And here I thought the one-arm chin was a difficult skill… How about one finger? Also, Jim at Beast Skills turns in some great work on the pegboard, including a muscle-up. That guy is a machine. (both via SttB)

Everything Jim at Beast Skills posts warrants a link, and his one arm push-up tutorial is no exception. Great stuff, as always.

Jim at Beast Skills does the best tutorials. He has a new one up, the Front Lever. Excellent.

Jim at Beast Skills has done it again: fantastic muscle-up tutorial. Make sure you not only watch his embedded video of Andreas Aguilar at the 1991 World Professional Gymnastics Championships on the rings, make sure you watch all the way to the dismount.

Skwigg's "Tidbits" post is excellent (best wishes to her in recovering from her knee injury), and Jim at Beast Skills recently posted this enjoyable interview with Jack Arnow.

• Physical Strategies links up a bunch of Jumpstretch Band Training PDFs. You have to do a bit of work to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I took away several new ideas. Use Firefox and DownThemAll! to grab them all at once.
• Physical Strategies again, making an interesting case for eating buffalo instead of beef.
• dirttime.org posts an excellent interview with Jim "Beast Skills" Bathurst.

I've mentioned this before, but Jim at Beast Skills really does incredible work both in the gym and on his weblog. Top-notch tutorials. Happy day, he has a new One-Legged Squat (Pistol) tutorial up!

A bit of a link backlog to clear out:

• Ringtraining.com's training guide (PDF).
• Art De Vany: More Against Grains.
• Beast Skills: Clapping Handstand Pushup. You read that right.
• Straight to the Bar links up Campusing.

Congrats to Jim at Beast Skills for nailing the planche! Wow, that's some strong work, and I know he's been at it for awhile... the rewards of hard work and perseverance. No permalink yet, so just check out the home page.

When I saw the headline I thought it was a joke, but Jim at Beast Skills does indeed have a tutorial up on the no-handed one-arm chin.

It's been awhile since the last big update from Jim at Beast Skills, but he's started making up for lost time:

• New tutorials for the One-Arm Elbow Lever and the One-Arm Elbow Lever to Handstand.
• An article on callus removal (how timely!)
• Finally, a new training log entry (no permalink, this refers to the 4/15 entry).

Something about the holidays brought lots of interesting stuff across my desk. Or maybe it's coincidence. In either case, here's the trove from the last few days:

Jim at Beast Skills has updated his beginner guide to handstand pushups, and has also added a new intermediate guide and a new freestanding handstand pushup guide. Great stuff, as usual.

Art De Vany on Diabetes, Alzheimer's, and obesity. He concludes:

If this isn't enough to convince you of the need to return to the simple, low-glycemic foods of our ancestors and to work out and stay lean, then you aren't getting your new year off to a promising start.

Crossfit just made The New York Times: "Getting Fit, Even if it Kills You". Coincidentally, Crossfit linked up this great PDF, "Sports Conditioning (a comparison: moderate-intensity continuous activity and high-intensity intermittent activity)" by Mark J. Smith: Some money quotes:

It is also accepted that low- to moderate-intensity activities are useful in recovering from high-intensity exercise and is a necessity in some sports that require repetitive practice to acquire skill. However, while the contention is not that low- to moderate-intensity continuous exercise can improve cardiovascular conditioning and weight loss, the need for significant quantities of this type of training for the field and court sport athlete is indeed challenged.

...and:

It has been demonstrated that low-intensity, long-duration exercise results in a greater total fat oxidation than moderate-intensity exercise of similar caloric expenditure15. However, when endurance training is compared to high-intensity intermittent training, the findings differ. The effect of a 20-week endurance-training program (mean estimated energy cost - 120.4 MJ) upon body fatness and muscle metabolism was compared to a 15-week high-intensity intermittent-training program (mean estimated energy cost - 57.9 MJ)16. Despite the lower energy cost of the high-intensity program, it induced a more pronounced reduction in subcutaneous fat compared with the endurance program. When corrected for the energy cost of training, the reduction induced by the high-intensity program was nine-fold greater than the endurance program.

...and (out-of-context disclaimer attached, however - you really should read the whole thing):

The acknowledgment that the activity did not need to be continuous was a major shift from the initial recommendations of the ACSM. It was even stated, "accumulation of physical activity in intermittent, short bouts is considered an appropriate approach to achieving the activity goal". This concept was validated in another study that demonstrated that three 1-minute bouts of maximal intensity exercise, separated by 1-hour recoveries, constituted 74% of the oxygen uptake of 20 minutes of low- to moderate-intensity exercise.

Three minutes gets you 74% of the benefit (in terms of oxygen uptake) of 20 minutes. Yow.

Finally, Fitness Blueprints is my latest blog subscription.

Today's Crossfit Workout of the Day—100 pull-ups! (with video!)— led me to a great thread over there on the virtues of the kipping pull-up. The whole thread is informative, especially Coach Sommer's posts.

While we're on the subject, Jim over at Beast Skills is on the rebound from a wrist injury. Gotta love a guy whose recovery is miles better than my best day. But anyway, further down in his post he describes a monster pull-up I haven't seen mentioned before: "the rafter chin". I don't think his training log is broken up into separate pages, so look towards the end of the 10/4/2005 entry.

Jim of Beast Skills fame has just posted a One-Arm Chin-Up/Pull-up Tutorial. Yow. I need to pick some easier goals!