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Paul "Coach" Wade

Isometrics, Prison Training and Bodyweight: A Match Made in Valhalla

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Hey, you guys!

It’s been a long time. I missed ya! How’s the wife? I always thought she was a honey…a real catch!

…Wait, what? She did what with the mailman? She took the kids, too? Damn.

I never liked her anyway bro. …Uh…some training talk might take your mind off it, huh?

I’ve sure been thinking about training a lot these days. One type of training in particular—isometrics. I’ve also been working isometrics—hard—for the last couple years or so, and feeling stronger and tougher than ever as a result. Let’s chit-chat about ‘em; tumble some thoughts around in the brain-laundry, and see what colors run, eh?

“Isometrics” is a word virtually everyone who trains knows pretty well. We’ve all heard about isometrics; static training; “isos”. We’ve all read an article about their benefits, thought about seriously applying them, then put the ideas back in a dusty mental drawer and continued with our usual old training. Since Dragon Door is about to release the ISOCHAIN—a project I’ve been heavily involved in, from the get-go—I thought I’d talk a bit about bodyweight and isos to my PCC brethren. (And sistren.)

I’ve used isos in some manner for decades; since the earliest days of my training, in fact. In Convict Conditioning I wrote about how I used to pull on prison bars for an iso workout. I didn’t invent this; inmates have been doing it for hundreds of years to get strong. It’s amazing how varied and productive bar pulling can be. I had a little, dog-eared notebook full of different techniques, bad pencil sketches of different angles and holds to work different muscles. I even included a handful of examples in Convict Conditioning.

Something I talk about a lot in all my books are the old-time strongmen and their methods. All the old timers used isometric holds, particularly as feats of strength: I’m thinking of the human bridge, various back lifts, crucifix holds, ridiculously heavy support holds, restraining wild horses—all this must have put thousands of pounds of force through the human body! But those guys thrived on it, and many of them were performing well into old age.

The Mighty Maxick (1882-1961): one of the great pioneers of isometrics.
The Mighty Maxick (1882-1961): one of the great pioneers of isometrics.

Maxick stands out as a guy who build his entire system around loadless isometrics: pitting one muscle against another. He built an amazing physique on it, too, and his “muscle control” exhibitions were famous throughout the world. Angelo Siciliano—a.k.a. “Charles Atlas”—was another former strongman who took isometric tension seriously, and his Dynamic Tension system pretty much started the modern bodybuilding craze. Nobody wanted sand kicked in their face, did they? (Apologies if you’re into that kinda thing.)

It’s an interesting but little-known fact that the history of the old-time strongmen, isometrics, and prison training are all intertwined. Nobody personifies this more than the great Russian strongman, Alexander Zass—The Amazing Samson. Zass always used isometrics, even from a young age. His first workouts involved pushing and pulling against trees in the local forest. Before he could fulfill his dream of becoming a famous strongman, World War I rolled around, and Zass was nearly killed by the Austrians, then made a prisoner of war. Despite unbelievably poor training conditions—and food that would make a billy goat puke—Zass never lost his passion to become strong, while injured and locked away. He began grimly pushing and pulling against his cell bars, on a daily basis. When he was put in shackles, he would pull against the chains, over and over, from different angles. Zass was using whatever he could to train. This is the tradition that continues in jails to this day. I’ve seen inmates use towels, walls, even each other to generate some brutal isometric workouts.

Zass was training with chains a century before powerlifters thought of it.
Zass was training with chains a century before powerlifters thought of it.

Did these isometric workouts produce results? Unbelievably, Zass became so powerful from this training that he could split chains and bend bars. He was made a prisoner of war four times: he escaped prison, four times. It seems he was just too damn strong for the early twentieth century military jails. And yeah, that’s not hyperbole. Zass was inhumanly powerful. (You may have seen the famous photo of him taking a horse for a walk: with the colt on his shoulders.) It was Zass who began the bar bending and chain breaking that became synonymous with the old-school strongmen.

Numerous athletes took Zass’s chain-pulling system to heart, and built enormous strength from it. But by the time the fifties had rolled around, strongman training was out in Europe and America, and Olympic weightlifting was in. Chain isometrics were still used, but some bright spark—history seems to disagree exactly who it was—attached a bar to the chain, to better replicate the barbell lifts. This simple—but very powerful—chain-and-bar unit was found in elite gyms throughout Europe and America, but it was stolen by other athletes who craved power, too. You might have seen the famous images of Bruce Lee using one. Lee swore by isometrics as a training method, claiming it increased his strength and speed.

Bruce Lee Training With Homemade Isometric Device

Although isos have largely gone by the wayside these days—our loss—some well-read athletes still use these cool old hardcore devices. Ross Enamait is one famous strength and conditioning coach who still promotes isometrics. (A few years back he wrote a great article teaching athletes how to build their own chain-and-bar unit. Check it out, here.)

I’m old (read: decrepit) enough to remember actually seeing the first generation of these chain-and-bar devices being used, in strength magazines and whatnot. They always intrigued me at the time. I didn’t ever get round to trying to construct one though. The lack of measurement was the only thing that bothered me: how do you know how much force you are generating? You don’t. At least with bodyweight training you know you are getting stronger because you move from progression to progression. With conventional weight-training, you move from heavier to heavier bars. But with traditional isometrics without weights? Sure, you feel stronger—but you just don’t know how much, or what’s working.

This has been the major stumbling block for most isometrics. I think it’s the one issue—in today’s era of measuring everything—that has turned the modern generation off isos. We know, thanks to anecdotal and scientific evidence, that isos get you very strong—rapidly. But how strong? How do you know what’s working? How do you motivate yourself to hit a new PR?

This is what first intrigued me so much about the ISOCHAIN. It has a digital force meter that measures the “weight” you are lifting with pinpoint accuracy: on curls, presses, squats, deadlifts, etc.

I know from experience, also—particularly as I get older—that isometric work is good for building muscle while being amazing for the joints. I have been very critical of lifting “external” weights in the past; one reason is the potential damage heavy weight training can do to the joints. With chain-and-bar devices, your joints are under heavy load, but not moving: this results in almost zero friction inside the joints. Imagine pushing coarse sandpaper against a wall, then rubbing. Does a lot of damage, right? Now imagine pushing down on the sandpaper just as hard, but keeping still. Virtually no damage. This is the difference on your joints between loaded isometrics and loaded dynamic lifting.

One of the reasons I’m reaching out to you guys here is that I’d like you to start thinking about incorporating some isos into your program. Isometrics are one of those training topics everybody has an opinion about—but never actually tries, seriously. That’s a damn shame. Isometrics has a ton of proven benefits—from amplified strength and muscle gain to increased speed, reduced joint pain, fat-loss, lower blood pressure, improved heart health, and so on. (Check here for an in-depth article on the science, egghead.)

Truth is—three steps behind, as old Paul always is—I’m probably preaching to the choir right here. If you are seriously into bodyweight training, chances are you already perform isometrics in some form. Isometrics, in its purest sense, just means holding a position to build strength. Damn, it’s hard to do bodyweight training in any form without doing isos:

  • Holding a handstand (or even a headstand): isometric.
  • The plank (RKC plank, anyone?): isometric.
  • Wall squats: isometric:
  • Bridges: isometric.
  • Hollow body holds:
  • Elbow lever variations: isometric.
  • Grip hangs:
  • Front and rear hanging levers: isometric.
  • L-holds and V-holds for abs: isometric.
  • The human flag and the clutch flag: isometric.

…And so it goes on. The most impressive gymnastic strength feats that exist—the Iron Cross, the planche, the inverted cross, the Maltese Cross, and so on—are all isometric holds. Hell, even holding a classical yoga position is isometrics! So us bodyweight guys and gals are probably already well ahead of the curve when it comes to isos.

Classic bodybuilders weren’t averse to getting some isometric action: Mr Olympia, the late Franco Colombu, rocks a front lever.
Classic bodybuilders weren’t averse to getting some isometric action: Mr Olympia, the late Franco Colombu, rocks a front lever.

I’d also like to ask you guys a favor. The ISOCHAIN has been tested in prototypes, but to get the project off the ground—to fund the tooling, the best materials, the programming exactly as we want it—we need pre-orders. If we don’t get them, this project won’t succeed, and that would be a damn shame. I would love for this old-school piece of gear to come back, better than ever, for modern athletes to benefit from. Please, go take a look at the device—it’s amazing. Even if you don’t want one, please send the link to a friend. Or an enemy. Hell, someone you are ambivalent about. Spread the word. Please.

Read about the ISOCHAIN design, here.

Pre-order your own ISOCHAIN, here.

I know what you’re thinking. But it’s a gadget! Some of my hardcore bodyweight bros are probably about ready to track me down and give me the old baseball bat massage, eh? Uncle Paul, you always told us we don’t NEED gadgets or equipment to get in peak shape!

I did say that—and it’s TRUE. It’s as true today as it was yesterday, and it will always be true. I stand behind the ISOCHAIN because I believe, hand on heart, that it will help a lot of athletes, young and old, reach their full potential. It’s the most important piece of training equipment to be released in my lifetime. I hope people who read this know me well enough to know that I would never put my name behind something I didn’t believe in, 100%. Fact.

That said—you don’t need an ISOCHAIN to perform isometrics and gain the benefits. One of the bonuses of isometrics is that it can be performed anywhere. You can do loadless isometrics—muscle-vs-muscle training, so beloved by Maxick. You can do low-to-zero tech isos using a chain, a rope, a towel. You can perform static-state isos, using a doorway, a wall, or so on. And—saving the best for last—you can do bodyweight isometric progressions, like levers, flags, L-holds, grip work, and so on.

So what do you guys think? Do you want to see isos make a big return? Please hit me up in the comments below. Let me know if you’ve used isos, and benefited from them; let me know if you want some more articles here on loadless or zero–tech isos. Shoot me a comment if you have any questions, and I’ll answer them if I can.

Heck, please leave a comment just to say hi. I’d love to hear from all of ya!

Paul

Natural Muscle—How Much Can You Gain…Really?

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Al and Danny Kavadlo for Paul Wade

I’ve found that these days I keep getting asked the same questions over and over. Why did you get those lame tattoos? How come your face looks so much older than your body? Who are you, and what are you doing in the girls’ locker room?

That’s my personal life, but in my life as a coach I get a lot of repetitive questions too. Since I wrote C-MASS, here is a doozy that crops up over and over again:

How much muscle can I gain without steroids?

Yeah, you’ve heard it too, right? Well I can’t promise you that I can give you a concrete answer, but at my age I sure am getting good at rambling—so if you’ve got five minutes, stick around and listen to old Uncle Paul. There’s five bucks in it for you. (There’s not.)

Alright. Let’s start with a baseline. (I’m going to focus on the males here because, well, it’s only the males that seem to care about gaining maximum muscle—forgive me, my bodyweight bodybuilding sisters.) How much does the average untrained dude weigh? Modern stats tell us that the average American male these days weighs around 190 lbs. But modern stats are misleading, because we are interested in muscular bodyweight, right? And let’s face it, the modern generation is the fattest ever. Fat Albert, fat. So let’s go back to the sixties—before the obesity epidemic was in full swing. In that decade, stats tell us that he average male was a much sleeker 166 lbs. Now, this wasn’t a lean, steel-cut “six pack” Kavadlo-type athlete—just a regular, untrained not-fat dude. So let’s make this a pretty rough weight for “Mr. Average”—166 lbs.

Now, the Million Dollar Question: how much muscle could our Mr. Average gain, just through training and eating right?

The problem with answering this question in the modern era can be summed up in one word—drugs. Drugs have skewed Joe Public’s vision of what can be achieved by training, more than most people could even imagine. (More on that in a little bit.) So in order to look at what’s really achievable naturally, we need to go back to a time before steroids hit the training scene.

You might be surprised how far back that actually is. Most people probably associate the first true “steroid-era” with the seventies, and the larger than life physiques of men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, as seen in the movie Pumping Iron (which was based around the battle for the ’75 Mr. Olympia). In fact, similar (and in some cases, identical) compounds to those used by the seventies crew were already for sale in the US in the late fifties. The Soviets were experimenting with steroid-based drugs for Olympic lifters in the forties, which is no surprise because testosterone was first synthesized in the early thirties. If we go even further, natural testosterone—from animal cajones—was first being injected into humans as far back as the nineteenth century. (Hell—that’s before even I was born. I think.) So bodybuilding drugs ain’t new, kids.

As a good guideline though, we can say that—in America, at least—steroid-based PEDs were not being tested on weightlifters until the fifties. So if we go back to the forties, we should—probably, if not absolutely definitely—be able to find drug-free, natural bodybuilders at their peak. This, in turn, should maybe give us at least a clue how big and lean our Mr. Average could aspire to get, at a push.

So let’s look at arguably the best (and most muscular) bodybuilder from the forties: the guy the other lifters all called “the King of Bodybuilders”: Clarence “Clancy” Ross. Clancy was Mr. America 1945—the biggest bodybuilding title in the world back then. (The Mr. Olympia title wasn’t created by Joe Weider until 1965.) How big was he? He was about 5’10, with 17 inch arms, and he weighed in at 185 lbs pounds, soaking wet.

First things first—to many of you on the fitness scene now, this will seem like a ridiculously light weight for a “big” guy. Hell, lean bodybuilders nowadays sometimes hit the stage at close to 300 lbs! So as a result some of you may be thinking…185? At 5’10?! Did this guy even lift?

Uh, yes, He did. In fact, Clancy was a monster who outlifted 99% of modern bodybuilders: he could curl 200 lbs, bench 400 lbs, squat 500 lbs and—get this—perform a standing press of 320 lbs! (Good luck seeing that in a modern gym.) He was also a big fan of traditional calisthenics.

That 185 sure looked good on old Clancy. He had a six-pack like bricks on a building, pecs like huge slabs, muscular, separated quads, round, thick delts and loaded guns.

Bodybuilding King—Clarence Ross!
Bodybuilding King—Clarence Ross!

Actually, Clancy was undernourished and underweight for his frame when he started training. But if he had been the “average” male weighing 166, that would mean he put on close to 20 lbs of muscle as a result of his training and diet (actually probably more like 25-30 lbs, as Clancy was leaner than the average guy.) There were a tiny number of men in the forties who were bigger than Clancy—George Eiferman is an example—but there are always going to be taller guys or real genetic outliers who screw the curve. The fact remains that Clancy is a great example of what “big” is for a male of good health, average height, and normal-to-excellent genetics.

In reality, when guys ask me about how much muscle they can add, it’s obviously impossible to answer. You’d need to see into someone’s genes to know the answer—to also know their hormone levels, dietary habits and work ethic. But as a good rule of thumb, most men who are not underweight and are dedicated to their training and eat and rest adequately can gain 20-30 lbs of solid muscle via training alone. (Obviously you can dial up or down the numbers according to height.) Clancy is an extreme example—among the world’s best—but as you can see from his photo, 20-30 lbs of muscle on a fairly lean physique is enough to make you jacked as sh**. Hell, if you are lean enough, as little as ten pounds of muscle added to your frame will make you look like a buff dude. Toxic drugs are not required to look great.

At this point, a lot of younger guys will be shaking their head, and saying I’m just an ancient loser who’s setting the bar too low for athletes. (They’re right about the ancient loser part, sure.) I get emails all the time about this guy and that guy who does bodyweight-only on YouTube, and is built like a friggin’ Pershing tank. Many of them weigh 200 lbs with change, and are often sliced to the bone. These men are putting on 40 plus pounds of muscle using bodyweight training, their fans tell me. Well, sure they are. They are on steroids. Do you think you are only allowed to use bodybuilding drugs if you lift weights? Jesus, there’s steroids in all sports now. Hell, even the International Chess Federation started doping tests for steroids in 2003. (I’m not kidding. Look it up.)

Why are so many modern athletes lying about their natty status? A simple law of human behavior. Anything which gets rewarded happens more, and anything which gets punished happens less. There are lots of rewards for lying about drug use—more fans, more views, more sponsorship, more respect, etc.—and plenty of punishments for telling the truth—stigma, being banned from sports, jailtime, etc. Of course these guys lie: I don’t even blame them. The problem is though, it creates false expectations, particularly for the younger athletes. They think they suck, or their training sucks, because they don’t look like some juiced up balloon in six months. As a result, they either get despondent and quit training—and so lose a myriad of lifelong benefits—or figure it out and take the drugs, ruining their hormonal profiles and setting up a future health minefield along the way.

It’s understandable that so many people overestimate the amount of muscle that a natural athlete can put on, because drugs have skewed their view of reality beyond belief. To see just how much drugs have changed the picture, check out the biggest bodybuilders after drugs began to infiltrate the scene. Let’s take a look in time lapse, every twenty years:

  • The best bodybuilder in the world in 1945 (Clancy) weighed 185 lbs.
  • Twenty years later, the best bodybuilder—the 1965 Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott—weighed 200 lbs: heavier AND leaner than any Mr. America in the forties. (All this, and he was three inches shorter than Clancy!) What caused this huge jump? By now bodybuilders were using the oral steroid Dianabol and almost definitely injectable steroids like Deca-Durabolin, which was available from the late fifties. They were probably taking fairly light to moderate doses (by modern standards) and only using the drugs before competition, coming off them for long periods.
  • Twenty years later—it’s 1985 and the world’s greatest is Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney. At 5’11, Haney weighed in at a phenomenal 245 lbs. With paper-thin skin and dehydrated, Haney weighed about 70 lbs more than old Clancy! What caused this quantum leap? Maybe Haney was just more intense in the gym, or trained better? In fact, no—by all accounts, Clancy Ross could outlift Lee Haney on his best day: so it wasn’t the training. The real reason is that by now the top bodybuilders were using much larger doses of drugs, for much longer periods. They were also “stacking” multiple oral and injectable compounds, and beginning to use low doses of Human Growth Hormone (HGH)—which, at the time, was extracted from corpses, meaning that if the dead body had a disease, you got it too. (Oh, it made you a bit bigger than the competition, though.)
  • Fast forward another twenty years to 2005 and basically things have got ridiculous at the top level. Mr. Olympia now is Ronnie Coleman, and he’s stepping onstage weighing 290 lbs (!), ripped to bejesus, and looking something like a cross between a walking chemical toilet and a badly-drawn comic book. This guy weighed well over a hundred pounds more than poor little Clancy, while being only about an inch taller. What caused this latest “improvement”? Huge doses of the same old steroids, now stacked year round, plus much larger doses of more modern, synthetic growth hormone, along with widespread heavy use of insulin, which it turns out, is a another massively anabolic drug when applied in a certain protocol. Hell, guys are now literally shooting oil into their muscles just to keep the expansion happening.

This is the context modern students of bodybuilding have to enter—is it any wonder they have lost all sense of what’s real? Let’s get some reality back. Let’s look back to the old physiques—the guys under 190 lbs, with abs: look at Eugen Sandow (180 lbs), Clancy Ross (185 lbs), Roy Hilligenn (175 lbs). These men were pinnacles of strength AND health, and looked as big (and healthy) as any normal person could want.

Hilligenn: shorter and lighter than Clancy, but still a slayer.
Hilligenn: shorter and lighter than Clancy, but still a slayer.

One more common question, to finish. This muscle gain—20-30 lbs—can it be done using calisthenics? Or are weights required? My answer is: maximum muscle mass CAN absolutely be achieved with bodyweight-only training. External weights are not required. You only need to look at the current rash of calisthenics stars who are using the same kinds of drugs as the hardcore bodybuilders used back in the sixties (Dianabol, Deca, test). Guess what? They have the same types of upper-body measurements as the bodybuilders had then! This is because your muscle mass is not determined by your training stimulus, but by your hormonal profile.

I hear gym lifters tell me: yeah, bodyweight exercise might be good for the upper-body, but you can’t build huge legs with calisthenics alone. Again, this is something of a modern illusion. what folks don’t realize is that all these “huge” legs aren’t being built with barbells but drugs. Remember—it’s the steroids that make you big…the training is way down the list! Look at those huge, overgrown cows and bulls these days; they have huge hips and asses just like modern bodybuilders, but it’s not because they are going to some secret bovine gym. It’s because they are being shot with hormones—steroids and growth. In fact, some popular modern anabolic steroids (I’m lookin’ at you, trenbolone) are literally just the dissolved animal steroid pellets farmers give to livestock to make them bigger.

It ain’t the drugs, bro! It’s heavy squats!
It ain’t the drugs, bro! It’s heavy squats!

It’s a prevalent myth that you only grow if you take steroids and train hard. There are plenty of studies that show you will grow more than any hard-training natural athlete just by sitting on the couch, if you are loaded up with steroids. It’s your hormone levels that primarily cause growth: like I say, training is very secondary. Remember: these drugs are legitimately used for people with horrible injuries and wasting diseases, to add muscle mass…the patients aren’t lifting weights, but the drugs work anyway. Remember going through puberty? When over a year (or even a summer, in some cases) you went from being a scrawny boy to suddenly having some muscles? It happens whether you exercise or play video games. It was caused by a sudden surge of natural steroids.

Training heightens the effect of the drugs, but not nearly as much as most non-athletes think. Clancy Ross built 24 inch quads by doing squats with 500 lbs…meaning his LEGS in 1945 were the same size as Ronnie Coleman’s ARMS in 2005! I’m pretty sure Ronnie wasn’t doing 500 lb curls. Work your legs hard with squats, one-leg work, sprinting and jump training, and yes, they will reach their natural limit. But they won’t ever be 36 inches unless you’re also willing to inject your body every day to make them that way.

Okay, ramble over. Go back to work. And remember, brethren—all this is just my opinion, based on what I’ve seen. I’m not claiming to have the final answers on fat-free mass indexes or stuff like that. If you still have questions, I’d love to hear ‘em. Slap them in the comments below and I’ll answer. If you think I’m wrong, yell at the screen. Or, better yet, hit me up in the comments section and tell me where I’m screwing up.

