As you may have gathered I shot a fair amount of video while in Providence, Rhode Island recently. The weather was ideal (slightly cool and overcast outside) not only for running around but acting as a natural light diffusor for pretty good video!!! When we arrived at Brown Street Park, I had that whole feeling you get as a kid when you see the playground and you can’t seem to wait any longer. The urge to sprint across the grass and immediately begin climbing on something was very hard to overcome.
One of the topics we’ll hopefully explore in the podcast I’m recording (AGAIN! Long story…) tomorrow with a local, very accomplished movement focused chiro friend is the importance of play, and exploration of movement–especially as adults. Often we have to give ourselves “permission” to play or explore as adults, as we’re all too accustomed and comfortable with highly structured activities. I don’t want to get into that too much here, because Chad and I have a lot to say about it that you will hopefully enjoy later this week. Monkey Bar Monday is kind of my attempt to remind people to have some fun even on a Monday with an active pursuit of some kind.
The video below is pretty funny… the monkey bars were so high off the ground that I couldn’t even jump to reach them! As with almost all my videos, this is completely unscripted, and for whatever reason we were kinda slap–happy at this point.
Wouldn’t blame you for making fun of me :), personally I am choosing to blam it on the bizarre green apple flavored Perrier I so “wisely” chose to bring with me to the park as refreshment. With some much needed help from Amber, I finally did… and its a pretty funny/silly thing to watch. If nothing else I hope to have inspired you to get out and have some kind of active form of fun today. At the end of the video, you’ll see me climb up one of the very tall (at least to me) climbing ropes, then towards the top when I need to start using my feet to help, I was playing with an idea I’d seen on a tactical website about how to use your feet. Even though there was hardly any slack in the rope (the bottom of it was affixed to the ground, presumably to prevent any unwarranted “Tarzan action” I was able to apply the principle of one foot on top of the other (with the rope in between) successfully. Looking forward to trying this technique with a rope that is free at the bottom, there was no sliding with the feet… unless I wanted there to be. At the very tip top of where the rope is connected, someone had put a large Hello Kitty sticker, so of course since there was no bell or other thing to ring, I had to high five the sticker… because well because it was there, and because I could. LOL!!!
Hope you enjoy this silliness on a Monday and have some healthy silliness of your own today too! 🙂 Below is a video for how to do the rope climbing drills anywhere:
PLEASE FORGIVE ME!! I hate it when people shoot video with their iPhones and the iPhone is vertical! I did it below though so that you could see more of what matters to the subject under discussion. (I get on to several of my friends for this all the time.)
Indoor or At Home Rope Climb Drills For Everyone!
The video above is a way that you can try rope climbs with little to no fear!! It’s a fun, easy way to scale a rope climb, and gain loads of benefits of rope climbing without having to ever really leave the ground!!! I first learned about this cool drill years ago at Bud Jeffries and Logan Christopher’s Superhuman Strength Workshop. They gave the floor to Frank DiMeo, an Underground Strength Coach with Zach Even-Esh’s system and this was one of the really neat drills he shared. Years later I ran into Frank again at Zach’s recent Underground Strength Certification held here in Florida. You can find this drill (the Recline Rope Climb page 250-251) and many many others in Zach’s sizeable tome, The Encyclopedia of Underground Strength and Conditioning. While all the models seem to be these very fit young guys (who seem to be made of muscles and springs), these exercises are actually fantastic for everyone when scaled properly. Not to mention a whole lot of fun!
If you want to purchase the pretty purple (and yes, dudes, they have other more manly colors available) 1.5″ “Jump rope” in the video above, it’s just $25 or so from Onnit. So Click here!! As mentioned in my video, you can also use longer ropes too for other applications and plenty of fitness fun.
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