Home The Workout
I definitely wanted to write this post after reading Paul Wade's book "Convict Conditioning" because even though pregnant women, those suffering from a lack of opportunities and time, and teenagers living with their parents cannot be compared to the life paths of fallen individuals in the prison world, some overlaps can still be observed. What is the book about? It's about how to train when your life truly depends on your inner strength and toughness. Most fitness systems are designed for domesticated people, meaning those who live relatively safe lives and build their strength out of pride, not self-defense. They see performance in it, and are not driven by the absolute necessity of survival. A professional athlete trains their body to perform well in a sporting event, not to safely escape a life-or-death struggle. Even soldiers and police officers rely more on the safety provided by their weapons to achieve victory, rather than their own raw strength. There is only one place in the world where greater strength can mean the difference between life and death, and that is prison. In this environment where intimidation is a daily practice, where your self-esteem, not just your masculinity, is at stake. In the cruel world of prisons, one either becomes a victim or acquires the strength necessary for survival. Naturally, the similarity between prisoners and the three typical types of people mentioned above does not manifest in this form, but rather in the feeling of confinement itself, and the lack of opportunities. A new mother is in the "prison" of the initial stage of motherhood, where her baby represents the walls and the first few months of childcare are the bars. Confined at home, especially in the first six months after childbirth. Then there are those who have no opportunities. No money, no gym, no time, no life. This is also a kind of cell because anything that prevents you from self-realization is. Finally, there are those under twenty-something living with their parents who don't have money for training but want to train, and furiously do biceps curls at home on the dresser. I left the biggest, San Quentin-type maximum security prison for last, which is represented by obese people living in the prison of themselves and their decadent relationship with food. They carry 30-40-50 kilos of parasitic excess weight, who don't even dare to go to the gym because they are already ashamed of themselves...
These people, in one way or another, live in prison. If not in the same prison Paul Wade lived in for years, it's still a closed world where they have to replace solutions and tools bought with money with creativity. I have a lot of work and due to lack of time, I'm not making any progress with the book, so convict conditioning will be a separate post series because it contains really useful things that you could have also utilized if I had transferred them into this post. Stepping out of the visiting rooms and prison walls, let's break down the periodic system of home training.
Let's start with the mother of all workouts, running. It's one of the best fat-burning exercises, and besides being a full-body workout, it's available to everyone, or at least to those who are not currently enjoying the hospitality of a correctional facility. I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate the first part of this post, and also the first video, to András Stohl, who is probably crying into a camera right now.
If you run alone, listen to music or imagine a world you place yourself in. I usually imagine that I'm at a Real Madrid training session and we're running through the city with the team. It doesn't really matter what autistic dream world you imagine for yourself, the point is that it drives you forward. Margaret Island is great, among other things, because many people run with you at different paces, and we need something like that right now. To improve, a stranger can help you, and you don't even have to talk to them. If someone who runs a little faster than you passes you, try to match their pace and rhythm, or pick out someone running ahead of you and try to catch up. It's important that the other person is only slightly faster than you, because if they're much faster than you, their pace will exhaust you in moments, you'll stop, and we can just go straight to hell. For those who run in the wilderness, or in a place where they are alone, that's really tough, so listening to music remains. I mean, if you live in Nógrád or Borsod, just run into the gypsy quarter and you won't have any problems with motivation to run, I guarantee it. That's all I could professionally add about running, and also, run and never stop before your set goal. The same goes for cycling, and all cardio that relies on longer-term endurance. For new mothers, I already mentioned that pushing a stroller uphill can be an alternative, but a woman who has just given birth doesn't need any training at all in the 4-5 months after childbirth. And certainly no diet because of breastfeeding. That's why every woman who boasts about losing her excess weight 2 weeks after childbirth should be buried alive.
Once again, I want to state... Forget aerobics as a home workout for life. Feel free to douse the inventor of Zumba in gasoline and light a match. It's utterly pointless to stock up on that crap at home. A cautionary example for home aerobic bullshit is a girl I met on New Year's Eve who then had 7-8 kilos of excess weight. I met her again in April, and by then she had been doing Rubint Réka's workouts at home 5 times a week for 4 months, and of course, she couldn't show a single pound lost. Why? Two things. The first and most important is that her body got used to the exercise routines after about the 4th playback. The other is that even if she had switched cassettes, I would bet my dick that she was doing the exercises themselves completely incorrectly technically, if that movement and intensity were even suitable for her body type at all. With aerobic DVDs, we've actually arrived at one of the biggest pitfalls of home workouts. Because anything that is available to us anytime, and we can do anytime, we will never start, or if we do, it will be as ridiculously embarrassing as government communication in March 2009. Just think of the cruel suffering during exam periods. We did everything just so we wouldn't have to study. We did things we couldn't have imagined ourselves doing under normal circumstances. For example, I once started mopping the stairwell just so I wouldn't have to start studying. It's the same with home workouts. The textbooks and notes are right in front of you, but you're at home and you won't start studying. You go to a coffee shop, a library, then yes, then you'll study because you're not at home. What differences these are. Home is a private area where you don't want to do anything. Your living room, your bedroom, your bed should be problem-free, and you don't want to see life's annoyances inside your threshold. It's a completely normal reaction, I personally would throw up just at the thought of my workplace being on the same street as my apartment. And besides, why start now if you can start in 10 minutes? Or in 1 hour, or tomorrow...