I’ve got a pot of coffee on the stove, and I’m always ready to learn.

CALISTHENICS: 20/16 20 Exercise Tactics and 16 Programming Approaches to Keep the Dream Alive (Part Two)

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LeadImageAlDannyPhoto1

Apparently one of the movie sensations of 2015 was Fifty Shades of Grey—a flick about the pleasure you can get from absorbing punishment. Well, I didn’t see that pile of crap myself, but I can see we have plenty of dedicated masochists in the house today…you came back after reading Part One. Good for you!

This article ain’t about making that mythical “new start” for the New Year—new starts are easy as pie. It’s keeping going that’s hard, good buddy. With that in mind, the first part of this article was about new training techniques and approaches to keep things fresh. This second half is about finding some new programming approaches to help you express freedom and creativity in your training. You’re not meant to use ALL the stuff I present to you here—just take it as the ramblings of a crazy mind. Who knows? Hopefully by the end of this article, you’ll have some fun new toys to whip out when you feel the urge.

Enough smut. Let’s go!

#1. MASTER THE SQUARE OF PROGRAMMING

I’m a big believer that athletes should develop their own programs—teach a man to fish, and all that jive, huh? With this in mind, I want to expose you to a useful bit of PCC theory we use to help coaches and trainers visualize the basics of programming.

There are four basic variables of any program:

  1. Mode is what you do;
  2. Volume is how much you do;
  3. Intensity is how hard you do it; and
  4. Frequency is how often you do it.

Imagine these four as axes on a square—the “corners” of the square being maximum (highest reps, intensity, volume, and the peak complexity/skill of the mode—e.g., compare kneeling pushups with high-skill hand-balancing):

Diagram1_image2

Now, in theory, any workout you care to imagine will make a pattern on this square. By visualizing different patterns, you’ll be able to understand all these four variables’ roles in a program. For example:

a. Injury rehabilitation

This requires lots of volume, lots of frequency, and low intensity, over very easy-skill exercises. So the square pattern might look like this:

Diagram2_image3

b. Skill training

Learning complex bodyweight skills—such as an elbow lever—also requires lots of practice (volume and frequency). But you should keep fresh, which means lower intensity. So the square pattern will look more like this:

Diagram3_image4

c. Hypertrophy training

The muscles need plenty of rest (low frequency) but moderate volume if they’re going to grow. You need fairly basic exercises, and you need to work them hard (intensity):

Diagram4_image5

d. Strength training

Sets are moderate to high, reps are low—making the total volume somewhere in the middle. Intensity is high, exercises are big and basic:

Diagram5_image6

What’s that? You disagree with the data pictures in the squares? Perfect! The beauty of this approach is that you can tailor your own squares. What line graphs are to understanding and displaying economics, the square of programming is to understanding and illustrating programming theory. Think of it as a shorthand. Look at your personal goals, then see where your own workouts fall in the square.

Neat, huh?

#2. UNDERSTAND YOUR REPS!

One of the biggest favors you can do in programming your training is to understand the role that reps play. It sounds obvious, but if you want to get strong, you are going to do it more efficiently with sets consisting of low repetitions. If you want muscle growth (hypertrophy) you need more reps. For a mix of strength and size, you need somewhere in the middle. For rehab purposes—you need higher reps still

Enough jawing—a picture is worth a thousand words. Memorize this chart, then eat it.

Chart1_image7

Yep, you’ll find these type of charts differ slightly. But you’re reading my article, so I guess you want my opinion on the matter. Just for you, brown eyes—in black and white.

AlKavadloPlayingNinjaChina-001

#3. NINJA PCC STRENGTH TACTICS

I’m often asked the best way to train for strength—not mass, just strength. In the PCC Instructor’s Manual we put out eight tactics which should be considered the foundation of all strength training—honestly, I can’t put it better than I did there, so I’m going to share them with you here:

  1. Keep strength work brief and focused. Strength and volume are mutually exclusive. Focus on low reps, and take plenty of rest in between sets when strength training.
  1. Warm up. The nervous system can take time to “wake up” and generate maximum strength output. Gradually increase the difficulty of your work sets (without burn-out) during a training session to tap into your full strength potential.
  1. Brace yourself. The idea of “bracing” when the body is needs to exert or absorb force (the two are the same) is an ancient one. Prior to your technique—whether static or dynamic—deliberately flex all your muscles, and keep them tense as you train. This would comprise an excessive energy drain during a higher volume set (e.g., a hypertrophy set), but when applied during low-rep pure strength training it works well.
  1. Grip/root. Generating tension in the hands during training increases upper-body power by amplifying nerve branches running through the torso to the arms and hands. Powerlifters have used this technique for decades, gripping the bar hard during deadlifts and bench presses. Grip the bar as strongly as possible during bar work, and focus hard on “gripping” the floor with your fingers during pushups. When your feet contact the floor (e.g., squats), employ the same tactic with the feet, by generating static torque in the legs, calves and feet, and bracing the lower legs. This is called “rooting”.

RaisedPushUp_image8

  1. Inhale to improve leverage. Breathing in a big lungful of air prior to a positive movement can increase strength on many techniques. When the lungs are full, pressure inside the trunk increases, making the torso more “solid” as a leverage base.
  1. Utilize controlled exhalations. Learn to “hiss” as you exhale during negative movements. This will dramatically tighten the trunk muscles and core. Controlled exhalations can increase force production during a punch or a kick; this is why boxers and martial artists seem to hiss when they strike powerfully.
  1. Find your psych. High levels of strength are associated with hormones like epinephrine, which can be produced by emotional arousal. You are unlikely to see a strength record broken by a relaxed athlete—learn how to apply controlled aggression.
  1. Employ plyo. Explosive movements (jumps, clapping pushups/pullups) force the body to rapidly recruit huge numbers of motor units, amplifying neural facilitation. Performed before work sets, plyo temporarily raises the baseline of strength.

Expensive manuals of strength have been based around these eight simple techniques, which can double a novice’s strength in a matter of months if applied consistently. You’re welcome.

 

#4. 1-10-1

This is a very traditional approach to bodyweight training that’s about as old as the dinosaurs. It got popular again in the 70’s and 80’s when Arnold S. (yeah, that Arnold S.) discussed it in several training articles.

It’s a beaut for getting a lot of training under your belt on the basics like pushups, squats and pullups. Just pick an exercise you can do for over ten reps and hit it like this:

Set # Reps: Set # Reps:
1 1 11 9
2 2 12 8
3 3 13 7
4 4 14 6
5 5 15 5
6 6 16 4
7 7 17 3
8 8 18 2
9 9 19 1
10 10

Gupsidedown_image9

It’s a basic pyramid, allowing you to get 100 reps in total over 19 sets. Training this way has a lot of pluses: it’s high volume, and allows you to build in a lot of reps into your program without getting too fatigued; it also works great as its own warm-up. Sure, this is not the program for you if you’re on the hardcore edge of your training—trying to eke out another rep on a tough exercise, or master a new step—but it’s an excellent device to help you build on the basics. And who doesn’t need more of the basics? The basics are like exercise candy, baby!

 

#5. TIMED WORKOUTS—THE PRESSURE VALVE

I feel sorry for modern trainees for a lot of reasons. The prevalence of steroids and dumb expectations is one reason. The utterly mental obsession with programming is another.

I’ve been called a throwback and a Neanderthal for my programming ideas: or, to be fair, my LACK of ideas! When I started training we generally picked up a few bodyweight exercises from watching others do them, then we did them. We trained hard as we could, increased our reps and got stronger. We didn’t really talk much about programming.

Folks today are obsessed with programming. Maybe it’s the internet—I dunno. But they talk about rep ranges, cycling, periodization, percentages…Jeez, if training had been like this when I started, I might not have bothered. I wouldn’t have understood that shit!

I hear from a lot of guys in a similar position. They want to train hard—they are aching for it—but their routine is getting them down. They find it boring, constraining, being stuck in a workout rut: but they’ve expended so much time and energy working on the “perfect” program, they feel constrained to follow it.

My solution: for a few weeks, throw your program in the garbage. Seriously. Replace it with a stopwatch, and do this:

  • Set yourself a fifteen-minute period every other day for training.
  • Try to give yourself access to a bar, a basketball, and the floor.
  • Do NOT plan your workouts hours ahead of time!!
  • Take five minutes before training to put some ideas together about what to do. No more.
  • Feel free to change your plan “on the fly”. Improvise.
  • Do not repeat workouts. Try to keep fresh.
  • Try to train as nonstop as you can for the fifteen minutes.

This is actually a surprisingly refreshing, exciting method of training. The best thing about it is that it completely removes any mental pressure than has built up, and is cramping your training. You might be thinking—fifteen minutes….damn, that ain’t long. But trust me, when you are faced with filling that time, nonstop, you’d be amazed what you can pack in there!

AlWallSplit_image10

And what should you be looking to pack in there? This is where the creative fun starts…anything you like that’s bodyweight is game! Here are some options:

  • Mobility work: twists, hamstring stretching, joint rotations, Egyptians, teacups…all groovy.
  • Skill-strength work: any exercise you can barely perform for a single rep? Great! Keep returning to it during your training session!
  • Pushing: pushups, jackknife pushups, chair dips, tiger bend pushups
  • Pulling: Aussie pullups, pullup variations
  • Cardio: Burpees, star jumps, running on the sport, jumping jacks, shadow boxing, up-and-downs—all for nice, high reps.
  • Grip work: Fingertip pushups, timed hangs
  • Inverse work and balances: Handstands, headstands, elbow raises, crow stands
  • Leg work: Pepper in plenty! Squats, close squats, shrimp squats, lunges, broad leaps, vertical jumps, spin jumps, etc.
  • Soft tissue work: any sore spots? Time to massage out the trigger points you’ve been neglecting!

See what I mean? That’s plenty to pick from right?

Don’t forget—you don’t need to stick to a strict rep range, or even a strict order. You can do ten pullups, or ten sets of one. You can do five sets of pushups, or none. You can start the session with grip work, then return to it later. It’s your call—you’re free again!

 

#6. THE HEAVY-LIGHT SYSTEM

You beautiful, fresh-faced hunks of gorgeousness are too young to remember, but back in the seventies and eighties, there was a war going on in gyms. Not the Cold War, or a war between Man and Machine—a war of bodybuilding styles.

In one camp were the heavy lifters. They claimed that unless you were bending bars with giant weights, and getting stronger on a diet of doubles, triples and singles, there was no way you could reach your brawny potential. On the other side were the muscle pumpers, or spinners; these guys insisted that bombing and blitzing the muscles with higher, exhausting, pumping reps was the true key to getting truly swole.

Eventually, thesis and antithesis found their synthesis, and bodybuilders began using the heavy-light routine. This involved beginning your bodypart training with the biggest weights on compound exercises you can handle. From there, you move to higher rep exercises to engorge the muscles and keep them pumped and primed. A nice solution, no?

You can also explore this general method with bodyweight training. There are several ways to go about it, but here’s what I suggest:

  • Pick an exercise you can barely perform for one repetition: maybe a strict handstand pushup for shoulders. (This is the “heavy” portion.)
  • After warming up, perform that technique for five single repetitions.
  • Take at least a minute between reps—more if you want to.
  • Now pick two pumping exercises for the same area; say, pike pushups and handstand inverse shrugs. (This is the “light” portion.)
  • Perform two sets of each “pumping” exercise, aiming at 10-15 reps.
  • Rest less than 30 seconds on the lighter work.

This approach might seem old-fashioned and mixed up to modern athletes—but if you can stomach it, it actually has a lot going for it. For a start, it allows you to explore your full strength potential when you’re fresh, allowing you to constantly master newer and harder bodyweight feats. (Don’t forget—you can use holds, like levers or free handstands, for the “heavy” bodyweight stuff—since it’s one rep, you don’t need to be moving.) The lighter (but harder and more painful!) work ensures that your muscle mass will always be constantly growing.

HeadstandNYCPCC_image11

I’d advise cycling three workouts:

  1. Horizontal push/pull (pushup progressions, Aussie pullups or back levers)
  2. Lower body and abs (squats, leg raises or front levers, bridging)
  3. Vertical push/pull (handstand work, pullups)

This template allows for a lot of finagling—you can go three times in a row, three times a week, and so on. Give it a shot, handsome.

 

#7. DEFAULT MODE—CLASSIC CONVICT CONDITIONING

Most of you reading this will have a pretty good idea of what the Convict Conditioning view of sets and reps is. But a few of you won’t, which is why I want to take a moment to outline it here. Convict Conditioning is at the opposite end of skill work, and is heavily set in the muscle and strength building portion of the square of programming. There are some minor variations, but at its heart, Convict Conditioning couldn’t be simpler:

  • Warm-up well with 1-4 lower intensity sets
  • Perform 2 hard sets of 8-10
  • Rest until recovered between sets
  • Take 48 hours+ before hitting the same exercise again
  • When you reach a rep target, find a way to make the exercise tougher
  • Wash, rinse, repeat

This, ladies and gents, is what foolproof basic training looks like. Convict Conditioning is essentially old school, intense, power/bodybuilding-type training—which is why so many bodyweight aficionados, mired as they are in gymnastics-born systems—find it difficult to accept. Convict Conditioning is about gradually and progressively using bodyweight training as a tool to build muscle and raw strength. It is NOT about using skill-type methods to teach the nervous system into performing bodyweight “tricks”. This can be done quite quickly—but so what? If you are performing Convict Conditioning-style bodyweight work, and someone tells you to stop, because you could progress faster through the steps using skill-style or GTG training, run to the hills. They do not understand the system, nor what you are trying to achieve. It’s like a skinny guy walking into a gym and telling a bodybuilder to quit his methods and switch to Olympic lifting, cuz “you’ll be able to get a heavier clean and jerk much quicker that way”. The two are different things!

DannyChicagoWrestlersBridge_image12

Is the Convict Conditioning way “best”…? Well, best for what? For becoming a skilled gymnast, no. For racing through progressions, no. For building a blend of muscle and strength simultaneously? Yep, I believe it IS the best. Yeah, you can apply other methods, but if you are looking for a method to use as the backbone of your training, something you return to over and over, you could do a lot worse. I say that with no ego—two hard sets and home? C’mon, I didn’t invent that shit. It’s been around since the pyramids, and will be around—and working well—long after I’m gone.

 

#8. SUPER HARDCORE: 5 X 5

If there’s a “classic” set and rep scheme for mass and power in the weightlifting world, this is it—the hallowed 5 x 5. 5 x 5 was heavily used and promoted by super-stud Reg Park, who was “Ah-nold’s” hero back in the fifties. Reg not only built the most badass physique on the planet (yep, he took gear—sorry but he did), he also moved more weight than Charlie Sheen has done coke, being the second man ever (after big Doug Hepburn) to bench press 500 pounds—and this was in the damn fifties, when the average man would have trouble rolling that weight.

How did he do it? He did it with his classic 5 x 5 routine: a method that became so popular, it’s still the mainstay of many hardcore routines to this day. There are many variations of this workout, but the basic one involves:

  • Picking 3-5 BIG exercises—no isolation fluff!
  • Perform five sets of five reps
  • The first two sets should be progressive warm-ups
  • The final three sets should be with the same weight: your top weight
  • If you can’t get five on the last three sets, continue training with that load until you can
  • When you can get five on the last three sets, jack up the load a little bit

Like most other basic approaches, this one can be stolen for bodyweight. Is it perfect? Hell no. But it’s a change, and sometimes that’s what the body—and mind—really needs.

Just pick a bodyweight strength exercise you can perform for 6-8 reps, if you’re pushing all out. Then perform two warm-up sets with easier drills (two sets of five reps) then hit your hardest exercise for three sets of five. Like Park said—if you can’t get fives on the last three sets, stick with that exercise. If you can get the three sets of five, move to a harder variation. Do this for a few of the big exercises—pushups, pullups, squats, handstand pushups—and you have a serious strength and size workout on your hands.

The trickiest part of repurposing weights programs for bodyweight use is having enough progressions at your fingertips. When you want to move forward with a barbell, you can just slap five pounds on the bar and repeat. But with bodyweight, you need to be more subtle. Tiny progressions can be made, however, if you have the right knowledge—the “hidden steps” as I can them. Slight shifts in hand or foot position; limb alignments; different body angles; depth changes. This was the real reason that I worked on the Progressive Calisthenics Certification with John Du Cane and Al Kavadlo. I wanted to create an entire generation of super-bodyweight trainers and coaches, with a toolbox of progressions so vast, that any programming method would become possible!

Don’t ever listen to goofballs who tell you that you need to use “special” programming approaches for bodyweight. It’s not true—whether you are performing dumbbell bench presses or one-arm pushups, your muscles have no idea whether you are performing calisthenics or hoisting a bar. They only contract and relax—that’s it. They don’t go onto Reddit to discuss the nuances of their day. If a collection of sets and reps works for weight-training, it will, under most circumstances, work for bodyweight!

 

#9. HUNDRED REP SETS?

Let’s face it—if you were to look at the rep ranges of the average calisthenics athlete throughout their career, you’d be faced with a mind-blowing level of tedium. What’s your favorite rep range? 6-8? 8-12? Truth is, we’re creatures of habit. Once we find rep ranges we like, we usually stick with ‘em. That’s no bad thing: until we get bored.

Let’s change things up. Kiss them single and double digits goodbye, and let’s go triple. You haven’t lived unless you’ve performed a hundred reps straight on a calisthenics exercise:

Set # Reps:
1 100

The method couldn’t be simpler. Grind away at an exercise until you hit a hundred. Probably best not to start with pushups though—unless your last name is Kavadlo.

https://youtu.be/9GL17uq_tB4

If you’re new to this method, start with light stuff—kneeling pushups, half squats. You’ll be amazed at the feeling these “easy” exercises give you in your muscles. As well as enjoying the burn, you should savor these high-rep delicacies, knowing that you are building your circulation, lactic acid/waste removal systems, releasing endorphins and natural analgesics, nourishing the joints and basically just being cool as f**k.

As you gain in strength and stamina, every dedicated athlete should aspire to this kind of level:

  • Close squats x 100
  • Pushups x 100
  • High incline pulls x 100

What? You want to do them all in one session? God damn, you stud! What a workout! Let me know how it feels to be awesome!

 

#10. ABBREVIATE TO ACCUMULATE

Human instinct is to overcomplicate anything we think about a lot. Unfortunately, the Golden Truth of programming is the opposite of this—if in doubt, simplify.

I recently read a program designed for the absolute beginner who wanted to get as big and strong as possible. I couldn’t believe it—there were about twenty exercises over three workouts! There were flyes and lateral raises, machine movements, this and that. You’ve probably seen similar routines yourself.

This is totally wrong. Getting big and strong—quick—is like beating someone up. If you really want to destroy someone, don’t hit them all over their body, in dozens of places. Pick only a small number of places and pound them there—over and over and over again. It’s the Principle of Concentrated Energy. This is Sun Tzu, Von Clausewitz shit I’m giving you here, son!

HollandPushUpPCC_image13

Those of you (the smart ones) familiar with my training philosophy will know this already, but it bears repeating. To get bigger and stronger, cut back. Cut back your exercises and your sets. You only have so much energy—neural energy, muscular energy, hormonal energy. You need to pour that energy where it counts: the big efforts on the big exercises. It’s pure Pareto Principle: 80% of your gains come from 20% of what you do. So put everything you can into that 20%!

If you are deadly serious about just getting as big and strong in calisthenics as fast as possible, do this:

  • Pick three movement types: a vertical push (the pushup family), a vertical pull (the pullup family) and a lower body move (the squat family)
  • Begin with fairly easy versions of the exercises to learn form, condition your joints and build psychological momentum
  • After a light warm up, perform two hard work sets
  • Work hard to build reps—while keeping your form pure. The harder you work, the faster you will progress
  • Every time you meet a rep goal, move up to a slightly harder exercise (use the rep targets and progressions in Convict Conditioning)

Progressive bodyweight training really is as simple as that. Why do we constantly wring our hands over it, and overcomplicate it? You could write that shit on a match box.

At first—when the exercises are easy—you should be able to perform all three exercises per session; either three days per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) or on alternate days. As you get stronger and it takes longer to recover, take two days off between workouts. When progress slows down again, think about performing pushups on day one, squats on day two, pullups on day three, and repeating on a six-day cycle, with one day off each week.

One final tip—if you are really serious about jacking up your strength—emotional and physical—in 2016, grab hold of my favorite strength book: Strength Rules by Danny Kavadlo. I don’t get paid a red cent for promoting his book, but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t tell you this book is awesome. I learned a huge amount from it. Get it and build your year around it. You can thank me in 2017!

 

#11. BODYBUILDING: “GOLDEN AGE” PROGRAMS

One of the less fashionable ways to use bodyweight nowadays is by applying a bodybuilding template. Why? Because the idea of bodybuilding—isolating different muscles—is seen as very dysfunctional. Calisthenics naturally lends itself to total body training. But you know what? Screw being hip—let’s do it!

One of the classic bodybuilding programs is the old three days on: push, pull, lower body. On push and pull, you’re going to be working 3 different movement-types during each session; four, for lower body:

A. PUSH:

Horizontal pushes (pushup variations, elbow levers)
Vertical pushes (handstand pushups, handstands)
Triceps work (bodyweight extensions, tiger bends, dips)

B. LOWER BODY: Squat progressions

Squat progressions
Bridge progressions
Leg raise progressions
Bodyweight calf work (one-leg raises, jumps, etc.)

C. PULL:

Horizontal pulls (Aussie pullups, front lever work)
Vertical pulls (Pullup progressions)
Biceps work (close pullups, supinated Aussie pullups, etc.)

