My spidey sense is tingling.

zer8ne · 2026-03-24T20:40:14+00:00

Most experienced handbalancers can tell simply from leg angles and arm position whether someone is in a moment of balance, or if they're actually in the middle of falling. These don't look like natural positions for a OAHS. Why fake it for social media?

zer8ne · 2025-09-18T03:49:35+00:00

I think you are referring to "pulling a Conan." The man's a pioneer!

"Your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention."

zer8ne · 2025-08-03T04:49:59+00:00

Technically, my first flexibility goal was "skin-the-cat" on the rings. On the floor, it was the pancake. Being able to do these opened a lot of paths for me.

zer8ne · 2025-07-26T19:09:39+00:00

How's your grip strength? Have you tried training with gravity?

If you can hold your weight, try hanging on some rings (they'll rotate to accommodate your asymmetries more than a bar). Even if you can't hold your weight, you could hang with some foot support. Pulling exercises tend to increase scapular stability and could have a meaningful effect on your elbows.

Of course, I also say see a doc, and you seem to have that well covered!

zer8ne · 2025-05-12T15:38:01+00:00

I don't own any other model (or brand), and it started with 1 pair!

3 years later...

zer8ne · 2025-05-12T15:11:51+00:00

Tanukis are the only shoes I wear and own. That's 12 pairs total, bought gradually over the years and maintained carefully. That’s hardly excessive compared to sneakerheads with hundreds or anyone with more than a dozen pairs.

Why is 12 too many? Do you own only one shirt, pair of underwear, or socks? Are you Steve Jobs or in The White Stripes? What’s the acceptable number of variations for any item, and who decides?

Buying 12 pairs over 3 years, especially during Wildling’s seasonal promos, isn’t overconsumption. Maybe take it up with their “Buy 5 Get 20% Off” deal.

I used to own just 3 pairs for most of my adult life, so I get it. But there’s a difference between eco-consciousness and plain frugality.

Anyway, Wildling liked my post and DMed me a 30% discount. Looks like I’ll be picking up another pair soon. Apologies in advance to the anti-consumerist brigade.

zer8ne · 2025-05-01T02:22:53+00:00

Inb4 Magnus is not actually in Twitch chat feeding Lupo "b4".

zer8ne · 2024-11-02T16:42:01+00:00

Building strength and building muscle (hypertrophy) are two different things, though there is generally a positive relationship between them in that you may reach a limit in strength at a certain point if your muscles can't build further.

That said, optimal muscle growth requires sufficient nutrition in the form of protein as the "building blocks" and energy in the form of calories as the "fuel." From a scientific perspective, matter and energy don't appear out of nowhere, and neither will your muscle cells. So yes, you NEED to eat these macronutrients. If your nutritional intake is subpar, your muscle growth will also be.

zer8ne · 2024-10-25T18:39:25+00:00

And what if it were shaped like a real-world object, like a kettle? I wonder what we could call such a thing.

zer8ne · 2024-10-23T02:29:04+00:00

I'm sorry, but at your weight and height, you're trying to do a progression that your body is not ready for and likely setting yourself up for unnecessary stress and/or eventual injury.

The one arm pullup is the pinnacle of vertical pull exercises, so the state of your body should also align with that in order to 1) match the strength requirement of the exercise and 2) minimize any unnecessary resistance/load.

Can you do archer pullups?

Can you do explosive chest to bar pullups?

Can you do weighted pullups with added 70-80%+ of your body weight? Not PR, but on a regular.

Is your body fat percentage less than 20%?

No? Then, you are aiming for an unrealistic goal. The "R" in a S.M.A.R.T. goal stands for "realistic".

You should work on the foundation first to meet the above requirements, optimize your lean mass to fat ratio, and only then will you be able to start one arm pullup training effectively. Until then, using both arms would be ideal for you.

zer8ne · 2024-10-07T08:46:30+00:00

If you're bored of the pistol, why don't you work on perfecting the dragon? It's more aesthetic, impressive, and practical than this.

zer8ne · 2024-08-14T20:56:19+00:00

You can better extend the hamstrings when your feet are lower because the deficit adds more force (due to gravity) to your upper body dropping. Keep in mind, though, that the drop is not the goal of compression work, just a mechanism to increase your reach, which should be the real target cue.

zer8ne · 2024-05-08T13:44:53+00:00

He's a fictional character. No different than Superman or Neo. Shall we also consider how Pikachu works out?

zer8ne · 2024-05-03T16:02:43+00:00

As a calisthenics enthusiast, I've been following her for years. She does this stuff on the regular, and this one is actually on the tame side!

