Dieting

A body mass index of 23.7 is normal weight, so I haven't been on a serious diet ever before. However, it is too much stomach fat for pole dancing, so next year I'll diet from 63kg to 55kg, resulting in 20.7 BMI.

The problem with mere physics-based diet of eating everything less it that it increases hunger, devastates ability to concentrate and produces relapses. Cutting out just starch (pasta, potatos, rice) seems to alleviate these side effects. Full ketogenic diet would require too much cooking. Keeping weight stable is much easier task: just weight yourself every morning, and eat less for a day if your weight crosses your Alarm Barrier. Body has some internal weight-stabilization mechanism, which makes this easier by controlling appetite.

Actually I already started on December 1st, first losing 1.5kg by dieting. Then a puke disease on Christmas days with vomitting and diarrhea took another 1 kg away, apparently permanently, despite me eating as much as I could keep inside, and sometimes a bit more, triggering The Symptom. Although the figure on the scale decreases, this is bad news for dieting. First of all, bed rest wastes muscles, so relative strength doesn't increase. Secondarily, the bacterial ecosystem in the guts still haven't recovered to the point where stool doesn't resume liquid form from a bit heavier exercise.

Body as a mute create

In this poetic and insightful piece Megan compares your body to a mute create. Your body knows what it wants, but can't speak it, so it sends signals. These signals are reliable. They need to be interpreted correctly though, for example aching from new kind of training does not mean "go to bed and don't do that ever again" - it means "stretch the aching away".

Your poor body. It is mute and it is trapped there with you. It can't say what it means. It can only send you signals, sensations that your bossy, dominant mind can ignore. Your mind wants other things, like information to chew on or distractions. It will find them while your body tries to get attention. It sends lethargy or a pounding heart to tell you you didn't eat what it needs. It sends an ache to ask you to please twist and bend and lengthen it in more directions. It sends joint pain to say that you've gotten out of alignment, please come back to your spine and work from there. It gets weak when it wants you to know that you should fight your limits. As soon as you do, it will rejoice by pushing those limits away and teaming with you to charge down the new limits.

As soon as you are moving in the right direction, you have no greater cheerleader than your body. It LOVES you. It is SO EXCITED to do things with you. ...

My other natural instincts don't guide me well, nor do they give reliable "raw" information which just needs to be interpreted. Concentration instincts tell me to get immediate satisfaction, like playing World of Warcraft. Social instincts mainly tell me to withdraw from conversations. But signals from my body are exceptionally reliable.

I can barely walk now.

Went to rope skipping group exercise at gym. Lacked both the technique and the aerobic fitness. In addition to just jumping, the girls did one-leg jumping, double-speed jumping, running rumping and moving sideways while jumping. I had more than enough trouble with just jumping.

It was preceeded by gradual warm-up and followed by stretching, so all the soreness and stiffness hit only 24 hours afterwards. Before that, nothing but normal tiredness. Seems that stretching really works.

It's a long time since any exercise hit my weaknesses so surgically. A rope cost 4 euros, so price is not an excuse to not own one.

Miss Pole Dance 2009

The difference between the gymanst's bar and the dancer's pole is that one is horizontal while the other is vertical. The versatile sport of pole dancing combines striptease-influenced sensual dancing and gymanstic circus acrobatics. Next I'll present videos from three pole traditions - striptease-influenced pole dancing, mallakhamb and Chinese circus.



This is a good combination of acrobatics and striptease influences:

• At 0:15, she's first doing a split and combining it to striptease-style leg-waving.
• At 0:32, more split variations follow.
• At 1:15, she's doing a cartwheel and some handstand walking.
• At 2:10, leg-waving upside down (!)

Mainly women practise Western pole dancing. In contrast, Chinese pole acrobatics needs so much strength that you only see men doing it. The aesthetics is about quick, explosive transitions and grace instead of cute sensuality.



The Hindi word Mallakhamb means "pole gymanstics". The influence of yoga is visible, when the man puts his leg behind his neck in Sirasana style.



Women do Mallakhamb with ropes.



This last video is from an American pole dancing competition. It is the most striptease-minded, but what I've seen in strip clubs is nothing like this. In theory, I'm all for sexually explicit dancing. In practise, the few times I've gone to strip clubs the strippers have mainly rubbed themselves against the pole and done a few swirls. They rely too much on naked skin. If I want to watch sexy dancing, I'd rather go to some electronic music event, where some girls put effort into dancing well. Wearing stylish clothes enables them to stay in relaxed mood and put up much better show.

In Friday, I was in a pre-Christmas party and Miss Pole Dance 2009 was held next door. I expected something like in these videos, but the overall level was quite low. The venue, Be-pop, was the tackiest nightclub I've seen anywhere. In general, pole dancing in Tampere seems to be about tattooed prole girls doing striptease gestures and basic gymnastics in 15cm tops and 10cm pants.