This is another template that stands a lot of tweaking. In the sixties, the big bodybuilders would generally do this three-session cycle over three days (Mon to Wed), really hitting their heaviest weights and busting ass. Over the next three days (Thu to Sat) they’d repeat the cycle with somewhat lighter days, taking Sunday off completely to recharge for the next week. Hardgainers can still follow the routine, but doing the three days over Monday, Wednesday and Friday, rather than twice per week. Most drug-free bodybuilders fall somewhere in the middle, perhaps taking a day off after leg day and before the next cycle, thus spreading the three workouts over five days rather than three or seven.

AdrianVSit_image14

In my humble opinion, an even better way to work the three-day cycle is to mix up the upper-body work: swap biceps to the push day, and triceps to the pull day. Why? Well, for starters small muscle groups like arms can be worked more frequently and still grow. But the most important reason is intensity: after pushups and handstand work, most athlete find it impossible to give their triceps a damn good beating. But after pullups? Triceps are still fresh for the slaughter. Same principle for biceps. Check it:

A. UPPER-BODY I:

Horizontal pushes (pushup variations, elbow levers)
Vertical pushes (handstand pushups, handstands)
Biceps work (close pullups, supinated Aussie pullups, etc.)
Hanging forearm drills

B. LOWER BODY:

Squat progressions
Bridge progressions
Leg raise progressions
Bodyweight calf work (one-leg raises, jumps, etc.)

C. UPPER-BODY II:

Horizontal pulls (Aussie pullups, front lever work)
Vertical pulls (Pullup progressions)
Triceps work (bodyweight extensions, tiger bends, dips)
Fingertip pushup drills

 

The best way to hit this for most athletes?

DAY 1: PUSH/BICEPS

DAY 2: LOWER BODY

DAY 3: OFF

DAY 4: PULL/TRICEPS

DAY 5: OFF

Like I said before—this isn’t set in stone. No programming is. You can skip the rest days if you’re raring to go, or add in more if you are always sore/not recovering. Nothing bugs me more than coaches who say; use my program as it is, or not at all…don’t change a thing! Athletes are not retards. They are individuals, with brains. If they don’t have ideas, experiment and start working stuff out for themselves, they’ll never learn what works for them. They’ll always be dependent on external “experts”.

Still, I guess that works well for the experts, right?

 

#12. WE COULD TAKE IN AN OLD STEVE REEVES MOVIE…?

Back in his day—the drug-free forties and fifties—Steve Reeves was the greatest bodybuilder in the world. His physique was so impressive—previously unheard of mass, combined with classical lines—that it led him to Europe and made him, for a brief time, the highest paid movie star in the world.

https://youtu.be/nisz2sMQ6d8

Reeves built the bulk of his muscle on plain vanilla training: the whole body done a deal three times per week, with just one working set. Yep, Reeves used weights, but it doesn’t mean we can’t rip off his template and apply it to bodyweight training:

  1. Burpees: 20 reps
  2. Australian pullups: 10 reps
  3. Jackknife pushups: 10 reps
  4. Jackknife pullups: 10 reps
  5. Pushups between chairs: 10 reps
  6. Close squats: 15 reps
  7. Bridge pushups: 10 reps
  8. One-leg calf raise on step: 20 reps
  9. Incline tiger bend pushups: 10 reps

You might need to tailor this workout to meet your strength level: feel free to drop or add reps, or alter the exercises. This is just an idea, folks.

Often we make our training too complex. We overthink it. Reeve’s original-style routine is a great way to go back to basics, and get a good honest workout under our belts.

Make no mistake, this kind of template can be very powerful. Reeves himself claimed that he put on thirty pounds in his first summer of training this way! Ironically he was later disparaging of this kind of “simplistic” training, saying that he’d moved on to more sophisticated methods. Maybe that was a bad move—Steve put on thirty pounds of muscle in his first three months with this method, but didn’t gain twenty pounds over the next two decades.

So much for sophisticated!

 

#13. JOE HARTIGEN SETS

One of the most perfect set-and-rep schemes I ever came across was invented (or reinvented) by my mentor, Joe Hartigen. I wrote more about the Hartigen Method here, but it fits in really well in this article. It looks like this:

Warm up: with easy sets of 5 reps

Set # Reps:
1 5
2 4
3 3
4 2
5 1

Looks simple huh? It is!

Just pick the hardest exercise you can perform with great technique—five reps should be very close to failure. Warm up with a few easier exercises—but keep to five reps. Then, get stuck into your work sets. Do your five rep-max set, and rest for a minute or so. Now, draining as that set was, after a minute you can probably still manage four reps, right? So do it. Another minute’s rest and you can manage three, and so on—right down to one.

AlFingerTipPushups_image15

I love this method, which is why I’ve talked about it before. This is an elegant way to train. Unlike methods like 5 x 5 and 1-10-1, it allows you to get your hardest effort out the way immediately, and with the most efficiency.

Those of you who’d like to learn a little more about Joe’s broader training philosophy, check the article I wrote here.

 

#14. GERMAN VOLUME vs CALISTHENICS

This is another method drawn from the weights world—bodybuilding specifically—just to show you future greats that you don’t have to limit your mindset, just coz you are working with the greatest gym ever—the human body.

In C-MASS I discuss the difference between building strength and building mass. This confuses some folks, so I keep it stripped back: high load/tension is what builds strength. Stress/chemical drain is what builds mass. Typically, bodyweight athletes have taken their techniques from gymnastics, which is really more about building strength than mass. That’s why you have so many skinny guys performing amazing bodyweight feats. The trouble is, athletes interested in bodyweight then look at all these skinny guys and think: damn—calisthenics doesn’t build any beef at all!

Not true. You just need to apply bodybuilding methods—which drain the muscles—as opposed to gymnastics methods, which prime the nervous system.

Say what you like about their methods, but bodybuilders know how to program for mass!
Say what you like about their methods, but bodybuilders know how to program for mass!

With that in mind, here’s a classic pure mass method, straight from the Eastern Bloc. Although the name, German Volume Training, sounds kinda scientific and intimidating, this method is simpler than you might think, and actually translates effortlessly to bodyweight work. Pick an exercise you can perform 20-30 reps with, in good form. Then perform ten sets of ten reps with that exercise, with sixty second’s timed rest in between sets:

Set # Reps: Set # Reps:
1 10 6 10
2 10 7 10
3 10 8 10
4 10 9 10
5 10 10 10

 

  • Pick only one exercise for this method
  • If you can’t make the full hundred, note your reps and try to improve each session
  • Scale back your other exercises to a minimum during this protocol
  • Use the method for one exercise only, twice a week
  • After a month, return to regular training

I know this approach will have the low-rep skill-strength lovers pissing down their pant legs, but trust me—it works. At first, achieving the full ten sets of ten will be impossible. Your muscles will be screaming, your body pumping out more stress hormones than an actress getting a lift home with Bill Cosby. But persevere. Radical jumps of muscle size have been noted on this routine.

You’re a crazy radical, right? You’ll try something nuts once in a while? I knew it. That’s why I love ya like I do.

 

#15. HEAVEE DUTEE, BABEE!

In Convict Conditioning I advocate damn hard training on all work sets. I don’t however, advocate going to complete failure; I believe you should always leave a little bit of energy in your limbs in case you need them to defend yourself, or for another emergency situation. It’s how I was taught, and it’s how I teach now.

That doesn’t mean I think training to failure is a “bad” thing. It’s more like following through when you go to the bathroom; you don’t mean to do it, but sometimes you just push a little too hard. We’ve all been there. My ultimate view of training-to-failure is simple: your adaptation (how big and strong you get) is in direct proportion to the intensity of the stressor (how hard your training is). In other words, the harder you train, the better you get. Modern babble aside, everyone who has trained long-term knows this in their heart of hearts. You know it too, right?

Mentzer_image17The king of High Intensity Training was Mike Mentzer. He shocked the training world with his one-set-to-failure philosophy, and he practiced what he preached. It was hard to argue with those results, either: back in ‘78 he was the first ever bodybuilder to win the Mr Universe with a perfect score. Many in the know also thought he was the winner of the highly controversial 1980 Mr Olympia, which was actually taken by a well out-of-shape Arnold S., who entered as a last minute contestant.

What would Mike make of bodyweight training? Actually, we have a pretty good idea, because his mentor—the famous Nautilus machine inventor, Arthur Jones—was, ironically a big fan of bodyweight work. He went so far as to write that pullups, dips and one-leg squats would maximize any athlete’s muscle mass.

Fancy some calisthenics, Heavy Duty style? I suggest this:

DAY 1:

Pullup progression:
8-10 strict reps (to failure)
2 forced reps
2 ten second negative reps

Handstand pushups:
to failure

DAY 2:

Squat progression:
10-15 strict reps (to failure)
2 forced reps (or self-assist)
10 reps (with an easier progression: to failure)

DAY 3: OFF

DAY 4:

Dip progression:
8-10 strict reps (to failure)
2 forced reps
2 ten second negative reps

DAY 5: Off

Repeat cycle

That was fun, eh? But screw “fun”, Paulie…is this program any good? Yes and no. If you want to ramp up your muscle and strength over ten next ten weeks, and you have a partner willing to help with the forced reps, go for it. But after ten weeks you’re gonna start dreading training. You’ll find little niggling injuries. You’ll get colds. These are all really your system’s way of avoiding the pain. For long-term results, if your training ain’t fun, it’s not gonna happen.

…Speaking of fun…

 

#16. ULTRAREPS: 1000 PUSHUPS IN 12 HOURS

Low reps and keeping fresh—strength as skill—is the dominating approach in bodyweight strength, and it has been in years. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s all a part of God’s Great Creation. Like dysentery, or pubic lice.

But let’s be honest—it’s gone too far. You’ve got athletes terrified of reps. Scared crapless of actually pushing themselves, and busting their butts on basic exercises like squats, pushups and pullups. The way some of these dudes today program, you’d think their dicks would drop off if they hit double digits on an exercise.

I’m here to tell you: that’s bullshit. There are times a man (or woman) needs to push themselves way beyond what they ever thought they could do. Doing this builds huge chemical stores in the muscles, massive stamina and intestinal fortitude.

In jail there is one bodyweight challenge which is taken very seriously indeed. The man who completes it earns instant respect as one of the true “black belts” of cell athletics. Forget singles, doubles and triples. Forget twenty rep sets. You thought a hundred reps was big boy stuff? How about a thousand reps in a single day?

DannyKavadlo_image18

It might sound impossible—and for most people, even very experienced calisthenics athletes, it is. But if you lay the groundwork and prepare for it methodically—a lot like training for a marathon—it can be achieved. You can achieve it. Before we get to anything resembling a program, here’s some Cliff Notes on the prep:

  • The pushups need to be tolerable. Getting the chest 4-6 inches from the floor is acceptable, as is moving fast. Slow and controlled is great, but if you try that shit here it WILL kill you.
  • Yeah, you need to get good at pushups before you do this. Unless you can do fifty reps in a regular set, don’t even think about this.
  • You also need good recovery ability throughout the day. Unless five hard sets of pushups (doing double figures) is easy, keep trying until it is.
  • You also need good recovery ability day-to-day just to get through this training. This is really just the result of consistent, fairly frequent training over the last few months. Unless you can perform pushup sessions with minimal soreness the next day, don’t try this at home.

Once you meet these basic criteria, you can think about beginning the real training. Obviously, a thousand pushups can’t be achieved by strength training—it’s all about stamina. The key to a successful build-up is gradually developing this stamina. If there is a “secret” to acing the 1000 Pushup Challenge, it’s this: many small drops fill the bucket. The easiest way (!) to make the grand is not by huge, mega-sets, but by lots of small sets, frequently.

Think about the math. If you woke up and tried to bust out 150 pushups straight away, you’d probably exhaust yourself for the rest of the day. But if you did two sets of twenty every half hour, over twelve hours this would equate to 960 pushups. You’d only need to make 40 before bed, and you’d hit the grand.

This is the best way to approach your conditioning. There are several ways to go about this—I’ve used and endorsed several—but here’s a good one, lasting just eight weeks:

  • Strip back your other training to zero over the next eight weeks. Pushups hit the entire body; from the arms and torso to the legs, and even the toes. Don’t worry, you’re conditioning ain’t going nowhere.
  • Work out every other day. (Remember—you’re building stamina here, not muscle.) Your goal is ten sets of pushups, max reps. Take two minute’s rest between sets. Constantly try to bring up your numbers through the eight weeks. Ten sets of 25 is a good start, although much higher reps are possible with time.
  • One day per week, have a “test” day. On test day, you’re going to be skipping the usual ten sets, and trying to build up your stamina throughout the day. Stamina can be developed a LOT quicker than strength. Test days should build in volume like this:

WEEK 1: Perform one set of 25 every hour over ten hours (250)

WEEK 2: Perform one set of 25 every half hour for five hours (250) then every hour for the next five hours (125) (TOTAL: 375)

WEEK 3: Perform one set of 25 every half hour for seven hours (350), then every hour for the next five hours (125) (TOTAL: 475)

WEEK 4: Perform one set of 25 every half hour for ten hours (500) then every hour for two hours (50) (TOTAL: 550)

WEEK 5: Perform one set of 25 every half hour for twelve hours (600)

WEEK 6: Add a second set of 25 reps to hours 1-3 (675)

WEEK 7: Add a further second set of 25 to hours 4-6 (750)

WEEK 8: Add a final second set of 25 to hours 7-9 (825)

TEST DAY: From here, you should be good to give the challenge a try the following week. Your goal on challenge day will be to hit two sets of 20 every half hour for 12 hours—you will add a twenty-fifth session of 2 x 20, or 4 x 10—or whatever you can manage to get forty reps!—before collapsing into bed. This makes 1000.

Some final tips:

  • Take two days off after every test day. You’ll need it.
  • This prep is flexible. If you can’t meet the test day standards on a given week, keep training until you can.
  • Take the final four days OFF before you attempt the challenge. Stretching is fine, but no pushups. This will allow your muscles to overfill their energy reserves. Don’t panic—you won’t regress.

Can you really do this?! Of course, if you want it. The body was designed to perform bodyweight exercise, and it can do better than you give it credit for. Yoshida of Japan did 10,507 pushups non-stop. You can do this, bro.

———

Phew! That’s quite a little programming journey we took there, huh? From low reps to ultrahigh reps, from strength training to pure bodybuilding, old school to bleeding-edge. Quite a little mental tour.

Was this info-dump systematic? Nope. Was it logical and consistent? Hell, no—it half the stuff in there contradicted the other half. (Like the Bible.) But that was the point of these two articles—freedom, change, variety. Acquiring ability to break off the shackles of our usual training and have the guts and motivation to try something new—trust me, that is how we keep in the game, year in, year out.

Remember, there are good routines and bad routines, but there are no perfect routines…and any calisthenics training is better than just quitting, because athletes who quit regret it down the line and wish they’d kept their hat in the ring. I guess from that perspective, “perfect” is whatever keeps you training, right?

Thanks for reading this—or skipping to the end and pretending you did. Either way, old Coach had a fine time sitting writing this for you guys and gals. I really, really hope you can take something from it that helps ya, however small. Please hit me up in the comments with any thoughts, questions, or just to say hi. I will answer all of you, and have a fantastic time doing so!

Big love again goes out to Adrienne and all the Kavadlo clan for the huge help they gave me in delivering this little ankle-biter.

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning Volume 2, the Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Training Log, and five Convict Conditioning DVD and manual programs. Click here for more information about the Convict Conditioning DVDs and books available for purchase from Dragon Door Publications.

CALISTHENICS: 20/16, 20 Exercise Tactics and 16 Programming Approaches to Keep the Dream Alive (Part One)

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Al Kavadlo Hanging Leg Raise

My beloved bodyweight brothers and sisters!

2016 is here, and that means I get to quit that set of pushups, blow the dust off my old laptop (my computer, not my junk) and write an article for the folks who really matter—you guys! Jeez, have I missed ya! How you been? Good? Staying out of trouble? …Why not?

I know the drill. Every time New Year rolls around, dudes and dudettes promise themselves one of two things: they either promise that THIS is the year that they’ll start working out; or—if they already work out—THIS is the year they’re gonna make those big-ass changes they really yearn for.

Well, I’m not gonna help you with any of that. Sorry. (But if you do want to make this year the year you begin bodyweight, I wrote an article for you here, or if you want to make this the year of the big transformation, read this.)

Don’t get the wrong idea. I still love ya, baby. But this year I want to try and help you with a third kind of promise. It’s not as big a leap as starting out, or as sexy as a transformation, but it’s possibly the most important thing you can do if you want to really get anywhere with calisthenics.

What am I talking about? Keeping at it.

It’s sad but true, but just keeping working out—week-in—week-out—is something that a HUGE number of potentially legendary athletes really struggle with. They might have great genetics, massive pain tolerance, and a perfect program, but most folks seem to just suck at not quitting.

So what’s the solution? In reality, athletes quit bodyweight training not because they are injured, and not because they don’t get results. Consistency in training is a mental game. The late, great Vince Gironda once said that most athletes should train hard on a program for three weeks, then take a week off (!) and begin a totally new program, repeating this every single month. Vince understood that although an athlete’s BODY can absorb repetitive training almost indefinitely, the MIND gets easily stressed or bored with a given method of training very quickly.

Now, I don’t believe you need to lose a quarter of your training time every month, but Vince had a point. Variety—freshness, freedom, novelty—is the best possible solution for the kind of mental stress or staleness that makes folks layoff or quit their training. So that’s exactly what this blog post is gonna focus on. I’m gonna add to your training toolbox here, kid—in Part One of this post, I’m going to give you TWENTY fresh ideas—techniques, challenges, tips and tools—to throw into your training to shake sh** up when you start to get bored. In Part Two, I’m gonna give you SIXTEEN programming approaches—sometimes complete templates, sometimes more focused concepts to help you explore rep ranges, frequency, and so on.

Twenty/sixteen…2016…see what I did there?

Let’s hit it, gorgeous!


#1. GO CAVEMAN

Remember when you were a kid, and bodyweight training was natural—and fun? You ran, climbed trees, played games. And you didn’t even know you were doing calisthenics, right? Let’s learn a lesson from this. If you are starting to feel stale, trapped and bored with the old straight sets of the same movement-families, how about shaking things up and going “caveman”?

What I mean by “go caveman” is simple; look at your regular strength exercises, and try to see what functional movement patterns lurk underneath those joint movements. For example: in the real world, nobody needs to do a perfect one-arm chin. But they may need to use their arms in a similar way, by climbing. Nobody does a perfect one-leg squat, but you do need to sprint. And so on.

2treeclimbing

Here’s a list of some “caveman” calisthenics:

  • Climbing: Use a climbing wall, a tree, or natural terrain. Develops the pulling muscles of the back and arms, finger strength, coordination and mobility.
  • Running: Use sets of sprints, or better still hit a natural terrain with inclines, declines and stuff to duck under and jump over. Turning on the speed or hitting those hills will strengthen every lower body muscle, from toes to hips.
  • Quadrupedal movement: Get on the floor and crawl; run; roll—just use all four limbs. There are dozens of movements to try here, and they all build excellent arm and should strength, while ironing up that midsection.

3Crawlinggroup

  • Swimming: The above three activities will give anyone a total-body workout—you want to add an X-factor, go for swimming. Awesome for the joints, great stamina, and bulletproofs and heals sore shoulders. Hell yes, it’s bodyweight!

How should you use this list? Here’s a good way. When your regular training gets too stale—too heavy, stressful, or monotonous—take a month off your regular calisthenics work, and spend 4-6 sessions a week doing nothing but these four types of caveman “play”. Don’t try to be too systematic about it—just put the time in, and make it fun. In four weeks, you will have retained all your strength, but added extra balance, coordination and new skills, while refreshing your joints. Plus, you’ll have lit a fire, and be raring to get back to the regular movements.

These are just the basics—you can get much more sophisticated in your caveman work, which has a long history in physical culture. The PCC Instructor’s Manual has an in-depth chapter on “Natural Movement Patterning”. If you want to get more into this side of things, you could do worse than research the philosophy of the modern master of natural body-movement, Erwan Le Corre. Erwan is a training genius, and long-time friend of the PCC—check out my interview with him here.

 

#2. EXPLORE HAND-BALANCING

This concept comes in the “something different” category.

If there is an “art within an art” in calisthenics, then it’s gotta be hand-balancing. Back in the first half of the 20th century, hand-balancing ability was seen as a sine qua non of a strength athlete. Weightlifters and bodybuilders (like Doug Hepburn and John Grimek) did their thing with bars and weights, but they worked hard at hand-balancing too. If you couldn’t hold a handstand, then you were a goddamn pussy!

4Onearmelbowlever

Hand-balancing involves an entire catalog of techniques involving bodyweight inversion via strength and balance. It’s a discipline, almost a system, of itself. It’s not just holding a handstand. It involves all kinds of free handstands, tiger bends, various floor levers, hand-walking styles and techniques, partner tricks, and the crucial transition between hold sequences. It also includes preliminary drills such as the crow stand.

I spent many years obsessed with the art of hand-balancing: particularly the technique of kicking up into a handstand from a one-arm elbow lever. For a long time that technique, to me, was a “one-arm handstand”—and I thought I was the only person in the world who could do it. I later learned that countless others could: and better!

A long time after my experience with that technique, when I began teaching bodyweight to more newbies, I eliminated almost all hand-balancing from my system (although you still see the crow stand in there, a little throwback). Why? Because I discovered that handstands were more effective for strength-building when you took the balance element out. I stand by that principle, but it still doesn’t lessen the awesome respect I have for hand-balancing.

In addition, hand-balancing is exciting. Fun, in a way many “safer” calisthenics skills aren’t. If you’re looking to insert something new and powerful into your training, hand-balancing may be the way to go.

