Paul "Coach" Wade

The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass

October 15, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 150 Comments

How to build real muscle using bodyweight methods: Part I

Finally the tide is starting to turn.

Young and old athletes (and wannabe athletes) are switching over to calisthenics in their droves. There is a growing consensus that if you want a coordinated, supple, mobile, functional body, the best way to get it is using your body’s own weight. Rubber bands, plastic gadgets, cables, machines and infomercial ab gimmicks are out. The floor and the horizontal bar are in. We’re going old school, baby!

But what a lot of athletes (and coaches) still don’t realize is that bodyweight is also an awesome tool for packing on slabs of dense muscle mass.

Yes, you can see a lot of incredibly powerful bodyweight athletes with fairly low levels of muscle mass performing ridiculously impressive feats like muscle-ups, the human flag, one-arm handstands and whatnot. That doesn’t mean that bodyweight training doesn’t increase muscle mass—it can (and much more effectively than current bodybuilding methods).

Lionel Ng is built more like a karate master than a bodybuilder. But he has trained himself to perform impressive feats of total-body strength—like the one-arm elbow lever and the human flag—using calisthenics. (Many thanks to the awesome Basic Training Academy, Singapore for the use of the image.)

What it means is that there are a lot of athletes out there who use bodyweight in a specific way to develop movement strength, and skill, while deliberately maintaining their body mass at lean n’ mean levels to keep them lithe and sleek—after all, if performance is what you’re lookin’ for, the lighter you are, the easier bodyweight techniques will be, right? For these guys, extra pounds of muscle is nothing but drag, inertia. They don’t want it.

However…not everyone wants to be a clean-burnin’, high-voltage, low-weight, gazelle. Some of us want to be bulls. Big, beefy, scary-looking muthas with bulging arms, plate-armor pecs, thick, wide lats and dangerous delts. The good news is that bodyweight training can give this to you—and it can give it to you while keeping you mobile and supple, and protecting your joints.

But if extra inches of muscle are what you yearn for, you can’t train the way the gazelles train—inspiring as they are. If you want to bulk up to your maximum potential, you need to follow a different set of rules, stud. You need to religiously observe your own mass-building Commandments.

What Commandments, you ask..? Read on, future champ.

COMMANDMENT I: Embrace reps!

These days, low reps, high sets and low fatigue are the “in” methodology. Why low reps with low fatigue? Coz it’s great for building skill. If you want to get really good at a movement—be it a handstand or an elbow lever—the key is to train your nervous system. That means performing an exercise perfectly plenty of times, to beat the ideal movement pattern into your “neural map”. The best way to achieve this is to do a few low reps—not hard or long enough to burn out or get too tired—then rest for a bit and try again. Wash, rinse, repeat. This is typically how very lean, low-weight bodyweight guys train to get hugely strong but without adding too much muscle. It’s a phenomenal way to drill efficient motion-pathways into your nervous system, while keeping fresh. Like I say, it’s ideal for training a skill.

But for stacks of jacked up muscle? Sorry, this method just won’t cut it. Muscle isn’t built by training the nervous system. It’s built by training the MUSCLE! And for this, you need reps, kiddo. Lovely, lovely, reps.

To be big, you must first become weak—pay your dues with some serious reps.

To cut a long story short, you build big muscles by draining the chemical energy in your muscle cells. Over time, your body responds to this threat by accumulating greater and greater stores of chemical energy in the cells. This makes them swell, and voila—bigger muscles. But to trigger this extra storage, you gotta exhaust the chemical energy in those cells. This can only be done by hard, sustained work. Gentle work won’t do it—if the exercise is too low in intensity, the energy will come from fatty acids and other stores, rather than the precious muscle cells. Intermittent work—low reps, rest, repeat—won’t do it either, because the chemical energy in the cells rapidly regenerates when you rest, meaning stores never get dangerously low enough for the body to say “uh-oh—better stockpile bigger banks of this energy!”

The best way to exhaust the energy in your muscles is through tough, grit-yer-teeth, continuous reps. Learn to love ‘em. For huge gains, temporarily drop the single, double, and triple reps. Definitely start looking at reps over five. Six to eight is great. Double figures are even better. Twelve to fifteen is another muscle-building range. I’ve met very strong guys training with low reps for years who couldn’t build a quarter inch on their arms. They switched to performing horizontal pulls for sets of twenty reps, and gained two inches per arm in a single month! These kind of gains aren’t uncommon on Convict Conditioning, due to the insistence that you pay your dues with higher reps. They work!

COMMANDMENT II: Work Hard!

This Commandment directly follows from the last one. Using low reps, keeping fresh, and taking lots of rest between sets is a fairly easy way to train. But pushing through continuous rep after rep on hard exercises is much, much tougher. The higher the reps, the harder it gets.

Your muscles will burn and scream at you to quit. (That “burning” is your chemical energy stores being incinerated for fuel, which is exactly what you want!) Your heart-rate will shoot through the roof; you will tremble, sweat, and feel systemic stress. You may even feel nauseous.

Good! You are doing something right!

Whatever modern coaches may say, don’t be afraid of pushing yourself.

Like I say, the current trend is towards easy sets, keeping fresh, working on skill. These days you don’t “work out”, you practice. “Working ” and “pushing yourself”….these are filthy terms in gyms today. They are considered old-fashioned, from outta the seventies and eighties. (Remember those decades? When drug-free dudes in the gym actually had some f***ing muscle?) I mean Christ, some coaches take this philosophy so far that you’d think if an athlete went to “failure”, their goddam balls would drop off. Jesus!

Sure, I don’t recommend going to complete failure on bodyweight exercise—at least, most of the time. I’d prefer it if you left a little energy in your body after a set to control your movements, and maybe defend yourself if you have to. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work hard. Damn hard.

Far from destroying you physically, brutal effort—when moderated by plenty of rest and sleep—causes the body to release testosterone, growth hormone, endorphins, and plenty of other goodies Mother Nature always intended to reward Her hunters and warriors with.

So accept the challenge. Balls, wall—together, okay? Don’t ever be afraid to push yourself into new zones of pain and effort if you want to get bigger. I have seen twigs turned into oaks this way, and you can do it too—I believe in you!

COMMANDMENT III: Use Simple, Compound Exercises!

Again, this Commandment is related to the two which have gone before. If you are going to push yourself hard on moderate-to-high reps, the exercises you are doing can’t be complex, high-skill exercises. If handstands and elbow levers cause you to concentrate to balance, you can’t overload using them—your form would collapse (and so would you) before you were pushing yourself hard enough to drain your muscles.

So if you want to work with high-skill exercises, use the low reps/keep fresh/high sets philosophy. But if you want to get swole, you need relatively low skill exercises—this is what I mean by “simple” exercises. “Simple” doesn’t mean “easy”. Doing twenty perfect one-arm pushups is “simple”—it ain’t easy!

“Simple” means relatively low-skill—it’s not the same as “easy”!

Stick to exercises you can pour a huge amount of muscular effort into, without wasting nervous energy on factors like balance, coordination, gravity, body placement, etc. Dynamic exercises—where you go up and down—are generally far better than static holds, because they typically require less concentration and they drain the muscle cells more rapidly.

