The three year plan is now well over and it is time to reassess the situation. My first idea was to create a new plan, the ten year plan. This would have as its main objective maintaining health and strength as it is now with a focus on avoiding injury and illness. To get from 50 to 60 without any major medical intervention and to not lose any strength over this period. Yet at fifty I find myself in quite good condition without any health problems and a fitness level that must be significantly higher than most of my contemporaries. Why should I just maintain this level of fitness? Why not progress? One thing that occurs to me is that it is a bit dangerous to merely maintain a level of fitness. I suspect that if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards. The struggle has to be maintained in the forward direction and at some point there may well be a moving backwards even though you are making every effort to progress. Yet that time is, hopefully, some way off. With the new ideas about diet and the casting away of the carbohydrate is essential myth it looks quite possible, if you truly focus on it, that you can remain fit and vibrant up to ninety or more. A diet that comprises mostly animal protein and fat and that eschews the processed and even natural carbohydrates combined with intermittent fasting will preserve the body into old age. Well that’s the gamble anyway. We know that the standard diet and frequency of eating have a bad track record so there is not much to lose and a lot to gain. Well, I guess you might lose out on a lot of enjoyable eating moments yet eating bad stuff has long since ceased to be enjoyable for me and I rather enjoy a mostly carnivorous diet and the way my body looks because of it.
So the new direction? I must get stronger or fail trying. The new plan is a three month plan. Over three months I will concentrate on upper body strength. At the end of three months I want to have noticeably stronger abilities and be able to get a medical done that shows outstanding blood quality. How to measure strength? This is quite easy as I want to be able to do something that I cannot do now and that is a genuine muscle up. I can do a muscle up by jumping at a bar that is not too high but I can’t do one from a hanging position and this I would dearly love to do. It has practical applications for parkour as well as quite high walls can be scaled in what looks to be one graceful movement if you can easily do a muscle up.
To begin to train to do a genuine muscle up you need to be able to do 15 genuine chin ups and 15 dips in one set. The video above says 20/20. Presently I can only do 14 chin ups and I haven’t really done much dip training. This morning I was able to do 10. So now I need to concentrate on getting these numbers up. At the end of three months I expect to be able to do 20 chin ups and 20 dips as well as several muscle ups from a hanging, legs dangling position. This is not too ambitious but I will need to work at it, at times to the detriment of other things maybe although I suspect not. Overall fitness will still be required and a light frame will only help matters.
I will plot progress on this blog as I make my attempt. I thought I might spend less time commenting about theory and stuff and actually focus on this practical attempt at something that should be quite achievable. I want to concentrate on developing practical and functional strength.
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