For decades, the greatest resource for the old-school hand-balancing philosophy and training was the iconic York course #1 and #2. These beauties used to be available on the old Sandowplus website, however sadly this is no longer the case. Luckily, full copies have been preserved on David Gentle’s site:

York Hand-Balancing Course No. 1

York Hand-Balancing Course No. 2

Even if you aren’t interested in pursuing the training, these old courses make for a great read. David is doing the world of physical culture a HUGE service by preserving lots of invaluable old texts like this alive (and FREE) in his online library. If you read the courses (and if you do Facebook) please go and like his page on Facebook to let him know you’re supporting the great work he’s doing.

 

#3. GO MOBILE

Sometimes when we want to call Time Out on our strength training, it’s not due to staleness or boredom. One big reason is joint pain. Calisthenics is the safest form of training for your joints and soft tissues, but even so sometimes you’ll get aches and pains. It makes you paranoid.

Provided you aren’t carrying an acute injury—which needs to heal—the solution is usually to check your form. If that doesn’t get the job done, reducing frequency and volume probably will.

That said, there are times you will feel the need to take a brief layoff from hardcore, ball-busting strength movements. If you are doing it to save your joints, the best strategy is to devote 3-6 weeks to pure mobility training.

5Germanhang

“Mobility” is different from “flexibility”—which, frankly, I have no use for outside of a rehab context. Mobility involves the use of strength to increase a joint’s range-of-motion. Working on mobility movements every day (or maybe 6 days per week) will not only refresh your joints and increase your range-of-motion; done properly it will increase your neural efficiency and your ability to use your bodyweight when you return to the hard stuff.

Mobility work should feel natural—and, done right, it should complement and mirror other bodyweight training to a remarkable degree. All bodyweight aficionados who want to master mobility should go right to the source: Stretching Your Boundaries by Al Kavadlo.

That book is an incredible, next-level view on bodyweight mobility! I’m not saying this to sell you another Dragon Door book—just the opposite, that book has cost me money. When it came out, I was lining up to produce a book on mobility; but once I read Stretching Your Boundaries, I realized, genuinely, that it was the last word: simple, elegant, perfect. Better than anything I could write on the subject.

Thinking of quitting because of sore joints? Get this book, absorb it, and take five weeks using it every day. It’ll revolutionize you. Then get back in the War, soldier.

 

#4. PUT AN INCH ON YOUR PIPES

Oh yeah—now we’re talkin’, kid.

Sometimes when your training is in a slump, you need to back off. Sometimes, you need to change things. But sometimes, what you REALLY need is to double down, and work harder—really kick yourself in the ass. The best way to do this is set a challenge you really want to meet. Putting an inch on your guns in a month? Sounds good to me!

Here’s how we’re gonna do it.

6Al

Pick two triceps exercises, and two biceps exercises. The first biceps/triceps exercise should be TOUGH—five reps should be a struggle. The second should be a “FEEL” exercise—that you can control well, to burn the hell out of your muscles. You should be able to get about 10-15 reps on these.

Good choices for “tough” triceps work: handstand pushup variations, one-arm pushup variations, etc. For tough biceps work, stick with asymmetrical vertical pullups. Find progressions that match your own strength level.

Good choices for “feel” triceps work: incline French presses on a low bar, tiger bend pushups, close grip pushups. For biceps, some kind of horizontal pull, with your palms supinated (facing you).

Your arms workout will be the same for the next two months:

  1. TOUGH TRICEPS EXERCISE: Warm up, then: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
  2. TOUGH BICEPS EXERCISE: Warm up, then: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
  3. FEEL TRICEPS EXERCISE: 4 sets of 8-15
  4. FEEL BICEPS EXERCISE: 4 sets of 8-15
  5. Horizontal bar hang: 1 x minute
  • Take about a minute’s rest between tough sets; 20 seconds on the feel exercises.
  • Perform the tough exercises as straight sets; do the feel exercises superset (i.e., a triceps set, then a biceps set, etc).
  • As you get stronger, you may need to switch to harder exercises to keep the rep range right. That’s cool.
  • Forget torso work—you’ll get plenty of it with the arm pushing and pulling.
  • Train lower body just once a week: a few hard sets of squats, light bridges superset with lying leg raises, and possibly some calf work and mobility.

How often do you do this workout?

-Week 1, do it twice.

-Week 2, do it three times.

-Week 3, do it four times.

-Week 4 do it twice.

Then—on the final day of week four—perform the workout three times in a single day, with at least two hour’s rest between sessions. I know this sounds nuts, but the stress it puts on your arms is unbelievable. Eat plenty.

Don’t blame me if your t-shirts don’t fit this Spring, stud.

 

#5. LORD OF THE RINGS

Sometimes the key to kick-starting your training involves a new tool. Now—generally speaking, dude—I am a bodyweight purist. To me, the bulk of your training should involve the floor, a horizontal bar, and maybe a wall and a basketball. Run to the hills if someone says you NEED something more than this to assist your bodyweight training, because, 9 times out of 10, that item will actually water down your training and make it worse.

There are times, though, when sprinkling in a new bit of kit is the spark plug you need to set your training alight. In these cases, using new gear might be acceptable. One example might be parallel bars. I’m not a big fan of them, but hell—a lot of advanced athletes swear by them. Another example of an ancient bodyweight tool—and one I mentioned in Convict Conditioning—are hanging rings.

Rings Of Power Example

Hanging rings are fairly affordable now. They are available on the internet, they’re easily and rapidly adjustable, and can be slung from plenty of different locations. You can do pressing exercises (pushups, dips), pulling work (pullups, horizontal pullups, levers), hanging leg raise stuff, and assistance squat work (assisted squats, one-leg squats), etc.

Best of all, you can use progressions on these beauties: the higher the rings, the less the angle of your body and the easier the pushups are. Likewise for pulls. Can’t do a ring pullup? Sling the rings low enough to reach while sitting, with your legs extended. Then try a seated pullup, keeping your heels on the floor as a pivot.

I could give you dozens of progressions, but there just ain’t the space here. Want to know the best place to start? Get Gillette’s now-classic Rings of Power. The best part of the book? It stars our very own PCC wonder girl, Adrienne Harvey!


#6. BODYWEIGHT ISOMETRICS: “THE LITTLE 3”

Training getting boring because the exercises ain’t challenging enough? You stud! Now that’s what I love to hear!

I’m a big fan of an up-down-up-down lifestyle. And I don’t just mean in the bedroom, you dirty birds. I mean that, for muscle and functional strength, I love exercises with nice ranges of motion where you lift, pull or push yourself up and down for reps. Plenty of reps!

For those of you getting bored with the up-down-up-down stuff, throw some isometrics into your game. Now, as a known bodyweight zealot, I’m often asked my option on isometrics. Isometrics just means “same length”, and refers to exercises where you don’t move. The first basic kind is where you just tense your muscles, unloaded—bar pulls are an example. The second kind is where you load your muscles with a proportion of your body’s weight, and try like hell not to fall over—an elbow lever is an example. As for whether I dig isometrics? Well, I like the first kind…but I LOVE the second kind!

For the second kind of isometrics, you are typically (though not universally) looking at a group of exercises called levers. Levers involve supporting the body extended non-vertically from a limited fulcrum point. (Phew.) Levers not only require total-body strength to keep aligned; they also demand impressive trunk and limb strength, balance, coordination, and intense concentration. Levers are great!

You bodyweight strength princes and princesses looking to explore isometric levers should start with the “Little 3”. The Little 3 are basic levers which work the entire body, front, back and side:

L-sit

L-hold. This is a midsection classic! Just push down through the floor (or bars, in the photo) and lift your locked legs off the ground. A killer for the abs, hips and thighs; but the pressing motion also works the lats, triceps and pecs. This one can feel impossible at first—the abs just aren’t accustomed to pulling the pelvis up so high—but with diligence it will become easy as pie.

Elbow lever. Another trick too cool for school. Just lean forward on your palms and tilt your straight body off the floor. More balance than strength, but it does work the shoulders, chest and arms, as well as the entire back of the body, which has to tense to stay aligned. If you have any weak spots or shitty muscular coordination—forget it.

clutch flag

Clutch flag. The front and back of the body is done a deal—howabout the sides? Hug that bar and lift! Another really neat trick that builds strength in the hard-to-reach lateral chain of muscles.

Don’t tell me these are too goddam tough. You should know the drill by now—NOTHING is too tough for us, Kojak! We just use progressions to get there. Can’t perform an elbow lever? Do a plank. Do a lever from a table, with your feet dangling off the ground. Can’t do an L-hold? Do it off a chair with the knees bent. Straighten them over time. As you get stronger, return to the floor and try again with bent knees. No clutch flag? Again, bend those knees until you can extend just ONE leg. You’ll get there. A benefit of levers compared with most up-and-down work is that you can perform them more frequently; sometimes every day. Explore. Experiment.

The Little 3 are wonderful basic holds which are interesting, productive, fun to learn and impressive to non-trainees. They also work real well together; you can learn all three together much quicker than if you learn them separately, as much of the lever patterns carry-over. What are you waiting for? Go master them. When you’ve achieved all three I’ll show you how to level up in your isometrics work to “goddam!” status. (You guessed it. There’s a “Big 3.”)

 

#7. EXPLOITING EXPLOSIVES

In Convict Conditioning, I advised all my bodyweight students to perform the bulk of their movements slowly and under control. Why? Because if momentum is moving the weight, then your muscles aren’t. Slower movements not only build peak strength, they also fatigue the muscle cells more rapidly, for max size gains.

But—and, like that Kardashian chick, it’s a BIG but—there are exceptions to the rule. Those of you paying attention will have noticed that in every exercise chapter of that book, I also included an explosive exercise, to be performed at high speed, with maximum power.

Box jump

Spending some time training this way is useful for a number of reasons. Firstly—it makes you fast and explosive. That should be enough! But it also makes you agile, increases coordination, builds up joint resistance, and “primes” the nervous system for greater strength gains down the road. Bodyweight explosives are also interesting—a challenge, and real fun to perform. This makes knowledge of PROPER explosives training a real useful tool for that toolbox on a rainy day. Although why you’d need your toolbox more on a rainy day, I got no idea. Maybe the roof is leaking? Whatever.

So how do you go about explosives? Here’s a good way to start: add one solid power movement to each of your sessions. Apart from that, follow these simple rules:

  • Always use explosives at the beginning of your session, when you’re freshest. Trying to jump on tired muscles can lead to accidents. Also, proper explosives rev up your nervous system and help with later, slower sets.
  • Warm up well before any explosives.
  • Beginners should avoid exotic stuff and work mainly on a power diet of jumps and explosive pushups.
  • Limit reps on explosive work. You’re looking for stimulation, not exhaustion. Once the crispness and spring is gone, you is done.
  • Start slow and be progressive. One clap pushups become two claps, become behind-the-back claps, and so on.

Explosives are pretty cool. Looksee.

https://youtu.be/NkUk-S11blo

Over time you should begin to move from simple power work—the jumps and explosive pushups—to more sophisticated movements like kip-ups, muscle-ups, and flips. What’s that you’re saying? Paulie, there’s no way I could ever do ninja stuff like a backflip! Well, you’re wrong, knucklehead. You just need to start slow and—like all bodyweight—use the right progressions. And because I love the hell out of you all, I wrote those progressions down for ya in minute detail in Convict Conditioning 3: AKA Explosive Calisthenics.

Please check it out—it’s my personal favorite-ever book that I wrote, apart from all them other books.

 

#8. JOIN THE CIRCUITS

A couple years back I had a middle-aged athlete write and say he was laying off his training for six weeks coz he’d broken his wrist. I asked him: Too much jerking off? He responded, correctly, by telling me that there was no such thing as “too much”.

I always advise folks to keep training through injuries where they can. But what do you do with a busted wrist? No pullups. No pushups. No bridges. Damn. At least you can jerk off with Mr Lefty and pretend it’s a foreign chick.

What I advised this guy to do while his wrist was healing was to focus on leg work. Let’s face it—calisthenics athletes often get “chicken legs” bull thrown at them. Working a little extra on those legs can’t hurt at all. My student followed the routine I wrote for him, and in six weeks put an inch on his thighs, a quarter inch on his calves, and massively increased his definition in his lower body. Plus, he actually improved his stamina and cardiovascular capacity during his “layoff”.

Lunge

This was the program I gave him: to be performed with two days off between workouts.

Warm-up: mobility exercises/light squats-5 mins

  1. One-Leg Squat: 5 sets x max reps (per leg)
  2. Straight bridges (performed off forearms, not palms): 3 sets x max reps
  3. Vertical leaps: 5 sets of 2
  4. Sprints (100—200 feet): 5 sets x max effort
  5. Leg circuits: pick 5 exercises and perform each for ten reps. 3-5 circuits

Exercises for leg circuits (pick five at random each session):

  • Bodyweight squats
  • Hindu squats
  • Sissy squats
  • Half-squat with calf raise (two second hold at top)
  • Tuck jumps
  • Side kicks
  • Side-to-side squats
  • Alternating high steps (on a bench)
  • Alternating lunges
  • High kicks
  • 180 degree spin jumps
  • Wide stance squats

 

#9. BODYWEIGHT ISOMETRICS: “THE BIG 3”

What’s that? You’ve already mastered the Little 3 levers I gave you in tip #6?! But that was only three tips back! How did you…?

Ah, never mind. I trust ya.

When you’re at the point where the Little 3 are easy—you can hit them for a few seconds any time of the day, and they feel more like warm-ups than real “work”—you’re ready to move up to the big boy stuff: the “Big 3”. The Big 3 are the most impressive and valuable levers in calisthenics—the front lever, the back lever, and the side lever (more commonly known as the press flag):

Front Lever

The front lever. On an overhead bar, pull your knees up over your chest, and extend them until the body and arms are straight. Simple as hell, difficult as f***. If you are getting bored with leg raises as an ultimate front-of-body builder, this needs to be the next step. Try it and find out why.

Back Lever

The back lever. Opposite of the front lever. Grab an overhead bar, and spin your legs through your arms, straightening your bod to razor-like perfection. All muscles have to work to maintain position, particularly the spine and upper-back. A legendary exercise for building mobility and strength in the shoulders.

Flag

The press flag. Grab a vertical bar as in the photo, and jump/swing your legs out to the side, then hold. What? You can’t do it? Only one in a hundred thousand people can, because you need the kind of shoulder, arm and side strength (lats, obliques, serratus, hips) that you normally only find on folks who have turned green after getting pissed off.

As you have probably figured out by now—you read my stuff, so I KNOW you are intelligent, as well as good-looking—working your way up to these levers is about increasing leverage. Start with the body as squashed, as compact as possible, and “unfurl” to become as straight as possible, as in the photos. Begin the front and back levers hanging with your knees tucked in; extend them over time. Eventually, you’ll be able to extend just one leg. Then two legs, bent at the knees. Then you’re there. The principles are similar for press flags—a full progression system (including clutch flag progressions) are included in Convict Conditioning 2.

 

#10. SPICY SPICY GRIP

Productive training is all about those damn basics—the bodyweight squats, pushups, pullups, bridges and so on. Everyone who wants to become a calisthenics master needs to learn to love these bastards, but there’s no doubt about it—if you are performing them day in, day out, they can start to get pretty boring.

At times like this—when your training is going well, you’re adding reps and strength, but you’re getting a bit bored—ya gotta add some variety. Training can be like food: throwing a dash of spice into a bland meal can revolutionize a dish. Why not pepper some grip specialization into your training to shake things up and add variety? Often this kind of little trick is enough to keep you training through the grey times.

Al Bar Hangs

Grip work is best at the end of a session, so you don’t screw up your other upper-body work. Other than that rule—you can make this stuff up! I talk progressions and workouts in Convict Conditioning 2, but you don’t need that to get started. Keep it fun and challenging.

Howabout:

  • Timed hangs: Hang from the bar. How long can you manage? Add a second every session, and soon you’ll have grip stamina that would beat the hell out of a powerlifter or bodybuilder.
  • Towel work: Hanging from a bar is tough for most people. Try it from a towel! Loop a big towel over a bar and hang on for dear life. Unlike most hanging, towel work requires giant thumb power to complete the chain. Try it with one hand and you’ll see.
  • Fingertip pushups: So many styles—so many progressions to choose from. If the floor is impossible, go for a wall or an incline. If the floor is easy, howabout an asymmetrical position? One-handed? What about using individual fingers, or thumbs? If it was good enough for Bruce, it’s good enough for you.
  • Finger holds: In the barbell world, grip monsters love one-finger deadlifts and pulls to unleash the full potential of each digit. The bodyweight version is even better—digital hangs. Can you hang from a horizontal bar with just your index and inner fingers on both hands? Just the index? Pinkies and middle fingers? For huge tendon power, better get testing.

A little grip work is fun and very beneficial for strength—one or two exercises per session is enough, as long as you balance out the holds with fingertip pushup sets. Think you’re a real champ? Pick an exercise from each of the four categories above, and perform all four in circuit fashion, as hard as you can. Do five circuits and I promise you, you’ll know what your forearms are for tomorrow morning.

 

#11. EQUILIBRIUM TRAINING

Now this one is real interesting. Just throwing it out there, to see what you all think. It may intrigue ya—you may have no interest. That’s cool, too.

You train for strength, right? And speed. And maybe endurance. But who out there is seriously training their vestibular and proprioceptive systems? In other words, who is training for balance?

Equilibrium, or balance, is a crucial aspect of health and fitness. In fact, one of the more reliable indicators of biological age is the simple one-leg test—if you can stand on one leg with your eyes closed for more than twenty seconds, you’re doing okay. Check this here chart to discover your “Balance Age”.

Balance is essential in all athleticism. But I know hardly any athletes who train for it. If you are interested in this approach, it might prove to give you some supplementary work that’ll bring some fun into your workouts.

Ideas:

  • One-leg balances for time
  • Asymmetrical yoga positions (on one leg or otherwise)
  • Side planks with one arm and leg extended
  • Headstands
  • Handstands
  • Spinning and standing on one leg
  • Walking along a solid line (i.e., a brick wall—a series of posts, etc.)
  • Slacklining (cool with the kids, I hear—thanks, Adrienne!)

 

#12. WAY OF THE DRAGON

Sometimes the best way to renew our training is to search for a different vibe. We might be doing similar stuff to what we were doing before, but if the package feels different—we won’t get bored. It’s a win-win.

1 arm straddle handstand

A great way to insert some glamour into your bodyweight training to explore the way martial artists approach the subject. Practitioners of the oriental fighting systems—kung fu, karate, tae kwon do—these guys have centuries of thought and practice behind what they do, and they are inevitably crazy about bodyweight. Just check out tapes of modern Shaolin training to see how seriously these monks take calisthenics.

If the western, scientific, linear, American double-progression-style of bodyweight training is losing some of it’s meaning for you, think about exploring the way bodyweight is performed in traditional martial arts. These arts involve tons of training in ten areas:

  1. Katas (movement forms): body control, coordination, conditioning, power striking, etc.
  2. Pushes and pulls: various pushups, pullups, etc.
  3. Leg exercises: horse stance, low stepping forms
  4. Sensitivity drills: chi sau, striking/blocking drills
  5. Animal drills: eagle claw, monkey, tiger, etc.
  6. Agility: rolls, flips, tricks, tumbling
  7. Extreme mobility work: “teacup” training, joint work, box splits, etc.
  8. Balance techniques: plum blossom poles, asymmetrical tai chi movements, etc.
  9. Breathing exercises: chi gung, iron shirt work, etc.
  10. Meditation

All of this is bodyweight work. All of it is useful, and it might just suit you. One of my favorite martial arts bodyweight manuals is the old classic Dynamic Strength by Harry Wong. Check it if you can!

 

#13. ROPE-A-DOPE

Another super old-school bodyweight tool! Rope training is vouched for by everyone from the military to sixties Batman. I’m not talking about those piss poor ropes in modern gyms—you know, the ones they lay across the floor so you can play ribbon with ‘em. I’m taking about ropes you actually CLIMB, bitch!

Get a thick length of climbing rope (it has to be thick as you can get, for grip—narrow rope is no good) and secure it to a high girder or branch (20 foot is about perfect). Then climb that sucker. Ropes build incredible pulling strength and arm size, but they also work the torso and midsection more than most people realize. One of my personal heroes in calisthenics, Harvey Day, said that rope climbing was THE toughest abdominal exercise. He was right.

rope climb

Be ready for a challenge, and—as ever—you can make this shit progressive.

-Climb up and down with legs and both arms

-Climb up with legs and both arms/climb down using only arms

-Climb up and down using only arms

-Climb up with the legs in a L-hold

Experts begin their climbs seated on the floor—in an L-hold! This means the legs cannot help with the climb at all. By the time you can do this, your biceps will look like goddamn steel softballs. There are other progressions from there—mostly built around speed (time yourself for distance or reps) and volume (how many climbs can you make?).


#14. SURVIVE THE CENTURY

I said earlier that a challenge is as good as a rest when it comes to keeping your ass training. Now, if you’re REALLY looking for a challenge, why not try the coolest calisthenics gauntlet in the whole damn world: The Century.

I know the vast majority of you reading this will be aware of The Century. For those who aren’t, it’s a bodyweight strength test over four different exercises performed back-to-back for a hundred-rep total (hence the name). Check it:

 

Men  Women
40 Squats 40 Squats
30 Push-ups 30 Knee Push-ups
20 Hanging Knee Raises 20 Hanging Knee Raises
10 Pull-ups 10 Australian Pull-ups

 

Want to see what a perfect Century looks like? Check these videos from Al Kavadlo and Adrienne Harvey.

https://youtu.be/FtRnPCWhWgU

Working towards The Century isn’t just a motivating challenge: it’s a killer program in itself. The entire body is worked; form on the basics is tightened up; and because the exercises are performed with no rest, you wind up with a killer cardio workout, too.

The Century is designed as the final PCC test, to be performed after three grueling days of bodyweight training. If you’re headed to a PCC—now that’s a challenge to motivate ya!—check out this awesome article on The Century by Adrienne Harvey.