The best dynamic exercises are compound exercises, which involve multiple muscle groups at once. Not only are these simpler—the body works as a whole, which is more natural—but you are getting a bigger bang for your buck by working different muscles at the same time. (No weak links for you, Daniel-san.) For example, focus on:

Pullups
Bodyweight squats, pistols and shrimp squats
Pushups
Australian pullup variations
Dips
Bridges
Handstand pushups (against a wall—lower skill, more effort)
Leg raises

All of these movements can be made increasingly difficult to suit your muscle-building rep range (see Commandment V). There are no excuses for not kicking your own ass, here.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not to say that skill-based techniques—like elbow levers and handstands—don’t have a place in your program. They are valuable exercises and are taught extensively as part of the PCC curriculum. But using them exclusively for muscle gain is definitely a big mistake. Throw in simple, compound moves and watch those muscles sprout like never before!

COMMANDMENT IV: Limit Sets!

This is another pretty controversial suggestion—but, as always, it flows from the previous Commandments perfectly. Why? Well, if you are hitting your body with hard exercises, and pouring that effort into enough reps to completely exhaust the muscles, why would you need to perform lots of sets?

Depleting your muscle cells beyond the point your body is comfortable with is what causes the biological “survival trigger” that tells your body to add more energy (i.e., extra muscle) for next time. That’s all you need to do. Once you have pulled that trigger and told your body to make more muscle…why keep pulling the trigger, again and again? It’s a waste of time and energy—worse in fact, because it damages the muscles further and eats into your recovery time. In the words of infamous exercise ideologist, Mike Mentzer:

“You can take a stick of dynamite and tap it with a pencil all day and it’s not going to go off. But hit it once with a hammer and ‘BANG’—it will go off!”

Many folks disagree with Mentzer’s training philosophy—I don’t agree with all of it—but he certainly nailed it when he said this. The biological switch for muscle growth needs to be triggered with a hammer, not a f***ing pencil. One hard, focused, exhausting set on a compound exercise is worth more than twenty, thirty half-hearted sets.

If you keep work sets low, you are much more likely to genuinely give your all when you train. Add sets and you subconsciously pace yourself.

I usually advise folks looking for maximum growth to perform two hard sets per exercise, following a proper warm-up. Growth will happen with one set, but two sets feels like a belt-and-braces approach. I sometimes advise more sets for beginners, but this not for growth—it’s to help them get more experience with a movement. It’s practice, basically. Once you know how to perform an exercise properly, two hard sets is all you need.

Many eager trainees ask me if they should perform more sets. The trouble is, adding sets does not encourage hard, high-performance training— just the opposite. Once you are doing five, six sets, one of two things happens; either you give your all and your last sets are pathetic compared to the first couple of sets, or you pace yourself, making all the sets weaker than they would be otherwise. Neither of these situations will promote extra growth. They just hinder recovery and increase the risk of injury.

Avoid “volume creep”. Training hard is very different from training long—in fact, the two are mutually exclusive. Keep workouts short and sharp and reap the rewards, kemosabe!

For Paul “Coach” Wade’s Bodyweight Muscle Commandments 5-10, tune in next week for part 2 of this article.

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The models for most of these photos are the incredible Al Kavadlo and Danny Kavadlo! As ever, thanks you guys. The image of the one-arm elbow lever was provided by my buddy Jay Ding over at the Basic Training Academy. Check their site—they are doing some amazing bodyweight training, Singapore style!

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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.

Erwan Le Corre talks Bodyweight, Part II

August 6, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 10 Comments

Erwan Le Corre is the founder of MovNat.

Erwan Le Corre is an icon in the fitness world. He is considered by many to be the modern-day inheritor of the French tradition of physical education (and that’s quite a compliment when you consider that the French created parkour, free running, and effectively invented the modern military “assault course”). Erwan is the founder of MovNat—an astonishing physical education and fitness system based on comprehensive movement abilities. There are many coaches who try to imitate what he does, but for people who have seen him in action—or learned from him—there will only ever be one Erwan Le Corre!

Paul “Coach” Wade (author of Convict Conditioning) recently got the chance to ask Erwan his opinion on all things bodyweight, on behalf of the PCC community. In Part I of this interview, Erwan shared his thoughts on his heroes, the thinking behind MovNat, and bodyweight efficiency.

In this second and final part of this interview, Erwan opens up about his status as “World’s Fittest Man,” his favorite bodyweight exercises, and performing sit-ups over an eight-lane superhighway!

Paul Wade: Erwan, what are your favorite bodyweight movements?

Erwan Le Corre: Probably the “muscle-up” (this name is just SO weird, what does that mean exactly?!) simply because it is such an explosive movement that demands power but also coordination and balance. It is also adaptable to different environments, not just gymnastic rings, you can do it on a tree branch, a platform, a cable or rope etc…you’re looking up and the next second you’re looking down from an elevated place. To many people it is an inapproachable feat but when you’ve trained to make it almost effortless it’s such a bliss.

But that’s thinking “bodyweight movement” for strength. You know, holding a simple deep squat, and be super relaxed in that position and hold it for a long time, this is maybe the simplest, most enjoyable human movement and position of all. How many people out there can fully squat and hold it minutes in a perfectly relaxed state? There is more to a functional, competent body than just the impressive stuff that demands strength or power.

Al Kavadlo is a master of the muscle-up!

Paul Wade: Actually, “muscle-up” still seems like a strange name to me—in jail, these were called “sentry pull-ups,” which kinda makes a little more sense!

Do you use progressions in your teaching? (For example, beginning with easier push-ups on the knees, and moving to one-arm push-ups.) If so, could you give us an example?

Erwan Le Corre: Of course! Do you seriously think I’d take a completely deconditioned person (I call them “zoo-humans”) in the woods and say, have them walk in balance across a fallen tree trunk above a raging river? That would be criminal! Where should people start? They start not in natural, unpredictable and complex environments but in controlled, or at least managed environments that are predictable and safe. Or else you don’t have a coaching and physical education system, you have no system and you’re a jackass.

So I place a 2×4 wood beam on the ground and voila, here you go, you’ve got an environment with basic, entry level of complexity but that does challenge the beginner. It demands not just “balance” but “balancing skills” and you start practicing safely and progressively that way. Another example, before you train muscle-ups you train explosive pull-ups, before you train explosive pull-ups you train regular pull-ups, before you train regular pull-ups you train a variety of hangs and hanging traverses (the “side-swing traverse”) etc…

The priority is always the establishment of movement quality and efficiency through technical work. Then you gradually increase volume, intensity and complexity. Gray Cook puts it simply like this, “First move well, then move often.” In most cases motor-skills and conditioning will develop symbiotically. Depending on the movement, and/or the environment complexity, a physical action may demand more motor-control, or more strength and conditioning. I’ve addressed this earlier but I like to hammer it because it is so important. So the way you train sometimes involves both aspects, or may dissociate them. I’ve seen guys who could do tons of pull-ups but were unable to climb on top of the horizontal bar, I mean even after trying a few times. No amount of general conditioning can compensate for a lack of motor-control and technical skill. An hour later they could climb on top 6 different ways after learning the techniques.

