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Progressive Calisthenics - The Official Blog for the PCC Community

Archives for December 2015

The Top 10 PCC Blog Posts of 2015

December 29, 2015 By Al Kavadlo 19 Comments

PCC 2015 CollageWhat a great year it has been for calisthenics and the PCC! Danny and I traveled all over the US and Europe in 2015, bringing the Progressive Calisthenics Certification to new places like California, Italy and the UK.

In addition to reaching new markets, many of the venues that had previously hosted the PCC, like Trainingscentrum Helena in Holland, and Soho Strength Lab in New York City, saw even larger attendance than at last year’s events.

While I was fortunate enough to connect with hundreds of you in person this year, the PCC has impacted hundreds of thousands more through this blog.

With the year coming to an end, it’s become an annual tradition for me to take a look back and select my favorite blog posts. Once again, it was hard to pick ten, but I did my best!

Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

–The man, the myth, the legend, Paul “Coach” Wade kicked off the year by telling us how to add 20 pounds of muscle mass in one year with calisthenics. Did any of you give it a shot?

–My brother and PCC Master Instructor Danny Kavadlo explained why there’s no reason to be afraid of getting hurt during a workout.

–Senior PCC Adrienne Harvey reminded us that revisiting regressions such as the short bridge and shoulderstand squat can lead to surprising advancements in our training.

–PCC standout Matt Schifferle explained how understanding the concept of technical convergence can take your training to the next level.

PCC NYC Raised One Arm Pushups–It’s always an honor to get a blog post from a calisthenics legend like PCC Instructor Jack Arnow.

–PCC Instructor Eric Buratty wrote this entertaining and informative post about getting in the zone for your workout.

–Right after earning his Progressive Calisthenics Certification, newly-minted PCC Instructor Eric Bergmann passed along some great advice to avoid the 99 rep curse and complete the PCC Century test.

–While PCC Instructor Ali El-Khatib updated us a full year after taking the cert to explain how his life had changed following the PCC.

PCC NYC Wrist Stretches–My wife and fellow PCC Instructor Grace Kavadlo penned this helpful tutorial on the crow pose and its variations.

–And lastly, I had fun ironically pointing out that talk is cheap.

That’s it! Enjoy the articles, have a Happy New Year…

…and Let’s Do Some Pull-ups!

Pic4

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Al Kavadlo is the lead instructor for Dragon Door’s Progressive Calisthenics Certification. Recognized worldwide for his amazing bodyweight feats of strength as well as his unique coaching style, Al is the author of five books, including Raising The Bar: The Definitive Guide to Pull-up Bar Calisthenics and Pushing The Limits! Total Body Strength With No Equipment. Read more about Al on his website:www.AlKavadlo.com.

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics Tagged With: 2015 in review, calisthenics, PCC, progressive calisthenics, top 10, top 10 blog posts 2015

Three Easy Stretches to Improve Your Calisthenics Practice

December 22, 2015 By Al Kavadlo 14 Comments

Wonder Wheel Bridge Al Kavaldo

Anyone who’s practiced calisthenics long enough knows firsthand that mobility is a crucial component of bodyweight exercise. Calisthenics staples like L-sits, back bridges and pistol squats all demand a high degree of flexibility, but even less obvious exercises like pull-ups and handstands require mobility as well.

While practicing those moves in and of themselves can help you improve your range of motion, supplemental stretching can elevate your calisthenics game to the next level.

Here are three simple stretches that you can practice daily to improve your overall mobility. Just try to hold each pose a few times a day while you take several deep, slow breaths. There’s no need to set a timer or be too dogmatic about it.

Speaking of dogs…

Updog

What’s up, dog?

For starters, it’s a great way to prep your spine for bridge work. It also opens your hip flexors, warms up your triceps and provides a good stretch for your abdomen.

Begin in a push-up position, then drop your hips toward the ground, lift your chest and look up. Be careful not to let your shoulders shrug up by your ears. Think about pulling down and back through your shoulder blades like you would during a pull-up. Press your hands into the ground, lock your elbows and gently contract your quads to prevent your legs from dragging on the ground.

Al Kavadlo Up Dog

Downward Dog

Downward Dog is a helpful stretch for building flexibility in the entire posterior chain as well as opening the shoulders. It will loosen your hamstrings for L-sits and pistol squats, plus it can improve your handstand as well.

Begin on your hands and knees with your toes curled under your heels, then slowly lift your hips into the air while pressing your chest toward your thighs. Try to keep your back as flat as possible while pressing your hands into the ground and reaching your hips into the air. Do your best to maintain straight arms and legs, though it’s okay to allow your knees to bend and/or let your heels come off the floor. In time, work toward fully extending your legs and pressing your feet flat. People with tight calves may find it helpful to bend one knee while straightening the other, alternating sides.

