About Me

What’s up! My name is Jacob and welcome to my blog about my artwork and calisthenics regimen! For those of you who don’t know about calisthenics (often referred to as street workout), the word itself comes from “the ancient Greek kallos (κάλλος), which means beauty, and sthénos (σθένος) meaning strength.” Calisthenics is essentially “the art of using your own body weight and qualities of inertia as a means to develop your physique.”1 I personally think it’s incredible how much our bodies are capable of and I’m on a mission to max out my potential! As for my artwork, I will be posting some of my projects from my 2-D design class and some pictures that I’ve painted for fun.

I’ve recently been out on a search for new hobbies and painting definitely fit the criteria I had in mind. The idea of bringing my imagination to life on a canvas or piece of paper has peaked my interest and I’m here to share it with everyone. I highly suggest everyone to start getting into the art of painting because it’s a beautiful way to spend your time and alleviate your stress! In addition, you also have paintings to show your friends and family as well as be proud of.

As for my strength training regimen, I’ve always tried traditional heavy weightlifting and bodybuilding, but I could never find the energy or excitement to stick with the programs. Ever since I’ve run into calisthenics training however, I have found working out to actually be a convenient leisure activity that I can reflect on easily! For example, when I first started my routine, I could hardly do a couple of pull ups, now I can do handstand pushups (against the wall) and almost muscle-ups! A few of my goals that I have in mine as of right now for my routine are to be able to do a muscle-up, full planche, and a straight handstand (without leaning against a wall).

Lastly, a little about me personally, I am currently going to Texas State University in San Marcos and I’m majoring in Electronic Media and Mass Communications. Eventually I want to set up a YouTube channel, but that will be a while down the road. I love meeting new people, so feel free to shoot me a message or question on Twitter and I’d be more than happy to respond! So now that you know a little something of who I am and what my blog is all about, go ahead and check out some of my posts!

How I Feel About Blogging

Hey everybody! This blog post is an evaluation of how I felt about my first blogging experience! I have to say its been a great semester and I’m happy I’ve made it this far. I feel that a lot of different things made my blogging experience amazing and a few things not so much.

The tools for blogging that were most effective for me were all in my wordpress dashboard! A text editor, capable of posting images and correcting grammatical errors truly made my blogging experience much more effective. However some of the tools, such as the “copy posts” feature in wordpress wasn’t exactly needed (at least for me). I look forward to improving my content in my blog with better, fitting quality images and even videos to enhance my reader’s experience in the future.  I think that I’d achieve more readers this way which would be greatly beneficial. I also believe that I’ll use wordpress to create more websites in the future for possibly starting a business of my own!

My most popular week of my blog was around March 20th, 2016 in which I only achieved 28 views. I’m not too bugged by that fact because I know I’ll do better in time! My most popular post of all time was my body transformation post and I recieved 17 views! I think this was the most popular post because it was pretty motivational in my opinion. However, I was pretty surprised that this was my most popular post. Also, my Twitter page achieved 20 followers! Not a lot, but still lol. Overall, I had a great experience blogging and I definitely feel encouraged to keep going. Stay tuned!

Deload Week

It’s been awhile since I’ve decided to up the frequency in which I train (4-5 days a week instead of 3-4) and I can definitely say I made some progress, but I hit another plateau. I heard of something called a deload week and it sounds like this will be the next step I’m implementing into my workout routine. For those that don’t know what a deload week is, it’s basically a week of recovery.

I have been working out for about half a year now and still have not had a deload week! The max I’ve taken a day off from my workout has been three days a part on rare occasions. So, as you could imagine, my muscles need a break from so much exercise. I highly encourage anyone who has been training for a long, consistent amount of time (4-6 months) and has ran into a plateau, to try out a deload week to refind your strength gains.

How I will be implementing my deload week will simply be by stretching and increasing my flexibility and by limiting how many lifting or pushing exercises I do. This is how I’m going to perform my deadlift week because I feel like I just need a good recovery from my weeks of intense training and to overcome this new plateau I recently ran into. I’ll keep y’all updated to let you know how I thought of my deload week!

My Physique, Then and Now

Hey everyone! Glad you’re here for my latest post. 🙂

This post is essentially a slideshow of my progress during roughly a year’s worth of time of me training, using both bodybuilding style training methods (in the beginning) and calisthenics (now). Enjoy!

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Strength Plateau :(

Work Out, Even When You Can Hardly Hang On

Some days we just don’t feel like hitting the gym. And it’s completely understandable! We get tired and drained from long days at school, work, etc. and all we can think about is meeting up with friends and taking a break from all the stress that we put up with in our day-to-day lives. However, it’s important to focus on what you want to achieve in life.

If we are not contributing towards our goals every single day, then how must we achieve those goals? Yes, it sucks sometimes to hit the gym, but in the end its the effort we put into gym that directly reflects our status towards our goals. If you want to achieve your dream body you have to work towards that goal. even if you don’t feel like it! That being said, if a break won’t hurt your gains, then take a break occasionally.