I also have seen guys who could do tons of pull-ups unable to climb a horizontal bar even with technical instruction, do you know why? Because the bar was too thick, smooth and slippery for them and they couldn’t hang to it very long, let alone attempting to just pull themselves up, as they simply didn’t have the necessary grip strength to do so. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and not amount of technical instruction will compensate for a lack specific conditioning or strength. And if you want to know, all these guys were highly trained CrossFitters. Take the test I mentioned above and see how it goes. If it doesn’t go as well as you thought it would, you have two options:

– re-assess the way you train (and maybe the reason you train), and modify your training regimen consequently. Maybe take a MovNat course or certification workshop.

– just forget about it and get back to your routine.

Paul Wade: Erwan, so far I am surprised by how much your thinking has in common with what I would call the “old school calisthenics” approach to training—you make a throwaway comment “you are only as strong as your weakest link,” but very few people will realize how important that understanding really is.

What’s your personal training regime like now, in brief? How many days per week?

Erwan Le Corre: I rely on my intuition. Not everyone is endowed with good intuition about themselves, their body and what’s the best way to train, I am fortunate that I’ve got a lot of experience and I know myself well, I have explored many training modalities and mastered a few. I’m also opportunistic. If I am somewhere with water I might swim, if I’m in a gym my training will be slightly different, or in nature, or at a martial art academy, depending on what a particular place has to offer. Personally, routines are not my cup of tea, but this being said routines and programs are very important for beginners, or when you have a very specific objective, like an event you want to participate in and you want to kick ass, or at least survive. Programming IS part of MovNat. It’s just that at the moment, my training doesn’t follow a particular structure. It’s free, intuitive and opportunistic, and I am mostly maintaining a decent general level of skills and conditioning. It can change tomorrow and I can decide to structure my training again, with particular goals. There’s no rule. I also want to say that it is very important to manage health for longevity.

Bodyweight-based training can be opportunistic—use whatever is around you to build your skills and abilities.

There’s only so much your body can take. Aging is real. You can’t prevent it, but you can decide how fast it goes, and avoid poor lifestyle choices that make you age even faster. Overtraining and under-recovery participate in aging faster, including uncomfortable symptoms such as joint pain etc…At almost 42 I am fortunate that I experience so far very limited symptoms like that, and it has to do with the way I train, in term of movement quality but also the way I treat my body overall. If I were to tell you I train X number of days a week, or X number of hours, or X number of sets and reps, does it actually mean something THAT objective? What is the quality of each movement performed? At what intensity? How prepared is my body? How do I recover? How do I treat myself? You know the latter questions only seem more subjective, but IMO they are actually more objective than any indication of numbers. The body doesn’t know anything about numbers. It only knows about movement patterns and sensations. How you FEEL should be your number one indicator or adequate training and practice. Feel amazing and don’t settle for less. You’ve got one life. At the end of your journey you will have forgotten all the details and numbers of your programs. But you will never forget how they made you feel.

Paul Wade: An amazing attitude—a lot of advanced guys think the same way.

Guys like Demenÿ and Hébert believed that an athlete should have mastery of their body in any environment—underwater, on rough terrain, even high above the ground. You are known for having performed some very unusual feats in this tradition. (For example, Erwan famously had a sit-up competition with Jean Haberey, while both men were hanging from a bridge over an eight-lane superhighway!) Could you tell us some of the thinking behind this please?

Erwan Le Corre: I think lots of people lack motivation to exercise because the purpose behind it is either unclear or too superficial. It can be unclear when you’re aiming at general aspects of “fitness” but without ever really assessing their transferability to real use. Because of this vagueness, you need to focus on something that is more tangible to you, like number of sets and reps. That may be rational in some way, but your mind needs something more substantial and real to be really excited. My mind at least, and that which of people who train with us. Superficial goals like a better looking body are legit, but they are not deeply satisfying.

So I’m not saying that having specific goals that can be measured is unimportant, it actually is very important for a number of reasons, such as assessing progress, the effectiveness of a program and motivation for instance. All I am saying is that when there’s a truly practical goal in mind, let’s say I’m going be able to carry somebody on my back a whole mile, or I am going to train to hold my breath 3 minutes straight so I could dive and rescue someone if needed, or I will become fast at running so I could escape a threatening situation swiftly…you see, these are practical goals. The indications of the one mile firefighter carry or the 3 minutes breath hold only matter because the objectives are practical performance, but if you remove that and just look at “one mile” or “3 minutes” then it doesn’t mean much anymore.

The practical goals go beyond the current perception of what is “functional.” You step on a bosu and do rotational lunges and that’s functional. Fair enough. But what actual practical physical action are you performing? If it is not clear in your mind what you’re trying to replicate, then you might get bored very soon because it won’t click in the back of your head. Practical goals give you, and your training, a deeper sense of purpose, that increases and maintains your drive to exercise hard and consistently. Because you want to acquire real-world physical competency, or to maintain it. You want to know what you are capable of, what you are made of. There’s a sense of reality and realism that is undeniable. You can walk the streets with the self-confidence of a person who knows they won’t be completely helpless to themselves and others if a difficult situation arises. Be useful, know you are. This is a great feeling!

Paul Wade: What, in your opinion, is the biggest barrier to fitness in the modern age?

Erwan Le Corre: Mentalities. There are gyms everywhere, parks everywhere, nature, cities. There are millions of fitness videos online for people who seek motivation, and books or trainers for those who seek knowledge or guidance. But the sad reality is that the average Joe and Jane are real “zoo-humans.” Why on Earth would they even want to move or exercise? Why such a physical punishment when you can be comfy at home and hide your physical suffering with pills and entertainment? Comfort is weakening, but people seem happy to be soft, they joke about it, every TV commercial makes people laugh about useless, helpless human beings who are completely disempowered. There’s a global culture of voluntary disempowerment. It is both a mass-condition and a mass-conditioning.

Bodyweight fitness is about more than strength and huge muscles. How is your running? Your climbing, your swimming?

Change this mentality and you will have legions of people who realize that exercising, especially moving in natural ways, is not a chore, not a punishment, not an option, but an expression of their most beautiful human nature. It belongs to all of us regardless of what makes us different. It has the potential to bring us all together. I want to awake in a world crowded with self-actualized, self-empowered individuals. Instead I wake up in a world crowded with dormant minds and lazy, soft bodies. The people who train physically and want to stay healthy and strong within a society that is sick and weak are modern heroes. They may not want to be part of an elite, but in some way they are. But my point is the opposite of trying to create elites. It is rather that everyone would be liberated and empowered. I have created MovNat with this vision in mind. It is quite the romantic, utopian and delusional vision, yet I am innocent enough to believe a change will take place. In my inner world, the change is taking place NOW.

Paul Wade: Wise words, my man. Are there any long-standing myths about strength and fitness training you would like to see vanish from the face of the earth?

Erwan Le Corre: Probably the idea that all there is to fitness and building a body is to grow bigger muscles. It is not really a myth but an overwhelmingly common perception. There is more to building a body than building muscles, and there is more to building a human being than building its body. To me fitness is the level of your energy at every level, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. This is old school, in the sense that the ancient Greeks thought like that, all the main pioneers of physical education in Europe all thought like that. They didn’t seclude themselves to a purely physical realm. They wanted people to be whole. The mainstream, commercial fitness industry has absolutely no interest in you thinking like that. You don’t make much money on self-actualized people, that’s why.

Paul Wade: You have been called The World’s Fittest Man due to your wide-range of abilities. Any final tips from the World’s Fittest Man?

