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Progressive Calisthenics - The Official Blog for the PCC Community

Archives for February 2015

Big Man Calisthenics

February 24, 2015 By Forest Vance 17 Comments

Forest Vance  with Al and Danny Kavadlo at the Encinitas PCC
Forest Vance with Al and Danny Kavadlo at the Encinitas PCC

A couple of years ago, cumulative injuries, less time to hit the gym, and just wanting a break from hard lifting motivated me to explore other modes of training to gain functional, healthy strength. I’d been lifting weights for almost 20 years and needed to try something different. The simplicity and practicality of bodyweight training appealed to me, but I always thought that at my size (6’4″ / 245 pounds) advanced calisthenics were out of my reach. If you look around YouTube, I’m a lot bigger than the typical people you see doing this stuff!

Back in my football days (I played college ball and had a short stint in the NFL), bodyweight work WAS a big part of our routine. However, it was mostly conditioning – stuff like jumping jacks and running in place. I had NO idea of how to use bodyweight training for any other type of goals (strength, muscle gain, etc).

I remember searching around on the internet one day and running across one of Al’s YouTube videos. It featured him doing human flags, muscle-ups, and a bunch of other stuff and that’s what led me down the “rabbit hole” of bodyweight exercise.

I went in to PCC Encinitas not knowing what to expect. Watching videos and practicing on your own is one thing, but going to an event like this with dozens of other calisthenics enthusiasts is another. I went in not knowing if I could even DO any of the exercises taught, let alone hang with the gymnast-types I expected to see at the event.

The certification weekend turned out to be one of the best fitness events I’ve EVER attended – and I’ve been to dozens over the 10 years I’ve been in the fitness business full time!

Forest Vance Muscle-Up

We learned and trained bodyweight exercise for three full days, including:

Push-ups
Pull-ups
Human flags
Muscle ups
Squats
Back bridges
Ab work (everything from L-sits to dragon flags to hanging leg raises)
Front and back levers
Floor levers
Handstands

And MUCH more.

From the staggering amount of new exercises, technique tips, and coaching cues I came away with, to the top-notch instruction from Al and Danny and the rest of the PCC team, to the positive attitude and energy of every single attendee, it was truly an amazing experience.

And my worries about fitting in and being able to hang were gone almost as soon as the event started. Being able to try “basic” versions of exercises like the human flag, muscle-up, dragon flags, floor levers, and many more showed me that these movements ARE possible for a big man. The huge amount of progressions presented showed me that if I put my mind to them, and work consistently on getting better over time, I can make a lot of progress!

Forest Vance Assisted Pistol

Add to that the accepting, positive, encouraging approach of the instructors, and you have probably the most universally applicable training course for a fitness professional that exists. Master this bodyweight stuff and you can train any client, anytime, anyplace, with zero equipment.

I feel a new enthusiasm for training that I haven’t felt in quite a while, really since I discovered kettlebells six or seven years ago. That alone is worth the cost and time of the trip 10x over.

It turns out my fear about my size was really just an excuse I made up in my mind! YOU can do this progressive calisthenics stuff – big or small, young or old, fit pro or just calisthenics enthusiast … make it happen! You’ll be glad you did.

Keep training hard!

Forest Vance At PCC

***

Forest Vance, PCC, RKC II, is a Master of Science in Human Movement, former professional football player, and currently runs a fitness boot camp and personal training facility in the Sacramento, CA area. Find years worth of free kettlebell and body weight – related articles, videos, and training courses at Forest’s personal blog at http://forestvance.com

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics Tagged With: big man calisthenics, Forest Vance, PCC Encinitas, progressive calisthenics, workshop experience

3 Steps to Getting “In the Zone” for EVERY Workout

February 17, 2015 By Eric Buratty 36 Comments

Al Kavadlo superman push-up

Want to know what it feels like to explode?

No, I’m not referring to those whack pre-workout supplements.

I’m referring to what it feels like to get “in the zone,” which naturally occurs during your superhero-like workouts. These are the moments when you look and feel deceptively stronger to the naked eye. These are the moments that ultimately allow you to push your limits.

Since we’ve all experienced those days where we feel like crap and less motivated to train, it’s time to put a cap on that mental and physical stress once and for all. Here are three steps for a stronger workout and improved recovery rate, EVERY time.

Step I: First Things First – Eliminate Distractions!