Al Kavadlo downward dog

Seated Twist

A powerful stretch for the hips and spine, the seated twist is also one of Coach Wade’s three favorite stretches, as noted in Convict Conditioning 2. The full expression of the exercise, which involves binding the hands, is also a great stretch for the shoulders. Seated twists are helpful for any calisthenics move that requires rotation, such as the side crow or dragon pistol squat.

Sit on the ground with both legs extended straight in front of you. Now bend your right leg and cross it over the left, placing your right foot flat on the floor. Twist your trunk and reach your left arm out in front of your right knee. Your right hand should be placed palm down on the floor a few inches behind your back as you twist and look over your right shoulder. From here you can bend your left leg as well, tucking the foot beneath your opposite hip. For an added stretch, reach your right hand behind your back while threading your left hand through the opening beneath your right knee, bringing your hands into a bind (or gripping a cloth between the hands if a bind is not yet attainable). Make sure to repeat the stretch on both sides.

Seated Twists

I encourage you to use these stretches to warm up at the start of your calisthenics practice and/or to cool down at the end. The more time you spend in each pose, the better they should start to feel. Also feel free to practice throughout the day any time you feel stiff.

To find out more about stretching to improve your calisthenics practice, check out my book Stretching Your Boundaries – Flexibility Training for Extreme Calisthenic Strength.

Pic5StretchingYourBoundariesBookCover

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Al Kavadlo is the lead instructor for Dragon Door’s Progressive Calisthenics Certification. Recognized worldwide for his amazing bodyweight feats of strength as well as his unique coaching style, Al is the author of five books, including Raising The Bar: The Definitive Guide to Pull-up Bar Calisthenics and Pushing The Limits! Total Body Strength With No Equipment. Read more about Al on his website:www.AlKavadlo.com.

Filed Under: Flexibility, Tutorial Tagged With: Al Kavadlo, breathing, calisthenics, downward dog, flexibility, mobility, PCC, progressive calisthenics, seated twist, Stretching Your Boundaries, twist, updog, yoga

Calisthenic Conditioning Boosts Brain Power

December 15, 2015 By Joe Schwartz, DC 15 Comments

Al Kavadlo, One-Arm Elbow LeverIf you look around most mainstream gyms, you’re likely to see people using fancy-looking machines to try hitting each part of their bodies individually. This “isolation principle” of weight training gained popularity with the rise of bodybuilding, where it is effective in sculpting individual muscles in isolation and hoping to counterbalance that effort with each muscle individually, putting them together in a “Frankenstein” fashion to build a muscular physique.

Putting all the cells and body parts of a cadaver together, however meticulously, will not create a person capable of performing the miraculous feats humans are capable of performing. The problem lies in that a muscular physique alone does not translate into athleticism nor overall health. It is largely for appearance, and in some cases, raw strength. This is not to say that all those with muscular physiques are not athletic. Athleticism is a talent that is either practiced or naturally present. Just as talent alone is not enough, however, a muscular physique is not enough in the pursuit of overall health and optimum performance.

Critics of calisthenic conditioning often claim it lacks a progression element typical in weight training or machine resistance such as plate loaded or hydraulic cam or cable devices. Truth be discovered, there are near infinite progressions for every calisthenic exercise placing greater demand and stimulating progressively increasing power and strength.

So what does this have to do with brain power? Simple: The more you force different groups of muscles to work together to overcome a challenge, the more recruitment of brain, nervous system and muscle activation you achieve. Practicing this pattern over time makes you more efficient in executing similar challenges. It makes your system smarter! This is how we are designed to function, not in individual parts, but as a whole. This explains ancient systems of exercise and conditioning like martial arts, Yoga, and other physical practices dating back to the dawn of man. It wasn’t until recently we became attracted to the notion of isolation training for aesthetic outcomes and thought we were smarter than the ancient wisdom that brought us here.

Danny Kavadlo teaching at a PCC Workshop
The “Chain of Command” Principle

Like an elite military or business system, your brain’s recon teams bring information in for central processing and a proper response. Practicing these responses regularly with varying degrees of challenge builds reactions that are more reflex in nature than thought-based. Receptors in muscles, joints, tendons, fascia and other body parts perform the recon work. They gather information about the environment in response to gravitational stresses. This is where the juice is. Vary those stresses in multiple planes of action with varying degrees of difficulty and bingo! Practice consciously so you can react well in stressful situations.