Erwan Le Corre: This is one of the myths you were mentioning earlier and that needs to be debunked. Christopher McDougall, NYT Best-seller author for “Born To Run” has written in a article he wrote for Men’s Health a few years ago that I may rank as one of the fittest men on the planet. Well, it all depends on what criteria. Few people, I admit, are able to follow me in my “world” and keep up with every type of physical challenge they could encounter, on any terrain. I’ve met many inspiring specialized athletes that all could kick my ass in their specific field of predilection. I’ve met guys who are generalists, like high level CrossFitters, but who forget that reality is specific and that specific training is required for every aspect of competency you want to be ready for. But don’t be mistaken. I couldn’t care less about competition and rankings. I’m not here to prove anything, but to embody my philosophy and spread the MovNat system. All I hope is that MovNat will produce many “fittest guy on Earth.” Most importantly, just train smart and hard and become YOUR fittest, this is what truly matters. The rest is just ego. Don’t neglect areas of your physical competence and potential and leave them under-developed. It’s really a loss for yourself. Become the fittest you can be in all areas of natural human movement is probably the best tip I can share.

MovNat students learn to use their bodies in different environments—not just in an air-conditioned gym!

Paul Wade: Erwan, you are a phenomenal example of natural fitness! Thanks for your time.

Erwan Le Corre: Compliment taken. You’re not bad yourself! Resiliency is a beautiful thing. I want to tell people this: whatever you thought or told yourself you were, whatever you are or were told you are, it doesn’t matter anymore the moment you decide to redefine and remodel yourself into the most self-actualized person you can. ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Because if you can’t empower yourself…who will?

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Erwan Le Corre is the founder of MovNat. To find out more about his training approach, head on over to http://www.movnat.com/.

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Erwan Le Corre talks Bodyweight – Part I

July 30, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 14 Comments

Erwin_pic5 — **Erwan Le Corre is the founder of MovNat.**

Erwan Le Corre is an icon in modern fitness. Men’s Health once declared that he ranked amongst the fittest men in the world. Whatever your personal definition of “fitness”, Erwan undeniably has an amazing pedigree; in fact he is considered by many researchers to be the modern-day inheritor of the French Physical Education tradition.

Erwan spent his childhood exploring the countryside and training in the martial arts. He went on to become the most famous protégé of Jean Haberey, the notorious French stuntman and athlete. Haberey’s students met at night, and climbed bridges, ran and jumped across the urban skyline, and fought hand-to-hand in sewers. Haberey‘s underground society—dubbed Combat Vital—is widely considered to be an important forerunner of the modern bodyweight arts parkour and free running.

After seven years, Erwan left Combat Vital, and plunged into an intense period of in-depth research into traditional training methods. The result of these years of study and experiment was MovNat, Erwan’s physical education and fitness system which promotes authentic, natural movement through activities such as running, crawling, climbing and swimming.

Paul “Coach” Wade (author of Convict Conditioning) recently got the chance to ask Erwan his opinion on all things bodyweight, on behalf of the PCC community. The two-part interview that follows presents a unique insight into Erwan’s radical—and powerful—training philosophy. Erwan goes in-depth and pulls no punches, telling us exactly what is right with modern training—and also what’s very, very wrong.

If you are interested in bodyweight strength or movement training, you do not want to miss this!

Paul Wade: Erwan, thanks for agreeing to answer a few questions. Many people see you as the modern inheritor of a long tradition of “natural” physical culture.

Who is your all-time hero in physical culture, and why?

Erwan Le Corre: Paul thanks for inviting me, it’s appreciated.

First off I would like to dissociate Physical Culture on the one hand and Physical Education on the other. Historically there is some overlap between the two, but physical culture was mainly orientated towards feats of strength and the development of sculptural physiques. The term “culturist” comes from it, and is the forerunner of modern bodybuilding. Think Eugen Sandow or P.H. Clias for instance, the “Arnolds” of their time. I’m not saying they were not physical educators in some way, but in this regard there is, in my opinion, more substance to find when looking at the history of Physical Education.

Physical educators of the past had at heart the complete physical development of young people and the general population. So their aim was not just strength or sculptural physiques as in Physical Culture, but a more harmonious, general, and practical development of the body and mind. The type of “gymnastics” and “calisthenics” they promoted had not so much to do with a modern approach to gymnastics and calisthenics, in the sense that a lot of the training was based on practical skills. Movement skills practice such as jumping, running, climbing, throwing, carrying etc…were not done just for aesthetics, and not just for general physical conditioning through bodyweight exercise. The approach was way more practical, with exercises strongly resembling real-world physical actions and apparatus mimicking the environmental and situational demands of the real-world (there was also often a strong correlation with military needs and nationalistic ideas).

So of course my personal, all-time hero is the famous French physical education pioneer Georges Hebert. The reason is that he did emphasize utilitarian training as well as contact with nature like I do. He’s my big inspiration, though not the only one. But the history of physical education doesn’t start or end with him. There were wonderful other pioneers before him (who did strongly inspire Hebert, such as Amoros or Jahn), and there are quite competent innovators that came after him too. Sorry for the discourse in Physical Education history in Europe, I hope more people start to understand that “functional fitness” didn’t start with kettlebells or modern calisthenics. There’s a LONG line of people before us and a long history of methods, systems and programs. There’s nothing new under the sun!

Erwin_pic1 — A rare physique shot of Georges Herbert (1875-1957). Herbert developed bodyweight assault courses for the military which were later dubbed ‘parcours du combattan’ —the path/course of the warrior.

Paul Wade: There’s no doubt about it—you’re right, there’s nothing new in physical training. Nothing good, anyway! Let’s look a little at how you go about “Physical Education”. A lot of MovNat seems to be based around moving the body in different ways. “Body competency” seems to be a huge part of what you and MovNat are about. Could you tell us a little about your philosophy of bodyweight training?

Erwan Le Corre: Well, prepare for a lengthy answer! MovNat is based around moving the human body in all the ways that are natural to it. To understand what “natural” entails from our perspective, you want to imagine a wild human animal, maybe one of our common ancestors, or one of the remaining ancestral hunter-gatherers, moving through natural environments for survival. Having to seize opportunities while avoiding threats. Unless they’re resting, playing or dancing, the movements they will have to perform are all PRACTICAL; they aim at doing something immediately useful in a variety of situations of the real life. Secondly they are ADAPTABLE, they must adapt to the physical environment where you are.

This simple observation has a lot to do with the way we approach physical training in MovNat. First off we focus on the practicality of the movements we train. For instance performing a “human flag” does have value from a bodyweight strength standpoint, but not so much from a practical standpoint; therefore it may be trained occasionally as part of your overall physical experience and background. Comparatively, significantly more attention and energy will be dedicated to actually practical climbing techniques, for instance a “tuck pop-up”, or climbing strength and conditioning movements, for instance the “forearm pull-up” which is the discrete component of the “tuck pop-up” that requires more power.

Erwin_pic2 — **There’s more than one way to pull yourself up—if you have the strength. How many methods have you explored?**

Environmental adaptability is the second main pillar of our philosophy. If you train a given jumping technique, say a broad jump, you are not just considering the strength gain and other physiological adaptations by training this movement at a greater volume or intensity. You are also looking at finely tuning your motor-control skills by increasing environmental complexity. Greater environmental complexity means a physical environment that becomes progressively more challenging. This can be starting first by jumping at ground level on a flat floor, then landing on a flat but restricted surface (still at ground level), then jumping from and/or landing on a small, slightly elevated surface, and ultimately performing a similar jumping technique but at a height, landing on a narrow, uneven surface, and potentially involving a danger in case of a fall.