  1. Turn off your computers, mobile devices, and yes, even “high energy” music.

Responding to emails, text messages and social media notifications during the time you’ve set aside for working out is a good way to kill your training progress all together—due to their emotionally distracting capabilities. Playing “high energy” music may also upset the balance you want to achieve between feeling overly excited and feeling too calm.

  1. Turn away from all timers, stopwatches and clocks.

Reaching the highest level of performance possible during a given workout requires an attentive mind and body. Therefore, it would be silly to try and gauge your performance in the moment right in front of you if you’re too focused on beating the clock. While in a utopian-like society we would make linear progress, the mind and body simply do not work like that. So, in reality, we must respect our body’s dynamic progress capabilities without training on the nerve from elapsed time.

  1. Ditch the mirrors.

Mirrors create the illusion of space—which can sometimes be helpful in the short run for teaching body awareness. However, in the long run, too much reliance on mirrors can slow down your reaction time, affect your force and power development and interfere with your body’s natural balance and stability. These are the EXACT qualities you need to be mindful of when successfully getting in the zone

Step II: Select Your Secret Weapon – Choose a Movement for the Type of Workout You’re About to Do.

  1. Choose a Jump Variation for workouts involving more lower body volume AND for total body workouts.

Here’s a video I put together that features some fun options for you to try.

  1. Choose a plyometric Pushing Variation for workouts involving more upper body pushing volume.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.

  1. Choose a plyometric Pulling Variation for workouts involving more upper body pulling volume.

Unless you’re proficient with chest to bar pull-ups or kipping muscle ups, stick to the horizontal axis for some explosive Australian pull-ups.

Step III: Get in the Zone – Activate Your Nervous System.

  1. Regardless of what your current fitness levels are like, when you last worked out or what time limitations you may currently have, it’s imperative that you hit a warm-up that’s specific to the workout you’re about to perform. This is because the way you spend your first 5-10 minutes is the best indicator of how the rest of your workout will go. So we’re all on the same page, a solid warm-up will typically involve any of the following elements.

a) Active Stretch

Danny Kavadlo Toy Soldier
Danny Kavadlo demonstrates the “toy soldier”

b) Isometric or Dynamic Core Move (examples: plank or leg raise)

c) Lower Level Big Six Movement from Convict Conditioning for higher reps

d) Lower Intensity Cardio Exercise of your choice (light jog, jumping jacks, wall or some moderately paced mountain climbers with a training partner if you have one (see below))

Angelo Grinceri & Rosalia Chann of Couples Calisthenics
Angelo Grinceri & Rosalia Chann of Couples Calisthenics

If you have a training partner, some moderately paced mountain climbers for as little as 15 seconds at a time will surely warm-up your core, and get some blood flowing through your entire body. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

  1.  We’ll now kick up this baseline warm-up a few notches with that plyometric move you selected in Step II above. This is because, the more athletic your warm-up is, the better your chances are of putting yourself into the zone. Perform a superset between that plyometric movement and your warm-up movement(s).
  1. In order to make the plyometric movement look and feel as graceful and explosive as possible, you’ll perform 3-5 reps ONLY at various points throughout your warm-up. Ideally you’ll want to get away from counting with such few reps as this habit encourages you to train on the nerve. But that’s the approximate range for those of you who need quantitative satisfaction in the beginning.

Not sure where to start?

I recently performed a total body workout that consisted of pike push-ups, hanging V-leg raises, reverse lunges and straight leg bridges for reps. So, to give you an idea of how to apply this info, here’s the specific warm-up sequence/circuit I used prior to that workout.

Burraty Pike To Pancake

Burraty Standing Plow Good Morning

Burraty Bear Crawl

Burraty Staddle Box Jumps 1

Burraty Staddle Box Jumps 2

You’ll learn to feel this, but your performance WILL increase with each successive set/rep of your plyometric movement if you’re completely engaged in the moment right in front of you. It should also go without saying that this info can be applied toward workouts with weights for those of you who choose to supplement your calisthenics training.

By the end of your warm-up, you should feel ready to do more—with noticeable improvements in performance—but should NOT at any time feel excessive metabolic fatigue, out of breath or as though you’re doing the Valsalva Maneuver.

In sum, here are some key benefits you’ll experience from getting in the zone for EVERY workout.

