Finally, a light appears

I've never had a cold or flu or whatever that was so on/off. I first thought I was getting sick over two weeks ago and it didn't hit me fully until just this past Tuesday and Wednesday. Today, I actually feel like I'm getting better, rather than the symptoms just disappearing. I'l still a bit stuffed up but the caughing has subsided. I'm proud that I didn't really miss any workouts either. I don't think working out with the cold prolonged anything, my wife and several people I spoke to also mentioned they had oddly long illnesses recently with symptoms that come and go.

Anyway, on to a new challenge. Partly from clicking around on Beast Skills, I want to incorporate more challenging bodyweight positions. To me, nothing says fitness more than being able to handle your bodyweight with ease. What I'd like to do is work on my muscle-ups, handstands, hand stand push-ups and the straddle planche and front levers. Dragon Door has an article on progessing through the planche and front levers that I plan to incorporate into my training. In fact I'm going to start it right when I'm done here. Besides looking at Beast Skills, the other thing that motivated me was that, to my surprise, I can now do one rep of one-armed push-ups. I had bought Pavel's Naked Warrior book several years ago and practiced them for two months without getting anywhere and gave up. I pretty much gave up on them and then a few days ago I tried to see if they were as hard as I remember and I surprised myself by actually doing one. I also really began to see definition in my abs when I started doing L-sits off the pull-ups bar so I know these types of exercises really sculpt the body. There are no fat noodle armed gymnasts. You can see in the photo series at the top of the page right where I started doing L-sits, right between photos 4 and 5 the weight didn't change much but I started doing the exercise 3 times a week.

Right now, I can't balance more than 10 seconds in the frog stand, and the tuck front lever is probably less impressive than that. I cannot free hand stand long enough to impress anyone so I certainly can't do any free hand-stand pushups although I can do 1-2 hand stand push-ups using a wall for support. I cannot do any muscle-ups although I can do pull-ups on the rings and dips on the rings without problem.

So, I guess by the end of summer (I'm not sure how long this takes, I could be giving myself too much or too little time) I'd like to be able to do the following:

Minimum 20-second free hand stand
(then) 1 Free Hand Stand Push-up
1 Muscle-up
(then) 2 Consecutive Muscle-ups
Working for Time on the Advanced Tuck Planche
1 Tuck Planche Push-ups
Working for Time on the Advanced Tuck Front Lever
1 Advanced Tuck Front Lever Pull-up

That all seems impossible right now. But I've always thought the Flag was one of the coolest moves to show off. Sure, a 500 pound deadlift is nice but you can't say, "Hey, watch this!" with any spontaneity with deadlifts. Anyway, I figure I'll practice these 3 times a week and see how far I get.