The other day a friend of mine made one of the more creative notes I’ve seen to promote my site on Twitter for “Follow Friday.”
Fellow fitness, hockey and MMA enthusiast @m3mma (Mixed Martial Marketing) posted the following note, and it reminded me of a good old exercise I had neglected for a while.
m3mma: #ff @colintimberlake Instead of reading this he’d rather you do a few turkish get-ups. But if you can’t, you should at least follow him.
Sure enough, I had been letting the Turkish Getup gather some dust in my routine. In fact, it was pretty damn near fossilized. It also turns out that I had, only a week or two earlier, come across a good video of the Turkish Getup, thought exactly the same thing, and then promptly forgotten about it and not done any Turkish Getups until the Follow Friday incident.
It turns out that the demonstration video is by Maximum Fitness cover model and previous training inspiration Nathane Jackson, who actually has several videos demonstrating numerous exercises on his website and YouTube channel.
Kettlebells are being used in the above demonstration, but the exercise can also be done with dumbbells. Give it a try.
Hopefully you will never have to contemplate making use of this exercise, this technique or anything like it because your gym will be fully stocked with all the fundamental equipment, including a seated calf raise machine.
However, life doesn’t always provide everything we want and, in my case, I often frequent a gym that is pretty well put-together except for one machine, whose name I won’t mention, that is noticeably absent.
As you probably know, there are two muscles that make up the calves, the soleus and the gastrocnemius. The soleus is specifically targeted when the knee is bent (a seated calf raise as opposed to a standing calf raise with the leg straight). And needless to say, since plenty of gymrats neglect calves in general, they will also be quite likely to simply do the standing calf raise if anything at all.
A proper and ideal calf workout will incorporate calf flexion with a straight and bent leg, and this is what I aspire to do…even if the gym won’t help me out!
A typical seated calf raise will have you sitting with your legs bent at 90 degrees, with a padded bar that goes across the top of your thighs. You add barbell plates to both ends of the bar (or sometimes to a pole that juts out the front) and lift your heels and lower them back down.
Sometimes we have to get creative, though, and this is where my modified (makeshift) calf raise can come in handy. Now, this is one of those exercises that you have to be extremely careful with and should simply do without if you are a novice or intermediate in the gym, due to the control required and risk if you lose control the equipment.
However, if you are serious about your calves, don’t have access to a true seated calf raise, and are comfortable with free weights and know your limitations, then this is an option you can consider and one that I use when I am deprived of the proper machines.
I take a couple of Aerobic Steps, the kind everybody uses in the aerobics classes for step-ups, and place them in front of wherever I will be sitting. You should find a place to sit where your legs will be bent at about 90 degrees when you are seated and have your feet on the aerobic steps. Something like the seat at a pec deck machine or seated dip machine will work.
I lay one aerobic step down in the normal manner, as though I would use it for step-ups, and then use it to prop up the other aerobic step on a slant, so that the second step is sloping down toward me where I am sitting. Ideally the angle will be something from 30 to 45 degrees, allowing a fluid range of motion with a comfortable starting and resting position for the heels.
I can not stress enough how important the following is: Make absolutely sure that the slanted aerobic step is solid in in its position! Make sure it won’t slide off, slip off, collapse or otherwise come apart during the exercise or you could be facing disaster. If you are unsure at all, just don’t bother with the exercise.
If, however, you are comfortable with the setup, you can take your seated and put your feet on the aerobic step. Your knees should be bent at about 90 degrees, and your toes pointing up from the ground at 30 to 45 degrees.
You can now lay barbell plates across your lap to create the desired amount of weight and resistance for your calves as your perform repetitions of the calf raise.
You may wish to pad your lap with a towel or something. I don’t find it necessary and have actually become quite comfortable with the plate and finding the ideal grooves in it for my knees.
It is also wise to utilize a spot, due to the balance required in executing repetitions with a stack of weights on your lap that has the potential to get somewhat tall.
Once again, this is an exercise to employ with extreme caution, and one not to employ at all for beginners, but it is nonetheless an option when you are faced with the options of either getting creative or neglecting half of your calves workout.
