Archives for May 2014

Kids and Calisthenics

May 27, 2014 By Peter D'Epiro 6 Comments

Playground Workout child performs clutch flag

When my son began organized sports my main reason for coaching was fairly simple: spend time with my boy. Besides, who better to coach the team than someone who has experience as both a coach and former athlete, understands we are not playing for a college scholarship from the ages of 5-12, and is more than happy to explain that point to overzealous parents?

I was excited to spend quality time with my son, but over time I learned that coaching provides opportunities beyond teaching kids the skills of various sports and trying to foster an environment that would leave them wanting to sign up again the next year.

KidsSportsTeam

I can’t imagine a much better resource for developing motor skills, strength and athleticism in today’s youth than calisthenics. As a result, you will find our teams opening practice with a number of standard athletic drills (skips, cariocas, etc.) and animal movements to work on total body strength, stability and coordination. If we’re lucky, as we often are during our current baseball season, we will practice at a park or school that has playground equipment nearby, and the kids can all head over for a couple rounds of a fun calisthenics circuit. When we have practice at this particular school, our players show up, start playing catch to get ready for practice, and inevitably a chorus of inquiries starts, asking if they can go do their “obstacle course” to start practice. You can’t beat building genuine strength and movement skill, while all the while the kids feel like they are having a great time “playing.”

Think about some of the principles and skills required for calisthenics movements: learning to generate total body tension, learning to link the kinetic chain rather than isolating joints and muscles. Let a young athlete practice push ups, pull ups and other bar exercises and more than likely, even without being cognizant of it, they will figure out how to generate more tension throughout their kinetic chain, creating a more stable base from which to produce strength and perform the movement.

Kids Calisthenics Obstacle Course

What does an athlete need to hit a baseball as far as possible, kick a soccer ball as far as possible, throw a baseball as hard as possible? They need linkage through the entire system, total body tension at just the right moments, integration of the nervous system and kinetic chain.

My family lives in California, a state known for great weather year-round. Despite this environment, physical education in school is down to 1 or 2 days per week as a result of state budget cuts and shifting priorities in school curriculum. Academic excellence is so prioritized that time to play outside of school also suffers. Combine this atmosphere, contemporary technological advances that have reduced our activity in general, and the realization that today’s youth are being raised with these advances completely integrated into their lives, and the bottom line is there is just not as much physical activity occurring for our youth today compared to past generations. That’s why it’s so important for parents to make sure their kids get out and move.

The relationship between calisthenics, youth and young athlete development seems perfectly synergistic, building strength and improving motor development in under-active children, and providing the injury prevention and general athletic development (needed to safeguard young athletes from the risks of early sport specialization). If you are a parent, consider taking advantage of the great resource that calisthenics offers to develop your child’s movement skills, athleticism and strength. And if you coach youth sports, considering doing your athletes a huge favor by making time for movement training beyond the skills of your sport.

Kids Calisthenics Crawling

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About Pete D’Epiro: A fitness & performance coach in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years, Pete specializes in training the unique population that is the Silicon Valley executive/entrepreneur as well as junior athletes ranging from middle school to Division I scholarship athletes. Pete also volunteers his time to Stew Smith’s non-profit Heroes of Tomorrow, providing free training to candidates preparing for careers in military special operations, law enforcement, & fire. Most days of the year Pete can be found at the world-class training facility, Evolution Trainers (www.evolutiontrainers.com), in Mountain View, California.

Unlocking Your Hips for Pistol Squats

May 20, 2014 By Benji Williford 16 Comments

Benji Williford Bodyweight Pistol Squat

A strong body begins with flexibility, good body mechanics, and then progression. One of the biggest motivators to start calisthenics training is to conquer more advanced feats of strength like the pistol squat. But it is impossible to do pistols without adequate flexibility in the lower body as the hip, knee, and ankle are in deepest flexion at the bottom part of the rep. Before you can walk; you must crawl. Or in this case before you pistol; you must squat. A full range-of-motion squat is nearly impossible for most people when starting out as they spend most of their day sitting. Consequently, this usually results in tight hip flexors, calves, ankles, lower back, and weak glutes.

The first thing that I assess on new clients in regards to squats is their flexibility limitations in the hip and lower body.

“Blessed are the flexible for they will not allow themselves to become bent out of shape!”

~ Adapted from Robert Ludlum

The hip is a heavily muscled area and is made up of a ball-and-socket joint that is formed between the os coxa (hip bone) and the femur. Aside from the shoulder, the hip joint allows for the most range-of-motion than any other joint. If it allows for the most range-of-motion, all of its muscles (along with the leg) should get stretched to foster strengthening throughout the most range-of-motion making skills like the pistol squat obtainable.

