Fitness test advice

amazingemmet

Hey,
I'm auditioning for a course in about six months and as part of the audition i have to do a fitness test and was wondering if people could give me some advice on what would be the best way to train for the requirements:
-As many push up as you can in 30 secs
-As many V-sits as you can in 30 secs
-As many overhand chin-ups as you can in whatever amount of time
-Stand against a wall back straight and lift one leg as high as possible and hold 15secs, then same but with leg to the side.
And then there's flexibility testing but i'm fine for that.

Last time i tested my self i got:25 in push-ups, 24 V-sits, 14 chin ups and leg to right angle with my body. I train acrobatics 2-3 times a week and go to the gym for the other three.
Any advice/ tips welcome
thanks

joc_06

for push ups do clap pushups, depth pushups, drop pushups. also figure out your optimal hand spacing. there are guides online

situps bang a weight onto yer chest and do em, do decline
chin ups - find optimal hand spacing, use good technique - no swinging core tight etc, do weighted chins, bottom up chins with lots of weight to get past your sticking point, half chins with loads of weight to get past that sticking point. thick bar chin ups to improve grip and forearm strength,

loads of assistance work for all three on triceps, biceps, lats, upper and lower back.

As you can see its relatively easy to "cheat" these tests, just prepare right. in 6 months you should be hitting 50 plus chins. you'll not get much more than 30 on either of the others though as time for a perfect one of either is close to 1 sec and anything lower might be called by a judge or whatever. Its important to know what allowable. do you have to pause at the bottom for any time?

deadfingers

joc_06 wrote:

f
situps bang a weight onto yer chest and do em,

Im sorry if this sounds dumb but how do you attach the weights to your chest? Do you use a strap? Or just do the situp slow and the weight should just stay put? Also what weight would you recommened to a beginner?

joc_06

just hold onto the disc in front of you or else just use balance. Might get a sore set of b@lls though unless you're carefull...

amazingemmet

joc_06 wrote:

for push ups do clap pushups, depth pushups, drop pushups. also figure out your optimal hand spacing. there are guides online

Depth push ups? Do you mean on paralettes? also drop push ups? How many sets of each would you reccomend at the moment i do four sets of ten normal push-ups and 3 x 8 psuedo-planche pushups.

situps bang a weight onto yer chest and do em, do decline

Again how many sets would you reccomend?

chin ups - find optimal hand spacing, use good technique - no swinging core tight etc, do weighted chins, bottom up chins with lots of weight to get past your sticking point, half chins with loads of weight to get past that sticking point. thick bar chin ups to improve grip and forearm strength,

At the moment in chin ups i try to do 3 x 8 but it normally ends up being 8,6,6
What are bottom up chins and half chins? and again how many sets etc?

As you can see its relatively easy to "cheat" these tests, just prepare right. in 6 months you should be hitting 50 plus chins. you'll not get much more than 30 on either of the others though as time for a perfect one of either is close to 1 sec and anything lower might be called by a judge or whatever. Its important to know what allowable. do you have to pause at the bottom for any time?

50 plus chins in 6 months :eek: If i can get over twenty five i'll get you a pint at the next beers after.

One more exercise i remembered is a horizontal jump where they measure your height and see how far past your height you can jump from standing. any advice for that?
thanks in advance

joc_06

I cant really advise more about reps sets because i dont know what stage you are at but doing 3x8 all the time definitely isnt worth it. your body needs new stimulus to grow and improve. try 2x10 or 5x5 and more improtantly weighted

depth pushups are where your hands are on a platform and you go down below your palms. be carefull you dont tear something at thte start though


Bottom up chins are where you hang at the bottom until completely stationary for a few secs then go

mate you're asking me for advice on training a vertical jump test?? Have you done any research work yourself? The VJ test is one of the most popular tests EVER. Its done in every sport in every country in the world. try "improve vertical jump" in google. You might be surprised to find a few million pages on it.
best site to llok for is on defrancostraining.com. he has an article 20 exercise to increase VJ or something and also on t-nation.com or bodybuilding.com or fortifiediron.com

amazingemmet

Didn't know it was call the vertical jump test. cheers

BrianD3

amazingemmet wrote:

50 plus chins in 6 months :eek: If i can get over twenty five i'll get you a pint at the next beers after.