 

#15. I DON’T WANT NO DISSENSION! JUST…DYNAMIC TENSION

About twenty years ago if you’d talked to anyone in fitness about building up your body with calisthenics, they woulda immediately shot back with one name—Charles Atlas.

Atlas—real name Angelo Siciliano—was a legend in the physique world for developing the bodyweight-only system known as Dynamic Tension. Anyone my age who bought a comic book EVER remembers the ads vividly—the scrawny dude getting sand kicked in his face (in front of his gal! Not cool!) only to go into hiding and use Atlas’ secret techniques. A little while later, he would return to the beach, jacked up, find the bully, and rip off his head and s*** down his neck. Then he f***ed the bully’s mom, while she was still grieving. Probably at the funeral. Actually, yeah. At the funeral. That’s how I remember the ads, anyway.

Comic

Atlas fused basic calisthenics training drills with isometric tension techniques to create his system—a system which, all in has, has to be one of the most successful training programs the world has ever seen, any way you want to slice it. If you’re devoted to bodyweight—maybe working through Convict Conditioning or a similar system—and you’re looking to explore something a bit different for a while, why not go old school and give it a try?

I know a lot of folks have attacked Atlas’s methods over the years. So what? Here’s the reality: no training system is perfect, and virtually no athlete goes their entire career using just one system, anyway. So if you give Dynamic Tension a try and find out it’s not for you, that’s cool. I’m betting you’ll learn a thing or two along the way. And that’s what it’s all about.

One proviso though. If I see you at the beach, please don’t kick sand in my face. I bruise real easy.

 

#16. PAIN WEEK

Here’s a fun little number to shake yourself out of a funk. When a body part needs specialization, the sensible way to train that area is to up the intensity and volume a little, allowing plenty of time for rest and recovery.

Feel like screwing with “sensible”? Try “pain week”, which was a common bodybuilding tactic in gyms in the seventies and eighties. (You don’t hear about it much now, which is why I thought you might want to know this stuff.) When your training is getting tedious, pick a body part that’s lagging for you—let’s say, chest, for example. Now, instead of slightly increasing frequency and volume, we are gonna jack them up massively, by working this area every day, for five days straight.

Close Push Ups

Utilizing pain week is simple. Pick five exercises, and perform five DAMN HARD sets of each exercise, each on a different day. That’s all you do—nothing else that week. Take the weekend off as a well-deserved rest, and go back to your regular workouts on Monday. (Trust me, you’ll be grateful about it.)

For chest, Pain Week might look like this:

MON:  Pushups between chairs: 5 x max

TUE:    Parallel bar dips: 5 x max

WED:   Clap pushups: 5 x max

THU:    Muscle-ups: 5 x max

FRI:     One-arm tripod pushups: 5 x max

SAT:     OFF

SUN:    OFF

Monday’s workout should be tough, but otherwise fine. On Tuesday you should be a little sore, which will make things extra tough. Wednesday, your pectorals will feel deep-fried and scream during every rep of every set. Strangely, by the time Friday rolls around, your pecs will feel as if they’re starting to adapt—but you’ll still be glad to put the madness behind you.

The best part of Pain Week is that it actually seems to work. Using this method, you actually CAN noticeably improve a lagging body part in a real short span of time. Don’t believe me? Try it.

 

#17. THE “PERFECT 10”

I can’t take credit for this one. This is from a buddy of mine and former tactical firearms officer Mike Barnard. When he read about my “Big 6” exercises—squats, pushups, pullups, leg raises, bridges and inversions—Mike wrote me and told me about his list: the “Perfect 10”.

Mike’s theory was that a perfect athlete—with control, strength, stamina—would be able to achieve these ten bodyweight feats:

  1. Pistol squat: 25 reps per leg. Hip, knee and ankle strength, mobility and endurance.
  1. Pushup: 100 reps. Vertical pressing strength and stamina.
  1. Pull-up: 50 reps. Pulling strength and stamina.
  1. Muscle-up: 10 reps. Horizontal bar dominance; explosive pulling and pushing strength.
  1. Elbow lever: 1 minute hold. Balance-strength-stamina.
  1. Human Flag: 5 seconds. Huge lateral chain power.
  1. Front lever: 10 seconds. Total-body strength plus anterior chain.
  1. Back lever: 10 seconds. Total-body strength plus posterior chain.
  1. L-hold: 20 seconds. Contractile hip and abdominal power.
  1. Free handstand: 30 seconds: Shoulder and arm strength, plus ultimate inverse balance.

So—how do you stack up on this “perfect” list?

Mike was in the process of working towards all these feat when we last spoke—and he already had a WARNING: this list is only for athletes who are already real badasses, or those with big, BIG ambitions to get there.

But maybe you fit that category? If not you, then who?

 

#18. MUSCLE CONTROL 

This one also comes under the “something different” category.

Back in the day—let’s call it a century, or roundabout—one of the popular disciples of strength was muscle control. Like a hybrid between yoga and Dynamic Tension (which hadn’t been invented), muscle control was the art of maximally contracting and relaxing all the muscles of the body, rhythmically and separately.

Before you think: what’s so hard about that shit? Stop and consider it for a second. Yep, maybe—inspired by Arnold—you can tense your pecs in time to the beat. But can you really control each row of your abs separately? Can you pull one shoulder-blade up while the other one goes down?

For a really great example of this art, google British athlete Tony Holland.

Most of you older guys will be nodding your heads; you will have heard all about muscle control. Before you younger guys laugh too hard, remember that Bruce Lee was influenced by muscle control methods; you can see it in his warm-up sequences. That shoulder mobility comes from Western muscle control training, not kung fu. In fact, muscle control not only increases coordination, neural recruitment, circulation and mobility, it also helps ease joint pain. It’s a helluva workout.

Bruce Lee

Muscle control theory was pioneered by a strongman who went by the stage name “Maxick” (changed from the more vomit-y “Max Sick”). In fact, for many years, muscle control was called Maxalding. Maxick used his training methods on himself. The legendary Eugen Sandow said that Maxick had achieved a level of physical conditioning that, in his opinion, could never ever be bettered.

Sick wrote in depth about his ideas and techniques, and he had a huge number of followers during his lifetime. Luckily his works are all now public domain and you can enjoy them for free. The full library can be found here.

 

#19. TRY PARKOUR

If the semi-static pushes and pulls of bodyweight bodybuilding or strength training are getting you down, you need to get in touch with what your body was made for in the first place. Move!

I’ve been aware of the ideas behind parkour since before most of you were born. (Yeah—I’m THAT ancient.) But it’s nothing new. What is?

One of the biggest thrills (and surprises) I’ve had over the last decade or so is seeing this new wave of Hérbertisme training, parkour, become mainstream. You see kids getting off their asses and Xboxes and doing it in the park, in the street—everywhere. You don’t need to buy anything to get into it, and your imagination and effort is what unlocks your ability; not any drugs, money, equipment. God, it’s cool—it’s just the kind of thing the world of physical culture needs. And the talent some of these young athletes possess blows me away time after time.

I wish this stuff had been better known when I was a kid: I woulda eaten it up with a spoon. I have actually built some parkour drills into my explosives training, over the past few years, and loved it. I’ll never be great, but I continue to surprise folks with my agility.

So don’t think you are too old for this stuff. If you want to start, begin slow and master the basic drills. Over time, you’ll be able to link some moves and freestyle.

 

#20. BAR-ONLY TRAINING

Here’s a tip to shake up your training straight from Joe Hartigen. I recall one occasion when someone I knew a little bit who worked out pretty hard asked Joe how to improve his upper-body mass and strength with a quick turnaround. I think he was expecting a sets and reps answer, but he didn’t get one. Joe was real concise. He said something along the lines of: only use the bar when you train. Nothing else. That was it.

Al Kavaldo Muscle Up

In fact, if you are looking for upper-body gains, this weird advice is actually gold. If you’re only working on the bar, all your exercises are hanging. That’s a grip and core workout every damn rep; not to mention circulation, as your blood is pumping hard the whole time. You’ll be doing plenty of pullups for your lats and biceps. Goodbye floor work for your trunk—hello leg raises and front and back levers which work the torso like nothing else. Pretty good for the whole body, actually. Standard pushups are fairly easy—if you want to press using the bar, you’ll need horizontal bar dips and muscle-ups, which are Nth-Level pec and triceps builders.

Joe gave no rules, but if you’re serious about this I’d think about doing nothing but a bar workout, every other day for no more than twelve weeks. I’d alternate between pulling days and pushing/levers/abs (although there’s gonna be a ton of carry-over).

If you’re interested in this idea and want some more technical instruction, the finest manual of bar calisthenics is by my pal Al Kavadlo. Check out Raising the Bar.

If this works for you—hey, remember Coach taught you this great tip right? If it’s a total failure, remember—this old crap wasn’t my goddamn idea.

——–

There you go—straight from me to you, twenty training ideas to keep you interested, invested, and in the calisthenics game for the rest of the year. At least! In Part Two of this article we’ll look at programming tips and tricks to help you even further out of any slump you might find yourself in. Big thanks go out to Al, Danny and Grace for letting me use their awesome photos, and more thanks too to the lovely Adrienne for all her help with this post.

Now, I don’t get on the net much—yes, that statement dates me for the elderly bastard I am, but so be it. I’m just not that type of guy. The biggest pleasure I get from posting here is that it gives me the chance to speak to all you cool bodyweight athletes and soon-to-be athletes from all over the world. So please, please—I’m gonna be checking this page for the next two weeks. I would LOVE to hear from all of ya: old friends and new friends alike. If you have any questions, I would really get a kick out of trying to help you, and I answer all comments. I don’t care if you’re completely new, or a “lurker”: don’t be shy. There are no stupid questions. So shoot me a line, studs and studettes!

 

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning Volume 2, the Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Training Log, and five Convict Conditioning DVD and manual programs. Click here for more information about the Convict Conditioning DVDs and books available for purchase from Dragon Door Publications.

The “Diesel 20”: Add Twenty Pounds of Muscle in One Year —Using Only Bodyweight

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Danny Kavadlo 1 Arm Push Up

Okay. It’s the New Year. It’s 2015—that means another year just slipped by you.

Another ****ing year.

That vague image you had of your ideal self: of jacking up to a dangerous, bone-shattering level of strength, and bulking up some serious muscle…you got there yet? Huh? Or are you still running around on a low setting, chasing your own ass?

Big changes need to be made, stud. And big changes require big personal challenges. A rich dude I knew back in the Bay once told me that it was EASIER to set—and meet—the goal of making a million dollars, than setting and meeting a goal of making a hundred thousand dollars. Why? Cuz the bigger goal is more inspiring. It unleashes more psychic energy; causes you to truly marshal ALL your forces to meet the challenge. The same principle that holds true for money holds true for your body. A big, inspiring, challenging goal is more likely to be met than a small, flimsy, pathetic one. So here’s a goal for ya:

I want to help you put on 20 pounds of muscle in a single year: using only bodyweight training.

Matt Schifferle Muscle
PCC Instructor, Matt Schifferle is a calisthenics master who exclusively uses bodyweight…does it look like he has a problem adding slabs of muscle? Check out the loaded guns!

Now, if you love training and that ain’t a goal to jack you up—you’re probably dead already. Twenty pounds of dense, solid muscle is an awe-inspiring amount of beef, and would totally revolutionize your body. Forget what you mighta seen on bodybuilding sites or magazines, where guys talk about putting on ridiculous amounts like fifty pounds in a year. That’s real rare, and when it does happen it is purely the result of huge amounts of steroids and other chemical poisons: it is mostly water, and what isn’t water is fake, artificial tissue that’ll disappear (taking extra with it) when the drugs are discontinued. That’s madness to me: if you want to look big using dumbass tricks, just stuff some goddam Kleenex in your sleeves. (In fact, modern bodybuilders are actually doing the equivalent of this. Google “synthol abuse” if you feel like laughing at the mentally challenged.)

What will twenty pounds of REAL muscle look like on you? Imagine a big, juicy quarter pounder burger patty. Now, remember that a quarter pounder burger is its raw weight: and that patty is at least a third bigger before cooked up. Now imagine four of these big, raw patties squashed together. That big, meaty lump is pretty much what a pound of muscle looks like. So imagine twenty of those lumps (that’s eighty large raw burgers).

It’s quite an amount, no? If you could plaster your torso, arms and legs with all that meat, you’d appear much, much bigger and more intimidating. (Remember, if you count bones, organs, skin and the rest, the average guy only has about forty pounds of lean muscle on his body anyway.)

And as for strength? Damn, son—if you really want to level up your raw power, getting diesel is a real good way to do it. Yep, there are some real pansy huge bodybuilders out there, and there are some tiny guys who can lift like Superman. But as a general rule, there is a direct correlation between muscle and strength. That’s why powerlifters and Olympic lifters move up through weight classes throughout their careers: as they gain strength, they gain lean muscle tissue. Plus, you’re not gonna be pumping out reps on silly machines, right? You are gonna be using the ultimate functional training tool: your body. You WILL become alpha-strong as a consequence of training for this goal.

How to really do it: six keys to success

You are probably expecting a routine here, right?

In truth, it’s very, very tough to work hard on just one routine for a year. Most athletes will get stale and bored, and quit. Thinking “programs” is not enough. Putting on the “Diesel 20” is a big ask—it’s kinda like going to war. Exercises and routines are your weapons and equipment. In war, the tactics you use are way more important than your weapons. We’ll talk programs a little later—let’s absorb the tactics first. Here are SIX Alpha-Building tactics to keep you on the straight and narrow:

  1. Joints first

If you are going into a year of hard training, you gotta be conditioned to it first. The job of a beginner—no matter what age they are—is to learn the correct calisthenics movement patterns, build basic strength, and condition their joints. If beginners launch into tough regimes designed to build maximum muscle, they will only end up hurt and frustrated. If you are a beginner and want a great starter routine for the New Year, I wrote one here just for you.

  1. Work the basics.

Despite what you might believe, tons of muscle is NOT built by working with dozens of exercises, working with isolation-type moves, or by working each muscle head “from every angle”. This might (or might not) be a method for putting the finishing touches on a physique that already carries plenty of beef—for actually building mass, its worse than useless. A better tactic is to structure your training around a handful of basic, compound movement-types, used progressively. I favor the “Big Six”: pullups, bodyweight squats, handstand pushups, bridges, leg raises, and pushups. (Some folks might choose to include dips as part of the pushup family.)

Al Kavadlo Bar Dips
I’m a pushup man myself, but I gotta say it:
dips can be an excellent upper-body builder.

Note that “structuring your training around” these six does NOT mean you are limited to six exercises. The Big Six are families of exercises: so when you are doing “pullups”, you might actually want to do two types of vertical pull plus a horizontal pull to work all your back muscles: three exercises, but they all come under the “pullup” banner. As long as you stick to the basics and work progressively, this is a good way to work everything to the max.

You can add other bodyweight work, certainly for the lower body: explosive jumps and plyo work goes well with squats, as does sprinting training. (Hill or stair sprints build more muscle on the legs than you might imagine: many UFC fighters actually favor this kind of work over barbell squats.)

Beyond this, if you want to throw in some different stuff into your sessions—maybe isolation movements or static exercises—sure you can. But use these things sparingly, as add-ons, rather than the backbone of your program.

  1. Mix low AND high reps.

High reps or low reps for maximum muscle gain? If you read my article, The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass (Commandment X), then you know that you need BOTH. For upper-body, it’s a great idea to begin your sessions by using very hard pulling and pushing exercises which limit you to low reps. If you want, you can use more sets than usual. One useful method is to shoot for 10-15 reps over as many sets as it takes.

It doesn’t matter what exercise you use—dips, pullups, pushups, levers, handstand pushups, whatever—just use low reps for your primary push and pull movement, and constantly try to move up to harder and harder techniques. For the rest of the pulling/pushing exercises of your workout, you should shoot for higher reps, attempting to really drain the muscles. In the old days, this used to be called the “heavy/light” system. There are alternative equivalent methods, but this combination works very well over the long term.

You can use this approach for legs, too, but since the lower body has adapted to carrying you around all day, you can usually grow well using just higher reps.

  1. Sets and reps?

As I said above, if you are working with very hard exercises, where you can only get low (1-5) reps, you can use more sets to reach your rep goals. (If you can only do four strict pullups, for example, you might set a workout rep goal of ten reps, and do a set of four, a set of three, and three singles—or whatever you can manage.)

If you are pushing hard on muscle-building, higher rep sets (8-20) stick to one or two sets and just give it your all. (Extending your set—by changing grip, style, range-on-motion, speed or position—doesn’t count as a new set. It’s all one set, baby!) That’s miles better than just plugging away. Sure, for legs you can get away with adding more sets than this, but always emphasize quality over quantity.

  1. Hit it hard or go home.

If you want to transform yourself this year, work ****ing hard when you train. How hard? Hard enough to improve—it ALL comes down to this. “Improving” doesn’t mean “jumping to stuff that’s too difficult”. It means finding a baseline you find manageable but tough, and consistently improving form, adding a rep here or there, or making minor technical progressions. These all add up over the year to huge changes.

I’m not a generally huge fan of training to “failure” for most workouts. But the reality is that the harder you push yourself, the better your body adapts, to cope with the perceived effort. Eight reps is better than six reps. Fourteen reps is better than ten reps. If you are fired up and committed to gaining a LOT of muscle in the near future, you need to push yourself more than you might in regular strength training sessions.

  1. Stay away from the weights.

To those of you versed in modern fitness “culture”, this sounds nuts. Sacrilege, even. You gotta hit that bench, those heavy squats, or you can’t grow, bro! Sure. That’s why gymnasts are some of the most muscular natural athletes on the planet.

Yes—bodyweight training WILL jack you up.
Yes—bodyweight training WILL jack you up.

In the REAL world, using weights makes training TOO EASY. That’s why most gym-trained folks never change. Any fat weakling can do bench presses or machine curls. But strict dips? One-leg squats? Hanging levers? One-arm pushups? Only for REAL athletes.

Bodyweight also keeps you honest. It’s simple to bulk up 20 pounds of fat and go do some deadlifts and convince yourself it’s “all muscle”. But when you are struggling to add reps to your pullups, you know the truth from the lies pretty damn quick.

Programs, Paulie?

Okay—that’s the tactics. What about the program?

Well, I can’t give you a program. That changes over a year. (For sure, the exercises you use MUST change, as you grow in power and mass.) There are plenty of programs you can apply these tactics to in Convict Conditioning, Raising the Bar and C-MASS.

Like I said, your program should ideally be based around six basic components (which are distilled into the Big Six). Pullup variations, bodyweight squats and leg work, bridges, handstand work, leg raises/midsection and pushups. They key is to work these six families hard. What does “hard” look like? Here’s a sample intermediate routine, containing just two workouts, cycled with a day off between each. The exercises may change if you are not this strong, but the flavor is there:

WORKOUT 1: Pullups, Squats, Bridges

Pullups

Everyone loves pullups! You warm up with two sets of five regular two-arm pullups and some hanging stretches, just to get everything loose. After that’s it’s archer pullups—an exercise you find pretty tough. You want to get ten cumulative reps in today: it doesn’t matter how many sets it takes. You begin with your weakest side, and manage to grind out four good reps. You repeat that on your stronger side, then get three reps on both sides. You finish with another set of two (both sides) and a single (both sides), making ten reps (4, 3, 2, 1). Not quite failure, but tough, stimulating work—you’re going for eleven reps next time, champ!

Not done yet, though. After some shoulder circling, you head back to the bar to finish off with regular, two-arm pullups. Your lats and biceps are so shot that strict, deep reps are out of the question now: so you only go ¾ of the way down, and swing yourself up. One set of nine of these, and there’s no point in doing any more vertical work: your lats are flash fried.

Al Kavadlo Shredded Back Pull Up
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Shredded upper-back!

Your upper-back and traps could use some more training, right? So it’s back to everybody’s favorite, horizontal pulls. You set yourself under a low bar and pull yourself up until your chest touches, forcing your shoulder-blade muscles to contract almost painfully, even from rep one. A strict set of eight, followed by a set of seven leaves your upper-back tissues pumped and burning as hell.

By now, your entire upper-back has had a great workout—front-to-back, side-to-side. You are a Spartan though, and want to finish off with a little treat for your grip—hanging grip holds. To help work the entire hand, you throw a couple towels over the bar, turning a tough exercise into a real bastard. Your forearms are pretty thrashed already, so you can barely last a few seconds each hold—three sets and yer hands are cramping, with your forearms feeling so hot, you want to plunge them into ice water. Great work. You are doing something right! Thankfully, your arms can take a break now. Legs are up next.

Squats

After a warm-up of jogging on the spot and jackknife squats, it’s time for the perfect neural primer if you want big legs: explosive jumps. Three sets following the rules and progressions I set out in Convict Conditioning 3 (released soon!) and BANG—it’s suddenly time for squats.

Perfect one-leg squats are a little tough for the rep range you’re shooting for, so you start with a version of assisted squats, using a doorframe to help pull yourself up. You go tough on yourself, though—each rep is slow, strict, momentum-free, and with as little help as possible. Ten strict reps per leg, for three sets, leave your quadriceps feeling like they’ve been surgically removed, dipped in battery acid, then sewn back in.

But you need more squats—for motor patterning and conditioning. (Don’t worry, those big leg muscles can take it.) So you work with deep, strict, perfect two leg squats—two sets of fifty reps leave those legs pumped and blitzed beyond belief. Not done yet though—you head outside for some sprints. (I’m betting you have a stretch of road. Somewhere.) You set a point around a hundred meters away, and hit it. At first it feels like you’re running through Jell-o, but you grit your teeth and somehow adapt. Five rounds of sprints with a minute in-between leaves those legs shot and shaky. You ever seen a sprinter’s legs, kid?