That’s an example of progression in (environmental) complexity, without necessarily an increase in volume or intensity. The movement pattern remains the same, the volume and intensity too, but you must finely tune your motor-control if you want to be both effective (doing it successfully) and efficient (with minimal energy expenditure, in the shortest time, in a mentally relaxed state etc…). You see there is more to greater performance than just volume and intensity. When you add to the mix the necessity to increase movement adaptability, you open a whole new world of possibilities and challenges. It can be intimidating to those who prefer not challenging their comfort zone too much, but it is going to thrill those who want optimum preparedness for the real world. No extra amount of general conditioning will ever compensate for a lack of motor-skills and adaptability.

Erwin_pic3 — **“No extra amount of general conditioning will ever compensate for a lack of motor-skills and adaptability.” –Erwan Le Corre**

So yes, physical competency to us is movement competence and to develop it you need motor-skills, strength and other aspects of conditioning. This being said, we are not restricted to bodyweight. To us bodyweight just means locomotive skills such as running, jumping, crawling, balancing, climbing etc…i.e., moving your body through various environments. Sometimes, you need to move both your body and an external object, and your bodyweight movement becomes a manipulative action against greater resistance if for instance you’re lifting and carrying something heavy, and this is practical and adaptable training too.

I like to tell people, especially the big dudes who are mostly focused on strength and lifting heavy, that before they moving “heavy s**t”, they must be able to move the “heavy s**t” that they are. They usually get it because the heavier you get in bodyweight, the more difficult it can become to move your body with complex movements and through complex environments. They know it and can feel it inside, so it is hard to argue with something that just makes sense.

So physical competency starts with being to move your own body skillfully before anything else. My good friend Gray Cook says, “Don’t add strength to dysfunction” and he is so damn right. This simple common-sense is probably what led him to create the CK-FMS, so that kettlebell practitioners who primarily focus on the external load, manipulative side of exercise, would rediscover fundamental human movements and positions. After fixing basic dysfunctions they can better put their strength to use, or develop even more strength once they got rid of physical limitations, such as lacking full range of mobility. Move your body skillfully first, then skillfully move stuff around, not the other way around.

Paul Wade: I am in agreement with this, completely. It’s ridiculous how many people I see trying to squat with loaded barbells when they can’t even squat properly with their own bodyweight. A lot of the older generations of lifters and bodybuilders (pre-1960s) all did bodyweight work before, and alongside their weighted training to keep these essential skills at a high level.

Your attitude to “practical” movements is really interesting. These days, people are beginning to realize that calisthenics is about more than formal exercises like push-ups and sit-ups; bodyweight training can encompass a massive range of activities including “natural” exercises like crawling, balancing, jumping, and so on. I tend to think that both these types of bodyweight work—the formal/systematic, and the free/natural—work really well side-by-side in a training program.

What kind of role do more formal, traditional exercises (e.g., pull-ups, push-ups, bodyweight squats) have in your method?

Erwan Le Corre: People start rediscovering movement as whole, and there’s a slow shift of perception and paradigm towards a more movement-based approach to fitness. So far movements, usually basic, segmental and mechanistic movements have been used for the purpose of muscle building, strength or conditioning. With MovNat the approach is different, as the purpose of movement is movement itself, or movement competency if you prefer.

Muscles and joints are the tools, much less a finality. This being said, to perform practical movements effectively you do need a functional body that is also conditioned and strong. You will need full range of mobility, stability and strength, power, coordination, endurance, spatial awareness (proprioception and exteroception), and so on.

To answer your question more specifically, most formal strength and conditioning drills such as pull-ups have their place in our method all simply because they ARE natural movements too. Let me explain, what exactly is a pull-up? From a classic strength and conditioning standpoint it is an upper body strength conditioning drill. From a MovNat standpoint, it is a climbing movement. If you hang for instance to a horizontal tree branch and that you pull your body up, the end-goal is most likely that you intend to actually climb on top, right? You see, the movement itself hasn’t changed, but the intention and purpose have, as well as your perception of the drill. It is replacing movement in its original practical context. The strengthening value of the pull-up drill is the same, and we will practice it to develop upper body strength in the trunk, arms, shoulders, abs, forearms etc…so we can condition for more complex climbing techniques. Where our approach will differ is that we will try perform various practical ways to pull-up, for instance hanging from a much thicker surface or a flat surface, pulling hanging from your forearms (we call it “forearm pull-up”) etc…so we can adapt to specific environmental demands with effectiveness and efficiency. This is why for instance a “chin-up” (supinated grip) has much less value to us than a “pull-up” (pronated grip) chin to the bar or higher. Why? Because if you think climbing a horizontal surface and pull your body up chin to the bar, what do you do next? That’s right, you’re forced to bring each arm behind and over the bar so you can keep climbing. It is a waste of time and energy, it is inefficient.

Erwin_pic4 — **Calisthenics strength and bodyweight movement skills can work together well. PCC Lead Instructor Al Kavadlo is famous for his ability on the bar, but trees don’t pose a problem for him either!**

You see, just being good at pull-ups won’t necessarily translate to effectiveness or efficiency in every climbing movement or surface. It is important and even essential, but not sufficient at all. The reason is that both motor-skill and conditioning need specific training and adaptation. Think SAID principle, i.e., Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. This is why we don’t believe in just training in a (usually) short selection of general conditioning drills, because the “reality of reality” is that more specific demands can be placed upon you and your body won’t respond effectively and/or efficiently unless it has been trained to perform specifically. To us, “GPP” (general physical preparedness) programs do work, but work only to an extent. Contrary to a common belief, our observation is that they do not prepare you for “anything”, and people with a GPP training background who come train with us realize this. Within seconds or minutes. Again, most people don’t just lack techniques and motor-control, and MovNat is not just that (a set of techniques), they also lack specific conditioning and MovNat also addresses specific conditioning (not specialized conditioning).

I hope it all makes sense! If people in your audience want to understand this approach from an experiential standpoint, I invite them to find a bar that is about 4 inches thick (such as these metal structures for swings in kid’s playgrounds) and perform these 2 tests:

-max reps (pronated grip) pull-ups (compare to max reps with regular pull-up bar). If the number is significantly lower than what you can normally do, you lack grip strength. Isn’t it part of strength conditioning?

-starting from a full dead-hang (no motion at all), climb on top of the bar until you can straddle on top of it. You can’t jump off the ground, you can’t pull on something else than the bar itself, you can’t push off anything with your feet (like the vertical poles on the side). How many ways can you climb on top? How many ways do you know, and how many ways can you actually perform? For each technique you’ve used, how easy and efficient was it? If you couldn’t climb on top once, maybe you lack technique and motor-control, maybe you lack specific strength and conditioning, or maybe a combination of both. Same answer if you could only succeed climbing on top using one particular movement. You should be able to use 3 different ways at least, and ideally all 6 ways we teach in MovNat.

Next week we’ll post part II of this interview, where Erwan talks about his approach to training progressions, motor skills, training longevity, and debunks longstanding training myths—plus much more. Not to be missed!

