Archives for January 2017

The Perfect Calisthenics Workout Routine

January 31, 2017 By Tim Ponticello 11 Comments

Al Kavadlo Pistol Squats

As human beings, we have a tendency to look for the magic bullet that will solve all of our problems. In calisthenics, the often sought after “magic bullet” is the perfect calisthenics workout routine.

Have you ever caught yourself muttering things like…

“What’s the routine that will get me the same results as Al?”
“Just tell me exactly what to do!”
“Do you have a workout routine you recommend?”

Look, I get it… it’s easier to have a formula and just show up to do the work. It’s not as easy to craft your own personalized calisthenics workout routine based on your unique goals, needs, and abilities.

But unfortunately, the cold hard truth is that using a cookie-cutter routine will not only be unspecific to your goals, it can be downright dangerous. Just imagine if you have a leg injury and the workout routine has you performing pistol squats.

Ouch!

As Al mentions in his Make Your Own Workout blog post, “While many fitness guides spoon-feed the reader with rigid specific regimens to follow, I’ve chosen to empower my followers by leaving the suggested program design open-ended.”

I 100% agree with this approach. Every calisthenics trainee is a unique individual with unique needs and goals. For example, if you want to master the front lever – your training routine will likely look much different than someone who wants to master the one-arm chin-up.

The same thing goes for injuries. If you’re working through a shoulder injury for instance, your training routine will look vastly different than someone who has healthy shoulders.

There are simply too many variables at play to follow cookie-cutter routines.

For me personally, I like to use other routines as inspiration to create my own, and I highly encourage you to do the same. If you see someone post a calisthenics routine, take a look and see if you can morph it to fit your unique needs, abilities, and lifestyle.

“Dang-it Tim! You’re not helping me much here! Can’t you give me something?”

Okay, okay. I hear you. How does a “skeleton outline” of a great calisthenics workout routine sound? In other words, an overarching structure you can start with to eventually customize and build your own routines?

Kavadlo Bros Raised Push-ups

Depending on who you talk to and which calisthenics circles you run in, this structure may vary slightly. But in general, the structure is as follows:

Warm-up / Mobility
Skill Or Technique Work
Strength Work
Endurance / Cardio
Cool-down / Flexibility / Pre & Rehabilitation Work

Warm-up / Mobility
I think most everyone would agree that the warm-up should go at the very beginning of a workout. As Paul “Coach” Wade mentions in Convict Conditioning, imagine your muscles as a thick slice of mozzarella cheese. What happens when you pull it out of the frig and give it a tug? It crumbles to bits, right?

But what if you took that same slice of cheese and microwaved it for a few seconds before pulling on it. It would be all soft and stretchy.

Soft and stretchy muscles are what you want before you get into the core of your workout.

The warm-up is important for several reasons, but it can be boiled down to two major factors:

Helps prevent injury
Improves performance

There are several warm-up techniques you can implement into your calisthenics workout routines. One is to just use a generalized warm-up routine like the You Are Your Own Gym Warm-up Video. Another technique is to do easier variations of the exercises you plan to do in your workout.

For example, if you plan to do pistol squats in your workout, you might want to warm-up with normal bodyweight squats. Or if you plan to do one-arm push-ups, you could warm-up with a few sets of regular pushups.

If you have specific mobility weaknesses, you’ll want to address them in the warm-up. For example, I suffered a shoulder injury from back in my weightlifting days that still haunts me to this day. Although minor at this point, I always add lots of shoulder mobility exercises (such as shoulder dislocates) into my warm-up to ensure my shoulders are good to go for the workout. If you plan to work handstands in the skill portion of your routine, I highly recommend warming-up your wrists with a few mobility and stretching exercises.

You’ve successfully warmed up once you’ve got the blood flowing, raised your heart rate, and broken a light sweat (typically 5-10 minutes).

Skill Or Technique Work

Skill or technique work is the bridge between your warm-up and the main strength portion of the workout. In this part of the routine you are focused on developing your bodyweight skill & technique goals. For example, handstands, elbow levers, and L-sits are common skill goals. Any exercise that requires more balance/technique than strength can be considered skill work.