Let's take the equipment described in the Home Equipment post as a basis. I've put together a training plan that includes a full-body workout broken down into 3 different days, so that no one understands anything and questions arise about how and what this means.
In the P4P post series, you will find animations for almost every exercise to help you perform them correctly. For rubber band exercises, just Google "rubber band exercises." Do this workout plan and all workout plans for a maximum of 8-10 weeks to prevent your body from getting used to the workouts. Divide the workout plan into 3 periods. Weeks 1-3, weeks 4-6, and weeks 7-10. In the first phase, do 2x10 sets, in the second, 3x10, and in the third, how many?...
Pulse
"My butt, my thighs, my chest, my hips." I've never met a woman who didn't want to train these, nor a guy who didn't want to train chest and biceps. These are the muscles that receive the most emphasis. Women will train these and completely disregard back, shoulder, and arm training, and even then, only if they want to be thinner. The same goes for men, completely neglecting leg training. It's all about sex, I've been harping on this for a thousand years, and then I'm the sexist, chauvinistic asshole. These are the primary muscle groups used during sex, okay, we instinctively train these, but if we want to be proportionate, it wouldn't hurt to train the others too. To start training the other muscles that you consider unnecessary, you need some training intelligence, which will only come with time and training, but for those who are content with home workouts, I can talk about this all day, so I won't overcomplicate things. That's why I'll just simply list the exercises for women and men that they will actually perform. I could write squats for men, but maybe one in ten would do them because it looks gay and "my dick does it."
Men
Does any woman even like that black guy in the Old Spice commercial? I'm asking this seriously. There's a really beastly workout that I used to do. After a few workouts, I achieved such results that a kid came up to me at the Merlin and asked if I was naturally like that or if I was taking something. You need 2 dumbbells and something you can do pull-ups on.
Bicep curls with 5 kg dumbbells 50x, push-ups 15x, pull-ups 10x, and this in a decreasing pyramid, i.e., 50-15-10, 40-15-10, 30-15-10, 20-15-10, 10-15-10. This will tear you apart so much that you won't be able to move. Add an 8-minute P4P ab workout, do it twice a week, go for a run three times a week, and you'll have an upper body that makes you stare blankly like a fish. It wouldn't hurt to train your shoulders either; for that, there's all forms of lateral raises, or go swimming.
Women
If I remember correctly, the last time I looked at a woman's breasts for the first time was in 2004. Only the legs and butt. I'm incredibly uninterested in breasts, but I could win wars alone just to get close to a beautiful female butt and shapely legs. A woman, for me, truly becomes a woman from 3 things. 1. Her feminine quirks, hence her feminine behavior, 2. Her face, and 3. The divine anatomy from the navel down. That's why I tried to put together exercises that, if performed properly, must yield results. Do them and give the visual experience you need to give; the rest doesn't matter. Because you know, if you have small breasts but a good ass, and you learn to suck properly, then there's no problem, as I once wrote.
For at-home glute training, a resistance band is essential. Hook it on and (1)lift your leg forward, then sideways, and backward. This is the basic exercise. Do 3x20 of these in each direction as a warm-up. Forward 20x, sideways and backward too without rest. Then get down on (2)all fours (oh my, this is good), hook the resistance band around your foot, secure the other end, and lift your leg up 3x15/leg. Find something you can step up on to simulate (3)stair climbing, at least 50 cm high, and step up onto it, but make sure the foot you step up with doesn't touch the ground again 3x25/leg. Now comes (4)squats with a broomstick on your neck, from which you should aim for 3x maximum, meaning 3x as many as you can do. No female workout is complete without (5)lunges, not to mention their important role in developing coordination 3x15/leg. Finally, the (6)bridge, which looks like you lift your butt, but your shoulder blades remain on the ground throughout. It's incredibly important that when you lift your butt, you tense it continuously for 2-3 seconds and only then lower it back down, but not to the ground. This is a rather nasty exercise, which means it's also one of the most useful; do 4x15 of these.
If you do these twice a week, and add two runs and an uphill bike ride, I guarantee you'll see results and have amazing sex because even though I know it's not all about external appearance, for a woman it determines quite a lot. Finally, I would like to reiterate what you already know anyway. You can only improve to a certain level with home workouts, but after that, it's impossible because the lack of equipment has its limitations. Then again, maybe after reading "Convict Conditioning," I'll revise what I've written here.
