting with the occasional run wasn’t addressing every dimension of physical fitness for me. That explains my terrible flexibility, poor body awareness, and less-thanideal sense of balance. I’m certain my coordination and agility need work as well. Perhaps it’s time for an overhaul of my routines, to include a dynamic sport, or a return to adult ballet.

Is it really necessary to train so comprehensively? Maybe not. But diversification has its benefits, and even elite athletes do cross training, so why not give things a shot if you haven’t, and see how far a little redirected time and effort can take you? Your strengths and limitations might just surprise you.