In my studies and 30-plus years of clinical experience, I see one common element in people suffering the wide array of health problems. This common element is that people do not move enough and when they do, it is not in a beneficial way. All their effort goes into a rather mindless propulsion of a machine typically while seated. No attention is given to practicing consciously challenging movements! Often these efforts to “exercise” are misguided and result in repetitive strain or outright injury, which causes many people with good intentions to quit entirely.

Defining Exercise

My definition of exercise is any activity you engage in regularly that counteracts the stress and strain of what you do most of your day (at work and during leisure time). We sit too much. We do not move our eyes enough. We do not challenge our balance and equilibrium enough. We do not challenge our muscles to work together in synchronized patterns to evoke the brain and muscle “memory” required to sustain optimal brain health and physical conditioning. Calisthenic conditioning directly addresses these deficits. Moving your body and recruiting muscle and joint receptors in novel ways builds protein in these nervous system pathways in unison rather than simply building proteins to make a muscle larger. Keep in mind the age old principle that you either “use it or lose it”. Nowhere is it more profoundly true than in the brain and nervous system. To make the best use of time invested in a conditioning program it makes sense to engage the brain, nervous system, musculoskeletal system, and mind all at once while exercising. Comparing calisthenic conditioning to isolation exercises performed on machines, treadmills or other cardio machines is a “no brainer” (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

Clutch Flags at a PCC Workshop
Calisthenic exercises (ideally in a natural setting) provide huge potential benefits and rewards. By moving your body against gravity in various patterns and planes you establish and condition your “chain of command”.  In the absence of a natural setting, the movement of your head and body while performing calisthenic exercises should be adequate to improve your health far better than sitting on a circuit training machine pumping out repetitions of isolation exercises. The “chain of command” I refer to in simplified terms is your brain, nervous system, muscles, joints, and connective tissues, along with the parallel connections between the nervous system and every cell and tissue of your vital organs. A healthy brain and nervous system, an athletic physique, and the ability to perform impressive physical feats into your later years are just but a few side effects of calisthenic conditioning. Healthy blood chemistry, balanced mental state and ideal body composition are but a few more benefits. It is well worth the effort to re-establish your physical and mental potential for optimal health and well-being.

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Dr Joseph A. Schwartz, DCJoseph A. Schwartz, DC has 31 years experience as a practicing chiropractor with an emphasis on neurology, rehabilitation, nutrition, strength and conditioning. His mission is to empower others so they may exceed their expectations for vibrant health and well-being.

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics Tagged With: benefits of calisthenics, benefits of exercise, brain health, brain power, calisthenics, Joe Schwartz, nervous system health, PCC

How the PCC Changed My Life

December 8, 2015 By Ali El Khatib 12 Comments

Ali El Khatib Support Press

For me, the PCC was not just a calisthenics certification, it was a life-changing, eye-opening experience.

In October of 2014 I traveled from my home in Egypt all the way to Haarlem, Holland to attend the Progressive Calisthenics Certification. Going into a gym full of people I’d never met from all different nationalities was an intimidating experience by itself. That was when the learning began, however–just bouncing ideas off of people with different backgrounds than myself.

Al and Danny have a great way of welcoming people. They’re both very warm, and very hospitable, but I personally believe they’re opposites. Al is more of a lighthearted, relaxed type of guy while Danny is energetic and intense. This got me thinking, if these two guys are opposites, yet both are extremely successful, what does that mean? The answer is this: there is not one way to connect with your clients and achieve success. The only way is to be true to yourself, and strive to always improve and serve your clients as best as you can. That was one of the most valuable lessons I took away from the weekend.

Another thing I realized is that Al is skinny, while Danny is more muscular. Although that might not seem like much to most people, here’s what it taught me: forget aesthetics. Yes, neither Al nor Danny look like your typical bodybuilding meatheads, but they can do feats that would put most of the bodybuilding community to shame. The things I saw that weekend–slow muscle-ups, stand-to-stand bridges, one arm pull-ups–are the true signs of strength as far as I am concerned.

Al Kavadlo Stand to Stand Bridge

The biggest lesson I learned from the PCC, however, is to forget the dogma. I’d have to admit, I was the type of person who was obsessed with “sets and reps” and “the right way” of training. What Al and Danny taught me was to expand beyond right and wrong. As Al says, “There is no right or wrong, there are only actions and consequences.”

In this age of information overload where everyone considers themselves an expert, it’s hard to come out with truly valuable information. Ironically, the message that Al and Danny taught me, which is to be open to all possibilities, got me to shut some things out. They encouraged me to start questioning things, to focus less on information, and more on quality of information.

Too many people think the way you learn is by sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher, and getting an A on the test. Fortunately, life doesn’t work like that. Real learning happens in the application of new lessons, from getting feedback, and by constantly trying to improve.