The main movements of the hip:

Flexion—Lifting the leg forward in front of the body. The major muscles used are the psoas and rectus femoris. Seven other muscles assist comprising of five adductors, sartorius, and the tensor fascia lata. With normal range of motion, the leg can be lifted so that the thigh is within two inches of contacting the lower ribs.
Extension—Lifting the leg behind the body. The major muscles used are the hamstrings and the gluteus maximus. This motion also recruits movement from the lumbar region of the spine. With normal range of motion, the knee will rise above the level of the glutes.
Adduction—This occurs when the thigh moves across the midline of the body. Hip adductors include the pectineus, the adductors longus, brevis, and magnus, and the gracilis.
Abduction—This occurs when lifting the leg out to the side away from the midline of the body. The major muscle used is the gluteus medius. The gluteus minimus and the tensor facia lata also assist.
External rotation—This occurs when the leg is rotated outward so that the inner thigh faces forward/up and the knee out to side (away from the midline of the body). Muscles used are the external rotators located beneath the gluteus maximus (which is also an external rotator).
Internal rotation—This occurs when the leg is rotated inward so that knee is facing midline of the body. The major muscles involved are the gluteus minimus and tensor facia lata which are assisted by the gluteus medius.

The following video will demo a series of stretches that can be incorporated in a yoga practice, used for static stretches after a workout or any time after warming up the hips and legs with some mobility work. These series of stretches were designed to open up all of the different directions of movements of the hips and consequently the rest of the lower body. Since these stretches will open up the hip flexors, an added benefit is that it can potentially help ease lower back pain too.

Once you have the flexibility to complete a quality rep, it’s time to commit to proper body mechanics on mastering reps and gaining strength on each progression of an exercise. This is where the brain-body connection comes in as the brain sends electrical impulses though hundreds of thousands of chains of nerve fibers to the muscles every time you think about performing an exercise. Moreover, an insulating layer over the nerve fibers made up of protein and fatty substances called the myelin sheath increases every time a muscle pattern is repeated. Developing the myelin sheath with good biomechanics will enable you to perform a skill without as much effort. However, the opposite is also true. If you consistently practice poor biomechanics, it increases the myelin layers to reinforce those bad patterns. This can lead to poor performance and even injury.

Nerve, Neuron, and Myelin Sheath diagram

In short, work on gaining the flexibility required to perform a skill. Practice perfecting the body mechanics needed for the skill while gaining strength and continue to progress.

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Benji Williford, PCC, RYT, CF-L1 is a Personal Fitness Trainer located out of Eau Claire, WI. Benji believes that, “A successful fitness program is based on positive dialogue between the mind and body.” He can be reached through his website: http://www.benjiwilliford.com, or by email: Benji@ChainReaction-Fitness.com.

An Irish Blessing

May 13, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 13 Comments

Five days ago I boarded a plane to Ireland with my brother and fellow PCC Lead Instructor Al Kavadlo and Dragon Door CEO John Du Cane. It was uncharted territory for us and we did not know what to expect. This was Ireland’s first Progressive Calisthenics Certification. Not to mention the fact that we’d never been to the Strong Room or met our host Adrian Harrington. In fact, none of us had even been to Dundalk, Ireland. We were really going out on a limb with this one.

You could say we were “lucking” it.

We got off the plane in the Land of a Thousand Welcomes, and rather fittingly were welcomed by Mr. Harrington himself. Looking into his smiling eyes, it took no more than a handshake and a few minutes to find out we were all kindred spirits. You see, in the world of body-weight training, there is a bond that exists which defies geography, history, even culture. There’s something special about the solidarity between calisthenics aficionados—we are connected, even when oceans apart. It seems that wherever we go, we stand united with our PCC brothers and sisters. The enthusiasm, dedication and purity bring us together from all around the globe, no matter what our roots. We’re all here for the same reason: to better ourselves and learn from each other. I love meeting people from different backgrounds, age groups and walks of life who share my passion. And the posse’s gettin’ bigger!

Adrian took us out to the lush, green, Irish countryside and served us a homemade breakfast of fresh eggs, “homegrown” ham, coffee (with butter!) and of course, homemade blood pudding, prepared fresh by his Mum. If you truly want to experience a culture, eat the food. We had never been here before, yet we felt right at home.