Okay, this is not the most scientific name for an exercise that you are going to see, and I am quite sure that it is not anywhere close to the proper name for the exercise.
But the fact of the matter is that:
(1) I don’t know the name of the exercise;
(2) it may not even have an official name;
(3) it is used infrequently in the gym if at all by most people;
(4) you are unlikely to see anyone do it and even less likely to try it; and
(5) you have to be at a pretty high level of abdominal and overall body strength to accomplish one rep, and maintain any semblance of form. In fact, it is pretty difficult to do one rep with bad form.
With that said, I give you the Twisting Rocky IV.
EQUIPMENT and SETUP
The best equipment I have come across for this particular exercise is just the parallel close-grip handles for pull-ups that you’ll see on that equipment complex that has pretty much the same setup at each end: a cable for tricep pressdowns and bicep curls, a lat pulldown cable and probably a seated row cable. Same thing on the far end of the apparatus, and then in between, a wide space with two cables that can be used for flyes and lateral raises and so on…
Screw it, why am I describing this in words? I’m talking about this thing over to the right…
Anyway, just getting into the starting position can be a bit of a challenge and, if your grip strength is not 100% reliable, dangerous as well. You grab the parallel chin up bars, pull your torso up so that it is parallel to the ground (like a gymnast) and flex your waist to 90 degrees so that your legs are pointing straight up.
You are now set up somewhat like the gymnasts on the rings in the Olympics. Holding yourself off the ground with the soles of your feet pointed at the ceiling.
MOTION
In a very slow and controlled motion, gently twist your waist to one side so that your legs rotate and become parallel to the ground. Once they reach parallel, reverse the motion and twist so that your legs are pointing up again. Then slowly twist your waist to the other side until your legs are parallel to the ground and return them to the upright position. There’s a rep.
As your legs approach the position where they are parallel to the ground, momentum and gravity are going to get stronger and want to pull them all the way around to the floor. This means that (1) you should be doing these in a very slow manner, not some rapid jerky back-and-forth twisting that will wrench and over-rotate your back, and (2) you should not even be attempting these if you are anywhere near the beginning or even intermediate stage of strength training and conditioning.
If you can’t do several pull-ups, pretty heavy wood-choppers and lots of crunches, it isn’t time yet to even think about an exercise like this.
FURTHER INFORMATION
This is a pretty advanced move and not one that is really an irreplaceable part of any routine. If you are doing this one, you are either training for a specific sport or activity, putting on a show, testing yourself or in dire need of variety.
The entire time you are performing this exercise, beyond the obvious targeted oblique workout (like any twisting exercise)…you are going to be stressing your forearms (holding your body weight with your grip), your biceps (holding up your body weight) and your front abs (holding your legs up in the starting position). While you don’t want any of these to fail in the middle of this exercise, the last thing you want to give is your grip, because you’ll be landing on your back.
Therefore, I definitely don’t recommend doing this exercise over nails, broken glass or a pit of vipers.
That said, if and when you get to the point that you can do a few (or more of these) in a proper and controlled manner, you will be using a lot of stabilizers and be testing the capabilities of your.
WHY “TWISTING ROCKY IV’S”?
Because, like I said, it’s something of a show exercise, and it reminds me a bit of the body raises Sylvester Stallone starts doing at 1:15 of the following clip from Rocky IV…
Now imagine he is holding himself off the ground by his hands, has his waist bent, and is instead twisting his body. Anyway, I said it before and I will say it again. This is not an exercise for beginners. If you even think about doing this exercise before you are ready, you will get hurt. Just thinking about this exercise will injure you if you aren’t careful.
Another exercise I usually only see being done by the more serious crowd in the gym is the dumbbell pullover. This one goes by a few different names, and I am in the unfortunate habit of calling it all kinds of different things, often trying to be as descriptive as possible so that someone coming across the name can get the idea.