Allan Wells Sprinter Quads
Allan Wells is just one example of a champion sprinter with great legs who never touched a weight: he stuck to plyometrics and bodyweight circuits, and in the eighties his contemporaries said that when he flexed, his quads looked “like a road map”.

Bridges

Back indoors and though you yearn to crash on the couch, you still have another exercise to go: bridges. Everything is warm now, so you head straight to bridge pushups: fifteen reps seem easy, so you stretch out and switch to gecko bridge pushups—one arm, one leg. Only for champions, this. You are shaking and trembling, but manage four reps apiece. It doesn’t feel like enough, so you go back to regular bridge pushups, and bang out a set of twelve: each rep with a three second pause, tensing at the top. Just to bulk up those back-legs, you finish with two sets of straight bridges—twenty-five and eighteen reps leave your hamstrings (and triceps) aflame.

Convict Conditioning Bridges
Classic bridge pushups. Not sure what the book is called.

By now, it’s time to call it a day. But there’s a nagging feeling in the back of your mind: you suspect that you worked your legs so damn hard—all the squats, jumps and running—that you couldn’t give your spinal muscles all they deserved during the bridges. Your legs gave out first. Sure, you gave them a good workout, but “good” won’t build the Diesel 20, right? So you rock up to the overhead bar again, jump up and spin round into a back lever. Yeah, it’d be ideal to lever up and down, but your body is so brutalized now, just holding the lever is an achievement. You hold it ramrod stiff for three seconds—spinal muscles like steel pythons…five seconds…body shaking…eight seconds, and down. You give yourself a goal of thirty seconds total, holding the back lever: it takes seven ruthless, cumulative sets to manage it. By the end of it, you are sweating and exhausted, and your spinal muscles are thrashed to hell.

Do you do any more for your legs and back? Any squats, deadlifts, leg curls, hacks, adductor band moves? NO! Not because you don’t want to, because you can’t. Your muscles are worked to the max!

Forget what the fools tell you that you can’t build muscle with calisthenics. If you can train like this once or twice a week for a year, you will revolutionize yourself. This stuff would add mass to a pencil! Go have a steak and a good night’s sleep—you earned it.

WORKOUT 2: Handstand pushups, leg raises, pushups

It’s 48 hours, ten hours sleep and several quality meals since your last workout: but your legs are still a little stiff. Must be time to hit it again with workout 2! We did pullups, squats and bridges last time: this time it’s handstand work, midsection and pushups. Mostly upper-body. Your legs shouldn’t have to work too hard.

Handstand pushups

A good warm-up is always a great idea before shoulder work. So you start with shoulder rolling, active stretches, plus a few handstands against the wall. That gets some blood in there. Time to hit handstand pushups: for your first set, you bust out a strict set of six—not too shabby. Two minutes rest and you’re back on it—five reps. Maybe you could have got six, but it’s not wise to push too hard when your skull is hovering above the ground, right? You still want more, so you add sets rather than doing lots of reps all at once. Another set of 3, then a final perfect single rep, and you call it a day (that’s 15 reps: 6, 5, 3, 1). On that final single rep you hold your arms locked out for a total of about twelve seconds—seems like forever. You don’t quite crumple to the floor after this, but you ain’t far off.

Arnold Handstand Push-Up
Yep. Even Arnold himself used handstand pushups from time to time—
the legendary Frank Zane spots him.

You can feel the deep stimulation in the deltoids and triceps as you wander around, shaking out your wrists and arms. How can your shoulders and arms NOT grow after a beating like this? Hell, your whole damn upper-body feels like it’s had a workout!

Leg raises

Need to stretch out those compressed torso and shoulder muscles—after a break and a sip of water, you head off to the horizontal bar.

Your body is already warm, so after a couple sets of light, stretchy, knee raises, it’s time for the real stuff: strict hanging leg raises. With your legs as stiff as ramrods and using zero momentum, you bust out a set of eighteen. On the next set you only get six reps before you need to start swinging and cheating, but fight your way to eleven anyway. Two sets and your abs, waist and hips are toast.

Al Kavadlo Six Pack
Al’s six-pack was built with bodyweight training and nutritional discipline. No machines, drugs or supplements are necessary for a stripped steel stomach like this.

You drop down and walk to the other side of the room, to give your grip a bit of a rest, then you’re back—this time for hanging knee raises. These should seem easy after the straight-leg stuff, but your abs are tired: you can manage one really, really tough, messy set of twenty-one. Your hanging strength is spent now, so you head to the floor. You get on your back, not for a rest, but to work on some lying leg raises. One set of twelve strict, wheezing reps and you are nearly done. There’s a little gas left in those abs, so you quickly hook your feet under the couch and move to fast sit-ups. Just ten reps in, your abs are ready for suicide. By fifteen, “fast” is out the window, and you are gulping breaths on the floor between reps. You shoot for thirty, but twenty three is your absolute limit today—not because you quit, but because your stomach muscles do. How do you know you’re done? You can’t even get up for a full minute—your abs won’t respond. So you lie down and get your breath until you can face the next movement.

Pushups

You take a few minutes to walk off the pain in your belly, stretching a little to let the blood and waste products in your tight abs dissipate, then it’s back to your true love: the floor. A couple of easy warm up sets of pushups, then you’re into the real stuff. Let’s work the arms and shoulders with close pushups—one strict, slow set of twelve leaves your pushing muscles hot, and your triceps swollen like balloons. So we repeat the feat! Or try—you manage an agonizing-but-strict ten reps. You could not do more close pushups if you tried. So you place your hands a few inches apart, and the shift allows you another three pushups. Then you move a few inches apart again—two more. By now your upper-body is screaming in pain, and you are huffing like the Little Engine That Could. But you are a warrior, and there is more in you. So you switch to regular pushups, and manage to grind out five okay reps—with a little body English. This last set has lasted twenty reps—but WHAT a set it was. For sanity’s sake, you take a ten second breather, shaking out your arms and shoulders. Still not done, you get back into the pushup position and pump out some partials—nine half reps, six quarter reps, and finally about a dozen “pulse” reps: just bumping up and down, to squeeze the last bit of juice from your muscles. If the floor was a 500lbs barbell, it wouldn’t be any easier to push!

By now, the triceps and shoulders are blown to bits. But the pecs—after a three minute rest they got a little bit left in the tank. You set up two chairs a little way apart, and place your palms of the seats for stretch pushups, setting your feet up on a box at hip height to make things even tougher. Ten reps and your chest muscles are in agony. You manage eleven. But instead of crashing down, you pop your feet down on the floor to improve your leverage and continue. You manage another four reps only, your chest screaming at you the whole way. You’re toast.

Clint Walker Stretch Pushups
In the fifties and sixties, actor Clint Walker had the best pecs in Hollywood. The stretch pushups didn’t hurt none, huh? (You’re right. He shoulda played Superman.)

It takes you five minutes of rest before you feel ready to hit the shower. Another killer workout in the bank—but look on the bright side. You got another 48 hours to rest before going back to workout 1 and kicking yourself in the ass again.

Got the idea?

Gentlemen, it’s training like this that builds SERIOUS MUSCLE. It’s not easy. It’s not really fun. But if you can train like this for a year you will look like all those guys you always dreamed of looking like. I’m not saying you should do this workout—you can use any workouts you like—I’m just trying to give you a taste of the kind of hard-ass, focused training that will ramp up your muscle mass quickly.

Another point is that you need to—always—vary the exercises you are using to reflect your strength and ability. For most people, the exercises in the above workouts, with those rep levels, would be too tough. For some hard cases, these exercises would be too easy. The exercises you use will change as you get stronger, fairly quickly: the athlete performing these exercises would “outgrow” them fairly soon, as he moves to harder and harder stuff over the year. (How do you “move to harder and harder stuff”? You meet rep goals on the exercises you are doing, then find ways to make ‘em a little harder. You got this thing, right?)

Fit Rebel Push-Up

Just Do It

If you are really up for this challenge—Beta to Alpha in twelve short months—one final piece of advice. Keep it secret. I don’t believe this modern bullshit that you should shout your goals to as many folks as possible. There is magic in secrecy, in knowing something nobody else does. Social media is one reason so few folks get in shape these days—they expend all their mental energy talking about their goals, and leave none for the goals themselves.

Shoot me a comment with questions or ideas—but don’t promise me you are gonna do it. Promise yourself. If you really want to go for this, get weighed, take a photo of your physique, and come back in one year to show me how awesome you got. I WILL publish it, and you WILL get famous.

I believe in you, kid.

A million thanks to the greatest calisthenics trainers on earth, Al and Danny Kavadlo, for providing most of the photos. Find Al at AlKavadlo.com and Danny at DannyTheTrainer.com. It was also an honor to be able to use shots of the Fit Rebel himself, Matt Schifferle. This guy is a master bodyweight bodybuilder, and really understands the science like nobody else in the world. Please check out his site, RedDeltaProject.com.

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning Volume 2, the Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Training Log, and five Convict Conditioning DVD and manual programs. Click here for more information about the Convict Conditioning DVDs and books available for purchase from Dragon Door Publications.

Convict Conditioning 3: Explosive Calisthenics

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Al Kavadlo Danny Kavadlo

Our ancient ancestors were incredible bodyweight athletes. Just a basic grasp of history will make you realize how true this statement is. What’s more, they were explosive athletes: can you imagine the inherent power, the speed, the agility and reflexes it would take for a team of human beings to take down a mighty creature like a rampaging boar, a wildebeest or even a giant mammoth?

Hell, who wouldn’t want to have all that back today? Who wouldn’t want to become that explosive again—for sports, athletics, or maybe even self-preservation in a survival situation? Perhaps just for the natural pride of knowing that you’ve taken your body back to the primal “default” settings you were always meant to have?

Mother Nature gave you this incredible machine for becoming almost Spider-Man explosive. That machine is your own body. But somewhere along the way, something in the fitness world went wrong. We turned our backs on this birthright. Instead, athletes looking to gain qualities like speed, power, and agility started using gimmicks. They are jumping off boxes; using straps and bands; throwing weighted balls around; and dancing around cones. None of this will get you explosive as fast as just moving your body! Your body is really all you need. It was all we ever needed.

Did your ancestors have any of this crap?

Explosive Calisthenics: Convict Conditioning Style

Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to follow a Convict Conditioning approach. We’re gonna field-strip our training: we’ll get rid of the crash mats, the foam pits, wedges, wires and spotters. You just need to find something to hang from—a bar, a branch. No more specialized gear than that. We’re going back to basics, baby!

Forget intricate training schedules with hundreds of exercises programmed into a periodized routine. None of that junk works—it spreads your energy and focus too thin. We are going to use just a handful of movement “chains”—we’ll pick six of the finest, most mind-blowing examples of explosive speed and power on the planet, then we’ll work up to them progressively.

What examples?

The “Explosive Six”

First, don’t get me wrong: slow strength is crucial for the athlete—it builds muscle mass, teaches the soft tissues to resist force, and builds joint integrity. But it shouldn’t be the end of your calisthenics story! In the real world, you gotta be able to use your strength quickly, and with agility. You gotta EXPLODE!

In Convict Conditioning’s “Big Six” I shared with you my philosophy on the world’s greatest bodyweight strength exercises. But there is more to the story. There is also an “Explosive Six” which will turn that strength into incredible power. Take a minute to absorb the Master Steps on this list:

1. The Suicide Jump

Forget box jumps and go old school. This move is long known as a bodyweight feat for only the finest jumpers: Grab a broomstick…and jump over it. Sound easy? Try it, dude—you’ll find out how it got its name.

Danny Kavadlo Suicide Jump
2. The Superman

Also known as the flying Superman, this is possibly the archetypal power pushup: you just bend your arms, and explode your entire body off the ground, before shooting you’re your arms then landing safely. Warning: medicine ball work will not get you there!

Danny Kavadlo The Flying Superman

3. The No-Hands Kip-up

You’ve seen Jackie Chan do it; you’ve seen The Rock do it. Lie on your back and BANG! Whip up onto your feet. But since you’re cooler than those two dudes, I’m gonna teach you to do it with no damn hands.

Al Kavadlo No Hands Kip-Up

4. The Front Flip

Forget the relatively slow Olympic lifting everyone is into these days. Now we are talking speed-strength. Now we are talking perfection of muscular synergy. No running. No steps. From standing, explode 360 degrees and land on your feet like a cat.

Front Flip

5. The Back Flip

Beloved by parkour masters, martial artists and acrobats—if one exercise symbolizes agility, it has to be this one. We all know it—dip down and flip around, landing on your feet without using the hands. But how many have learned it? Mastered it, dominated, it? No funny little plastic cones required.

Back Flip

6. The Muscle-Up

The first five moves in this list build incredible power and speed. But they are performed off the floor. For a balanced power-physique, you need to pull upwards, as well. And for true explosiveness—which works every muscle in the upper-body and trunk—there’s only one choice. Hang from the bar and power up and over!

Al Kavadlo Muscle Up

Knowledge is power

Just take a look at that roll call. It’s pretty elite right?

Let’s dream for a moment. How much raw power would you possess—in every single muscle of your body—if you could bust out all six of these movements? How fast would you be? How conditioned would your responses, your reflexes become? How much would all that power improve and enhance your strength training, your bodybuilding, your sports? Furthermore, how many athletes do you know who can complete all six? Hell, how many human beings in history could? And yet, achieving this incredible level of ability can be done.

…And it might be easier than you think. But you need to open your mind and drop all thinking about modern methods, current gimmicks and trends, and be prepared to go Spartan as Hell. Old, old school.

Don’t be misled into thinking in terms of gymnastics, either. Gymnastics is great, but it’s a sport based on aesthetics and external judgment. What I want to share—progressive, explosive calisthenics—is much more ancient. We’re just moving. Nobody is judging you. I’ll help you find your own way. It doesn’t matter if you put this foot out of alignment, or that arm in the wrong direction. As long as you are building power, you are winning!

Most athletes—even dedicated, impressive men and women—shy away from “big” exercises like these. They assume that only naturally gymnastic folks can do them, and that they gotta start off real young.

BULL!

Any regular man or woman can build up to these exercises! You just need to do so progressively.

I am incredibly proud of my first book, Convict Conditioning. One of the reasons I’m so proud is that the manual persuaded many thousands of folks who were intimidated by incredible strength feats—like the one-arm pullup and pushup—to begin working on these movements by starting easy. Sure, you can’t pull off a one-arm pushup on your first day of training! But you can do wall pushups well, right? And when you’ve been working with them for a while, you can do incline pushups. Then kneeling pushups. Eventually, asymmetrical pushups. And before you know it, you’re on your way: you have experienced—first-hand, not via theory—the fact that progressive calisthenics can unlock your innate strength!

The exact same is true for the legendary explosive movements above. You can achieve each of them—if you know the “secret”. What’s the secret? The correct progressions.

My new book, Explosive Calisthenics is the third volume in the Convict Conditioning series. In it, I’ll be teaching you all the programming theory you need to optimize your power training. I’ll give you my training tips, my “performance hacks” to get you crashing through barriers. I’ll also give you dozens of extra zero-equipment drills to help you in your training. But most importantly, I’ll share with you my progressions. Each movement in the Explosive Six is carefully broken down into ten steps—ranging from “pretty easy” all the way up to the Master Steps above—and beyond. And I promise you, you don’t need a gym, foam mats or a spotter. Just your body, like I said.

I know all you reading this have been thinking about, and working on, your bodyweight strength—and I love you for it. But—if you’re ready—it’s nearly time for us to commence a new journey together. It’s time to shift up a gear—several gears—and transform that strength into power.

It’s time to go back to where we were meant to be, kid.

It’s time to explode.

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning Volume 2, the Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Training Log, and five Convict Conditioning DVD and manual programs. Click here for more information about the Convict Conditioning DVDs and books available for purchase from Dragon Door Publications.

C-MASS: A gift for the PCC community!

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[ssba_hide] Around seven months back, I wrote a two-part post for this blog, called The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass. I wrote it because, in my experience, many athletes know how to use bodyweight to build strength and skill—but very few really understand how to use calisthenics as a powerful tool to maximize dense muscle mass.

I didn’t realize it when I was writing it, but the piece turned out to be the most popular post ever published on the blog. I love hearing from the bodyweight athletes out there, so I was real happy to get, and answer, ten comments. But then I got twenty. Then fifty. Eventually, the piece had hundreds of comments, and I had a mountain of questions by email, too. The article had really hit a nerve—a huge amount of blog readers were clearly starving for more information on old school bodyweight bodybuilding. A lot more.

AlfredMoss
Many modern trainees have been taught that only external weights build muscle, and bodyweight is simply for fitness. A century ago, the opposite was true. Most of the truly muscular men—like Alfred Moss—used calisthenics to get big, and only ever employed super-light dumbbells for conditioning.

Then a member of the community had a smart idea. Somebody suggested—for convenience sake—that we weld the two posts together, and throw in a bunch of the questions and answers I’d been discussing. We could publish this as a short PDF, free to members of the PCC community.

This was a great idea, but I decided to go one better.

You see, I’m passionate about bodyweight bodybuilding. I love it. And talking to all you guys and girls on the blog had ignited that fire hotter than ever! I wanted you all to love it too, to see calisthenics mass-training the way I have always seen it.

So as I was putting the little PDF together, something happened. I started to really get into it…found I was setting down all of my “secrets”…my favorite exercises, my hard-won tactics, my long-held theories about bodybuilding routines…

…and before I knew it, I had added over a hundred dense pages of totally new material! I made this little book into a big book, representing the last word on bodyweight mass building!

When I was done, I crammed this new volume with dozens of cutting-edge bodyweight training shots, as well as old school photos, instructional illustrations, graphs and tons of other cool stuff! After months of effort, I was finally as proud as a new poppa. I called my latest baby C-MASS—for calisthenics mass—and I’m not lying when I tell you that I love this book at least as much as Convict Conditioning.

Here she is!

I know what you are thinking—probably what I would be thinking, reading this post. I’d be thinking: okay…he’s gonna try and sell us something now. He said the book would be free to the PCC community, but because the book has so much extra content, he’s decided to cash in on it.

I would think that too. But I’d be wrong. When it comes to my bodyweight brothers and sisters, I’m a man of my word. Only for the PCC community and regular readers of this blog, I’m giving you the chance to get your FREE copy of C-MASS, today.

[Offer is now closed]

Simply enter your details, and as soon as Dragon Door staff have verified that your request is appropriate, they will shoot you your own complete digital copy of C-MASS! (In the form, there’s a question asking why you qualify for a copy of the manual. Just tell them that you are a follower of the blog, a member of the PCC community, or whatever else makes it right.)

This gift-offer has a window of one week—the webpage above is temporary and will close on Tuesday, June 10th. I worked real hard on this book, and I would dearly love all of you reading this to receive this little gift from me. So please grab it now!

What’s the catch?

There is no catch. The gift is yours, no-strings-attached. However, note that Dragon Door has already been selling C-Mass as an inexpensive e-book and is working on the design for a paperback version, which should be published in a couple of months. So, perhaps you’ve already got the sucker! Then consider this a second copy you can share with someone who could really use it.

I’m not the only one who has worked on this project out of love, either—the entire PCC team has taken part! When I told them I was writing a new book, Al Kavadlo and his brother Danny offered to donate all the high-quality photos I needed. They asked for nothing, and bent over backwards (in the case of the bridging images, literally!) to get me everything I asked for. Likewise, John Du Cane threw all his support behind the project, donating PCC event photos and handing me all the resources I needed to get this thing done. What a goddam gentleman!

Even the lovely-but-super-busy Senior PCC Adrienne Harvey threw in a great photo—plus, it was the Girya Girl herself who took the amazing cover shot! The entire team pulled together for this. It is a true honor to work with such talented people, people who will drop everything, just for a chance to give something back to the bodyweight community.

The PCC team put this together as a labor of love, just to show our heartfelt gratitude to all of you—the amazing PCC community who have supported us SO MUCH over this, our first year. I’m not just talking about all you future-legends who attended our certs, or the phenomenal athletes who have won the right to bear the letters PCC after their name. I’m also talking about all the wonderful folks who have spread the word, checked out this blog, made a comment, or just plain shown interest in what we are doing.

Guys—you are amazing. Thank you so much for being with us. With you enlisting in the Bodyweight PCC Army, this first year has been mind-blowing. Next year is gonna be even better!

…so what are you waitin’ for? Go get your free book!

Paul

PS. If you enjoy it, please come tell the world here.

The Bodyweight Revolution

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Al and Danny Kavadlo
The Kavadlo brothers are the face of
the Dragon Door bodyweight revolution!

If you have been keeping track of the fitness world over the last five years, you have definitely heard the term bodyweight revolution used by writers and teachers.

Lots of folks have used this term, but few—if any—have defined it.

To me, if there is a common theme behind the modern bodyweight strength revolution, it’s this:

Cutting edge athletes and coaches are starting to break down the distinction between bodyweight training and externally-weighted methods for adding strength and muscle mass.

What does that mean?

Well, up till fairly recently, the fitness “status quo” treated bodyweight training and, say, weight-training very differently. Weight-training was done to get ya big and strong as possible. To achieve this, you were supposed to follow three basic rules:

  1. Train hard for strength and mass. (A given. No pain, no gain, bitches!)
  2. Be progressive. (The goal is always: add weight to the bar!)
  3. Focus on load, not reps. (Folks will ask: how much can you bench? Not; how many reps?)

Fairly simple, huh?

And it worked, too. For the last fifty or so years, barbells and dumbbells have been the “go-to” method for bodybuilders and strength trainers alike. Some coaches and exercise ideologists have gotten so wrapped up in the romance of the iron, that they have told us that these tools are the only way to maximize muscle and power. (This is horseshit, but you know that already, right?)