Tim Pontecello Handstand — Handstands are a classic example of “skill work”

As you progress in strength, it is common for a bodyweight exercise to previously be categorized as strength work, but then re-categorized to skill work as strength improves. For example, if you’re just starting out the L-sit progressions might be too difficult to put in the skill portion of the workout. You could first include them in the strength portion, and then after a few weeks or months move them to the skill section once they become easier.

While some strength is required for skill work, it should mostly be balance/technique. Front levers, for example, are not skill work for most of us. The end of the skill phase should leave you feeling fired up and ready to go for your strength training exercises, not drained.

Skill work comes before strength work because you have not yet exhausted your muscles in the main strength training portion of the workout.

Strength Work
Strength work is the meat & potatoes of the workout. This is where you’ll perform your bodyweight exercise progressions. For example, if your goal is the front lever, you would include front lever progression exercises here.

Structuring this part of the workout routine is another post in and of itself. For example, should you do full body or split workouts? How many exercises should you do? How long should you rest between sets?

Again, the answer is there is no right answer. It is 100% dependent on your own unique goals and abilities. For example, someone interested in hypertrophy (increasing muscle size) would likely want to train in a different rep range than someone who is primarily interested in gaining strength.

Similarly, a beginner would train differently than an advanced trainee.

You might hate me because I’m not going to give you a cookie-cutter formula that you can go and apply right away. However, since the majority of trainees are in the beginner to intermediate training phases, I’ll throw out a few rules of thumb that you can use as inspiration to get started:

Choose approximately 3-6 exercises total (1-2 push, 1-2 pull, 1-2 leg)
For strength, rest 2-3 (and up to 5 if necessary) minutes between sets
The 3-8 rep range gives you a nice blend of strength and hypertrophy
Beginners will likely benefit more from full-body routines as opposed to split routines
Order the exercises such that the ones you want to progress in most are completed first

Endurance / Cardio

This section is entirely optional. If you have cardio goals, this is where to include them in your workout routine. Alternatively, you could do cardio on your off days. The take-away here is that cardio should be included after strength work, not before it.

Why is that?

Most forms of cardio are less taxing on the central nervous compared to strength work. You also haven’t really tapped into the endurance capacity of your muscles too much yet (unless you’re specifically training endurance with your rep scheme). So you can still get a fairly decent cardio session in after strength training. But doing the reverse (cardio before strength training) would most likely negatively affect your strength work.

Again, if your primary goal is endurance / cardio, then it might make sense to put it before your strength work. But in general, if you’re someone who wants to progress in calisthenics (and I’m guessing you are) then you should do cardio either on your off days or after strength work.

Cool-down / Flexibility / Pre & Rehabilitation Work

The cool-down is the place to include static flexibility stretching, additional mobility work, and pre/rehabilitation exercises.

If you have a specific injury that you’ve worked around in the core of your workout, the cool-down is the best place to include rehabilitation exercises for that specific injury. Or if you have an area of tightness, hone in on that particular area during the cool-down. Again, the structure of this section is entirely dependent on your particular goals or problem areas.

What does your calisthenics workout routine look like? Do you use an overarching structure similar to the one outlined in this post? Let me know in the comments below!

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Tim Ponticello is a calisthenics enthusiast who is on a mission to help others master their body weight and learn a few cool-looking skills in the process. When Tim isn’t hanging upside-down on his rings, he loves to snowboard, cook, read a great book, and visit new restaurants with his girlfriend. You can learn more about Tim at timothyponticello.com.

Finding Balance Between Mind and Muscle

January 24, 2017 By Steve Opalenik 5 Comments

Steve Opalenik Balance Mind Muscle

I grew up in the perfect storm of cheesy action movies and the rising star of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Visions of attaining the perfect physique filled my head, and snapshots of Arnold from Commando carrying a tree on his shoulder filled my vision boards. But as I grew older, I found that the oversimplified pursuit of a chiseled body was useless if I did not take the time to stop and smell the roses.

Many times, my younger self would feel guilty about taking a rest day or skipping a workout to spend time with family and friends. Unfortunately, it cost me quite a bit of time off due to injuries and overexertion. My approach was far from balanced, and was driven solely by ego. Even after those early injuries, I still could not see the error of my ways. It wasn’t until years later that I found a healthy, balanced approach that was able to relax my body and mind, while exercising them as well.