Ashtanga yoga and gymnastics

Some sports train juniors into top athletes, while other sports enable adult hobbyists to stay fit. In team ball games, ice hockey is the serious sport while floorball is the sport of choice for amateurs. Many schools and companies have a floorball field reservation for their students or employees. In martial arts, wrestling trains young professional athletes while krav maga, kickboxing and various schools with Japanese names train adults.

For gymnastics, the closest matching adult sport is Ashtanga yoga. Yoga covers those parts of gymnastics which are realistic for adults, and which are not better trained at gym.

• Flexibility exercises - included in Ashtanga Yoha
• Static strength positions - included in Ashtanga Yoga
• Pulling and pressing - better trained in gym
• Dynamic acrobatics - out of reach for adults

Many static positions are part of both gymnastics and Ashtanga yoga, with different names:

• Handstand is Navasana Vinyasa Out
• Frog stand is a fundamental preparatory exercise for plance and handstand. Kukkutasana and Marichyasana B Vinyasa Out are more difficult variations of frog stand.
• Planche is called Mayurasana
• Headstand is called Muka Hasta Sirasana A
• Going to Navasana and back to the ground is called a V-up in gymnastics.
• Split is not part of Ashtanga Yoga, but Supta Parsvasahita is close.
  

Alexandra Kroha in a split.

Hardcore gymanstics book

"Gymnastics for ironheads" sums up the spirit of the book. The goal is the same as in weight training - to develop strong and functional muscles. But it only uses bodyweight exercises from gymnastic tradition.

Gymnasts are famous for superhuman acrobatic feats where they fly from pole to pole or do multiple cartwheels and aerials on a narrow beam, but this book is nothing like that. It deals with dips, pull-ups, headstands, handstands and other strength exercises. The main claim is that gymnasts who start by systematically developing a strong body will also find acrobatic movements easier.

I ordered it based on this article, and got what I wanted. My old weight training book classifies exercise to 8 categories for different parts of body. A good program covers all categories to achieve balanced development. This new book has bodyweight exercises for all the categories. (The categories are knee dominat, hip dominant, core, vertical/horizontal push/pull, and explosive force.)

So if pig flu strikes, I can stop going to gym and get full exercise with my bodyweight using just walls, mats, a pull-up bar and rings.

The funny thing is that the author is a coach for a national team of young gymnasts. So all the pictures are about 9 - 15 years old boys. It also classifies the moves with 5 stars. I can currently only do 1/2 star movements and hope to progress some day to 1-star moves. Luckily, it lists much more exercises in the easy end. It ends with a motivational story about the benefits of strength training for gymansts.

A gymnastics based workout of the day
...
After a four hour workout and completing their ring strength training, the general physical preparation assignment was to complete, in 15 minutes, as many rounds as possible of the following: 10 muscle-ups followed by 20 pause-jump squats. The winner would be the one who completed most rounds in 15 minutes.
...
The pause-jump squats were simply a jumping squat with a 2-3 second pause at the bottom with hips parallel or slightly below the knees. I placed these here primarily to provide a break for their upper body before the next set of muscle-ups. (As a side note, towards the end of the workout, one of my athletes became bored with the pause-jump squats and began adding a back flip to the jump portion.)

The results were as follows: Chris and Greg chased each other throughout the entire fifteen minutes, completing 12 rounds each and were begining a 13th round when the clock ran out. Chris was crowned champion as he finished his 12th round of muscle-ups one rep ahead of Greg. Greg was, needless to say, quite annoyed to have been defeated by one rep. ... They were not extremely fatigued and would have been fine had I extended the time of the general physical preparation to twenty minutes.

Allan and Zach were tied for third with 10 rounds apiece for 100 single bar muscle-ups and 200 jump-squats. As an interesting aside, Allan ... had only recently turned 9 years old that March.

We finished off our workout with 50 flairs on the pommel horse. ...

So if you want to be able to do 100 pull-ups in 15 minutes once you reach the age of 9 years, this book tells you how!

Bodyweight training

Lately, I've gained enough strength to add dips and chin-ups to my gym program, and ordered a gymnastics book which should contain more bodyweight moves.

In weight training you adjust the weight to suit your strength. In bodyweight training, you have variations. Bodyweight training requires some initial strength, so not everyone can start with it. But you won't face the upper limit ever. Here are for example some pull-up variations:

• Chin-up. Heavy on biceps (hauis). The lightest of all pull-up variations.
• Pull-up. Hands have overhand grip unlike in chin-up. A little heavier. I expect to have enough strength for this when I get bored with chin-ups.
  
• Mixed-grip pull-up. One hand has underhand grip while the other has overhand grip. It is good for endurance that you can use a bit different muscles between series.
• Muscle-up. You raise above the bar by doing a dip after the pull-up phase.
• False grip pull-up. A component move for the muscle-up. It enables you to switch to dip after the pull-up phase.
  
• Front lever pull-up. It is extremely heavy on your core and shoulders to even get to the static position.
• One-handed pull-up.