  • Mood-uplifting, “neural-charge” effect—wherein eustress exceeds distress from an exercise standpoint
  • Greater body awareness through free space—remind upper and lower extremities of each other for total body synergy
  • More control over body momentum—reinforce a strong carryover between “loading” and “landing” positions (i.e., eccentric and concentric phases in a range-of-motion)
  • Make exercise fun, playful and less routine-like.

Do YOU have any favorite strategies that help you get in the zone for your workouts? If so, I’m sure we would love to hear about them. Just drop your tips in the comments below!

 

***
Eric Buratty brings five years of experience to the DC Metro Area as a Certified Personal Trainer, Progressive Calisthenics Instructor, Nutrition Consultant and Sports Injury Specialist.
For more information about Eric, check out his website, EricBurattyFitness.com.

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics, Tutorial Tagged With: Eric Buratty, explosive calisthenics, fitness training, focus, mental training, plyometrics, stretching, tutorial, warm up, warmup, workout strategy

Calisthenics, Injuries and Life

February 10, 2015 By Corey Howard 72 Comments

Corey Howard One Arm Aussie Pull-Up

On June 8 of 2014, I turned 40.  The following day I had surgery to repair a ruptured triceps in my right arm.  In late August, just 3 months later I was able to pass all of the skill elements for my RKC recertification using ONLY calisthenics for training.  But what happened in between those dates is where the magic of calisthenics lies.

Fitness gives me life.  It helps me stay in shape so I can help out my wife around the house and keep crossing things off the seemingly never ending to-do list.  Being in shape gives me the ability to play basketball with my son in the driveway, or throw soft toss to him in the batting cage.  In late May when I ruptured my triceps I was no stranger to working around injuries, but it still gave me a few new opportunities.  First, I was able to focus entirely on my lower body and write what turned out to be a fairly successful blog post about calisthenics leg training.  Second, it forced me to start my upper body training from ground zero and really dig deeper into the Convict Conditioning progressions.

How does an advanced lifter re-teach himself one arm push-ups?  I will admit, despite limited range of motion in my elbow and absolutely zero pushing strength in my right arm; I had retained most of my pulling strength.  After regaining complete active full range of motion in the joint I was able to start push-ups at an incline as well as horizontal pull-ups. Pairing the pushing and pulling together gave me a chance to work on regaining my tricep strength as well as the range of motion from the pulling movements.

Despite my youthful desire to challenge myself and rush to the next progression I made sure I was able to hit 20 quality reps with each movement before moving on to the next harder step.  I think this also helped strengthen the tendon as well as create movement proficiency.  Eventually I was able to do 20 quality narrow push-ups on the floor and 20 wide grip pull-ups with my ankles elevated on a support bar.

Corey Howard One Arm Raised Push-Up

The transition to a dead hang pull-up was surprisingly quick and easy, but moving to the one arm push-up proved to be a bit more challenging.  To accommodate the added weight and strain on the elbow joint I had to move to incline one-arm push-ups and follow a similar rep progression back to the ground.  I think it really helped practicing single arm push-ups at various heights and immediately following it with tight narrow push-ups on the floor.

I learned a couple things along the way.  First, patience is everything.  Don’t rush to get to the next progression until you’ve mastered the step you’re on.  As Paul Wade says in Convict Conditioning, earn the right to advance to the next step.  This pays dividends when you attempt the next step and find that you can actually control a few reps with quality technique instead of surviving and gutting out two or three sloppy injury risking reps.  Second, most of us are not professional athletes.  Yes, a lot of us think part of our identity comes from what we can do in the gym.  Our true identity is created by how we are as a husband and father.  My injury sucked.  It took away my ability to train upper body and I lost some of my hard earned muscle mass, but that paled in comparison to not being able to play catch with my son, or help my wife carry in the groceries.

On Friday January 9th, I ruptured my bicep in the other arm.  On Monday the 19th I had surgery to repair that. Click here for a photo during the repair process. Warning: Graphic medical photo.  Two major injuries in six months.  This time around I’m not worried about the lost training time, I’m upset that I won’t be able to go sledding with my son, or do everything my wife needs me to do.  I’ll admit I’m having a hard time dealing with this one. Three months from now I know I’ll look back and see countless blessings from this, including a deeper appreciation for the pull-up progressions, but right now I’m in the storm and it’s tough to see the shore over the tall waves.