Discovering a technique known as Progressive Muscle Relaxation helped me find that balance. PMR is a technique for learning to monitor and control your muscular tension that was developed by Dr. Edmund Jacobson in the early 1920s. The main idea is to create tension in a specific muscle area, and then relieve that area of the tension. In doing this, you are able to monitor your body as it physically relaxes, and get a decent amount of muscle work in as well.

The technique is comprised of three parts: breath control, body scanning, and dynamic muscle tension. It is important to understand these aspects individually before trying to blend them together into a cohesive practice.

Breath Control:

The first thing to practice before diving into progressive muscle relaxation is breath control. There are a million and 20 articles and YouTube videos out there on breathing techniques and philosophies, all of which offer some interesting insight on the subject. For our purposes, we are going to focus on cyclical breathing, also known as square breathing.

The idea is basic in nature, but has a complex bodily reaction. To start, you should understand why it is sometimes called square breathing, it is simply because the breath has 4 parts to it: a 2 second inhale, a 2 second pause (this is not holding your breath, but rather a pause between inhale and exhale), a 2 second exhale, and another 2 second pause between exhale and inhale. It is sometimes called cyclical breathing due to the nature of the breath as it flows between each transition to form a circle (isn’t it cool how your breath can be both a circle and a square?). It is also an important image to hold when breathing, as it’s not just a breath in and out, but rather a breath in that goes to the lungs and diaphragm and then returns to complete a circle through your respiratory system with the exhale and pause. It is also of import to note that the breath is not shallow in nature – you are not breathing into your chest – you are breathing much deeper, into your diaphragm and lower dantian, which is at the center of your body, 2 inches below the navel, and 2 inches back inside the body.

Body Scanning:

The concept of the body scan has its origins in the history of meditation and prayer, as well as being revitalized recently with the mindfulness movement. Without delving too deep, it is the internal scanning of your own body, while in the practice of meditation, to notice stuck points of energy, emotions, or physical maladies. Generally, it is progressive in nature, as you have a fixed starting and end point. These points may vary, but generally it’s good to start at the top of your head, and work your way down toward the feet. A body scan can also vary in length of time as well. You can do a relatively quick scan focusing on parts of the body for 30 seconds at a time, and spending more time on areas in which you sense the sensation of stuck energy, or you can do a longer practice, spending a minute or two at each area, and allocating more time to any “stuck areas.”

Dynamic Tension:

The beginnings of dynamic tension have roots dating back to old-school strongman Charles Atlas. It’s a simple practice that literally pits muscle against muscle. Dynamic tension focuses on tensing the muscles of a certain body part and then moving said body part against the tension, utilizing isometric movements through a wide range of different muscles, and muscle relationships. This is the physical act of creating the tension aspect of progressive muscle relaxation. Picture the flexing techniques of a bodybuilder. Their routines utilize the ability to flex a specific part of the body, while relaxing other parts of the body at the same time.

Steve Opalenik Bridge

Now that we have formed a basic idea of the individual aspects and concepts of progressive relaxation, let’s Voltron these bad boys, and focus on the practice itself.

Begin either standing, lying or seated. Whichever position, it is important to have a relaxed posture, maintaining a straight spine with arms and shoulders relaxed, and legs slightly bent.

Start with one big breath in and out, breathing down to your dantian. Then close your eyes and take ten more breaths focusing on the principles of square breathing. When you finish the tenth breath, begin your body scan at the top of your head, and work your way down the body, contracting your muscles at each point for 30 seconds as if doing an isometric hold. After thirty seconds, release, and focus on bringing breath to these muscles for an additional 30 seconds. Concentrate on feeling the blood flow to your muscles to nourish them. As you continue breathing you should feel your muscles becoming heavy and starting to relax.

As your mind/muscle connection improves, you will be able to feel your heartbeat/pulse within the blood flow to the muscles. Don’t be disheartened if you can’t yet, it takes a long time to get this feeling. Keep practicing and it will come with time. Generally, you follow this practice all the way down to your feet, hitting major and minor muscles groups on the way down including your nose, eyes, chin, throat, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, hands, chest, back, abs, glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves, feet, etc.

When you reach the end of your body scan, take 10 breaths, followed by one deep breath and slowly exhale. When you feel comfortable, open your eyes if they are closed, and feel the weight of your body in a full relaxed state.

