PCC Blog

Progressive Calisthenics - The Official Blog for the PCC Community

Archives for February 2017

Organizing a Group Calisthenics Class

By 4 Comments

Al Kavadlo Leading Group Fitness
I can still remember my anxiety as I was about to teach my first Progressive Calisthenics class. I found it challenging to train myself, let alone a group of people with varying backgrounds, limitations (both psychological and physical) and fitness levels!

Perhaps you have recently qualified at a PCC, love calisthenics and are looking to share your passion in a group environment. Good luck, my PCC brothers and sisters; teaching calisthenics in a group setting can be tough! Given that most classes are 60 minutes long, devising a system to help people learn new skills and improve their fitness as expediently as possible can be very challenging.

The truth is there is no one “correct way” to structure a calisthenics workout, but there are some basic guidelines and principles that you can follow to ensure your classes are safe, fun and effective.

Here is a 5-step basic blueprint that I use for a one hour class that I hope will help you teach calisthenics in an intelligent and organic way.

The Warm-up

The warm-up serves a number of purposes, yet is often overlooked as a valuable use of time. It’s a great opportunity to check in with the body and the mind to prepare for training. The overall goals of the warm up are to increase body temperature and blood flow, making the muscles more elastic and pliable, and to increase the ROM of joints and start to “dial everything in” for the workout that is to follow.

The warm up should include mobility and flexibility exercises, including thoracic/shoulder, hip and ankle mobility and often the wrist, hands and forearms to prepare the joints and connective tissues for what is to follow.

The warm-up can also include “activation” sets, which involve a few reps of regressions leading up to the primary exercises you are about to practice. For example, you might use a few sets of squats and lunges to warm before working on single leg squat progressions.

Approximate time = 10 minutes

Al Kavadlo Leading Group Fitness
Strength First?

If you are working with beginners, building a proper foundation of strength needs to be your first priority.

For newcomers, following a structured set and rep scheme just like traditional strength training is paramount. Mastering basics like push-ups, pull-ups, squats and lunge variations are the bread and butter of calisthenics training. They have crossover into everything else.

Furthermore, if your students are planning to eventually work up to advanced holds such as bar levers, flags, or freestanding handstands, it is imperative to be looking to increase their time on more rudimentary holds. This means spending time on things like planks, frog stands and elbow lever progressions. The training needs to be structured in order to move to the next progression. A foundation of strength is crucial to achieve those higher level skills.

Or Skills First…

If your students have worked their fundamentals and strength for a while already, then the exercise that requires the highest skill, balance or power demand should be practiced when they are the freshest.  Or alternatively, whatever is your highest priority should come first.

If your focus is something like muscle-ups, handstands or elbow levers, then trying to practice them after fatiguing your upper body will likely leave you too tired.

Once you have finished your “skills practice” at a particular progression, you can then do some “work sets” of reps/holds of some of related regressions or move onto other exercises.

Approximate time = 30 minutes

Al Kavadlo Leading Group Fitness
Finishers and Conditioning

I am a big fan of finishers and conditioning work at the end of sessions. Finishers and conditioning can be loads of fun and add variety to sessions whilst being very effective for skill and strength transfer. Exercises like bear crawls, inchworms, crab walks, frogger variations, etc. are all great choices. I also like to turn these types of movements into games whenever possible. Something like “crab walk soccer” can be a nice way to make your students forget how hard they are working because they are having fun!

Approximate time = 10 minutes

Cool Down

Not unlike the warm-up, the cool down is often glossed over by many people. It’s a great time to work those flexibility restrictions that might be inhibiting your practice as well as letting your body know that the workout is winding down and it’s time to shift into recovery mode. In addition to stretching, you cool down may consist of joint mobility, diaphragmatic breathing exercises and other body awareness drills.

Approximate time 5-10 minutes

Al Kavadlo Leading Group Fitness

Going out into the world to teach progressive calisthenics can be a daunting task. I’ve been doing it for a while now and still find it challenging. However, it is a lot of fun and highly rewarding to see your clients making progress.

Goals are important, but the process is even more important. Hopefully this basic blueprint will give you a structured approach to your classes while giving you ample scope to make them fun and effective.

Drop me a line a let me know how it goes!

****

Matthew Beecroft is a PCC Team Leader, Senior RKC, and CK-FMS certified instructor. He is also a GFM and Animal Flow instructor and Expert Level 2 instructor with Krav Maga Global and a Muay Thai coach who has trained amateur and professional Muay Thai champions. He can be contacted through his website www.realitysdc.com.au or his Facebook page facebook.com/MeetLifeHeadOn

 

Five Tips for Training the V-Sit

By 10 Comments

Grace Kavadlo V-Sit

When I attended my first Progressive Calisthenics Certification, learning to hold an L-sit was one of my goals. It’s a tough move, but I surprised myself and was able to nail it for a few seconds that weekend. Of course once I got the L-sit, I needed a new challenge.

