Improving Your Pull-Ups for the Marines Physical Fitness Test

Article by Jonathon Hyatt

Improving Your Pull-Ups for the Marines Physical Fitness Test – Health

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Pull-ups are the hardest part of the Marines physical fitness test. Most Marines can get ten or twelve, but hitting that elusive twenty takes carefully-planned training. Whether you’re trying to secure a spot at officer school – or you’re just getting into shape for your next test – follow these tips for your best performance yet.

Train Heavy

When people have a rep goal for a certain exercise, they usually spend way too much time training with light weights. This is true for pull-ups, as well as squats, push-ups, and other calisthenics. Your goal might be to do twenty chins with your bodyweight, but adding extra resistance is what will actually get you there.

If you don’t already have one, find a sturdy chain belt for adding weight. If you have a weighted vest with adjustable poundage, that’ll also work. Dedicate at least half of your training sessions to using heavy weights that only allow you to get six to eight pull-ups. If you get stronger, you’ll be able to do more reps with your bodyweight, as well.

Practice Daily

If you want to become proficient at any exercise, you need to practice it as often as possible. This doesn’t mean that every pull-up session needs to be a gut-busting, all-out effort – it simply means that you should do them every day. In fact, you may even want to set up a portable pull-up bar in your home. Do easy sets of five or ten every time you pass it, and you’ll soon find the movement to be far easier than before.

Hit the Gym

It’s important to do a variety of exercises to strengthen your upper back and biceps – the muscles that do most of the work in the pull-up. Barbell rows, dumbbell rows, and deadlifts are the best movements you can do, and you should focus on constantly lifting heavier weights. Some Marines are quick to write off curls as “non-functional,” but they can also help you squeeze out those last few inches to get your chin over the bar. Bicep work is especially important if you’re going to use an underhand grip in your PFT.

Energize

Make sure you fuel yourself with the right food every time you train or test. Poor nutrition will cause you to lose steam well before you hit twenty pull-ups, even if you’re strong enough to do it. Low-carb diets are great for losing weight, but you need starches and sugars for intense training. Energize with oats, potatoes, and yams for an even keel of energy. Gatorade and other glucose-based sports drinks are good, too – but stay away from table sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

Lose Some Weight

Heavy hitters can sometimes get good scores, but it’s the middleweights and little guys who usually excel at the Marines physical fitness test. To really get good at pull-ups, you’ll need to strike a balance between having enough muscle mass – and not weighing yourself down with extra flab. To get as lean and mean as possible, eat al of your carbs just before and after training. Load up on protein, eat moderate amounts of healthy fat, and stay away from fast food and other junk.

About the Author

Pull-ups are the hardest part of the Marines physical fitness test. Most Marines can get ten or twelve, but hitting that elusive twenty takes carefully-planned training.

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Jonathon Hyatt

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For TShirts strengthproject.spreadshirt.com www.strength-project.com http please visit our website and facebook for more training advice, tips, and discussions. This is the first weeks pull up videos for beginners. If you can already do pull ups, this weeks video is not for you. Make sure you subscribe and for a workout routine for beginners, please go to strength-project.com and in the tutorial section, go to calisthenics and you’ll find pull ups week 1 for beginners. Do these workouts and eventually you WILL get to the point where you can do a pull up.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Heart Rate Training Zones – On Improving Fitness

Article by Gerald Flume

Want to improve your physical fitness, including your heart? Increase your physical stress. Of course there are right and wrong ways of doing this, but an analogy might get us started.

I. The benefits of (physical) stress for physical fitness

Tulip growers try to maximize the number of bulbs they grow per square meter or foot of available soil. But when the plants grow close together, they each tend to reduce the wind drag per plant among their neighbors at the same time that they all compete for the same square inches of sunlight as they grow upward. The result is thin stems, so thin that a mature plant cannot hold the flower and head upright by itself. So the tulip growers gently pass their extended arms over the tops of the growing plants to give the stems a little stress. Not enough to break them, but enough to stress them into growing thicker, stronger stems.

Humans tend to lose physical strength where there is too little physical stress or muscular exercise. One of the best ways to increase muscular strength and efficiency is known as interval training where intervals of more and less intense exercise and rest are interspersed. A core feature of interval training is switching between aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

II. Interval training builds strength and endurance

Anaerobic exercise is intense and brief. One’s heart is racing near its maximum and the muscles are burning glycogen in the presence of very little available oxygen (anaerobic means “no oxygen”). This is especially the kind of stress that “thickens the stem” in humans, or rather than stimulates the muscles to build up. Especially as people age, anaerobic exercise becomes increasingly important for maintaining physical strength and endurance.

But anaerobic exercise of course comes at a price, and here is where consultation with a doctor becomes critical for advice that may enable one to avoid injury or sometimes a heart attack, especially if a person has certain physical conditions or is on some kinds of medication. Know your reasonable limitations beforehand. And in all cases of anaerobic exercise, a price is the build up of lactic acid and other waste products in the muscles resulting in physical symptoms of pain and exhaustion.

Intervals of rest or lesser exercise then become necessary in order to flush out and oxidize the lactic acid in the blood stream and elsewhere. Aerobic exercise relies on “burning” oxygen along with “fuel” like carbohydrates. It is less intense than anaerobic exercise, and can be carried on for relatively longer periods of time.