Just like anything, this practice can take time to develop and feel comfortable in, and often, when you are beginning, it is helpful to have someone guide you with auditory cues to help you focus and move through your body. Don’t be disheartened if you can not make it through your whole body with your first attempt, instead, when you next try the practice, focus on hitting the major muscle groups, and in time you can begin to refine and define the areas that you want to target.

These concepts of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, when married with concepts of exercise and dynamic tension, help to bring balance to our whole selves by exercising BOTH our bodies and minds. So in reality, you ARE able to relax but also get a good workout in at the same time, which gives a new definition to a rest day.

Steve Opalenik Group photo

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Steve Opalenik is a PCC instructor, licensed mental health counselor and calisthenics fanatic located in Massachusetts. He is the president of The Promethean Project (theprometheanproject.weebly.com). Connect with Steve on Facebook for more: facebook.com/prometheancounseling

Progressive Calisthenics Returns To New York!

January 17, 2017 By Danny Kavadlo 8 Comments

Danny Kavadlo Human Flag NYC PCC 2017

The first PCC of the New Year was held in my hometown of New York City this past weekend, and if it’s any indication of what’s to come, then it’s clear that 2017 will be another incredible year for the Progressive Calisthenics Certification!

In our fourth foray into the Big Apple, over thirty-five calisthenics freaks assembled to train, learn and grow together. We started the weekend as strangers, but ended it as family. As my brother and fellow PCC Instructor, Al Kavadlo would say: Hey hey hey! That’s what PCC is all about!

Hey hey hey! That’s what PCC is all about!

There was a mix of calisthenics practitioners, martial artists, dancers, everyday working folks and lots of personal trainers at this one. Attendees came from as far as England, Canada, Bermuda and Puerto Rico to take part. The bodyweight community is even more widespread than we’d imagined.

This man came all the way from Canada to re-certify!

This event was particularly exciting for many reasons. To begin with, it was the first PCC where Dragon Door partnered with CRUNCH fitness, one of the largest gym organizations on the planet. This alliance truly illustrates how much the calisthenics movement is growing. This partnership will undoubtedly lead to the continued education of more and more trainers in the future. No wonder there were so many in attendance! They came from many locations to improve themselves as personal trainers, fitness professionals and even human beings. The future is bright!

Crunch Trainers Side Planks

This weekend’s PCC was also host to some very special guests including living legend Jack Arnow, who dropped some time tested wisdom and demonstrated several septuagenarian feats of strength! Our Street Workout photo contest winner, Steve “Grizzly” Opalenik was in attendance as well. Additionally, Martin Dubovic from Street Workout magazine not only attended the course, but also documented the whole event. Be on the lookout for a special all-star video coming soon!

Street Workout contest winner Steve “Grizzly” Opalenik lets his freak flag fly!

The three rigorous days of push-ups, pull-ups, dragon flags and muscle-ups, as intense as it is, seems to fly by in a flash. That’s why it’s up to us to stay in touch, preach the gospel and spread the word!

NYC PCC Dragon Flag

Personal bests were achieved, lessons were learned and strength was celebrated. It was a weekend we’ll never forget, and as everyone who’s ever attended a PCC already knows, there is no substitute for an in-person experience. With more events scheduled this year in Boston, California, London and Poland, we hope to see YOU soon! The posse’s getting bigger.

Keep the dream alive,

-DK

NYC PCC at Crunch Gym Group Photo 2017

The Muscle Building Advantages of Calisthenics

January 10, 2017 By Matt Schifferle 30 Comments

Matt Shifferle Neutral Grip Pullup

I’ve been building muscle with bodyweight training ever since Convict Conditioning was first published. When I attended the first PCC, a few people told me they thought I still lifted weights because I had a decent amount of muscle. Not that I can blame anyone for their doubt. I was once one of those guys in the gym hogging up the preacher curl machine telling everyone that you needed to lift weights to build muscle. It’s funny how things change; now I believe calisthenics is one of the best muscle building methods, bar-none. Most of reasons for this belief are because of 5 massive muscle building advantages calisthenics offers you.