***

Erwan Le Corre is the founder of MovNat. To find out more about his training approach, head on over to http://www.movnat.com/.

***

Five for 5

May 28, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 46 Comments

Summer is knocking at the door, boys and girls. (Allegedly.) Everyone is outside, hanging out in the golden rays, whiling their hours away in sun-soaked fun and romantic adventure. (Allegedly.) Summer lovin’. It’s like a scene from Grease, I tells ya. And why the hell not? A spell in the sunshine promotes Vitamin D synthesis, improves mood, and boosts immunity. It may even increase lean tissue-building testosterone levels. (Allegedly.)

Seriously, there are some times you want to lock yourself away in your cell and perform hours and hours of calisthenics—and there are times you definitely don’t. There are times you want to get a quick, productive workout under your belt, so you can go out and enjoy life instead. For a lotta folks, summer is one of those times.

My hands are up, officer; I’ve been guilty of long, draining, excessive workouts throughout my career. But I have also experimented with very brief, efficient, training sessions—and I want to share a few of the tactics I’ve personally used for super-short workouts. Specifically, I’m gonna give you five types of session that will keep your motivation high, keep you strong, flexible and tough—and all for the temporal investment of a mere five minutes. (Yeah, you read that right. Five minutes.)

I want you crazy kids to enjoy summer. Think you can’t get a viable training session done in five minutes? Read on, Macduff.

The S4 Method

This right here is my personal favorite strategy for a quick, effective workout. It’s simple, too—provided you can view a clock or wristwatch. For any movement or body-part, you warm up, then perform: a minute of a strict bodyweight strength exercise; a 60 second muscular hold for stamina and control; a minute of a fast calisthenics exercise; and a final stretch. (Strength, Stamina, Speed and Stretch—four “S” qualities. S4, get it?)

So the method looks like this:

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How quick and simple is that? You just knock out each of these for one full minute. Non-stop activity, with no rest in-between exercises. That’s it!

If you think this is not effective, I challenge you to try it. Here’s how it might work for midsection. You warm up for a minute with some abdominal tension, leg swings and hip rolling; then—eye on the clock—jump up and grab the overhead bar. For sixty seconds you grind out slow, smooth, perfect leg raises. (Ten reps is about right, champ.)

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By now, you are grimacing—but you still got some life in ya, right? So drop to the floor and press out into an L-hold—now stay there for sixty seconds.

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By the end of this (if you manage it) your legs will be trembling, and your gut will be in agony. But the show ain’t over, bud. Hook your feet under something; you have one minute to pump out as many bent-leg sit-ups as you can stomach. (Pun intended.) You are going for speed—military style.

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USCMC image (LCpl Esteban Gallegos)

By now your midsection is spent, and you will be pretty much snapping up using everything you have. The minute—which will seem endless—finishes, somehow. Your body just wants to curl up in pain right now, but I want you to do the opposite—roll onto your stomach and straighten your arms, pushing up into a cobra stretch.

paul_pic5

This hold is a strange mix of relaxing—as it decompresses your confused and tangled, deep-fried muscles—and painful, as the time mounts up. One minute of this, and you walk out a free citizen—if you can walk at all!

Sure, this workout is too tough for most athletes. But as with all progressive calisthenics, you can tailor it to your own level. Can’t do leg raises? Knee raises or lying leg raises. Not loved by the L-hold yet? Bent-leg holds or jackknife holds work the same. Too shot to do the sit-ups? Throw a b-ball at the wall and catch it on the rebound for a minute (an underrated gut exercise).

Even the time aspect is variable. A minute is unthinkable for these exercises? Start with 30 seconds for each and build up a few seconds each session.

The S4 method works with pretty much anything. Want some upper-body push action?

paul_pic6

Again, with the PCC “toolbox” you can vary the difficulty in dozens of ways. For example, beginners might sub dips for kneeling push-ups. The elbow lever could be swapped for easier prone statics like planks, wall planks or raised elbow levers (see the PCC Instructor’s Manual for even more options). Fast push-ups could be subbed for incline push-ups, focusing on pumping out rapid-fire reps in the top range. Stretch out on a doorway for an easier pec stretch.

S4 works for legs, too:

paul_pic7

If you are working on unilateral or asymmetrical exercises, it’s best to alternate sides each rep. Again, you can use different difficulty levels, or different techniques—S4 stands a lot of tweaking.

Strength, control, speed and mobility. That’s three simple, five-minute workouts right there that very few advanced athletes could manage—trust me.

Gear Change Sets

Fancy a change? A workout new and fresh, free from the baggage of your long-term program? It’s a good idea to try novel exercises. It’s another cool idea to change your sets and reps. But how many athletes think about radically changing their speed? Or, how about changing your speed as much as possible…in a single set?

This is the basic idea behind Gear Change sets. You begin with a handful of slow-mo reps, and finish with a bunch of max speed reps. There are many ways you can approach this. A great one is to shoot for 4 slo-mo reps—that’s 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down—immediately followed by a minute’s worth of a very high-speed, explosive exercise for the same body-part. For example, after 4 slo-mo squats, I used to perform tuck jumps for a minute (if you are outside, a maximum speed run for 60 seconds is probably even better).

So here’s a potential Gear Change workout for the legs:

paul_pic8

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Ever combined slo-mo squats with running? Murder.

Pick the right movements for your ability, and you have an amazing five minute body-part workout right there. But for Christ’s sake, always start each slo-mo rep at the bottom—or you may find yourself doing a 30 second negative squat you cannot push up out of. Slo-mo reps are tough, so don’t try slo-mo with an exercise unless you can do at least twenty strict reps with it at regular speed.

The method works for any body-part. For midsection, you could follow 4 slo-mo leg raises with squat thrusts for 60 seconds. After slo-mo push-ups or pull-ups, you might apply a minute of intense bag work or shadow boxing. You get the idea.

This slow-to-fast method is an amazing way to train. Through the complete elimination of momentum, the slow moves are tougher than you imagine (until you try ‘em). They just seem to hit the muscles in a new way, activating deeper fibers we don’t reach by bouncing mindlessly through reps, like so many folks seem to do. Very slow reps also really teach your brain something about the movements you are using; leverage, joint tracking, movement angles, weight shift. Subtle qualities of bodyweight motion, easy to miss at regular speed, now scream at you. When you are done with them, your muscles feel totally numb—and asking them to switch to their highest gear is a true challenge.

The Gear Change set also replicates real life. There would have been times when our ancient ancestors had to move very slow with high tension—maybe dragging a carcass back to the cave—then they were forced to suddenly fight off a predator trying to steal their prize. Slow to fast. Survival today is no different; imagine a soldier in the desert carrying heavy weapons or equipment, suddenly having to run for cover in a firefight.

Don’t get me wrong. Gear Change sets (like the other ideas here) are not meant to form the basis of your long-term training program. But they sure are fun, effective and instructive once in a while.

The H.P.A.S. Protocol

This is a beaut of a workout. I’m gonna call it HPAS, coz “Half Pyramid Antagonistic Super-sets” is too hard to say (at least for me). The premise—as always—is real straightforward. Pick two exercises for opposing muscle groups. Begin by doing each for 10 reps, then each for 9 reps, then 8 reps and so on, until you get down to one rep per set—and you do all this without stopping.

