Capoeira/gymnastics conditioning advice wanted.

Moto42 · Post by **Moto42** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:48 am

I'm 300ish pounds, 25 years old and in the worst shape of my life.
</BowflexMoment>

So I took up capoeira. Sounds like a stupid idea even to the voices in my head but it syncs up with my true fitness goals. Those being "Do a handstand", "do a back-bridge (ponte)", "do hand-springs/cartwheels" and generally be able jump, roll, duck and move with ease. Improving my musculature and losing the fat are all secondary to that goal.
I'm tired of feeling trapped by my own body.

I'm using exercises from the book Capoeira Conditioning by Gerard Taylor to start out, but it seems to be assuming that the student can already support his full weight on his hands. Flexibility isn't stopping me, it's just a matter of upper body strength. (and being overweight)

The two things I'm focusing most on right now are the hand-stand and back-bridge, any advice on these is appreciated.

Any gymnasts, yoga users or capoeirists out there have any advice to help me train up to my pathetic goals?

Serious Paul · Post by **Serious Paul** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:16 am

Well you don't have to be a Yoga Maester to give some advice here. You want upper body strength. A simple way to do this, at first, is push ups and dips.

Push ups require no equipment, membership or training. Only time and a small amount of space. I suggest you start doing some looking and find a routine that suits you.

Here are some sample routines I found:

Navy SEAL routines

Body by Fish

A Pop Up, but some good stuff here.

The problem is this is all dependent on what you want to do, and driving yourself to do it.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:53 am

Seems like dips would be a good place to start.

Moto42 · Post by **Moto42** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 6:19 am

I'm actually doing pushups in my cube at work while explaining the difference between "left clicking" and "Right clicking" to people over the phone.

jo_alex · Post by **jo_alex** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:06 am

I started capoeira in January. Never done any handstands before in my life and still have problems with supporting my whole body weight on my arms. My trainer's advice was what has already been mentioned here: do push ups. And another one: just try and try continuously - and then one day it just works out.

Some tips which were handy for me:
When you do back bridge, stretch your hand to the max in the air before putting in on the ground behind you, but put it close to your head - so as to make a real arch. The more stretched your back is, the easier it gets. Don't push your knees to the side, hold your legs in a straight line. Get on tip-toes.
With handstand - don't put your hands flat on the ground, only your palm. Your fingers are meant to help you balance. Oh, and don't look at the ground, hold your head so you can look backwards.

Crazy Elf · Post by **Crazy Elf** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:14 pm

Hmm. Well weights is what I typically suggest, as it's probably the easiest way to build strength. Failing that, the push ups are a good way to start. However, if you're doing a lot of push ups, you're going to want to throw some chin ups in there also, or at least the opposite movement to push ups. What I used to do when I trained primarily at home was set up a bar between two chairs, and then lay on the ground, holding the bar. I'd then pull my body up to the bar, doing the same number of that movement as I did push ups. It helps balance things, otherwise your shoulders roll forward and you walk around like a gorilla.

Once you can, try doing handstands against a wall. Just set yourself up and hold it as long as you can. That will help condition you also. If you're watching TV or something like that, get down into a push up position and see how long you can hold it, or do a bridge. It's all about constant movement and conditioning. Getting out and doing a lot of cartwheels is also going to help, so try to go through the basic capoeira movements to music whenever you can. The more you do it, the easier it will be, ultimately.

How tall are you, by the way?

Just Pete · Post by **Just Pete** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:16 am

CE - I've never heard of that bar routine before - that's brilliant.

11 years in the army, and I could never do more than 3 pull-ups. If I'd known about/thought of/been taught about that, I might have been able to do more.

Now to find a bar....that will support my 250...

Moto42 · Post by **Moto42** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:35 am

Thanks for the advice guys.
CE: I'm 5 feet, eleven inches. ( or 180.34 centimeters, since your in "we have a poisonous version of everything" land)
I like that bar idea too.

Crazy Elf · Post by **Crazy Elf** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:40 pm

Okay, well your height is going to be something of a hindrance when it comes to gymnastics. You'll be able to do the movements, but training them up will be difficult. The more height (and weight) you have, the more likely you are to cause damage in the learning of them. Handstands and the like are going to be fine, as you've constant contact with the floor. You'll start to get trouble with jumping and landing.