There are days that I simply just do not want to hit the gym or do not feel as if I have enough time to hit the gym. Today is a perfect example of how I feel that I don’t have enough time to workout, but I actually do have enough time to workout! It’s 9:09pm and I still have to do a bit of homework due tomorrow, but working out only really takes about 45 minutes to an hour and since I’m doing calisthenics training, I can workout in the comfort of my own apartment! The point is, I feel like I don’t have enough time to workout because its pretty late, but in reality I have all the time in the world.

So if you want to make your dreams come true, quit neglecting the bike of success and hop on. Sometimes the ride will get fairly rigidity, but know that it will all be worth it in the end. Peace. 🙂

How to Easily Stay Hydrated

We all know we need to be hydrated, after all, our bodies are mostly made up of water! But how does one go about staying hydrated all of the time and with ease? Well if you ask me, I feel as if I’ve mastered the art of hydration with two simple rules:

First, always have a bottle of water in your hand or nearby you. It doesn’t matter if the bottle is plastic or glass, just keep the water near you and drink it. I always have a water bottle in my hand or next to me and I stay steady sipping my water.

Second, always mark your water bottle that you have with a permanent dark marker like a Sharpie with a number on the lid. So, for example, if you were drinking your third water bottle of your day you would mark the lid with a number 3. Doing so will not only let you keep track of how much water your body is taking, but it will also let you know the water bottle is yours! Now you’ll always know that your water bottle is yours and stay hydrated.

I hope this method of staying hydrated works as well for you as it does for me. Stay hydrated, my friends.

How is Kinobody?

I just wanted to let my readers know where I got my workout routine from, which is from a blog/vlog called Kinobody! The guy who created it, Greg O’gallagher, had inspired me to achieve my strength and aesthetic goals, so I felt the need to also give him credit where it is due. The workout routine I’m following from Kinobody is known as “The Bodyweight Mastery” program.

I think a lot of what Greg has to say in terms of fitness has ultimately inspired me to be where I’m at with my fitness today. Strength and aesthetics were what I was looking for and Greg provided an extremely simplistic approach to achieving the goals I wanted. I find that watching his vlogs provides a ton of quality information and that really motivates me to keep doing what I’m doing.

Again, if anyone is wondering what workout routine I’m doing specifically, it is “The Bodyweight Mastery” program from Kinobody. It’s the most laidback and most effective workout plan I’ve ever had. Keep reading my blog and you’ll find out how it works for me!

My Handstand Progress

Hello again everyone and welcome back to another post about my calisthenics advancements! As you can probably already tell from the title, this post is going to be about my progression in terms of my handstand improvement. I’m currently using handstand pushups (against the wall) as a strength exercise primarily for my shoulders. However, I also use handstand pushups as practice to one day be able to do a full handstand without the wall.

The handstand pushup took me a while to progress to. I used pike pushups as my progression exercises and it took me about a month or so to finally be able to do my handstand pushups against the wall. Pike pushups are a great progression exercise if anyone ever wants to advance to a handstand.

I can currently do about 8 handstand pushups against the wall and I feel I have fair control of my handstand. I’ve only been able to hold a full handstand without the wall for about 4 seconds, but I can definitely see my potential in the exercise further down the road. Time will only tell, so stay tuned to my blog to see how I will do!

Advanced Frog Stands & My Giraffe Painting

Hello again everybody! This will be my first blog post in which I actually update on my current progress in my artwork and calisthenics routine. So, as the title of this post suggests, I will be reporting on my giraffe painting and advanced frog stands.

For those who do not know, an advanced frogstand is a progression exercise towards the full planche. The exercise is extremely effective in building wrist strength as well as balance for the full planche and handstands. To do the advanced frog stand, place both hands shoulder width apart on the floor and lean forward, placing all of your body weight  into your hands, meanwhile, keep your arms as straight as possible. Lean your knees towards your lower arms and keep your feet off the ground and there you have it, the advanced frogstand! However this exercise is the advanced variation of the original frog stand, so make sure that you can hold a normal frog stand first! I find this exercise to demand lots of tension on the wrists, and when I first started with normal frog stands I didn’t think my wrists would ever be strong enough to perform any of the progression exercises. But time and hard work definitely proved me wrong, advanced frog stands are easy for me now! If I can do it, anyone can.

Me Performing the Adv. Frog Stand

So, whats up with my giraffe painting? Well I’ve always been into drawing and coloring, and this semester I am taking a 2-D design class which has really made me excited about art itself. I don’t know why, but painting in particular has caught my interest and I decided to get all of the supplies a few days ago. I wanted to paint something meaningful, but not too complex at the same time, considering I am relatively new to painting. I decided to draw a giraffe because the girl that I love likes giraffes and, I decided to make the giraffe holding a rose because I felt as if doing so would give the painting a much more unique feel to it. Also, I felt as if all of the colors complimented each other pleasantly; brown & gold, red & green, black & white. This painting was only on a piece of paper, but I will be sure to keep it safe with more paintings to come soon!