Here’s one potential workout:

paul_pic10

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Few exercises go together better than regular push-ups and Aussie pull-ups.

Back to back antagonistic superset madness! On sale NOW!!

Can all this be done in five minutes?—if you use brisk reps with no pauses, yeah. But it’s not easy, and most folks will have to seriously build up to this. (There’s a good goal, huh? I’m looking at you, Jack.)

The HPAS Protocol is a perfect example of how short sessions can be both powerful and productive. Very popular in jails. If you can follow the above workout, you will have scorched every muscle in your upper bod, knocked out 20 sets, and got a helluva cardio workout, too.

This workout is proof that you don’t need to be in the gym for hours to make progress. In calisthenics—as in life—it’s quality that counts, not quantity. A hundred thousand rhinestones won’t make you rich, son; but a handful of diamonds sure will.

“The Century”

The Century is the rapidly-becoming-classic PCC certification test. It is designed to display technical ability in combination with an advanced level of conditioning, but it can also be a damn fine workout in its own right. In case you haven’t heard of The Century (where you been, dude? Under a rock?!), it’s so-called coz it features one-hundred nonstop reps in a single set:

paul_pic13

PCC-certified super-achievers will probably be sick of training for The Century, but it’s still a good staple to return to from time-to-time. Not only is it great to get back to the basics, but a hundred reps of the good stuff will leave your circulation and energetic system supercharged.

Beware though—if you want to crack this sucker in five minutes, you better have taken some Super Soldier Serum this week, kid. It can be done, though.

Al Kavadlo owns The Century in under 2 minutes 39 seconds.
Can you come close to that?

The Bridge

One final suggestion. You want the best five minute bodyweight workout money can buy? Hold a bridge for five minutes.

paul_pic14

I’m not kidding. The bridge has so many benefits, it’s crazy. It is the best bodyweight exercise in the world. A long hold will increase total-body strength and endurance—not just in the showy muscles, but in the vital deep tissues and tendons. It will increase flexibility, mobilize the ribcage, hip flexors and stomach wall, and disperse adhesions and calcifications in the shoulders. It bulletproofs the spine and lower back and drastically reduces knee pain. The inverse head position increases circulation to the noggin, releasing endorphins, inducing calm, and improving brain health. The bridge rocks.

I know what you’re thinking. Just one exercise? That’s an imbalanced workout, for sure! No way, José. In the real world, most eager athletes do so much for the front of their bodies—the showy pecs, biceps, abs and quads—that throwing a little extra meat to the under-loved posterior chain cannot hurt one bit.

Besides, the bridge is one of the all-time bodyweight classics, no different from pushups, squats or pull-ups. If you can’t hold a bridge for five minutes, there’s no way you can call yourself in great shape, no matter what else you can do.

Lights Out!

There you go—a killer series of five-minute summer training tactics, just for you.

So, what are your plans tonight, buttercup? What’s that? In a little while, you’re gonna eat, grab a shower, then head out for the evening?

Sounds great!

…before that, you’ve got five minutes to spare for old Coach, right?

My thanks go out to Al Kavadlo (PCC Lead Instructor) for generously contributing such cool pics to illustrate this article. This is not the first time Al has donated pics (and advice) for free to promote the bodyweight cause—thanks Al!

***

About Paul “Coach” Wade: Paul 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 Tao of PCC by Paul Wade

March 12, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 57 Comments

I am the man who wrote the book, Convict Conditioning. I am not a perfect man, and my book is not a perfect book; but I hope that when people judge the book, they will say that it got much more right than it got wrong.

They certainly couldn’t say that about the man.

Without improving, evolving, moving forwards, we are nothing. There is no standing still in life—you are either moving forward, or you are losing ground. That’s why I was so excited to be able to contribute to PCC. There is no doubt in my mind that PCC will do for bodyweight training what the RKC has done for kettlebells. And that would be incredible.

A lot of folks have asked me how PCC will be different from Convict Conditioning. I can sum that up in one word: KAVADLO. Al Kavadlo is, for my money, the greatest progressive bodyweight training coach on earth. PCC, as a total system, is much bigger than Convict Conditioning alone because it has been expanded by Al’s methods, tools and tactics. His “new-school” has met my “old-school”, and PCC is the result. PCC is as much Al’s baby as mine—maybe more so. It is flat out false to assume that the PCC is just a “Convict Conditioning cert”. People who love Convict Conditioning will love PCC, because Convict Conditioning forms just a part of PCC. But PCC is more than just Convict Conditioning.

Much more!

PCC: A Black Belt in Bodyweight

Perhaps the most important difference between PCC and Convict Conditioning is the fact that PCC is about principles, not techniques. Convict Conditioning is very easy for athletes to pick up and understand, because it presents six groups of ten techniques. PCC goes deeper than this. Anyone who has ever studied a martial art knows that they need to learn scores of techniques to achieve a black belt; but the closer you get to true mastery, the more you come to understand that it’s not the techniques that matter—nobody can remember a hundred techniques in a fight. What matters are the principles you absorb.

PCC is like this; you will drill and explore dozens of key techniques at the cert workshop; and the PCC Instructor’s Manual analyzes and illustrates over one-hundred and fifty exercises! But at the heart of PCC are the principles of bodyweight progression. Once you grasp these principles, you can make any calisthenics exercise progressive: from a rehab level, right up to epic Bruce Lee-level bad-assery. This is what it’s all about. Some people have accused Convict Conditioning of being too dogmatic; too rigid. Nobody could say the same about PCC, because it’s based on principles, not set exercises paired with progression standards. There is so much more flexibility built in.

(By Giga Paitchadze – Creative Commons License)

Though they play an important role in the early stage, the techniques should not be too mechanical, complex or restrictive. If we cling blindly to them, we shall eventually become bound by their limitations. —Bruce Lee

The punches and kicks—the 14 chains

A martial artist seeks to absorb principles, but he or she can only absorb the general by accumulating the specific—lots and lots of individual punches, kicks, throws, etc. The road to calisthenics mastery ain’t no different. Bodyweight athletes still need to learn individual techniques. They still need to learn about chains—i.e., technical progression sequences. It’s important to note that the fundamental movement-types in Convict Conditioning are all still present in the PCC system; however they have been expanded and added to. The seven fundamental movement chains in PCC are:

1. Push-ups—building to—one-arm push-ups

2. Pull-ups—building to—one-arm pull-ups

3. Handstand push-ups—building to—full handstand push-ups (between chairs)

4. Horizontal pull-ups—building to—“torquers” (one-arm, one-leg Australian pull-ups)

5. Dips—building up to—strict muscle-ups

6. Leg-raises—building to—strict rollovers

7. Squats—building to—wushu pistols

Anyone who knows Convict Conditioning well will see that all the major movements are here (save bridges, which I’ll address in a sec). Two new movement chains have been added to the system; the first is the horizontal pull-up. The basic form of this exercise will be well (and painfully) known by Convict Conditioning exponents, but here the progressions have been jacked up to an advanced level to add more symmetry to upper-body work (the vertical handstand push-ups and vertical pull-ups are antagonistic opposites; now the horizontal push-up has an antagonistic “buddy” in the horizontal pull-up). Complete dip progressions—missing from CC—have also been included, with these culminating in one of the most popular of Al’s bar moves: the uber-cool muscle-up (known as a sentry pull-up to CCers).

