Doug Ross @ Journal

Bodyweight Excercises

I'm still rehabbing from an injury incurred while playing basketball in August of 2003. A freak shot to the head broke a disc at C4-C5, which resulted in, among other things, a fair amount of pain, assorted bizarre feelings in my appendages, and (eventually) surgery in November of '03. I documented the experience in one of my very first blog entries.

Anyhow, after twenty-plus years hitting the weights, it was time to scale back. In July, I wrote about the Furey workouts I'd been doing, namely body-weight exercises that combine elements of yoga, stretching and resistance training. I thought I'd regale all twelve of my regular readers with my progress thus far. The last time I wrote about my workouts, it went something like this:

7/24/2004 Warmup: 30 minutes biking 1) Three sets of Hindu pushups 2) Three sets of diamond (close-grip) pushups - super-set by moving to knees when exhausted 3) Three sets of pullups 4) Five sets of curls using chin-up bar - basically, a very short form a of a chin concentrating only on biceps

Tonight, I did the following:

12/06/2004 Warmup: 20 minutes biking 1) 125 Hindu squats 2) Set of 16-18 dive-bomber pushups, then set of 10-12 3) Set of 20-24 elevated pushups (feet on exerball, hands on floor with 1-second pause at bottom), then set of 15-18 4) Four sets of Michigan dips (brief pause at bottom and top) 5) Three sets of lat pulldowns 6) Four sets of hammer curls

So I'm not completely machine-free, but it's close. And I have bulked up a bit since July. So far, so good for the body-weight regime.