Corey Howard Recovers From Surgery

I know there are tons of people dealing with worse situations than mine; those of us in the fitness world sometimes stake too much of our identity on our physical capabilities. Twenty years from now the only thing people will remember is how you treated your family and those around you. It’s easy to forget that we work out to be healthy and so we can have a good quality of life. I may have temporarily lost the use of my arm, but I’m not going to let myself lose sight of the big picture.

***

About Corey Howard, PCC, RKC, CK-FMS: Corey Howard strives to constantly become stronger, and to help others to achieve their fitness goals. He is the owner of Results Personal Training, and can be reached at fithubby.com, resultsptonline.com or coreyhoward.com.

Filed Under: Motivation and Goals, Progressive Calisthenics Tagged With: bodyweight exercise, calisthenics, Corey Howard, Injury, push-ups, recovery from injury, surgery

Increasing Frequency: How to Work Out More Without Overtraining

February 5, 2015 By Silvio Bauer 26 Comments

Silvio Blauer Pistol

If you are anything like me (which means people call you crazy, but that’s another story) you love to work out. You cannot go a day without training and you feel itchy when you miss a workout.

I’ve certainly been there while traveling or when I was stretched thin from work and social commitments. I get a bit moody and my feet start trembling. You may call me addicted.

But all this name calling is total nonsense, because there is a sound way to develop the resilience necessary to work out daily. The good news: I’m gonna tell you about it.

Ready? Good, let’s get to it then.

Why Go High Frequency?

So, let’s first consider the why before we delve into the how. There’s a good number of reasons why it’s pretty neat to be able to work out daily.

  • Habit building: People who struggle working out consistently might find it harder to collect enough will power 3 times a week compared to working out daily. But how can working out less often be harder? Because that way, it’s not a habit. When I come home after work, I change into my workout clothes, find a pull-up bar and do my workout. I don’t ponder about this, I just do it. It’s automatic. By working out only 3 times a week, it’s tempting to postpone a workout because every time, it’s a decision that has to be made.
  • More practice time: If your main goal is mere strength, a high frequency (HF) program is what you need. The more often you practice a certain skill, the faster your progress. And if you, like me, have a long wish list of feats of strength you want to accomplish, that additional practice time gives you room to sneak in one or two more moves you can practice.
  • Plateau busting: When you’re stuck with a progression, say, pistol squats, what can you do? Well, do a lot of pistols or pistol regressions. Do them every day. I dare you to not get better at a move by doing this.
  • Toughening up: When you finally buy into the HF training method, you forget about your excuses. It’s not a big deal anymore when you feel a bit stiff or sense a light muscle soreness. You’ll also learn to really listen to your body, how a good warm-up can do wonders and you will enjoy an enhanced ability to recover from your workouts.

If these are not good reasons to train more often, I don’t know what is.

However, here is what an HF program is not:

  • An ideal bodybuilding method: Most of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday routines come from the bodybuilding community. And if all you want is bigger guns, HF training as described here is not your best bet. I’m not saying you cannot build muscle with this (in fact I gained visible mass from doing pistols every day). It just might not be optimal for mass gaining.
  • A very structured routine: I’ll describe this in detail below, but to implement HF, you have to learn to go with the flow. Therefore, I recommend this only for strength trainees who A) know exactly what they want from their training and B) have enough experience to scale their workouts.

Now, if you want everything from the first list and can manage to miss out on the second one, here is what you need to do.

How to Implement High Frequency Training

Silvio Blauer

I came across the idea of HF training first by reading Squat Everyday by Matt Perryman. It’s an awesome read and, though it’s geared towards weightlifters, really useful for every fitness enthusiast because it’s about much more than just squats. It’s about questioning sport’s “science” and challenging your belief system from time to time.

I never thought I could train that often because I got really sore from my workouts. I was a big fan of the High Intensity Training (HIT) Method and therefore destroyed myself with every workout.

Now, my dentist told me that this won’t work if I wanted to work out almost every day. Here’s a diagram that illustrates why this is the case.

FIV_triangle

I call this the FIV triangle (I’m actually not the first person to come up with this diagram. I first saw this in an article by Alex Zinchenko). The orange dot in the middle is metaphorical you. You can be everywhere inside the triangle. The nearer you are to one corner, the more distant you are from the other two.