Such is the nature of progressive calisthenics.

This was how I began my journey toward the V-sit, a move which progresses the L-sit by lifting the legs and hips higher, changing the shape of the body from a position resembling the letter “L” to one that looks like a “V.” Due to the shift in balance and leverage, it’s also a lot harder.

I mean A LOT harder.

It’s been almost 3 years since I went to my first PCC, and I’m just finally starting to get comfortable holding a proper V-sit. Like many advanced calisthenics exercises, training for this move requires a lot of patience. It also forced me to reassess several aspects of my training that I did not realize had been lacking.

Here are 5 things I learned along the way that helped me achieve this difficult feat:

1 – Make A Good “Compression”
Before I started working toward the V-sit, I thought I already had a very powerful core. Whereas conquering the L-sit bolstered my confidence, starting over with the V-sit was a humbling reality check. The two moves may not look substantially different, but the amount of abdominal strength required to perform a V-sit is exponentially greater.

Transitioning from an L-sit into a V-sit is not just about lifting your legs higher – you also need to bring your hips farther forward. This means compressing your trunk by drawing your pelvis toward your sternum, and that requires significant abdominal activation, particularly when your legs are above you in the air. It can help to practice other exercises that involve this type of abdominal compression, like “toes-to-bar” hanging leg raises, to better get a feel for this.

I also recommend the “boat pose” from yoga, as it mimics the V-sit, while allowing you to stay seated on the ground. This makes the exercise considerably less difficult while still letting you get a feel for the body alignment needed for the V-sit.

V-sit Variations Collage 2

2 – Elevate Your Training
Practicing this move with your hands elevated on parallettes or yoga blocks can be helpful during your journey to the V-sit. Not only does holding onto something make it less brutal on your wrists, but it also gives you extra room for your hips and legs.

When I first started toying with the V-sit, I would begin by holding a bent-knee L-sit on my parallel bars. From there I started experimenting with sliding my hips forward in front of my hands. This helped me figure out that I needed to shift my weight back in order to move my hips into the proper position. From there I could practice leg extensions, gradually reaching my legs farther in the air each time.

3 – Stretch Your Way to Success
Though many people tend to skip this portion of their training, if a V-Sit is one of your goals then you will probably need to improve your hamstring flexibility.

The classic toe touch or forward fold is a great way to loosen the backs of your legs in preparation for the V-sit, and there are several ways in which you can approach it: You can bend over from a standing position, practice the gym-class style “sit and reach” while on the ground, or even try it hanging with your legs raised and feet hooked beneath the bar. I recommend spending some time in all of these positions as a warm-up for your V-sit practice, as well as throughout the day.

In the beginning, these moves can be practiced with a slight bend in your knees, or with your legs slightly apart. As your flexibility increases (where you can touch your toes without overly rounding your back), you can start to slowly straighten your knees and/or bring your legs together until you are in the full expression of each pose. You may find it helpful to exhale fully as you fold forward. When you reach your “edge,” focus on drawing your abdominal muscles inward to go deeper. It may be helpful to repeat this process several times.

Forward Bend Collage

4 – Use Helping Hands
When performing this move, proper hand positioning is important for success. If your hands are placed too far away from your body it will be difficult to generate tension between your arms and your torso. Furthermore, turning your hands out and pointing your fingers to the sides (or behind you) can allow you better leverage to lean back farther without tipping over. You can also practice “tenting” your hands to help you find a little extra clearance when you begin practicing the V-sit on the floor.

5 – Don’t Forget to “Tri”
There is an immense amount of triceps strength needed in order to do any type of L or V-Sit. You also need strong lats, a powerful chest and iron forearms. One of the best pieces of advice I’m continually reminded of every time I’m at a PCC event is to “get great at the basics.”

This means you need to do your push-ups, pull-ups, squats and knee raises. Anytime you find yourself at a plateau with a new skill, you can always return to these foundational exercises. Yes, you need proper technique and training to conquer the V-sit, but that journey begins with perfecting the basics.

The V-sit takes practice and patience to achieve, but you’ll never get there if you don’t try!

****

Grace Kavadlo is a PCC Team Leader, personal trainer and group exercise instructor located in New York City. She is a columnist for Bodybuilding.com and can be seen in several Dragon Door books, including Al Kavadlo’s Zen Mind, Strong Body and Paul “Coach” Wade’s Explosive Calisthenics. For more information about Grace, check out her website, www.DieselGrace.com.

