Wednesday, March 10, 2010

What common grow taller routines are missing and my own personal routine

There's a lot of uniformity in what exercises the height increase "experts" recommend people to perform in order to grow taller.  Remember, altering your bones is the best way to get height.  There may be ways using articular cartilage, disc space, and posture but bone is bar none the best way to have definitive height.

We are only interested in the methods that will increase bone size!  Posture and bed rest may give you a half an inch or so but that is nothing compared to what bone will give you.

A common method listed to increase height is hanging.  The problem with most people and this method is that they either don't weigh enough or don't add enough weight to their body(via a weight belt).  Hanging causes the right kind of strain on the bone(pulling).  Now you don't have to use as much weight as you would use in regards to compression as the bone is weaker when being pulled then when being compressed but you still have to use some weight.

Right now I use 245 lbs via a weight belt and I weigh about 195lbs.  I also twist while I do the exercise to get additional spiral forces.  I don't do this for very long(about 4 180 degree rotations) as the criteria for height increase is deformation of the bone and causing microcracks.  I'd much rather use heavier weight to make sure I'm meeting this criteria than by increasing volume.  The maximum weight I'd recommend is one where you can do at least one 180 degree rotation.

Another common height increase or grow taller exercise is inversion using inversion boots.  The problem with this is that you are very weak when inverted and you will not be able to add very much weight to your body at all.  What I do is get on a decline bench with 140lbs dumbells(280lbs), I get the same pulling effect and a partial inversion but I'm in a much more advantageous strength position and I don't get the feeling of blood rushing to my brain.

Another common exercise is sprinting, the problem with sprinting for one is that it's biased towards performance(the more training you have the more effective it is at generating forces on the bone and causing microcracks) and the other is that it causes mostly compressive and shearing strain.  Now you remember the study that showed that shearing and compression strain caused an increase in periosteal length in the mouse study.  However, we need to increase cortical bone length!  But, even though sprinting may cause mostly shearing and compressive strains on the tibia it can cause transverse strains on the bones of the rib and foot!

Also, remember that compressive and shearing strains have not been shown to decrease bone length(compressive exercises may temporarily decrease height) and that microcracks stimulate the growth of articular cartilage which can also increase height via the joints.  A strong bone is one that is more apt to microcrack so compressive exercises may make our pulling and spiral exercises more effective by allowing those exercises to cause more microcracks and therefore increase height.  It is much harder to decrease bone length then it is to increase it as microcracks by definition create space in the bone.  The way that physicians do limb shortening surgery is by removing bone so unless you cause a fracture in such a way that knocks a piece of bone out you are not likely to decrease bone length by doing compressive exercises.

I still do compressive exercises to strengthen my bones(more propensity to microcrack) and to cause transverse microfractures in the ribs and foot.

What I do is 1340lbs on the leg press and stomp against it.  This reduces some of the performance bias of running(as I don't have to worry about speed).  When you use heavy weight all you have to worry about is moving the weight you don't have to worry as much about technique as you would with sprinting.  I also rotate my body while isometrically holding the weight to cause spiral forces.

I also do 890lbs on a machine hack squat(the load is fully on the back) and do stomps and jumps(again transverse microcracks in the foot).

Then I do 675lbs stomp walkouts(walking out with 675lbs in the cage and then stomping).

The rest of my routine:

Tapping all bones with 10lbs dumbell.

Sitting down forcefully while wearing a 45lbs weighted vest and 60lbs worth of weight to cause microfractures in the pelvis.

rotating 180 degrees while in the top position of a dip(245lbs right now) to cause spiral forces in spine and humerus.

Doing step ups with 180lbs dumbells each(spiral forces in femur).  Usually I can only do one "repetition" a day so I alternate between right and left every day.

Spinning around 360 degrees with same dumbells(spiral forces in spine and femur).

Spinning 180lbs weight around 180 degrees with forearm(spiral forces in radius and ulna).

Doing clap pushups without the clap or the pushup(jumping up with my body and landing with my hands).  This causes transverse microcracks in the hand bones and the the clavicle and again strengthens the other bones.  Tried to add weight to this via a vest or a medicine ball in between my legs but it's too cumbersome.  This makes the exercise heavily performance biased though.

Rotating body left and right while keeping leg still with about 290lbs right now on leg extension machine(not sure as every machine is different)

Same rotation on leg curls

Pressing 65lbs dumbells overhead and rotating right and left to cause spiral forces on spine.

Remember if it was possible to increase height via yoga or pilates there would probably be much more evidence on this(as yoga and pilates are much more popular and more well documented by scientists then activities done in 'hardcore' gyms).  However, that does not mean that the exercises are ineffective as they do have a lot of mainstream resources behind them but they are likely missing the key ingredient of heavy weights.

Scientists do some in vitro studies(studies not performed on live subjects) however in vitro studies have confounding variables of their own.  So, there's really no way to avoid scientists bias against using very heavy weights.


10 comments:

  1. Um, just wondering...is this for real, or is it a joke?

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  2. This is not a joke. You can use much more weight if you lift in advantageous strength positions.

    This is merely my own routine. Do we know the best exercises to increase height? No.

    I'm trying to improve upon ideas other people have had on height increase and take it to the next level.

    This is 100% for real. But we are not there yet. That's why it's a quest :)

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  3. He is inverting with 240lbs...???isnt that like 120 kg...???if it is...then this is a joke...

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  4. 120kg is a little bit more than 240lbs. Elite bodybuilders can dumbell press 200lbs a piece. I worked up to 140lbs dumbells. And remember I'm not fully inverting(that's a very disadvantageous strength position) I'm partially inverting about 45 degrees on a decline bench but I still got some inversion forces(remember triangle mathematics).

    I've been training for about 6 years. You can call World's Gym in Pacific Beach and ask if I do this routine. If there's enough demand I could take pictures(but it would be a little bit of a hassle to find someone to use my digital camera and teach them how to use it).

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  5. what are your stats from start to now? Is this effective? Thank you.

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  6. Yoga/Pilates stretches arent the same as Height Increase stretches, at least not for me. my HI-stretches are a lot more intense, and I did them for a little more than a year, and my results are permanent! And there are lots of folks that have done the same.

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  7. My hands and feet have increased in size you can see the pictures in an earlier blog entry and to growth is possible I'll have to check out these stretches.

    This routine I realize now is mostly for increasing height via periosteal width of irregular and short bones but isn't that effective for long bones.

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  8. It`s seems to be a huuuuge fake.
    Like other para-medical strange hocus pocus sites.

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  9. Well, I was trying to experiment on bone deformation and stretching to stretch the Type I Collagen fibers. Lots of people can lift that weight if they do so in an isometric fashion. I just added some spiral forces as that seemed to be the best way to try to incorporate some tensile strain. I've taken a break from this now to focus more on LSJL.

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  10. People need to quit being so negative. Why would anyone make up the above routines.. If you don't do it, then don't do it. I for one believe in the science behind it, and in the dedication Tyler has shown!

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