When the workshop began the next day, it was déjà vu all over again. We could see that each and every one of the attendees, regardless of any differences in past history or present skill level, stood exactly where we stand. (Not to mention the fact that the Strong Room turned out to be one of the finest facilities I’ve ever practiced calisthenics.) We worked on push-ups, pull-ups, human flags and muscle-ups. In addition to the thrill of teaching these skills and the satisfaction of seeing so many PR’s (first muscle-ups, flags, one-arm push-ups and more), we got to make so many new friends. That’s the part you can’t really see on the internet. It can only be experienced firsthand.

Day two was even better. So many folks who were on the fringes of achieving the elusive back lever, one-legged squat and back bridge got to see their dreams become reality and so did we. Have I mentioned that I love my job?

In what felt like an instant, it was already Sunday, the third and final day of PCC. The pleasure of witnessing so many brand new inversions and elbow levers, the emotions running wild during Century testing and the tears of joy at the end of the day made it an experience none of us will ever forget. But it was is bitter-sweet; we shared so much with so many! Just two days ago, the people we met were perfect strangers, but now we see they were just like us all along. It’s so hard to say goodbye.

PCC Dundalk proved to be the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We are thrilled to have made the trip and are looking forward to coming back. I await with anticipation the prospect of meeting more future members of our PCC family and doing it all over again. As the Irish saying goes, “Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb… that’s where the fruit is.”

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Danny Kavadlo is one of the world’s most established and respected personal trainers. He is a Master Instructor of Progressive Calisthenics and the author of Everybody Needs Training: Proven Success Secrets for the Professional Fitness Trainer. A true in-person experience, Danny is known globally as a motivator and leader in the body-weight community. Learn more about Danny at: www.DannyTheTrainer.com.

The First PCC Grandma

May 6, 2014 By Sigrun Bishop 3 Comments

sigrun.photo1 — Photo courtesy of Anthony Read

Looking back over the years, I was always fascinated with bodyweight training. I suppose it started when I was a child and I dabbled in gymnastics. Practicing the movements and principles of gymnastics ignited the fire that would become a lifetime interest in health, wellness and fitness.

It wasn’t all triumph and positivity back then. It was quite the contrary at times. I remember thinking as a young girl that my peers were “better” than me because they could perform more advanced movements than I could. Despite my affection for this form of training, even at that age, a part of me was put off by the competitive nature. I stopped training. That was over forty years ago.

These days I am a proud grandmother and, yes, fitness is still very much a part of my life. In fact, my grandson is one of my biggest motivators! I watch with a sense of wonder how beautifully he moves and I feel that we should all be able to move with the same grace: Natural squats with a full range of motion, the power to push oneself away from the floor, or even the ability to pull up onto something. Any young child can do these things. I see it in my grandson all the time.

Around this time, I also discovered Convict Conditioning and the Kavadlo Brothers’ books. I devoured them. In those books I saw much more than one of the most comprehensive types of training and writing ever assembled, I also saw a chance to reclaim the childhood passion I had lost… and a new way to connect to my grandson. When I saw some of these photos, I had to try bodyweight yet again!

I first heard of the PCC in June 2013 when Andrew Read and the Dragon Door Australia team attended the groundbreaking, first-ever PCC course in the United States. Months later, when I found out the course would be offered in Melbourne, Australia, I was overcome with excitement and I knew I had to attend!

Still, I live in Central Queensland, which is nearly four hours by plane. However, missing out was simply not an option! I was excited not just for myself, but for the opportunity to learn how to teach bodyweight exercises to others.

This life-changing 3-day Certification really put me in touch with something I should never have lost: Strength from movement using only my own body. Empowerment. Plus, body-weight training is fun! There is absolutely no reason why we as we get older shouldn’t still do it. Kids play in trees, on the roof and every other place they aren’t supposed to be. I saw that attending the PCC was a way to reconnect with the kid in me. I was always the “cool mum” that did cool stuff with my own kids, and now, since attending PCC, I can do even cooler stuff with my grandson as he develops.

I’m talking to all you moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas out there. I’m reaching out to anyone who says they’re too old or it’s too late. It’s not! Nothing is unattainable! It’s never too late to join your kids (or grandkids) in this wonderful world of bodyweight training. They play. We train. Progressive Calisthenics helps us grown-ups reclaim what was rightfully ours from the beginning. I know I did! Take it from me, the first PCC Grandma!

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Sigrun Bishop, RKC ll, PCC, is the first grandma to complete and pass the PCC. She has been working on bodyweight strength after her childhood gymnastics sporadically at first and more consistently for the last 5 years, and has been interested in fitness for most of her life. You can reach her at: www.healthwellnesslifestylestudio.com or here.