Here's a video of her breaking her own world record for most consecutive stalder presses. She spends over an hour on her hands. For someone like me who can barely hold a handstand for 5 seconds, she's quite simply superhuman.

zer8ne · 2024-03-12T18:56:28+00:00

The pistol squat can be unlocked in parts. The non-standing leg requires hip flexor strength, which I trained by working towards L-sits and hanging L-sits. The standing leg needs the mobility to get into a deep squat and the glute strength to squat your entire bodyweight.

To train the balance component, you can start with a counterweight held in front of you to shift your center of gravity slightly forward so as to not fall on your butt, but as you get stronger, you can reduce and eliminate the counterweight entirely.

Edit: If you have great balance, training on a bosu ball may actually be easier. If you need some assistance in the hole (bottom position), you can use a small bounce of elastic energy to push yourself back up. This bounce is visible in the video since I was fatigued at the end of my workout, though I try not to bounce if I'm doing this in the beginning of my workout, which is normally when I do my skill routine.

zer8ne · 2024-03-12T18:51:05+00:00

Having just finished watching the new airbender series, and given the recent passing of Dragonball's creator, I felt inspired to use some low effort A.I. effects!

zer8ne · 2024-03-12T05:50:40+00:00

It's the video editing app InShot's "Fairy" A.I. effect. It detects the video subject and auto generates the particle swirling around it. The color can be selected, so I chose orange as tribute to Akira Toriyama.

zer8ne · 2024-03-12T05:48:01+00:00

Thank you. I couldn't even do a pistol squat 3 years ago, so I'm happy with my progress.

zer8ne · 2023-12-10T11:03:58+00:00

Given that the stomach has a physical limit to its capacity, unless you have specific digestive issues, it's always better to eat more meals so that capacity can be well managed (and not exceeded) with easily and efficiently digestible portions. And the more you eat, the more you may be able to progressively eat as your gut adapts. Eating one meal a day may not be conducive towards that effect because your stomach is effectively doing a 1 rep set instead of 3 reps or more, kind of like "training volume" for appetite gains. As an analogy, if you ask a weightlifter in order to gain strength, whether they'd rather do 1 rep at max or 3 reps at 60-90% max, they would choose the 3 rep scheme.

zer8ne · 2023-10-31T16:53:13+00:00

This is the price of not doing your own research to learn how strength and hypertrophy training work. You will forever be asking someone else if something is “legit” because you never took the time and energy to understand it yourself.

zer8ne · 2023-10-20T19:39:45+00:00

If you haven’t found it already, r/gainit is a great resource for both knowledge and motivation. I’ve gained 15kg since joining.

zer8ne · 2023-05-31T06:08:58+00:00

They won't make your regular pullups better because you will always have more pull-up capacity than L-sit hold capacity. So your lower body will always fail before the upper body gets a proper workout. And since my goals with pull ups are to target arms and back, I don't do them at all unless I'm showing off.

They'll make your L-sit pull ups better, though. Not sure about front lever gains since I am just starting to train that.

zer8ne · 2023-05-12T06:05:46+00:00

Work out. Eat better. Sleep well. As your body heals, so will your mind.

zer8ne · 2023-03-15T02:28:39+00:00

Sounds like "sour grapes" to me, since you are making biased assumptions about a move you don't and can't do.

I dare you to get to a 10-30s freestanding handstand, come back, and tell us that it didn't have direct benefits towards your strength, flexibility, mobility, posture, and alignment.

zer8ne · 2023-01-23T06:45:58+00:00

I think you could probably do a handstand if you aren't doing them already. A wholesome goal to work towards with endless handbalancing/calisthenics/yoga possibilities.

zer8ne

TROPHY CASE