Well, I just saw something I thought I would never observe–a new exercise from, of all places, the TV Guide Channel. It actually looks like it might be useful, although I really hate to say that, so my personal jury remains out until I try it myself. The world must be ending.
Anyway, the exercise is a variation of the woodchopper, done using a long straight rowing bar with a cable attachment, but on the end of the bar instead of in the middle. You attach it to a low pulley and hold and swing it like an axe or sledgehammer. The bar looks to be a regular cable bar, although I didn’t get more than a glimpse. Just an FYI. I may try it my next workout, see if I can jury-rig an imitation.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Well, I just saw something I thought I would never observe–a new exercise from, of all places, the TV Guide Channel. It actually looks like it might be useful, although I really hate to say that, so my personal jury remains out until I try it myself. The world must be ending.
Anyway, the exercise is a variation of the woodchopper, done using a long straight rowing bar with a cable attachment, but on the end of the bar instead of in the middle. You attach it to a low pulley and hold and swing it like an axe or sledgehammer. The bar looks to be a regular cable bar, although I didn’t get more than a glimpse. Just an FYI. I may try it my next workout, see if I can jury-rig an imitation.[/quote]
I think Mike Boyle shows these in his book “Functional training for sports”. The only advantage over a real sledge that I could see would be the ability to start of lighter and progreesive in weight in small increments. I guess you could get a pipe and some bolts and add small plates to it to build/change up the weight and save the need for a cable column.
[quote]Fulmen wrote:
Why don’t you just buy a heavy axe and chop real wood? Or how about a heavy sledgehammer and bust things in a junkyard or something…[/quote]
I live in an apartment above the bar district in a university town, I don’t know anyone that has a rural area to chop wood, and there are no nearby junkyards. It was just an FYI in any case. My abs are not a weak point for me at the moment, so I don’t really train them a lot.