Progressive Calisthenics Returns To The West Coast!

By 4 Comments

2017 Mountain View PCC

The date was Thursday, February 9. I rose at the crack of dawn, ready to board a plane from New York to San Francisco. I was intent on instructing, along with my brother Al Kavadlo, our fourth Progressive Calisthenics Certification in the Golden State of California. To say that I was excited would have been an epic understatement. My soul was on fire!

This three-day workshop, which covers all the Street Workout staples like push-ups, pistols, muscle-ups and more was scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Evolution Trainers, one of the Bay area’s premier training studios. The staff is world class, the facility is breath-taking and most importantly of all, the team of PCC participants slated to attend was absolutely top-notch!

Mountain View PCC 2017 Partner Pistols

But I almost didn’t get to meet them…

The evening before, a billowy blizzard fell over the North East. I woke up to find the city streets of Brooklyn, New York covered with over twelve inches of snow. Schools were closed, people called out of work, the trains were delayed and of course, the airline cancelled my flight. In fact, this airline cancelled all their flights out of John F. Kennedy airport.

But as those of you who’ve read STRENGTH RULES know, Rule # 10 of Danny’s Dos & Don’ts is “Don’t take No for an answer!” So I went to the airport anyway.

Amazingly (and slightly aggressively), I re-booked on a more sympathetic airline. After some persuasion, I was able to get on a flight scheduled to depart at 11:00am. At 6pm, I finally boarded the plane. At 7:30 I was in the air. Just before midnight, we finally touched down. HELLYEAH! Silicon Valley, here I come!

It is an incredible feeling to bring primitive movement and physical strength development to a part of the country so well known for specialized science and technological modernity. It’s a perfect union of cerebral innovation and primal instinct.

CEREBRAL PRIMAL

I cannot say enough kind words about this fantastic group of PCC candidates, who came from around the globe, hailing from across the United States and even as far as Brazil and Australia! As has become commonplace at these workshops, this tribe of calisthenic killers was not limited only to fitness trainers, martial artists and athletes, but was inclusive of everyday enthusiasts, like local tech professionals, physicians and working professionals. There was even a renowned journalist in the house! And of course, everybody there was a calisthenics freak! If you attend a Progressive Calisthenics certification, then no matter what your background is, you are one of us!

Support Press NICK

In classic PCC fashion, multiple PR’s and first time feats of strength were achieved. From flying human flags, to mighty muscle-ups, to stealthy hand balancing and bridge work, it was amazing to see everyone in the room get better and better as we trained together. In addition to the world-class coaching from the instructor team, the boundless energy of every single person in the room undoubtedly contributed to so much excellence.

This life-changing weekend flew by in the blink of a proverbial eye. I will miss my newfound brothers and sisters of the PCC family, but I know I’ll see them soon! This weekend lived up to and far exceeded my high expectations. There is truly nothing like an in person experience.

Congratulations to all the new PCC Instructors in the house. Welcome to the family!

The posse’s getting’ bigger,

-DK

PCC Mountain View 2017 GROUP

Three Keys to Unlock Calisthenics Muscle

By 9 Comments

Al Leading PCC

Building muscle has always been my main objective and it probably always will be. This is just as true with my calisthenics training as it was when I hoisted the iron. I wouldn’t have anything to do with progressive calisthenics if I harbored even the slightest doubt that it could pack on beef.

I fully believe it’s possible to gain muscle with calisthenics, which I know is a perception that’s a little left of center from many who seek bigger arms and a wider back. I credit my unusual perception to the fact that I don’t think like most people when it comes to building muscle, much less building it with calisthenics. Here are some of the biggest ways my mind has shifted over the years:

It’s Not About My Routine

I follow a very simple workout routine that’s based off of the Veterano plan in Convict Conditioning. It’s simple, basic and easy to wedge into my schedule. One thing’s for sure, I certainly don’t credit it with building muscle.

I depend on my routine like a rocket depends on a launch pad. It provides structure, balance and points me in the right direction. Beyond that, I don’t expect much else from it. I don’t believe it’s the key to building muscle or dialing in some secret combination that’s going to bring me success.

My routines are simple, but that's not why I build muscle.
My routines are simple, but that’s not why I build muscle.

I also don’t concern myself too much with rep ranges. I don’t shoot for a specific range of reps that’s supposedly best for building muscle. I’ve been successful with low reps, high reps and everything in between. As far as I’m concerned the best rep range for building muscle is always how many reps I can do now, plus one more.

It’s Not About My Diet

I used to eat super clean back in the day. The funny thing is, I made much faster gains when I loosened up and ate a pretty liberal diet. These days, there’s not a whole lot I won’t and don’t eat, from steamed broccoli to ice cream.