Advantage #1 Low maintenance training

Even die hard weightlifters admit that bodyweight training offers unmatched convenience and deficiency. You don’t need a gym or fancy equipment, nor do you need to wedge a long workout into a busy schedule. You just simply drop down to the floor or grab on to a bar and you’re in business.

While many admit to these advantages, others are unaware of just how convenience and efficiency are essential toward packing on muscle. This is due to the fact that building, and maintaining, a muscular physique requires months and even years of consistent training. The convenience and efficiency of calisthenics makes it easier to continue your training even as life becomes turbulent. This ensures your training stays consistent long enough to build the success you want.

Advantage #2 Technical progression

Building muscle through calisthenics isn’t really any different from building it with weights except for one thing: With weight lifting you keep your technique fairly consistent while adjusting the load you lift; with calisthenics, you use a consistent load while you modify your technique.

Progressing an exercise through technique requires you to develop more than just strength and muscle. You also need to develop the “softer” qualities like balance, stability, flexibility and muscle control.

When I first started training in progressive calisthenics I was humbled by how much I needed to work on these softer qualities. At first, it felt some of the exercises were not building strength or muscle because they were more about flexibility or stability. Eventually, I discovered that developing these softer qualities was the key to more muscle growth. The more I improved my softer qualities the more harder qualities like strength and power progressed as well.

Advantage #3 Emotional and mental focus

Effective training requires much more than tense muscle and proper technique. You need to put some heart into what you’re doing to reach beyond what you can currently do.

There’s just something about moving your body through space that requires more mental and emotional focus. Consider the difference between running on a treadmill versus hiking along in a path in the wilderness. These days, commercial gyms place televisions and similar electronic devices on their cardio equipment to stave off boredom and mental fatigue. Such distractions are not necessary and even unwelcome with bodyweight training. Through using exercises that require as much growth within your heart and mind you build the quality of your training and not just the intensity.

Advantage #4 Intellectual challenge and growth

Progressive calisthenics requires you to continuously analyze and improve how your body works. It strips away the false promise that your success depends on having the perfect routine or using the right equipment. This leaves you with little else to think about except to learn how to use your body better which is the true essence of effective training.

I wasn't able to do a pistol squat until I learned how to use my hips in a better way. — I wasn’t able to do a pistol squat until I learned how to use my hips in a better way.

Every workout is a lesson in how you are currently able to use your body and the weaknesses that you need to work on. Maybe you lack hip strength in your squats or perhaps your shoulders shrug from fatigue during push-ups. All of these little experiences invite you to explore how to adjust your technique and muscle control to improve how well you use your body.

Advantage #5 Workouts that are simple, disciplined and focused

I live by the 3 tenets of simplicity, discipline, and focus. Calisthenics embodies all three of these tenets perfectly because it requires mental and physical focus, continuous discipline and of course a simplistic approach to training.

It takes a lot of discipline to remain focused on simple workouts. The modern media constantly churns out advice that can quickly make training more complicated and fancy. Before you know it, you’re using a room full of gadgets to perform fancy exercises in a routine that’s based on rocket science. All of this fancy and complicated stuff might feel important, but it ultimately distracts you from what matters most.

Building muscle means focusing on just 3 things:

When your training involves little more than pushing yourself off the floor or lifting up your legs, there’s not a lot of clutter to distract you from working your muscles longer and harder. It may not be fancy, but that’s the point. The most exciting results are often produced from methods that appear boring at first glance.

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Matt Schifferle, PCC Team Leader a.k.a. The Fit Rebel made a switch to calisthenics training 5 years ago in an effort to rehab his weight lifting injuries. Since then he’s been on a personal quest to discover and teach the immense benefits of advanced body weight training. You can find some of his unique bodyweight training methods at RedDeltaProject.com and on his YouTube channel: RedDeltaProject.

Chaos-Proof Calisthenics Workouts For Long Term Success

January 3, 2017 By Adrienne Harvey 26 Comments

Adrienne Harvey Archer Pull-Up

One of the greatest things about Convict Conditioning style progressive calisthenics exercises are their extreme portability. We no longer need a giant gym stuffed full of highly specific machines to get a workout. For many of the exercises, we just need a floor. As the now-famous line from Pushing the Limits goes, remember, “if you don’t have a floor to work with, then you’ve got bigger problems!” On any given day, you may see me or one of my neighbors working out using the apartment building itself. In fact, one neighbor in particular has been giving the railings a heck of a workout with high rep, raised pushups—not bad for a guy that chronologically qualifies as a “senior citizen”.