25 would be very good. Even the 14 that you are doing already is pretty good. Even with lots of training, very few people will be able to do 50 dead hang chins without stopping or kipping (i.e. cheating) AFAIK a "perfect score" in the US Navy Seals chin up tests is 20 reps. And the "pass mark" for the test is something like 5 reps.

I also wouldn't recommend going very heavy with the weighted chins to increase the number of reps you can do. If you want to get good at high reps, then train with high reps with just bodyweight or with light weights added.

I do the opposite. My strength in chinning is pretty good (am aiming for a +100% bodyweight weighted chin in the next few months) However this has done nothing for the number of reps I can do with just my own bodyweight.

joc_06

well i never do chin ups but i always do pullups and ive found the exact opposite to you. Using Bw + 25kg helps me blast out 15 reps or more with BW only. Even though my aim is for 1 rep max only.

I really cant see how its possible to do say 5 reps with a 10kgweight attached and then only be able to do 5 reps with BW only. Its just not possible.

+100% BW chin up. that sounds interesting. whats it for?

Howd you hear about what the pass mark in the seals is? 5 chins? a child can do that. those guys are animals arent they? I think i hit 15 chins from rock bottom each time and a breath pause. it was ages ago though

BrianD3

joc_06 wrote:

I really cant see how its possible to do say 5 reps with a 10kgweight attached and then only be able to do 5 reps with BW only. Its just not possible.

That's my experience though. I can do nearly as many reps with 20 kg attached as with just bodyweight....

+100% BW chin up. that sounds interesting. whats it for?

Not for anything as such. Just a strength goal to aim for. IMO chin ups are one of the top 5 exercises and should be part of any workout for strength or size.

Howd you hear about what the pass mark in the seals is? 5 chins? a child can do that. those guys are animals arent they? I think i hit 15 chins from rock bottom each time and a breath pause. it was ages ago though

You'd be surprised at how poor most people are at chins. Most men are either too fat or too weak to do more than a couple of chinups. I read about the SEAL requirement in some military newsgroup.

PS my definition of chins is palms facing away grip. However I know many call these pull ups. In any case, both pull ups and chins ups are great exercises.

BrianD3

I think now I was wrong about the chinup requirement for the navy Seals. I may have mixed them up with the US Marine Corps. The only piece of fairly concrete info that I can find on the internet is that 20 dead hang chins is a perfect score for the US Marines PT test. Not sure what the pass mark is, but it's obviously going to be <20.

Can any military experts shed any light on this.

amazingemmet

This has some stuff about the test

ChilleR~

I had already posted a reply but I think it was erased because of the boards.ie update.
I have two questions hopefully someone can easily answer.
Some websites say never to push your chin ups to muscle failure or complete fatigue. Everytime I do chin ups I push it until there's nothing left in me and I'm about to die. So should chin ups be done until you can no longer do another rep?
Also, when I do chin ups, I do 3 sets of my BW and I get a progression of roughly 10,8,7. I reached a plateau and have never really been able to do more so I have started doing weighted chin ups. Many trainers say you should only increase your weight if your last set is around 10-13 reps. Should I continue with weighted chins or am I hurting myself?

Jak

For the first two if it's limited to 30 seconds (which is a bit silly) working on technique and specifically speed technique will be most important. Practice, Practice, Practice. Also - as pointed out - hand positioning etc may help with this.

With even a little training if you are in half decent shape - you should in no way be 'burning' out in 30 seconds.

Chins frankly should be trained by a variety of chins - varied grips etc.