Varying periods of rest have their own benefits in the process too, such as to rebuild and strengthen damaged muscle tissues with proper nutrition. And warm ups and cool down periods play into the regimen for things like muscle stretching and metabolic preparation. In interval training, periods of more and less intense exercise plus rest are repeated. This has proven more efficient and effective than prolonged aerobic exercise alone for many sports activities.

III. Interval training pegged to heart rate zones

One of the key means of measuring and progressing in interval training then becomes heart rate zones. Although these may at times be a bit fuzzy and variable around the edges, nonetheless heart rate zones can be a usefully pegged, for example, to anaerobic versus aerobic exercise periods or to rest or warm up versus aerobic exercise.

A heart rate within such-and-such beats per minute range should be maintained for so-many seconds or minutes for a given individual for a given section of interval exercises. As one moves in training from less fit to more, the ideal intervals of heavier exercise will increase and rest periods decrease or move farther apart. And again, where heart rate is measured, such as conveniently with technology, heart rate ranges defined as heart rates zones. Heart rate zones then identify or help identify levels of exercise, particularly aerobic versus anaerobic versus rest.

For a healthy person at least, heart rate zones are mapped out typically based on heart rate measured at rest (minimum beats per minute) and at very heavy exercise (maximum heart rate). The latter can become problematic especially where health concerns come into play, but in less precise fashion, can be taken as 220 minus age before the age of 30, with a beats per minute tappering off more slowly after age 30, especially for a healthy person. And there are other related or unrelated means as well.

Improving Physical Fitness with Home Workout Equipment

Regardless of your reason of improving your physical fitness with a home workout, whether you want to build a healthier self or sculpt a body for others to admire with jealousy, you will need to follow the same general guidelines as most other people who are looking to get into shape.

The Home Workout Machines Takeover

Even though some people firmly believe that the only way of making true and noticeable progress is by dedicating themselves to training at the gym, this may not hold true for everyone. Indeed, there are many people out there who seem to strive better when working out within the confines of their home. The number of people falling into this category has largely increased with the recent influx of various workout machines and exercise equipment designed for home usage.

If you believe that you can achieve results fast using only body weight exercises and perhaps dumbbells then you will be in for a rude awakening.

Of course, you will end up improving your physical fitness but it will take you a very long time to achieve the results you want. When it comes to exercise equipment, most legitimate offers provide you with a specially designed machine that is designed to help you focus your training on a specific aspect. There is a large variety of machines for you to choose from out there, ranging from some of them designed to improve your flexibility while others help you focus solely on your arm muscles.

More Affordable Choices

If you argue that most of these machines represent quite an expensive investment, then you are of course right.

Luckily however, there is a large number of manufacturers out there who have been working on less complicated pieces of equipment that are still proven to be effective.

When I was out there myself looking for something cheap that would help me get faster results from my home workout I came across the Shake Weight, which is like a dumbbell that shakes back and forth while you squeeze it and try to hold it in place. Seeing as how it only came at the price of $ 30 I actually gave it a shot. Even though I found that the claims of the Shake weight’s makers were heavily exaggerated I still found it very useful to some extent

Find More Physical Fitness Workout Articles

Improving Sports Performance

One of the great features of human nature is the fact that we are naturally competitive. And whether this is in competition with a friend or rival, or simply in competition with yourself as you strive to improve a time or goal, improving sports performance is an important objective for many people like you.

When you look online at the articles regarding almost any sport, you will often find a lot of them giving tips, or promoting products that promise to improve your sports performance. But while many of these are often full of false promises, if you find the right programs, whether it be in nutrition or training, you can definitely get the noticeable differences that you’ll be looking for.

Training

As with almost any skill or talent, the best way to get better at it is to train and practice regularly. When you meticulously follow the best training routines, you can significantly improve your skills at your chosen sport which will dramatically increase your performance in that field.  The more time and effort you are willing to expend in your training, the more you will usually be rewarded in terms of improved performance when the time comes for you to achieve your goals.

Another area which can also lead to improved sports performance when combined with a good training regime is using quality equipment.  After all, it is difficult to hit a ball clean and true when your equipment is broken or worn.  Whether it is in terms of clothing or the tools used to play the game, the small improvements in your sports performance will come with the edge that can be found by using the best equipment.

Nutrition

Engaging in any sport will, of course, require you to be fit and healthy.  To get the best sports performance from your body, you will need to give it the best nutrition so that it responds in the right way.  Depending on whether you need to improve your athletic ability or strength in order to get the most from your sports performance, choosing a diet which will allow you to fulfill these aims will help you get the most from your body.  For many people who lead busy lives, the right supplements can help you make up for any deficiencies in your diet, so that you are well-placed to achieve that desired improvement in your sports performance.

Conclusion

Achieving improvements in your sports performance will really help you to step up your game.

And to do this, you have to commit and be dedicated to achieving your goals, and train at a suitable level that will lead to your fitness and skills improving.

By combining the right training methods with the right nutrition and the right equipment, you can definitely get the big improvements in sports performance that you desire, which will allow you to get the most from the sports you participate in, and to achieve your goals, whether they be big or small.