Since returning to Egypt, I quit my corporate job, and started my own fitness company called The Movement, where I’ve been coaching group classes and training people one-on-one.

Ali El Khatib The Movement

Every time I work with a client, I’m constantly asking for feedback on how we could continue to improve the program. That doesn’t mean that I’m soft or that I let my clients off easy. They will tell you that I push them–and I push them hard–but that’s why they appreciate me. They know that I’m pushing them for their sake, and they trust me. Part of my job as a coach is to remind my clients of why they sought me out in the first place.

Though it may not be for everyone, sometimes, especially when I feel they’ve made considerable progress, I will invite my client to dinner to celebrate. For me, this is a way of increasing our rapport and it tends to create a positive association to training. It is also a good way to inspire them to eat healthier.

Most of my clients are novices who’ve almost never worked out, so doing something fun and having a laugh outside of the gym shows them a side of training that they never knew existed. This is the vibe I got when I first entered Trainingscentrum Helena in Haarlem, Netherlands.

The PCC experience got me to tell the people who want my advice on the best workout plan to “find what works for you–what you enjoy, and do it.” People have a hard time understanding this simple sentence, and I believe I would’ve too if it wasn’t for the PCC.

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Ali El Khatib is a PCC instructor who quit his corporate job to venture into health and fitness. Ali founded “The Movement” which aims to provide people with Physical, as well as Mental solutions to achieve true health.

Filed Under: Progressive Calisthenics, Workshop Experiences Tagged With: Ali El Khatib, PCC, PCC Workshop, progressive calisthenics, Progressive Calisthenics Certification Workshop, workshop experience

Training One Rep at a Time

December 1, 2015 By Jack Arnow 40 Comments

Jack Arnow: One Rep at a Time

Several months ago, inspired and guided by Paul Wade’s Explosive Calisthenics, I started training for the “suicide jump.” From a standing position with a stick between my outstretched hands in front of my thighs, the goal is to jump over the stick which ends up behind my thighs.

Most of my best friends advised me not to train for the “suicide jump,” as they assumed injury was extremely likely for a 72 year old. There was much truth to their assertions, but I decided to train anyway. I thought the joy of training was worth the risks. It was!

I trained extremely carefully, discovering ways to make the training even safer, advancing one small step at a time. I really didn’t think I would succeed in reaching the master step, but that was a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to focus on each rep in each step with no distractions at all, improving technique, listening to my body, and trusting my intuition.

As a result, I loved the training. It was so much fun because I wasn’t overly attached to the outcome. To my surprise, after a few months, I jumped over a long straw, not a stick. Then a while after that I jumped over a rubber flex bar. Just recently I jumped over an actual stick!

https://youtu.be/ZZ12VRBTmxg

The funny thing is that I thought I already had learned to train this way, focusing on the present, but in retrospect I wasn’t. This was particularly evident in my training for one arm chin-ups over the last several years. Even though I should have known better, I’ve been too aggressive in my pursuit to regain this amazing feat of strength. I’ve lived and learned a lot over the years, but certain lessons need to be continually revisited.

Recently I applied my lessons from training the “suicide jump” to training the one arm chin. I began varying my workouts based on how each rep felt. I will end or continue my workout based on my immediate feeling, not on a predetermined idea. I test new ideas cautiously to see if they help. I’ve learned once again that joyful creative training makes you stronger.

On September 20th 2015 I finally did a flat footed righty one arm chin, but continue training towards a full dead hanging one arm chin. The future is never really certain, in life, or in exercise goals, so enjoy and focus on the present.

Jack Arnow Flatfooted righty chinup

Having clear goals is important, but listening to your body in the immediate present is essential to make better training decisions, and especially to reduce the chance and severity of injury. Constantly strive to improve your technique. One small advance follows one small advance, eventually leading to clear gain, but there will inevitably be setbacks along the way, so be patient with yourself. Others may help you with particular training ideas or suggestions, but test these things carefully in your practice because we are all unique in one way or another.

Regardless of your exercise achievements, be proud of them because your hard work made them happen. If others inspire you, or you inspire others, that is fantastic. Most likely both things are happening. Most importantly, try not to make the mistake of thinking you are better than someone else because you can do something they can’t. You know the difficulties and obstacles that you had to overcome, but probably don’t know theirs. And they most certainly can do many things that you can’t.

Have fun and practice one rep at a time.

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A student of calisthenics legend Jasper Benincasa, Jack Arnow has been practicing calisthenics for over 60 years. He can be reached by email at jackarnow1@gmail.com.

Filed Under: Motivation and Goals, Progressive Calisthenics Tagged With: explosive calisthenics, goals, Jack Arnow, one arm chin up, smart training, training strategies, video

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