Therefore, I’ve used numerous terms, including “lying overhead dumbbell raise” or “supine dumbbell chest pullovers” or “overhead chest dumbbell raise” and so on. There are pretty much a hundred ways to describe / name this one. Also, calling it the “lying” pullover implies one particular variation of the exercise.
Please note that this exercise can also be legitimately characterized as a “back exercise” due to the involvement of the latissimus dorsi. To my experience in the gym, however, people tend more often to work it into their chest routines and think of it as a chest exercise.
EQUIPMENT and SETUP
Get yourself a bench and a dumbbell of your desired weight and set yourself up on the bench in one of two ways:
- Lie lengthwise on the bench with your head lining up at about the end of the bench. Don’t leave enough bench past your head so that the bench will impede the dumbbell from going down below your head; or
- Put your upper back and shoulders on the bench, with your body lined up perpendicular to the bench. Keep your torso and thighs relatively straight, with your knees bent at about 90 degrees (feet on the floor) to support this position. Flex the hips slightly.
MOTION
Placing your hands on the underside of the top plate on the dumbbell, raise the dumbbell straight up above your chest. Now, lower the dumbbell past and below your head (upper arm should be parallel to the floor and in line with your body). Return the dumbbell to the upright position over your chest. This qualifies as one rep. The elbows are slightly flexed during this exercise.
VARIATIONS
The two primary variations are already described in the “equipment” section. You can lie lengthwise on the bench or crossways with your upper back as the point of contact. A related exercise is the barbell pullover, and the key difference should be obvious.
FURTHER INFORMATION
This is another one of those exercises that is good to throw into a comprehensive chest workout, but not one upon which I would base my entire chest program. Looking at the chest workout as a whole, if bench press is your patty, and some form of flyes is your bun, then pullovers might be the mustard or slice of tomato on your hamburger. You aren’t going to want a mustard sandwich, but some form of garnish will make your burger better as a whole.
I find that this exercise supersets nicely with flat flyes, given that the weight involved is generally similar to one dumbbell for the flyes. As well, the equipment is the same and it is possible to go directly from your last rep of flyes to losing one dumbbell and beginning your pullovers.
If I am using a two-minute rest between sets normally, and decide to do the flyes-directly-to-pullovers program, I will typically reduce my rest period following the pullovers to something like 40-60 seconds. I find the motions and stresses between the two exercises to be different enough that the pullover period counts at least as much toward a rest for flyes as it does toward further exhaustion of the muscles.
One back exercise of some utility, and one that I don’t see being done too often around the gym, is the tried-and-true supine row. It can go by a few names, including supine pull-ups, horizontal pull-ups, and so on.
EQUIPMENT and SETUP
This exercise is typically done by taking an adjustable bench and pulling it up to a Smith Rack, so that it runs parallel to the bar.
Adjust the height of the bar so that if you are hanging on to the bar with your body parallel to the floor (feet on the ground or the bench) your head and back are just above the ground.
Adjust the placement of the bench so that you can put your heels on the bench, with your back straight while hanging onto the Smith bar, and there is no danger of your feet sliding off.
I personally prefer to have my feet elevated off the ground by using the adjustable bench, but this is not a requirement to perform the exercise. You can have your body straight and your heels on the ground.
MOTION
With your arms fully extended and your body straight, pull yourself up to the Smith bar. Then lower yourself back down so that your arms are fully extended. This qualifies as one repetition.
VARIATIONS
If I were only able to do this exercise in one manner, I would opt for a wide overhand grip, with the backs of my hands facing me and my hands a little further than shoulder-width apart.
This exercise is subject to the same variations as chin-ups and pull-ups, however. You can have an underhand grip and vary the width of your grip.
You can also add resistance by placing weight plates on your abdomen for the exercise.
FURTHER INFORMATION
While a fairly simple exercise, its obscurity and a few moments of required setup mean that I usually only ever see it being done by the more serious people in the gym. I consider this exercise to be more of a “condiment” to my back workout than the “meat” in the sandwich, and thus I typically throw it in pretty late in the session if I use it. There is nothing to say that you can’t make a meal out of it, however.
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