Lose weight, and lose a lot of it, before you start doing anything too extreme, unless you've access to some pretty hardcore safety equipment. Foam pits are a must. Otherwise, the extent of your early tumbling should be committed to learning how to fall correctly.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:10 pm

Moto42 wrote:I like that bar idea too.

It should be applied to all muscle work. Nearly every muscle has a counterpart which compresses in the opposite direction, and anything that only exercises in one direction can seriously malform your body. I naturally hunch, and naturally have large pecs, and I have to spent a lot of time working on my back - fortunately, I kayak - to make sure I don't end up exactly as CE says.

Second also the comments about height and weight. I'm your height, and I weigh 175, and it's still tough for me to do long drops onto semi-hard surfaces. At 300lbs, you're going to be in /deep shit/ doing jumps onto anything that isn't a cloud. Work slowly upward, pay serious attention to what your joints have to say - this is true for all impact work - and for gods' sakes, get that weight off as quickly as you can.

WillyGilligan · Post by **WillyGilligan** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:03 am

I just started a class here on base. I've got flexibility, I've got some upper body strength and the lower is fine except for my outer calf muscle. That should get better if I keep up with this. What I need is balance and rhythm. Any exercises for those?

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:06 am

WillyGilligan wrote:I just started a class here on base. I've got flexibility, I've got some upper body strength and the lower is fine except for my outer calf muscle. That should get better if I keep up with this. What I need is balance and rhythm. Any exercises for those?

Aerobics and steps. And no, I'm not joking.

jo_alex · Post by **jo_alex** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:13 am

DV8 wrote:
WillyGilligan wrote:I just started a class here on base. I've got flexibility, I've got some upper body strength and the lower is fine except for my outer calf muscle. That should get better if I keep up with this. What I need is balance and rhythm. Any exercises for those?
Aerobics and steps. And no, I'm not joking.

I'll add to that that it should be more dance than weight-lifting aerobics (e.g. step&shape instead of bodypump). There is this new trend to practice balance with BOSU.

Moto42 · Post by **Moto42** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:09 am

WillyGilligan wrote:I just started a class here on base. I've got flexibility, I've got some upper body strength and the lower is fine except for my outer calf muscle. That should get better if I keep up with this. What I need is balance and rhythm. Any exercises for those?

This will sound stupid, but Dance Dance Revolution will defiantly improve your rhythm, and can help a bit with your balance. If you decide to play at home (using one of the free ripoff programs or the actual game... I recommend the ripoffs.) I can tell you how to whip up a "firm" pad that is a vast improvement over the soft-pads and far cheaper than the full-fledged hard pads.

Thanks for the helpful words guys. Oh and about the falls. I know it sounds odd for someone as out of shape as I am, but I can take a fall extreamly well for some reason. Every time I've fallen and not been able to get up was because I was laughing to hard at the circumstances of my downfall.

Anguirel · Post by **Anguirel** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:42 am

WillyGilligan wrote:I just started a class here on base. I've got flexibility, I've got some upper body strength and the lower is fine except for my outer calf muscle. That should get better if I keep up with this. What I need is balance and rhythm. Any exercises for those?

First some stuff you can do on your own --

Balance: First step is don't move your eyes quickly while trying to learn good balance. Look at a distant object and focus on it. As long as you keep your head still, you shouldn't have any trouble with basic balance. Assuming you want balance on your feet, next up is to build up your leg and and particularly your ankles and teh muscles along the sides of your legs (since they don't get a lot of work usually but are pretty critical for maintaining balance). Any time you are on the phone, stand on one foot. Move the other leg around. Switch. Then start working on single-leg crouching - put one foot out in front of you and lower yourself down, then try to stand back up, again all on one leg. Using the phone for this is simply because your legs are free for it, and it gives you a set time to do it regularly.

Rhythm: Any rhythm game (DDR, Guitar Hero, Elite Beat Agents, Frequency/Amplitude) will help some. Learning an instrument more so (particularly drums). Simply marching to music, would probably help. Most forms of ballroom dance (Waltz, Foxtrot, Swing, etc...) will also be good, and most aren't hard to learn the basics of on your own.

If you're a member of a gym or have a local YMCA tha isn't shitty, look for PIYO or NIA classes. They're fusion classes that incorporate yoga concepts into more easily accessible exercise formats. I'm sure there are other good fusion methods around, but those are two I've seen, and they're quite good at handling people who have all sorts of problems, including difficulty with balance, poor joints, weight issues, and so on.