Now, when you want to work out very often, the first thing you have to do is do lower intensity and lower volume workouts (volume meaning the total number of sets you do each week, for every muscle respectively).

frequency-FIV

This is an extreme case and probably resembles something like working out 2 times a day, every day. If that’s you, I envy you for your spare time.

A useful method to implement higher frequency training would work with two things:

  1. Scale every workout so that the dot does not come near the lower corners of the FIV triangle (intensity and volume).
  2. Skew the FIV triangle so that a higher frequency is possible with intensity and volume being the same.

The skewed triangle below would resemble a good case of strength focused HF training.

high-frequency-FIV

This means we’re doing HF, medium high intensity and low volume.

To produce this kind of training regimen, you need to learn the Art of Going with the Flow and to push through some light discomfort. To elaborate this further, let’s take the pistol as an example.

Say you want to get really good at pistols and you therefore try to do them every day. Depending on your level of strength, the pistol can be a very demanding and therefore intense exercise. So doing 5 sets of 5 pistols (5×5) every day might be too much.

That’s exactly when you need to listen to your body: If you did a few intense sets of pistols on Monday, scale down on Tuesday. Maybe do a couple of sets of light bodyweight squats followed by one good set of pistols.

Maybe Wednesday and Thursday are medium intensity and you feel good to go again on Friday for a higher intensity workout. I plotted an exemplary weekly course of intensity in the diagram below.

intensity_curve

As you see, the intensity (the orange line) throughout the week varies significantly. This is to keep the balance between volume (dark grey area under the curve) and recovery (light grey area between curve and maximum intensity line).

Now we can see why the FIV triangle makes sense: If you keep intensity at maximum every day, there is no recovery. You can go high intensity, but therefore you need to have rest days (so intensity zero).

The low intensity days are nothing more than active recovery. In fact, doing lighter regressions of an exercise helps promote blood flow to your muscles and your joints, which in turn speeds up recovery and prevents injury. Spiffy!

There is no exact method how to scale each and every workout, because everybody is at a different level, both in strength and recovery ability. That’s something you need to experiment with yourself.

The neat thing about adopting this varied intensity scaling and HF training is that it makes you more resilient. You will get sore less often and will enjoy faster recovery. That’s mighty useful if you want to participate in a PCC Workshop, by the way. You won’t be beat up so much after the three days and can take The Century Test like a breeze.

So once you get the hang of taming your inner beast during your workouts, you can work on skewing the FIV triangle so that you can take more frequency with the same intensity and volume.

But do yourself a favor and be deliberate about your workouts. That means, keep a workout log and write out your workout beforehand on that specific day, based on how you feel. You can correct your plan during the workout but try to keep this at a minimum.

For the first few HF weeks, plan out your workouts lighter than you think you can handle. If after a week you think your workouts have been a joke, scale them up a notch.

Maintaining High Frequency Training

Silvio Blauer L-Sit

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when riding the HF horse. Firstly, warm-up properly with dynamic stretches, mobility drills or very light regressions of your target skill. After your workouts, I recommend some good old-fashioned stretching. Specifically stretch the muscles involved in your HF training.

After about 2 weeks of experimenting with pistols every day, I felt that my legs got really tense and stiff. It wasn’t soreness, just a slight tiredness. So I took a day off, did a nice recovery routine, had a couple of beers (I’m German, that’s how I recover 😉 ) and jumped on the pistol wagon again the next day.

So yes, you can take a day off once in a while. Just know that you won’t die from working out with slightly sore muscles. There have been so many times when I felt like I didn’t have enough energy for a productive workout, but after a good warm-up, it usually turned out great.

You also don’t have to implement this for all your skills and moves (but you could, I guess). I did this with pistols to finally master them with ease. But you could incorporate this for just about any skill like one-arm push-ups, elbow levers or dragon flags.

So there it is. All you need to know to toughen up and practice as often as possible without burning out. Happy tricking!

-Silvio

***

Silvio is a full time medical engineer who loves to practice and teach calisthenics in his free time. He enjoys creating workout plans for his friends and spreads the word about PCC over at his blog, NeatStrength.com. He writes about minimalist fitness and can also be reached through his Facebook page: facebook.com/neatstrength.

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics, Tutorial Tagged With: high frequency training, high intensity training, how to, neat strength, programming your training, progressive calisthenics, Silvio Bauer, tutorial

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