Compare this model with bodyweight training. Over the last forty-plus years, personal trainers, writers and fitness coaches have been force-feeding the world with a philosophy of bodyweight training which is built on the following three principles:

  1. Train moderately for skill or conditioning. (e.g., soccer drills, circuit training)
  2. You can’t be progressive with load. (Sure, you can add weight to pullups, but then you are weight-training, right?)
  3. Build to high reps. (How many pushups can you do?)

Notice something? The bodyweight training principles are pretty much the diametric opposite of the weight-training principles! Why? Because it was figured that there was no point in treating calisthenics like a PROPER strength and muscle discipline, coz there was no way to make the load progressive. For this reason, bodyweight training ceased to be viewed as a power and strength method. It became relegated to a “fitness” method, or for a warm-up, prior to the weights. Worse still, it was viewed as a means for “light toning”. (Puke now, ye who have the buckets readied.)

Recent conditioning icons have shattered this illusion, and are actually bringing intelligent athletes round to the notion that you can break any bodyweight exercise into progressive chunks—all the way from easy rehab work, up to the hardest strength exercises know to mankind. I’m talking about revolutionary books like Al Kavadlo’s Pushing the Limits! and Raising the Bar; Brooks Kubik’s wonderful Dinosaur Bodyweight Training; and Pavel’s breakthrough Naked Warrior.

Bodyweight can’t build total-body strength? Give me a break!
Bodyweight can’t build total-body strength?
Give me a break!

This is the idea at the very heart of the modern bodyweight revolution. If you can use external weights progressively—in hard sessions designed to build load over time—why can’t you do the same using your body’s own weight? The answer is, of course, you can. You don’t need to treat bodyweight as a gymnastics or sports skill, or as a warm-up, or as a simple endurance discipline. You can do it progressively, just like weight-training. All you need is a solid understanding of the science of bodyweight progressions. And this is why the Progressive Calisthenics Certification (PCC) organization was born, to catalog and disseminate this traditional knowledge to anyone in the fitness world who wants it.

A lot of athletes—specially those already in the bodybuilding or powerlifting world—have taken this breakdown in the barriers between regular lifting and bodyweight training approach real literally. Hell, why not apply regular lifting templates to bodyweight training? This is what many have tried to do; and in this article I’ll discuss some ways of doing it. I’ll also show you a good alternative used by my own teacher, Joe Hartigen.

The CC-Style Template

When it comes to sets and reps, I generally prefer a real simple, old school, American-style double progression. You warm up with some fairly easy exercises, then hit your major technique hard for two-to-three sets. When you hit your rep goal, you move to a tougher exercise. Don’t go to failure—always leave a little energy left in your limbs to complete an exercise safely, or in case you need to defend yourself. That’s the Convict Conditioning approach—and trust me, it works just as well for weight-training as it does for calisthenics. Many old school bodybuilders and strength athletes have used this kind of program with great success—it’s not a million miles away from the sort of training performed by old school strength marvels like Doug Hepburn, or modern-day bodybuilding champions like Dorian Yates.

Dorian Hepburn
Hepburn—like all the ultra-strong old-timers—used bodyweight training alongside his lifting. He also trained infrequently, going all-out with low sets. Sound familiar?

Popular Strength/Mass Templates

Of course, there are other rep/set formats than the CC approach. Dozens. Here’s a roll-call of a few well-known ones:

  • The 5×5 system
  • Pyramid training
  • Ladders
  • Heavy singles

All of these popular weight-training approaches can be used with bodyweight—in fact, they are being used right now. But no method is perfect, and there are problems when applying these methods.

Using singles is a good example. A heavy singles workout might consist of, say 10 sets of 1 rep, using 85% of your max. This is pretty easy to accomplish if you are working with your bench press; but it’s a lot tougher to translate it to your bodyweight pushups. For a start, how do you define “85%” of effort accurately? Which pushup progression do you select? With the bench press, you can add a tiny increment, maybe 2lbs to the bar every so often. How do you add such microscopic increments to your pushup form? How do you maintain this system, long-term with such fuzzy variables? You are kinda pissing in the wind here.

A bigger problem with most training systems is that they waste the athlete’s precious energy. A really great rule of thumb in muscle and strength work is that the degree to which your body adapts is proportionate to the stress you put it through. But what athletes constantly forget is that the muscle-building and strength stimulus is based on your best set, it’s not spread over your other sets! As I’ve said elsewhere:

Paul_Blog4To put that shit simply, if you want to get diesel, you need to do a lot of work in a single, relatively brief set. Your peak set! Trouble is, a lot of athletes are in the habit of exhausting themselves before they reach that peak set.

Bodybuilding is possibly to blame for this. Back in the seventies and eighties, it was all about “pyramiding”; you would typically warm up with 15, 12, 10 and 8 reps before knocking out a few peak sets of 6-8—then you would reverse the process. (You go up in weight, then down, hence the term “pyramid”.) The problem with this was that by the time you had done the first four sets you were too shot to do very much in your peak sets! Then you would repeat all those lighter, higher-rep sets again, just adding more volume to eat into an already overloaded recovery system.

The same problem is true of the popular “ladders” method of training. With ladders, you start with one rep—say, a pullup—then take a short break, and do two pullups. Break, then three. All the way up to your peak set, of, say, five reps. Then you take a short breather, do four reps, then break, then three, and so on down to one rep. See the problem with this? If your peak/best set here is the five rep set, you will have already done TEN reps of that exercise before you reach it! If the five reps really represent your best, then doing ten reps of the same beforehand is definitely going to adversely affect your performance in the five. In essence, ladders are a good way of doing a lot of work, but a pretty imperfect way of doing high quality sets.

5×5 is a more traditional method—it was used by Arnold’s hero, Reg Park, back in the fifties.

Big Reg Park
Bodyweight back work: Big Reg Park
rocking some behind-the-neck pullups.

Park’s method was to use two warm-up sets of five, then three sets of five with the heaviest weight you can handle for a particular exercise. Once you can hit the 3×5, you go up in weight.

It’s a simple (and pretty effective) idea. The problem—in terms of hitting one great, “peak” set—is that it makes you hold yourself back. You are inevitably (even if only subconsciously) holding yourself back from giving your all on the first hard set, in order to get the five reps on the final two sets. You need to do this, because if you really gave your all grinding out five reps on the first heavy set, you would be pretty unlikely to be able to repeat that twice. So with 5×5 you never have the motivation to really give your all and hit that one peak set.

Enter the Mentor: Joe Hartigen

One template which doesn’t contain any of these problems was taught to me in the 1980’s by my mentor, Joe Hartigen. Joe was a bona-fide calisthenics master, and although he was in his seventies when I met him, he was much more powerful than me, and remained incredibly strong in pulling movements right up to the final year of his life. Joe had forgotten more about training methods and the history of physical culture than I will ever know, and I learned virtually all the progressions in Convict Conditioning from him.

Despite the fact that Joe was an icon to me—and several others in San Quentin—we didn’t train in exactly the same way. We had different backgrounds, for one thing. I came from a “new school” calisthenics approach, one based on building up high reps in squats, sit-ups, pullups and (especially) pushups. In fact I would often return to these high-rep workouts—often ultra-endurance bodyweight work—throughout my time inside, particularly in Angola. (Think “thousand pushup days” and you got the idea.)

Joe was very much a man who favored lower, more intense, higher quality reps. He typically shook his head when he looked at my training journals, and—likewise—I must admit that when I was younger and dumber, I possibly looked down on his methods as a bit old-fashioned. Like a cool photograph, but colored in sepia. In later years, I realized he was right on the money, and although I modified my own training to better match his thinking, our workout styles were never quite the same.

The Hartigen Method

When it came to sets and reps, Joe had a pretty fixed method for working out. I’ve never heard a name for this scheme, so I’m gonna call it The Hartigen Method (although there’s no way he was the first to use it). This approach is simple to apply, allows for the use of real hard exercises, and is progressive—so I thought I’d put it out there for any ex-lifters or strength athletes looking for a new way to work with bodyweight exercises.

Here’s how it works:

1. Pick the hardest exercise you can do for 5 reps in good form.

2. Warm up, and perform a 5 rep set.

3. Rest approximately 1 minute. Shake your muscles loose as you rest.

4. Perform 4 reps of the same exercise.

5. Rest approximately 1 minute. Shake your muscles loose as you rest.

6. Perform 3 reps of the same exercise.

7. Repeat this procedure until you have performed a single rep.

That’s it! In essence, Joe picked an exercise he could do five good, strict reps with, and did 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

It’s that simple. Joe’s theory was that if you could bust out five reps of an exercise you were working on, then after a minute’s rest, you should be able to do four reps. After another minute, you should be able to do three, and so on. Joe felt this rep scheme offered low reps for strength and muscle, but also enough reps—fifteen total—to give an athlete plenty of hard practice on an exercise, but without burning out.

Plus, using this method you can hit an exercise hard in under ten minutes. Even if you were working with four exercises in a workout (two or three would be better!) you could be done in half an hour. Joe’s method works great with weights, too—kettlebell presses and rows would be a wonderful superset, if you’re that way inclined. (5 presses, a minute’s rest, 5 rows, a minute’s rest, 4 presses, etc.) You could superset pushup and pullup exercises the same way.

Making progress
Progression couldn’t be simpler with this method. When you can do all 15 reps—that is, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1—for three workouts in a row, you move to a slightly harder version of the exercise. As with all bodyweight strength, having an extensive toolbox of progressions is key to moving forward; it’s also why the PCC Instructors’ Manual includes hundreds of progressive exercises.

There will be times you don’t get 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You may only get 5, 3, 2, 1, 1. That’s fine, and to be embraced. When you don’t get the full 15, use these principles to move forward:

Try to add a rep (or two) next time; shoot for 5, 4, 2, 1, 1, then 5, 4, 3, 1, 1, and so on.

Whatever you get, always push yourself hard on the first set—that’s your peak set.

Adding reps on the earlier sets is more valuable than adding reps on the final sets.

Never do more reps than you are aiming for; stick with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Aim to perform ALL five sets, even if those sets are very low rep; e.g., 3, 2, 1, 1, 1.

Exercises, post-set work and warm-ups

Joe often performed more exercises than I stuck to. Most people today would probably call his routine imbalanced. In particular, he loved hanging exercises, and would do all kinds of weird variations of pullups, leg raises, levers, holds and hangs. Strangely, despite being such an aficionado of hanging work, he would typically do only three exercises for the rest of his body—one-leg squats, flat one-arm pushups, and some kind of inversion; handstands, but often headstands (I rarely saw him do inverse pressing, these were typically static). I have watched Joe do bridges, and do them easily, but like the man himself, these were an exception rather than a rule.

Whatever his last exercise of the session was, Joe would often make his very final set harder by completing a ten second dynamic-tension isometric at the top position of that very last rep. He’d follow this with a slow negative of about ten seconds. He claimed that this little “trick” for finishing his workout told his body that the session was over, and increased his hormonal profile. I’m not sure that’s true, but if Joe’s physique—at over seven decades—was testament, then he knew what he was talking about.

Al Kavadlo Push-Up
No matter what exercise you finish with,
you can squeeze it at the top for an isometric benefit.

What about a warm-up? Interestingly—like Reg Park—Joe never went over five reps on his warm-up sets. He would typically do two or three warm-up sets of five reps, and he always applied Charles Atlas-style dynamic tension during his warm-ups. If he was doing an exercise like one-arm pullups, he would perform an exercise about half as tough on his warm-ups—two-arm pullups. Always five reps. Why not more? Joe felt that you should always train to meet your goals. His peak sets were always five reps, so he thought if he did more in his warm-ups, his body would get confused and start adapting to higher reps instead! I’m not certain I agree with that, but it gives you some food for thought, eh?

I often advocate using progressive exercises when warming up—maybe start with a real easy exercise for high reps, then follow with a slightly harder exercise for less reps. But Joe only ever used one exercise technique in his warm-ups, no matter how many warm-up sets he did. I used to wonder why, for example, he’d perform two sets of regular pullups before his one-arm work; why not one set of regular two-arms, then something harder, like assisted pullups? I asked him once. Because I can make the two-arms as hard as assisted pullups, dumbass! he replied. And it was true. His capacity to tense his muscles during training—dynamic tension—was so profound, he could make seemingly easy exercises as seem as hard as advanced ones. He was able to adjust the intensity of any exercise by 100% or 1%, just using the power of his mind.

That was how profound his body wisdom was. Not many athletes could aspire to this level, although it’s possible with time and patience. I still admire the man to this day!

Lights Out!

Well, that’s it from me. Thanks again for reading—it means a lot to this dopey fella that you guys and gals still take the time to read my weathered musings. I hope this article has given you a new idea to play with. Looking for a lower-rep strength and mass routine that fits well with bodyweight? Give The Hartigen Method a try…tonight!

Oh, and if you liked hearing about Joe’s attitude to training, check this article out. I wrote it for my good buddy Neil Bednar.

You could do a lot worse than modeling your training around old Joe’s philosophy. That brother was something else!

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of five Convict Conditioning DVD/manual programs. Click here for more information about Paul Wade, and here for more information on Convict Conditioning DVD’s and books available for purchase from the publisher.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS: 4 New Year Goals for Total Noobs

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My bodyweight brothers and sisters!
My bodyweight brothers and sisters!

Welcome to the world’s finest bodyweight strength blog—and welcome to 2014! I really hope this year turns out to be something really special for all of ya.

New Year means a time for new fitness and conditioning goals—at least for a lot of folks. A brand-spankin-shiny new year is a perfect time for a fresh start…and God knows, millions of people need it. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese; only 20% get regular exercise; and, horrifically, it has been estimated that less than 10% of the population can perform a full pullup. That’s only one in ten! (I think.)

Many folks are so goddam outta shape, they just have no clue how to make a start in calisthenics. So they put it off…sometimes, forever.

If that’s you—or someone you care about—then this blog is my New Year challenge for YOU. I’m often guilty of writing for experts. Why? Coz the bodyweight community is a remarkable one; it’s typified by smart, mature, knowledgeable, advanced athletes. I love you all, but this post’s not for you. It’s for the noobs.

What’s a “noob”? Well, in terms of bodyweight training:

  • If you can barely do a handful (or less) of sloppy pushups;
  • If a strict, full pullup is outta the question;
  • If a full, deep squat is impossible or feels like it’s ripping your knees apart;
  • If getting up off the couch leaves you out of breath;
  • Or if any of the above apply to you;

…then yer a noob, kid. So if you are a desperate neophyte, an interested but confused lurker, or a collapsed ex-athlete—listen up!

Four Fundamentals in Strength Calisthenics

In this post I’m going to give you FOUR basic goals to get working on. You don’t need more than that—the more goals you set, the more your willpower gets spread around ‘em, so the less likely you are to meet any of them. Research also shows that the more inconvenient New Year goals are, the less likely they are to get met. So all these exercises, and their regressions (i.e., easier versions) can be performed in a tiny space, in the comfort of your own home. You don’t need jack s*** to start today. You don’t need to buy my book. You don’t need a pullup bar. You don’t need a gym membership or new sneakers. All you need is a little courage to accept my challenge, a few minutes time, and enough space to lay down. Everybody has that much, right?

Here are the goals:

noobs_textbox1All techniques are to be executed with perfect form.

To a dedicated athlete, these four are modest goals; easy, in fact. But they are also incredibly important; the average de-conditioned American would be unable to meet these standards…amazingly, given the decline of fitness in our schools, even the average teen would struggle! So let’s get to work on these fundamentals. If these basics are beyond your reach, you stand zero hope in hell of going any further in strength or fitness. And if you really ARE new to strength training, don’t give me any of that “shouldn’t I be lifting weights?” bulls****. If you can’t do ten pushups perfectly, you got no business laying down on a bench press. Likewise, if full bodyweight squats are impossible, then perching under a loaded barbell or leg press for messy, incomplete reps is only going to wreck your knees.

Bodyweight comes first!

The Four Techniques

1. Full Squats:

Full squats generate strength in the entire lower body—quads, hamstrings, calves, glutes, shins, everything. They also build mobility in two areas that badly need it, the knees and ankles, while strengthening the lower back. To put it bluntly, they are essential, whether ya like it or not.

Full squats means all the way down until the hamstrings are resting on the calves!
Full squats means all the way down until the hamstrings are resting on the calves!

You can’t do twenty full squats until you can do one full squat RIGHT. So begin by focusing on deep motion. I don’t care how weak or rusty your knees are—you can begin building motion using no weight on the knees at all. Lie on your back or shoulders, with your legs straight up, and bend your knees as fully as you can that way. (These are called shoulderstand squats.) As your mobility improves, try deep squats the right way up; use a partner or a sturdy object to help pull yourself out of the hole. Over time, use the assistance less…build to solo half-squats, and ¾ squats. Soon full squats won’t seem so tough. Once you can do your first set of 5-10 full squats, just add a perfect rep every so often. You’ll hit twenty reps real soon.

2. Full Pushups

Keep your back and legs straight and aligned—you’ll get all the benefits of planks, but without the boredom!
Keep your back and legs straight and aligned—you’ll get all the benefits of planks, but without the boredom!

Hey, ten pushups is easy right? Everyone can do that, right?

Wrong.

Most people—even coaches who should know better—do them wrong. If you do them the right way—my way—they are tough as hell. For a start, most folks rush their pushups. I want you to eliminate ALL momentum (if momentum is doing the work, your muscles aren’t, right?). I want you to take two seconds up, two seconds down, with a moment’s pause at the bottom position. Secondly, you need to go deep—go down until your sternum is a fist’s width from the floor: no less. (Use books or an object like a softball to guide you, at first.) Third, don’t bounce! When you descend so that your sternum touches your books, it should touch them as lightly as you would kiss a baby on the forehead. This technique (“kiss-the-baby”) is murder, forcing you to control your body FULLY. What else is strength, but control?

Doing pushups this way makes them brutal and incredibly productive as an exercise. If they are too hard for ya, begin doing them on an incline, or even against a wall. Once you find a pushup technique you can perform five reps in, add a rep every workout or two until you can do ten, then make things harder.

3. Leg Raises

Forget what you have probably been told about working “abs”…isolating the muscles, tensing, and performing lots of sets of teeny crunches or machine exercises. Real, functional strength—from hanging on a bar to picking up a fridge—requires not just strong abdominals, but an iron “anterior chain”—that means your hips, abs, intercostals, serratus, obliques and even the deep muscles of the quads. For strengthening your anterior chain perfectly, God gave you a gift—leg raises!

Isolation is for hermits, kid.
Isolation is for hermits, kid.

As usual, begin easy. Start with lying knee raises; build to twenty reps. Then extend the legs a little. Then you can try one–leg leg raises, with the knees locked. Pretty soon, twenty strict leg raises will be within reach, and your abs will be harder than those pathetic crunches could have ever got ‘em. Damn, you’ll be doing these suckers hanging in no time. Six-pack from Hell, here we come…

4. Straight Bridge

The straight bridge is a wonderful exercise for noobs to aspire to master. Whereas leg raises work the entire anterior chain—the muscles at the front of the bod—the straight bridge works the posterior chain. It builds the spinal erectors, reduces low back pain, bulletproofs the spine, trains the hamstrings, and helps heal bad knees. Because the arms are pushing behind the body, this type of bridge also strengthens the “lats” of the back, and the muscles around the shoulder blades—an awesome benefit for those who don’t have a pullup bar. Straight bridges also give ya triceps of steel kid—no more kickbacks necessary.

Once again, alignment is what’s up. Athletes make the straight-body position look easy. It ain’t.
Once again, alignment is what’s up. Athletes make the straight-body position look easy. It ain’t.

Normally I wouldn’t advise beginners to perform bridges—I think the time and energy is better spent on pulling work, typically on a low horizontal bar. That said, if you don’t have access to a bar, straight bridges can be a good way to work the back muscles.

Bridging can be demanding—so start easy. Commence with short bridges (with the shoulders on the floor), then move to table bridges (straight bridges, but with the knees bent). When ten seconds of perfectly aligned form is easy, start adding seconds—build to 20 seconds, then move to something harder. If straight bridges are too easy, try them with one leg lifted off the floor. That will teach you what your hamstrings were made for.

How to Train for these Goals

How do you go about training to achieve these goals? For a start, if you are de-conditioned, you need to get an okay from a doc before you start training hard (that’s the legal s*** outta the way). When you start, start slow. This is absolutely key—never throw yourself full tilt into a new training program. Start with exercises that are about half your full ability, and add work s-l-o-w-ly—a rep here, better form there, a harder exercise somewhere else. This approach will allow your joints and soft tissues time to adapt and get stronger, preventing joint pain. (Joints adapt to stress slower than muscles.)

As a noob, you really need to keep your programming easy and simple at first. I advise performing two exercises per session, with a day off in-between. Warm up with a gentle, ten minute walk, and perform one set of a lighter version of each exercise you are doing, also as a warm up. (For example, if you are doing incline pushups, warm up with wall pushups; if you are doing flat pushups, warm up with incline pushups. Got it?) After the warm up, perform two hard “work” sets of each exercise. Don’t go til failure, keep your form as perfect as possible, and rest between sets long enough to get most of your strength back. Such a program would look like this:

noobs_textbox2If you get sore, or stop making progress, add more rest days. If this seems easy, reduce rest days—but only if you keep making progress. If this seems like way too little, or you get fitter real fast, try the exercises all together:

noobs_textbox3Take a day off in between workouts, or more if you need to. Some will say this is not enough work. It is. Trust me, if your numbers are going up, if you are making progress weekly, you are doing better than 95% of those suckers with expensive gym memberships. More detailed programming info is included in Convict Conditioning. For motivation and to keep ya on the straight and narrow, try to write down your training sessions in a logbook, ‘kay?

I’m too fat for bodyweight workouts!

No, you aren’t. Obese would-be ninjas need bodyweight training as much or more than slimmer folks—they just need to start with easier exercises.

