I live in norway, where now our princess s getting married. What do this got to with training? Well, rigth now im in the serving my country as a royal guardian, and im supposed to be standing in a position called ´In arms´ (or something similiar. Dont know the english word) in their wedding. Basicly its about holding a automatic gun (5kgs) with your left arm while the gun is pointing straight up. In this position my left arm is flexed 90 degrees.
Holding 5kgs at 90 degrees sound rather easy eh? Well, I have to be able to do it for 10-15 minutes. Im now sortof able to hold it for …erm… 4 minutes, and im crying like a baby. This wedding is about 3 months ahead tho. Any tip on how to improve my strength/endurance here? Right now im doing 6kg dumbells and holding them up as long as I can for about 3 sets once a week. The wedding will probobly go live on national television too, and you dont want to see a T-man drop a gun live do ya? Thanks up front!
Read Don Alessi’s “Bone crackin’ bench” article in issue 181, he has a test in it called the isometric shoulder endurance test and subsequent exercises that help with strength gains and increased results, that may help. Rather you than me.
Pending you are able to do this throughout the day. You said you can do it for 4 minutes now. Why not hold it for 3 minutes once every 2-3 hours throughout the day. Be careful doing it though we dont want to fry your shoulder. You could do it even more often but for a shorter period of time. Maybe 2 minutes every 45 minutes to an hour. The only way your are going to get better at doing it is by doing it, but just short of failure.
Practice daily. Not once per week. And practice standing to attention while you do it, not just standing there with a dumbell in your hand. Relax and wiggle your toes in your boots to take your mind of it and help circulation.
To build endurance in a static hold, you will need to increase strength in the same static hold. The greater strength you have in a static hold, the fewer muscle fibers needed to hold a lesser weight and the more fibers held in reserve as initial fibers fatigue and reserve fibers are recruited. In addition to working at increasing the static hold time of the 6 kg dumbells, also do static holds with progressively heavier dumbells. In the USA, we typically refer to dumbells in pounds (1 kg = 2.2 pounds), so right now, you are using 13.2 pounds and I would increase the heavy static holds by 2.5 pounds every week or 2 but also include the 6 kg holds after the heavy holds and also I would definately be training 3 or 4 times a week instead of 1 a week and sometimes I would consider even 2 a day work outs, where you do heavy holds in morning and the 6 kg holds later in the day. Also, fatigue is partially in your mind, so it may help to block out the pain of fatigue and concentrate not on the fatigue but focus your thoughts on determination.
Five sets a day every day for as long as you can hold it. Do this with no weight. Every day of the week. (Don’t worry about needing a to recuperate, since your using no weight). Give your arm 3 minutes rest between sets, and stretch your arms out during the rest.
Once you can do 5 sets of 15 minutes each then gradually add a little weight. Once the weight gets heavier, you may need to take a day of between workouts, but I doubt it. Not with such little weight.
Make sure your muscles are warm before the exercise!
Sounds like you physical training is good. Spend some time working on your mind. Visualize yourself as a statue, unable to move from your position, or imagine the rifle to be light as a feather. Your mind is a major factor. If nothing else, use a distraction technique, think about the beach, a hot girl (if you really want to stand at attention!), whatever floats your boat. Being a weight trainer you have probably become very aware of the muscles you work in any given endeavor-this is one time that this will work against you. Good luck.
Thanks for all the replies guys. Now im rather surprised about your answers. Training static holds for 4 days a week and such? Allso… no body(arm) weight only holds? Interesting.Sortof thougth they would need more recuperation then that. But hey, ill give it a shot. Should I expect my bicep training really stall by the way (due to small recuperation times…etc)?
You will need to adjust your arm training to accommodate emphasizing the static hold training and avoid over traing arms. be sure to alternate arms so that training will be balanced. As far as training 3-4 times a week, you’re not really doing negatives, so recovery shouldn’t be excessive. You’re just using training methods to build endurance and recovery should be quicker than negative training which is usually done only once per week.