A pattern I have seen—and have personally experienced—for long term success in strength, health, and maintenance of body composition is thinking beyond time-bound programs. Most people who have maintained a strong, fit, and healthy body for a lifetime have done so by seamlessly making training part of their lifestyle. On the flip side, we’ve probably all observed others jumping from program to program or from diet to diet without experiencing much success at all. I bet a number of us here have done that too. While it’s a great idea to try new things, we must give them a real, fair try at the same time instead of becoming human yo-yos! Fortunately, simple but challenging workouts with calisthenics and minimal equipment are extremely sustainable for a lifetime, regardless of how busy we get with life’s responsibilities.

Evolving and Refining a Lifestyle

When we strive to make strength activities part of a lifestyle, the pressure of “all or nothing” doesn’t loom as large. This can be especially useful for your new clients or students who have been overwhelmed by the prospect of extreme fitness programs in the past. And from time to time, some of us may also stack up too many changes to try all at once. Many beginners who come to us for training and advice will need to ease into calisthenics training for a while until they even enjoy it. A few sets of the beginning Convict Conditioning progressions coupled with being more mindful about food is a smaller starting hurdle than a written-in-stone hour or longer workout and specific meal plan for each and every day.

Also, when working with a specific goal or program, it’s very handy to have a backup plan for your workouts between programs, or when life gets in the way. So, even when we aren’t leaping forward toward that goal, we’re still moving in the right direction. More importantly, even with a shorter, simpler workout than what we should have been doing with our specific program, we’re still making a long term investment in our health, habits, strength, and fitness.

Adrienne Harvey PCC Dips

I will describe these highly sustainable training approaches in detail in my upcoming book with Dragon Door, Eat Strong, Lift Strong, Move Strong: Proven Secrets for Strength, Power and Robust Energy. But, the general idea is to work towards a given skill or strength goal while allowing for flexibility within a few parameters. In this blog post, I’ll outline a few general workout strategies to weave into your lifestyle or around a program. Many of these ideas are great to have as safeguards against life’s chaos wrecking our goals. As instructors and/or business owners, we may also spend so much time working and training others that we’re left in the frustrating and perilous position of having little time for our own workouts.

Full Body Tension, Full Body Results…

No matter what plan you choose, or how many different exercises you do—or don’t do—be sure to get the most out of your time and effort by using full body tension. Far from being isolation exercises, movements like pull-ups, squats (especially the advanced versions), and lateral work with flags require full body muscular participation for ultimate success. The good news is, you’re training your whole body at this time too. A few minutes of exercises performed with full, high tension effort is time well spent. Gripping the pull-up bar hard, gripping the ground with your hands and/or feet, engaging the glutes and midsection—all activate more muscle fibers and teach us to move and lift safely in life outside of training, too.

Adrienne Harvey Neuro-Grip Push-ups — Neuro-Grips pretty much force you to use full body tension, and I love them for it!

So this year, instead of a New Year’s resolution, consider a goal of consistency. Below are some of the approaches I take on very busy days, when otherwise I’d be tempted to neglect my training.

Recipes for Consistency:

Paul Wade’s “Consolidation Training” (some may know this as GTG, Grease the Groove) is described in Convict Conditioning Vol. 1 for building skills and strength. Using this strategy, you’ll perform an exercise several times on the same day without maxing out. For example, I may work on singles or doubles of the human flag progressions on the hour. Later in the day I’ll do a simple full body workout which might just be a few runs through the Century Test performed slowly and with extreme precision. Consolidation training works fantastically for any of the very high tension, high technique, and advanced bodyweight exercises like bar levers, dead hang muscle-up progressions, advanced pull-ups, and generally anything that’s very difficult for you. On the days that I have focused on bar exercises, my short supplemental workout might consist of squats, jump-squats, and sprints. High skill and balance movements like handstands also really benefit from the consolidation training approach.