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The muscle-up—part pull-up, part dip—is an advanced technique in the PCC dipping chain.

Where CC progressions can still be found in the PCC system, they are often approached differently, thanks to Al’s input. For example hanging straight leg raises are real popular in jails: but we got the feedback from athletes on the outside that they were just too easy. So we have expanded and advanced the progressions, making the advanced techniques much, much harder. One-leg squats have also been made harder. Everything is at a higher turn of the spiral. More progression options have been included for pull-ups and push-ups. Extra handstand pushups variations have been included.

As I have said, the PCC system is much larger than Convict Conditioning. Convict Conditioning is really about building raw muscle and motive power by utilizing fairly basic, fairly brutal, pulling, pushing and leg movements. But bodyweight strength training is about more than that—static holds, for example. Whereas Convict Conditioning didn’t include full progressions for static holds, PCC does. The system includes 7 static chains:

1. Press holds—building to—the elbow lever

2. Midsection holds—building to—the L-hold

3. Bridge holds—building to—the gecko bridge

4. Handstands—building to—the frog-press handstand

5. The back lever—building to—the full back lever

6. The front lever—building to—the full front lever

7. The side lever—building to—the press flag

That’s a pretty damn impressive roll-call of techniques: and very few men or women outside of professional gymnastics could complete all seven. Fewer still could assimilate or teach chains for all seven. But this knowledge is part of the PCC system thanks to Al’s know-how, and has been integrated into PCC because I’ve been asked so often about these holds; athletes want to learn about old school hand-balancing, flags, elbow levers, and so on. Fans of bridges wanted to know how I would include them as a form of static hold. All this is contained in the PCC system. This doesn’t mean you can’t begin using these “holds” as “moves”—levering up from a bridge into a handstand, for example. Remember, everything is about principles, not dogma. Once you understand how to work with the techniques, you can expand; you can explore. You learn the form, you absorb the form, you discard the form.

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A bodyweight powerhouse, Al Kavadlo is no stranger to static holds. Perfection!

The PCC Instructor’s Manual will cover all 14 chains in-depth (it’s over 600 pages), but it will only be available to athletes who attend the PCC event. The certification workshop itself cannot cover all 14 chains—over 150 exercises—but it has been painstakingly designed to cover the key techniques, training methods, and the principles behind progression.

The eleven training modules and two seminars over the three-day workshop will revolutionize you: no matter what your level of development. Sure, you may not come away able to perform expert hand-balancing, elbow levers, front-levers, one-arm pull-ups and human flags, but I promise you this: you WILL come away knowing exactly how to get there—or get someone else there—in the best way possible.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—the great Patriot, and possibly the greatest essayist of all time—said this:

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Come and join us in the PCC community. The principles you need to maximize your bodyweight potential are waiting here for you.

—

Paul 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.

PCC: An Invitation for Bodybuilders

January 29, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 62 Comments

The new Progressive Calisthenics Certification is open to anybody who wants to learn more about bodyweight strength. I know it will be a fantastic resource for martial artists, personal trainers, footballers and yoga masters. But I also want to draw in a group of athletes real close to my heart—bodybuilders.

You might be surprised to hear me talk of a fondness for bodybuilding. I am known as a guy who pushes realistic, athletic workouts: not pumping and posing in a thong. Hell, I admit it: I have taken my share of potshots at the bodybuilding scene.

But bodybuilding is a bigger world than most folks give it credit for. Yeah, the idiot shooting himself full of thousands of dollars worth of dangerous crap while training like a schlub is a bodybuilder. But so is the guy trying to lose a little tub, while putting an inch on his arms. So is the underweight girl who trains hard to fill out skinny limbs and turn her flat ol’ butt into a nice round booty. So is the disciplined grandpa or grandma who wants to hold aging at bay by restocking their skeleton with some quality meat. In fact, the vast majority of folks who start training want to build some muscle, for whatever reason.

They are bodybuilding, whether they know it or not.

Bodyweight training builds muscle—but you need to make it progressive.

One of the great tragedies of the modern fitness world is that bodybuilding has become—maybe indelibly—connected to training on machines and other forms of equipment. You do not need special equipment to build muscle—what you need, first and foremost, is your body’s own weight.

Hey, everyone knows my opinion on this. You don’t need to listen to me. How about the guy who made all the training machines so famous?

Arthur Jones was—without doubt—the biggest figure in the history of training machines. It is unlikely that anyone will ever eclipse his success. The man is still a famous and controversial figure in strength and conditioning, years after his death. Jones was an inventor, exercise ideologist, genius, and ass-kicker. He single-handedly invented the Nautilus brand of machines back in the sixties. His son developed the popular Hammer Strength brand of training machines, and Nautilus Inc. has branched out and now also owns Schwinn, Universal, Bowflex and Stairmaster. Every exercise machine, in every gym, all over the planet, has been influenced by Jones in some way.

Arthur Jones participating in his brainchild, the infamous “Colorado Experiment”.

This should tell you something. Arthur Jones was the poppa of training machines.

So you would assume that Jones—above all people—would have sung the praises of machines? You’d probably guess that Jones would be doing all he could to spread the idea that building muscle needs to happen on expensive machines, right?

Wrong. Jones was a straight talker. At the height of his fame he caused thousands of jaws to drop when he published this:

“…just about anybody else in this country can produce nearly all of the potential benefits of proper exercise without spending much if anything in excess of about twenty dollars. You can build both a chinning bar and a pair of parallel dip bars for a total cost of only a few dollars, and those two exercises, chins and dips, if properly performed, will stimulate muscular growth in your upper body and arms that will eventually lead to muscular size and strength that is very close to your potential.

Adding full squats, eventually leading up to one-legged full squats, and one-legged calf raises, will do much the same thing for your legs and hips. Using this very simple routine, when you get strong enough to perform about ten repetitions of one-armed chins with each arm, your arms will leave very little to be desired.

Or, instead, you can do what many thousands of others are now doing and piss away thousands of dollars and years of largely wasted effort while producing far less results. The choice is yours.

One of the best pair of arms that I ever saw on a man belonged to a guy that I knew about fifty years ago in New York, and he never performed any sort of exercise apart from chins and dips, and damned few of them.” – Arthur Jones, My First Half-Century in the Iron Game

Interesting words, huh?

I’m not saying nobody should use machines—PCC isn’t about telling athletes what not to do. But when the guy who practically brought about the exercise machine revolution tells you that bodyweight works just as well, it counts for something.

Arthur Jones oversees Mr Universe, the great Boyer Coe, through a set of chin-ups.

The PCC curriculum is an expansion of Convict Conditioning; it includes both progressive pull-ups and progressive dipping chains; not to mention the one-leg squat progressions referred to by Jones.

Take this as an open invitation. PCC is not just for “functional” trainers and cross-training athletes. If you want to build some muscle—or if your job is to help others build muscle—participation at the inaugural PCC event will be a massive opportunity, either to maximize your own ability, or to fulfill your potential to help others.

You never get a second chance at being the first. Please don’t miss this one.

Keep doing those push-ups,

Paul

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Paul Wade is the author of Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning 2, the Convict Conditioning DVD series and is the co-creator of the new Progressive Calisthenics Certification (PCC).