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Despite working really long hours and not getting nearly enough training and workout time in, I've managed to make strength gains this past month. I went to the gym and banged out 10 clapping pull ups with ease. I was shocked that they were that easy, so I strapped on the dip belt with a 45lb plate. I did 3 sets of 5 weighted pull ups and dips. That's definitely stronger than I've been in the past. I used to only be able to do just 1 set of 5 (followed by another weak set of 4).

It's been a long time since I've done weight-lifting strength training. The vast majority of my strength training has been bodyweight exercises over the past 2 years. I have done the occasional squat or deadlift, and dabbled with weighted dips and pull ups, but that's about the extent of the actual "weight" lifting I've done in the past couple of years. I'll probably start ramping up the squats and deadlifts at some point since I find it a little difficult to find similarly challenging bodyweight equivalent for those exercises.

So, I taped my rings with climbing tape and tried muscle ups tonight. I can now say that the grip on my rings is not holding me back anymore. My hands didn't even come close to slipping out of position. In fact, the glue from the climbing tape started seeping through from the adhesive side to the grippy cloth side, making for a truly sticky hold. The first set of muscle ups felt really awesome. But then the 15 minutes of hard jump roping for my cardio warmup and the weekend pull up fest on my new home pull up bar caught up with me.

With my abundance of free time, what do I do on the weekends? Why, I build myself a pull-up bar so I can bang out some pull ups at home. I don't always make it to the gym since my boss seems to think it necessary to keep me working until past 8 p.m. Not a great way to get workouts in when the gym closes at 9. Anyhow, here's what less than $20 worth of parts gets you:

I'm mostly recovered from my weeklong cold and started getting back into my gymnastic skills training. Mostly, I'm back into the handstand and planche practice because I have no other choice with my crazy work hours. I can do those two exercises at home on my parallelettes. Anyhow, I did manage to hold a handstand for nearly 5s. As usual, my technique needs improvement. I need to keep my core tighter and get my leg and shoulder alignment better. I can also hold the arched handstand a little easier than the fully straight version for some weird reason.

Illustration compliments of Lem Fugitt of Robot Dreams

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