I’m going to tell ya a well-known “secret” now…calisthenics and weight-loss go together like love and marriage. Once your body recognizes it is regularly struggling to heft its own weight up and down, the subconscious mind kicks in and will help you shed those useless pounds. I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times, and it will work for you too if you give it a chance.

Yes, nutrition will play a role, of course. You gotta start dealing with your weight at the same time you start bodyweight training: it’s no goddam use saying; “I’ll work out when I get to such-and-such a weight”, or; “I’ll start eating right when my training gets off the ground”. Start training AND eating well right now.

The Next Step: Moving to Intermediate Level

Okay. Let’s say you have worked for a few weeks—or months—to meet these fundamental requirements. Congrats, kid! You did it. You are now stronger and more mobile than the average American! Well done.

Whazzat…? You feel better? You have added muscle, and firmed up? You are hungry for MORE? You want to know how to take the next step, and work towards becoming an intermediate bodyweight athlete?!

Now your arms, back, waist and legs are stronger, you’re qualified to begin studying at the ultimate bodyweight training college—the School of the Bar! You gotta get hanging. This article is too short to discuss bar training and techniques. Luckily, Al Kavadlo has got you covered. With John Du Cane, Al has put out the super-acclaimed Raising the Bar…the master text-book of hanging training techniques.

noob_RTB
Despite what you might think, I’m not a Dragon Door “affiliate” or any of that crap, and I don’t get paid one cent for promoting Al’s book.  It’s just too damn good not to mention. Raising the Bar includes every bar calisthenics technique under the sun—from Australian pullups and archer pullups, to muscle-ups and Korean dips, plus bonus floor training and pressing methods. Best of all, Al’s system is designed for bar athletes of all capabilities; whether you can do a hundred pullups, or if you can barely hang on to the bar, this book will get you stronger, safely.

Anyhow, I hope that gives some of you new fish some food for thought. You know somebody who needs to get started training? Be a true friend and email them a link to this post TODAY, so we can start helping them as soon as possible.

***

Got questions? Just holler at me in the comments, and I’ll do what I can to answer ya. Any experienced athletes who have advice for noobs (we are ALL ex-noobs, remember!), I’d also love to hear what you got to say, so please make a comment.

I need you all to step up this year—bodyweight is rapidly becoming the biggest movement in fitness, and I need you hidden geniuses out there to support us, and help tip it over the edge. I want lotsa ideas, questions, tips and feedback. So get typing, Jack!

***

Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of five Convict Conditioning DVD/manual programs. Click here for more information about Paul Wade, and here for more information on Convict Conditioning DVD’s and books available for purchase from the publisher.

The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass: Part II

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How to build real muscle using bodyweight methods: Part II

10comm1Part I of this article can be found here.

COMMANDMENT V: Focus on Progress—and Utilize a Training Journal!

Believe it or not, there are some folks who focus on the previous four Commandments—they exhaust their muscles, work hard, use the best exercises and put all their energy into a small number of sets—and still make very little in the way of meaningful gains. This is true even if they train year-to-year. Maybe this is you—I’m sure you know folks like this.

Why does this travesty happen?

Is it genetics? Is it the fact that they train without steroids? Is it because their balls haven’t dropped? Is it the fact that their gym doesn’t sell the latest superbolictastic high-sugar/high toxicity supps, bro?!

None of the above, Jim. To discover the true reason, read the following excerpt from the Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Log:

If making progress in training is so simple, why do so few wannabe athletes ever achieve a good level of strength and muscle—let alone a great level?

The answer is that few trainees take advantage of the windows of opportunity their training presents to them. You see, when you work out, your body adapts to cope with the stress, but it only adapts a tiny little bit; this is especially true once you get beyond the beginner stages of training. Improvements are small—maybe you add a rep here; you improve your form there; you increase your recovery time somewhere else. Over months and years, however, these small increases eventually add up to very big increases. This is how seemingly “inhuman” athletes double and triple their strength, add inches of solid muscle, and transform themselves into superior physical beings.

Sadly, since most trainees aren’t paying attention to those tiny changes, they never build on them the way they should. These little weekly changes are actually windows of opportunity. If you could increase your strength by just 1% every week, you could more than double your strength in just two years. But most trainees never get anywhere close to doubling their strength, because they aren’t keeping track of their training accurately. They fail to recognize that 1% adaptation—the rep here, the improved form there. If you miss these little improvements, how can you build on them to make big improvements?

1% is actually a pretty small target to hit. When you rely on memory, instinct or feeling—as so many trainers do—to hit this target, it becomes very fuzzy. (Which is the last thing you want from small target, right?) Writing your progress down in a log makes this small target clear and easy to see. It makes it quantifiable. Athletes who begin writing simple log entries of their workouts find they suddenly know what they need to do to progress every single time they work out. They never miss that tiny 1%.

There you have it. In reality, the previous four Commandments are worthless unless you harness them all to make progress—week to week, month to month, year to year. It doesn’t matter how seemingly insignificant these improvements are. Over the months and years they add up. In a nutshell, the “secret” to drug-free muscle and strength gain is to become acutely aware of the tiny improvements in your performance, and build on them on a regular basis. The best way to make this happen is to keep a training journal.

10comm2Small changes in physical conditioning can add up to big changes over time—but only if you recognize them and build on them.

Anyone who is familiar with my writings knows that I am a huge believer in keeping a training log to determine progress—especially where muscle-building is the goal. It always amazes me that folks will pay hundreds of bucks on worthless supplements, but won’t take a few minutes to keep a log of their training. It’s ironic, coz a simple training log, used correctly, will do more for your physique than any over-the-counter supplement on the planet. I could write a whole article on the benefits of keeping a log…monitoring progress, contemplating feedback, mastering training science, improving workout mindfulness…the list goes on!

I put together the CC training log because a lot of athletes complained to me that most commercial logs weren’t geared towards bodyweight. The log means a lot to me, and I put a ton of advice and cool photos in there. I’m real proud of the journal for many reasons, but I’m honestly not trying to sell you anything here. You don’t have to buy this log to keep a journal…the beauty of calisthenics is that you don’t have to buy anything!

Just get your hands on a cheap notepad, or use your computer. But please, do it. Do it for old Coach!

COMMANDMENT VI: You Grow When You Rest. So Rest!

Again—the issue of rest (“training frequency” for you guys with a better vocabulary than me) immediately follows on from the previous idea of progress.

Let me ask you a simple question. If you really wanted to improve on your last workout—add that rep, tighten up your form—how would you want to approach that workout?

Would you want to be tired, weary, beat-up?

No! That’s nuts! Obviously you’d want to be as well-rested, as fresh as possible, to tear into your workout with as much energy as you could get, to break some records, increase your reps, improve your personal best!

10comm3To build mass, you must keep beating your previous performances—but it’s virtually impossible to be at your best unless you are rested. (Athletics legend Sir Roger Bannister rested for a full five days before breaking the four minute mile record!) Al Kavadlo demonstrates perfect close pushups.

It sounds like a dumb question. Of course you’d want to be as fresh, as rested as possible if you really wanted to give your all and maximize your muscle-growth stimulation, right?

Yet this is exactly the opposite of what most wannabe bodybuilders do. Being brainwashed by the muscle rags—typically by trying to copy the programs of drugged-up steroid junkies, who can get away with training like pussies and working out seven times a day—they desperately try to deplete any mental and hormonal energy they have by training more and more often. Some of these guys are training the body hard four times a week…then they wonder why they aren’t improving!

You don’t need to be Kojak to know why they aren’t improving. You don’t need a PhD in molecular myology to know why they aren’t improving. They are tired. Their muscles haven’t had a chance to rest and heal, let alone recover and increase their size and strength. I admire the willpower of folks who are constantly working out, even when they are spinning their wheels—I’ve done it too. Some of it comes down to the glamor of training; we become so seduced by the idea of the exercises, we forget that we are tearing our muscles down when we train. We have forgotten that one simple, ancient muscle-building fact—your muscles grow when you rest, not when you train.

How much rest you need for optimal performance depends on your age, your constitution, your training experience, your other activities, etc. But I can give you a few general pointers:

  • Working any muscle more than twice a week is usually a mistake if you want to gain size.
  • How often you train doesn’t matter a s***—how often you make progress is what matters.
  • Old school bodybuilders like Steve Reeves and Reg Park became huge by training—hard—only three days per week. To this day, many of the most massive powerlifters only train three days per week. The idea that you need to train every day (or several times per day) to maximize your potential is bullshit.
  • Working a muscle hard once a week—and actually making progress—is better than working it four times per week and going backwards.
  • Never train any muscle hard two days in a row.
  • Bigger muscles typically take longer to recover than smaller muscles.
  • If a muscle group is sore, don’t train it!
  • Muscular training also depletes the hormonal and energy systems. If you feel low, tired or lacking energy, add another day or two of rest into your program—even if your muscles feel good.
  • Always take at least two days off per week, for maximum muscle gain—unless you are performing very low volume workouts. Even then, three or four days off per week is probably better.
  • The ultimate arbiter of a bodybuilding program is progress—in muscle size, but also in performance. If you are working hard but your reps aren’t increasing, add another rest day.

The bottom line: to build extra muscle you must continue to improve your performance by cranking out a greater workload over a small number of sets. To do this, your muscles (and your body) need to be rested. Rest is a bigger piece of the puzzle than most athletes ever realize—as a result, they never even come close to their full potential.

COMMANDMENT VII: Quit Eating “Clean” the Whole Time!

Ah, we’re on to nutrition now, boys and girls. My views on nutrition are so far from the norm that I even get snubbed at a George Zimmerman fundraiser. I can feel panties bunching with hatred and rage even as I write this. It’s a great feeling—so let’s keep going, huh?

Read a copy of any of the muscle or fitness based rags on the newsstands, and you’d think the perfect muscle meal was chicken breast with some broccoli—and hey, don’t forget some supplements thrown in on the side. Washed down with plenty of water.

Crock. Of. S**t.

If you are trying to pack on some muscle, eating junk now and again is not only okay, it’s positively anabolic. In Convict Conditioning 2, I wrote about the prison diet, and described how some very muscular, very strong athletes maintained incredible physiques on diets that—to the mainstream fitness world—would be considered totally inadequate, on many counts. Let me tell you, if those guys could get their hands on a little junk every day, they would bite your arms off for it! They knew it fuelled the fires of growth.

One of the biggest sensations in the modern bodybuilding world is a guy who—these days, anyhow—is known as Kali Muscle. Kali is 5’10” and weighs over 250lbs—with abs. Despite his bodyweight, Kali learned his trade in San Quentin, a prison culture surrounded by calisthenics athletes, and he can still perform impressive bodyweight feats like muscle-ups and the human flag. Kali says that he really began growing when he was in jail and began filling his body with “dirty” high-carb foods like Dunkin’ Stix, Honey Buns, ramen and tuna spread. He says the effect these high calorie “junk” foods had on his skinny body was so profound, that he rejected offers of steroids during his prison years. He didn’t need them.

Kali isn’t crazy. His words are the truth. This idea—that the odd “junk” item is good for your training—is not a new one. Many of the old-time strongmen thrived on food that is considered crap today. The Saxon brothers ate cakes and drank beer as a daily staple of their diet. John Grimek used to drive around with oversized Hershey bars in his glove box, for emergencies.

10comm4I love how folks pay over the odds for quick-acting protein, like “hydrolyzed” whey powder, but they avoid quick-acting carbs like the plague. Fast energy to recover from a depleting workout is way more useful than fast protein, which is probably worse than useless.

And throw some fatty stuff in there too, willya? Quit avoiding real “muscle foods” like red meat, egg yolks, ham, cheese and sausage. I have to laugh when I see skinny guys throwing thousands of bucks of amino acids and whey shakes down their necks, in a hopeless effort to get big. What the supplement companies (and their bitches, the fitness magazines) will never tell you is a basic fact known by every endocrinologist on the planet—testosterone (remember that? The muscle-building hormone?) is synthesized from cholesterol. That’s right…without taking in enough cholesterol from high-fat foods, your body cannot create testosterone, and it cannot build muscle.

Vegans are always moaning that meat is full of pathogens and the like, but—far from killing us off—recent studies show that red meat might be what’s responsible for our species’ abnormally long life-spans. Our hungry ancestors literally adapted to slabs of meat, building super-immunity in the process.

I’m not saying you should act like a fat pig and eat junk all day (although maybe you should if you can’t gain weight). If you want to get big you should eat a balanced, regulated diet. But eating “clean” the whole time will only hurt your gains. Throw in a little “junk” every day if you expect to get swole.

Go have that burger and a Twinkie. A couple hours later, you’ll have the best workout of your life. You might even grow.

COMMANDMENT IIX: Sleep More

Since Convict Conditioning first came out, I’ve been deluged by a lot of questions about prison athletes. It’s a subject folks—especially dudes—really seem interested in. How is it that prison athletes seem to gain and maintain so much dense muscle, when guys on the outside—who are taking supplements and working out in super-equipped gyms—can rarely gain muscle at all?

I could give you lots of reasons. Routine in eating and working is one. The motivation to train hard is one more. Absence of distractions is yet another. But there’s a bigger reason. I have been asked on many occasions if there’s a natural alternative for steroids—and I always answer the same: there is, but you can’t buy it from a drugstore. It’s called sleep. During sleep, your brain essentially orders your body to produce its own performance-enhancing drugs.

Inmates sleep like kings. I’m not saying that s***’s right, but there it is. Behind bars, when it’s time for Lights Out, you go to sleep. The time is always the same in the same institution—regular as clockwork. This is, essentially, how our ancestors lived—the sun goes down (Lights Out) and the brain and nervous system switch off for a well-deserved supercharge. Many convicts get ten hours per night—often with daily naps thrown in for good measure.

On the outside, it’s totally different. Folks can control their own artificial sunlight, using bulbs, lamps, LCD TVs, laptops and phones. They can go out and drink, or party, or watch Netflix all night, if they want. As a result, the sleeping patterns of most people today—especially young people—are chaos. And they wonder why they are plagued with insomnia and sleep problems…their brains don’t have a f***in clue what’s going on! There is no routine at all, and they definitely don’t get enough sleep—the average modern American gets well under seven hours, often much less than that.

10comm5If you want to build mass and blowtorch your bodyfat like Danny Kavadlo, skip the supplements and focus on getting more sleep!

Many training writers lump “rest and sleep” together under the same category. This is a mistake. Sleep is a unique physiological condition. Ten minutes of resting does not equate to ten minutes of sleep…or twenty minutes of sleep…or an hour of sleep. Sleep does everything rest does for the body and brain, but the opposite ain’t true. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of programmed rest (see Commandment VI), but no amount of simple rest can give you what sleep is capable of. When you sleep:

  • Your brain produces Growth Hormone (GH)—dangerous, expensive and illegal on the streets, but healthy and free if you take a nap.
  • The brain generates natural melatonin—possibly the most powerful immunity and healing compound known to science. (As well as helping muscles heal, high melatonin levels may even ward off cancer. This stuff is magic!)
  • When you sleep, you brain produces Luteinizing Hormone (LH), which (in dudes) strongly stimulates the interstitial cells of your cojones to produce testosterone—the number-one bodybuilding chemical powerhouse.

And that’s just a taster of what sleep does for a bodybuilder. Sleep is the cornerstone of muscle growth—and if that doesn’t persuade you to try and get more sleep at night (daily naps are great, too), then how about this: extra sleep can make you ripped.

It’s not something most people understand, but your sleep-wake cycles even regulate your eating patterns. Back when our species was evolving, the annual fruiting season occurred during late summer—when the days were at their longest. During this time, our ancestors went crazy trying to gobble up all the carb-heavy fruit they could find, to build thick bodyfat stores to protect us from the harsh, hungry winter round the corner.

These days, most everyone (outside jails) artificially prolongs their daylight time to ridiculous lengths using the bright electric lights in their home, not to mention the flickering boob tube, video games, etc. As a result, their Paleolithic brains still think they’re stuck in late summer—all year round. So they react accordingly, continually pumping out neurotransmitters and hormones programmed to make them guzzle down all the carbs we can find. No wonder folks can’t stick to diets. Their brains are trying to make them eat to survive winter!

Get to bed early, and your internal calendar won’t be tricked into thinking it’s fruiting season—you’ll find you’re suddenly not craving carbs like a maniac. It works.

Sleep also causes your fat cells to express leptin—sometimes called the “lean hormone”. Leptin regulates bodyfat expenditure and sparks up the release of energy from your fatty tissue. Go have a nap before you read the next Commandment, Jack. You might have a six-pack when you wake up.

COMMANDMENT IX: Train the Mind Along With the Body

This is a truism. The role of the mind in training is so fundamental that many books fail to even discuss it. The bodybuilders of the classical era sure understood it however, and they understood it well. Vince Gironda—“Iron Guru” and the real “Trainer of Champions”, including first Mr Olympia, Larry Scott—was once asked what he thought was the ultimate supplement. This was his answer:

…no supplement company has come up with a pill or powder as powerful as the mind. Conversely, the mind can equal and surpass any food supplement…if that is what you want from the mind.

Those weights never did anything for me. They never whispered in my ear. They never said, “curl me. Do this four times, or that for so many weeks.” I can dictate to the weights. I can dictate to my body. OK? Do I need to say any more on that?

The Wild Physique (Column), Musclemag no. 132

10comm6The mind is your number-one weapon in building your body. No supplement ever made you struggle through that final set of pullups.

Isaac Newton taught us that an arrow will fly straight and true forever—unless external forces (like friction, gravity, etc.) drag it to a standstill. I strongly believe that the human mind is like this. It goes in the right direction just fine—until negative influences drag it down. These negative influences are destructive ideas and damaging thought-patterns. As far as bodyweight training goes, there are six major classes of these ideas which screw with our training—or make us quit altogether.

Combating and defeating these six groups of negative ideas—I call them training demons—is at the heart of successful training. The topic is too deep to discuss in a blog post, but those of you who are interested can find more in chapter 21 of Convict Conditioning 2—The Mind: Escaping the True Prison.

If you want me to go further into this topic (you want this gold for free? Damn, son!), let me know in the comments and I’ll try and cover it in a future blog.

COMMANDMENT X: Get Strong!

If you want a quick summary of this article, it’s this: strength is built quickest by training the nervous system. Mass is built quickest by training the muscles. Over the last 9 Commandments, I’ve shown you the best, most powerful strategies you can use to train your muscles.

Does that mean that I’m telling you to permanently steer clear of strength training, if your only goal is to get bigger? No—and here’s why.

The relationship between the nervous system and the muscular system is a bit like the relation between an electrical circuit (the nervous system) and a light bulb (the muscles). The higher you turn the wattage on the circuit, the brighter the bulb will glow. Likewise, the higher you amp up the nervous system (through improved motor unit recruitment and neural facilitation), the harder your muscles will contract and the stronger you are.

A bodybuilder primarily trains his (or her) muscles—they are constantly buying bigger light bulbs. A pure strength athlete primarily trains his (or her) nervous system—they keep their small light bulb, and simply turn up the wattage on the circuit. You can have very powerful bulbs that are only tiny, just as there exist superhumanly strong athletes with relatively small muscles.

Here’s the thing—from a certain point of view, both these athletes want the same thing; more “light”, which, in our analogy, means more work output from the muscles. Athletes who truly want maximum strength also train their muscles—they buy bigger bulbs. You see this in powerlifting, weightlifting and similar strength events; as athletes grow in strength, they also increase in mass, often competing in several higher weight classes through their careers. A strong, big athlete is always stronger than a strong, small one.

From the opposite end, bodybuilders want more “light” (more capacity for muscular work output) because it allows them to use harder exercises and lift more, to direct a greater stimulus to their muscles for greater adaptation—higher and higher levels of mass gains. Everyone understands this—the larger and larger a bodybuilder becomes, the greater the weight they have to lift to retain their gains and keep making progress.

10comm7Al Kavadlo generates full-body tension and builds coordinated strength with an elbow plank. An athlete who trains for strength and size will ironically get bigger than an athlete who only ever trains for size. Get strong!

In other words; if you wish to gain as much muscle as your genetic potential will allow, just training your muscles won’t cut it. You need to train your nervous system too—at least some of the time.

Have you ever noticed that guys who begin bodybuilding make progress and build size for 3-6 moths, then it grinds to a halt? This is why. They have literally run out of strength. How hard you can train your muscles—how much stress you can put them through—partially depends on how strong you are. If that novice then committed 3-6 months to training their nervous systems instead of their muscles and building up their pure strength, they would find they could subsequently return to their bodybuilding-style training, and they’d experience another big spurt of growth.

Classic bodybuilders all understood this relationship between size and strength. Many of them devoted 3-6 months per year working full bore to train their nervous system, to get as insanely strong as they could, unworried about their muscle size during that time. Others performed pure strength work alongside their bodybuilding, either during different sessions or mixed and matched. Successful bodybuilders today do the same—they mix “hypertrophy” (growth) work with “strength” work. They understand that just one won’t work too well without the other.

The take-home message of this? Simple. Muscular training is what builds size, but without added strength your progress only lasts so long. You’ll get better gains if you cycle (or mix in) pure bodyweight strength training—where you train your nervous system—with your bodyweight bodybuilding.

The next question is—how do you train your nervous system for pure strength, using bodyweight techniques?

That would require a completely different article. But you’re in luck, beautiful. The PCC Lead Instructor and world famous calisthenics coach Al Kavadlo has written that article for you. It’s arriving right here, hot and sizzling, in just seven days time!

Don’t say we don’t do nothin’ for ya, huh? Now go out and build some beef, dammit. If you still have questions, hit me up in the comments section, below. I never ignore a genuine question and I will give my all to help you if I can.

*** The models for most of these great photos are the awesome Al Kavadlo and Danny Kavadlo! You have my thanks!

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Paul “Coach” Wade is the author of five Convict Conditioning DVD/manual programs. Click here for more information about Paul Wade, and here for more information on Convict Conditioning DVD’s and books available for purchase from the publisher.