At Home Training Variations

As an entrepreneur, I work a lot at my home office, and on heavy deadline days or product launches, I may not really have time to venture too far from that home office at all for my own training. Luckily, I’ve set up a pull-up bar in the hallway among other things, and of course have full use of the floor. I love to use the idea of “exercise snacks” along with Pomodoro technique productivity intervals: I work for 25 minutes, then practice an exercise or movement sequence for 5 minutes. At the end of the 4th 25 minute stretch, I take a full 10 minutes to do a more concentrated mini-workout. If you work at an office, depending on the corporate culture (and the exercises you choose), you may also be able to implement this at work.

Those who’ve read my website in the past already know about the “chores workouts” where I pit near max sets of a given exercise against a rest period of folding clothes or another short household task. This is a great way to build up higher reps on your chosen exercise. Have you tried it?

I recently read about a simple variation of consolidation training. A famous model placed a post-it note in a high traffic area of her house that simply read “15 squats”. Whenever passing near the note, she did 15 squats. Easy. I sometimes do a more involved version of this which includes the pull up bar and a designated area for mobility and floor based exercises. A lot can add up during the day.

Errands Circuit

One of my fondest memories of the early days of the PCC Workshops back in 2013 was when Al, Danny, John Du Cane, and myself were walking to a restaurant in St. Paul, MN. While we were enjoying a lively discussion, each of us kept pausing to point out “Street Workout-able” features in the landscape. We saw low bars for advanced raised feet push-ups, medium railings for Aussie pull-ups, skinny curbs for balance-challenging pistols, an edge of a planter for elbow levers, a round sign post for clutch flags, along with any number of poles, bars, railings for pull-ups and pull up variations… you get the idea. Developing a keen eye for these features (while keeping safety in mind, please) can turn most errand-related walks down the street into your own personal strength and skill obstacle course.

Adrienne Harvey Aussie Pull-Up — Caption: Look around for bars and railings that are approximately this height for an impromptu Aussie Pull-Up challenge!

Alternately, I also like to time my errands and workouts together. If I have to go to Whole Foods (which happens a lot) I’ll make sure my route to get there includes a short stop at a park so I can knock out a workout (usually a circuit including pull-ups, push-ups, squat variations, and a cardio component like sprints, burpees, or mountain climbers), then grab dinner or a snack at the hot bar before grocery shopping.

A Full-Body Format: Push, Pull, Legs, Plus….

The last paragraph in the errands circuit hinted at this approach. It’s been described in many great strength and fitness books for calisthenics as well as kettlebells and other forms of weightlifting. I am especially fond of the way Max Shank describes using push-pull as an approach to programming in Master the Kettlebell. On a day with minimal time to workout, this super-set strategy gets a lot of work done quickly, and allows you to work on a variety of skills in the same session.

Here’s one of many examples of this type of workout (choose number of rounds based on your fitness level and available time):

15 Push-ups
15 Aussie pull-ups (bodyweight rows)
30 Bodyweight squats (actively pull yourself down under tension)
1 Quick sprint or 30 mountain climbers
5-10 Pull-ups
Practice crow or handstands/handstand push ups resting as needed for one minute total

When I have time, after 3-5 intense rounds with minimal rest, I’ll end with sets of abdominal focused exercises like dragon flags (or the progressions up to) or hanging leg raises, and maybe even a set of twisting mountain climbers until I nearly face plant. Whew!

Adrienne Harvey Hanging Leg Raises — Full hanging leg raises near the end of a workout can be brutal!

If you’re ready to advance in skills and strength in 2017, I hope you have found these ideas help. On a tough day full of obligations, there are still plenty of options to keep moving forward towards your goals, and to maintain a healthy active lifestyle.

Have you tried some of these ideas before? Do you have some of your own to add? I would love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Here’s to a happy and successful 2017!
I hope your training is going better than ever,
Adrienne Harvey, Senior PCC

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Adrienne Harvey, Senior PCC Instructor, RKC-II, CK-FMS, has been RKC Certified since 2010, and RKC Level 2 certified since 2011. Kettlebell and bodyweight training have been crucial in Adrienne’s personal quest for fitness. A core member of the PCC team, Adrienne loves sharing her knowledge with small groups and individuals. She also loves to develop recipes and workout programs to further support performance, body composition, and of course—FUN. Visit her website, GiryaGirl.com for workouts, recipes, and more.