When it comes to muscle hypertrophy, a healthy diet is part of the recovery process. This means a good diet should remove stress from your life, not increase it. This goes for both physical and mental stress. A diet that causes guilt, cravings and unsatisfied hunger is an unhealthy diet. After all, how can a diet be considered healthy if it’s just one more thing you need to recover from? That’s like taking a vacation that stresses you out!

Most of my diet is pretty basic. Lots of plant foods and some protein at each meal is key. I keep treats as treats and generally stay away from beverages with sugar and calories. I eat what I like, when I like and how I like. Most of the time that means whipping up a stir fry or a kale salad with salmon. Sometimes it means ordering pizza and downing a beer or two.

I also don’t “eat big to get big.” I’ve tried that method many times but it always just made me softer. Admittedly, I have eaten more when I’m making gains from time to time. The difference is I’m not making gains because I’m eating more. I’m eating more because I’m making gains. I just listen to my body and trust that it will ask for more when it needs it. If it’s not telling me it needs more food then I respect that as well.

It’s Not About My Equipment

I used to work for a store that sold home fitness equipment. Everyday I heard the idea that getting results was all about using the right equipment. I crammed my small apartment full of gadgets and doo-dads believing it was the key to success.

It’s funny how things change. These days, all I want is a solid pull-up bar and I’m good to go. I’ve learned that 99.99% of success in training depends on how you use your muscles, not whether a weight machine is designed with the correct “vector articulation angles.”

This is why I’m always a fan of simple equipment like a pull-up station, kettlebell or gymnastics rings. The less you have to think about your gear, the more you can think about what you’re doing.

So if it’s not so much about the diet, the routine or the equipment, what is it about?

Well, to be honest, there’s not much I concern myself with. In fact, there are only 3 things I ever think about when it comes to my training:

Matt Schifferle Tension Chart

Pretty much everything I do boils down to just those three things. Even though that list is pretty short, each aspect of muscle tension can become a discipline in and of itself. I’ve made it my mission to study and learn as much as I can about each one to help me build more muscle.

To start off, I’ve become obsessed with tension control. Ever since I came across the book Muscle Control by Maxick, I’ve made it a habit to practice tensing my muscles on a daily basis. Granted, I’m not striking a bodybuilding pose in the middle of a meeting. I just lightly tense up my lats, abs or glutes a few times throughout the day. It’s not much, but I’ve found this habitual tension makes a massive difference in controlling my muscle tension in my workouts.

I also don’t rely on a certain technique to control my muscle tension. If I want my triceps to work harder in pushups I know it’s up to me to make it happen. Controlling muscle tension is the responsibility of my mind, not necessarily the exercise I’m doing.

I’m also constantly working on dialing in my technique to adjust the resistance of every exercise I do. My Taekwon-Do instructor always taught me to think like a technician in my training. We would drill down to the slightest details that might seem trivial, but can make all the difference in the world.

For example, when doing a push up, where is the weight on your hands? Is it more towards the palm or the fingers? Speaking of fingers, which fingers have more weight on them? Are you gripping with your fingers to tense up your hand and forearm? Which fingers are gripping harder? Are they pulling tension towards your thumb? Which direction is the thumb pointing? Is any of this changing as you lower yourself to the floor? Does it change even still when you push back up? How about if you pause at the top? What happens if you slightly twist like Angelo Grinceri teaches in Intrinsic Strength Training?

There's a lot more to pushups than just pushing up.
There’s a lot more to pushups than just pushing up.

I could keep writing pages about every little detail but the point is, all of these technical details serve to not only help control where tension is in the body, but how much of it is in various muscles. The slightest technical shift can make a huge difference in how much tension is in a given muscle.  Every workout I do is an experiment to discover and master these small adjustments to make my muscles work as hard as possible.

Third, as Coach Wade explains in C-Mass, stimulating muscle growth is about working the muscles to a high state of fatigue. This is why I’m always working on increasing the time under tension with any exercise. Sometimes, this means doing an extra rep. Other times, It’s just half a rep or even just holding an isometric position for a couple of extra seconds at the end of the set. As long as I’m enduring just a little bit more time under tension I’m stimulating some muscle growth.

Finally, I don’t get too caught up in numbers and quantification. Sure, I keep a workout log but what’s most important to me is how an exercise feels from one workout to the next. Controlling muscle tension is just as much an artistic and sensual experience as cooking, painting or playing music. If you’re finding it easier to pop up into a handstand or do a pull up, you are making progress even if the numbers in your log don’t immediately increase.

 

****

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.