calisthenics

On Street Workout

January 14, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 21 Comments

Danny Kavadlo Performs a Human Flag in the streets of New York City

There is no denying it: The phenomenon known as Street Workout has built a mighty following over the years, a following that grows exponentially every single day.

What started with minimalist calisthenics crews in New York has spread across these great States, and all over the planet. While not exactly the same, Progressive Calisthenics and Street Workout do have a lot in common. Just look at the wild success of PCC Sweden (where participants trained on actual urban scaffolding!) and next month’s sold-out PCC Australia, not to mention upcoming events in Germany, Holland and Ireland. Clearly, the principles of Street Workout have become an international sensation. A movement, if you will.

And we are not slowing down. You can’t ignore us. Street Workout is just so damn fun and good for you! It sometimes seems like the fitness world is nothing more than a bloated bastion of isolated movements and impractical applications. Street Workout is a breath of fresh air.

A variety of exercises demonstrated simultaneously by participants and PCC Instructors at the 2013 PCC in Sweden

Do It Anywhere
To begin, it encourages us to tap into the creative, even artistic, part of our cerebrums. Whereas commercial gym members use multiple thousand-pound machines to train one muscle at a time, we can look at a pole, fence or street sign and come up with a dozen exercises on the spot. The ability to observe and use your surroundings is a human trait that’s dying these days. Free your mind. Further, unlike a gym, there’s no fee for this club. We welcome all comers.

I used to know a guy who would drive 40 minutes each way to a gym to train for 45. He could have ran flights of stairs, done dips on a bench and pull-ups off a ledge in a fraction of the time. Hell, he could have done push-ups right there on the street—that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Al Kavadlo Performs a Push Up on Cobblestones

Real Strength
Street Workout is more than just efficient and visually impressive—it also makes you really freakin’ strong! By encouraging harmonious full body movements over isolation and non-cohesion, this style of training builds real world power! Modern classics like high-altitude pistol squats and scaffolding pull-ups employ more muscle groups and promote greater overall strength than traditional gym exercises like leg extensions or biceps curls. I’m a lot more impressed by someone who can confidently pull his or her body up and over a real object, than somebody who moves a weight straight up and down a machine!

Danny Kavadlo Performs a Pull Up on New York City Scaffolding

It’s Fun
We are born with a primal urge to be outside. We’re animals, not built to sit under florescent lights in climate controlled, window-less rooms all day. It’s bad enough that so many good people have to do this at their jobs. Why do it during your workout?

Have some fun. Breathe the air. Feel the sun. Outdoor training makes you feel like a kid again.

Wilson on the playground

Community
This is the best part of all. Whenever and wherever there is a gathering of Street Workout enthusiasts, it’s like reuniting with old family, even if you’ve never met. The passion and energy are that intense. I can’t explain it, but there is a special kinship in our world, just as there is in the calisthenics community overall. I treasure being a part of it.

In his groundbreaking book, Raising the Bar, my brother and PCC Lead Instructor Al Kavadlo refers to it as “The Bar Brotherhood”.

The Kavadlo Brothers

When all is said and done, working out, like life, should be full of challenges, fun and adventure. No training style embodies these elements quite like Street Workout does. So what are you waiting for? Let’s hit the pavement and train!

***

Danny Kavadlo is one of the world’s most established and respected personal trainers. He is a Master Instructor of Progressive Calisthenics and the author of Everybody Needs Training: Proven Success Secrets for the Professional Fitness Trainer. A true in-person experience, Danny is known globally as a motivator and leader in the body-weight community. Learn more about Danny at: www.DannyTheTrainer.com.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS: 4 New Year Goals for Total Noobs

January 7, 2014 By Paul "Coach" Wade 132 Comments

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:

All 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!**

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!**

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!

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:

If 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:

Take 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.

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 Case of the Missing Pull-up Bar

December 17, 2013 By Al Kavadlo 19 Comments

The day after Thanksgiving I showed up to work out at my number one training spot, the iconic jungle gym in the Northeast corner of Tompkins Square Park. I always like to get a serious workout in the day after Thanksgiving to offset the gluttonous amount of savory meats and sweet dessert treats that I’ve consumed during the previous day. Imagine my shock when I arrived at the jungle gym to find that my favorite pull-up bar had gone missing!

Well to be honest, I wasn’t that surprised. After all, the bar had gradually been getting loose over the course of the last several months. Since the park reopened in the early ‘90s following the infamous Tompkins Square Park Riot of ‘88, the jungle gym has gradually become one of the most popular outdoor training spots in the NYC area. Even on the coldest winter day, a handful of dedicated loyalists are still out there getting their reps in. Hundreds of pull-ups, muscle-ups and other exercises are performed on that bar every day. It’s taken a beating over the years!

Without my normal pull-up bar available I was forced to improvise a lot of my workout, which often winds up being a good thing. Instead of doing my typical overhand pull-ups, i used the bars on the big yellow monkey bar arch to do pull-ups, which places the hands into a neutral position.

I did muscle-ups on the low bar, which forced me to hold my legs in an “L” to avoid hitting my feet into the floor at the bottom of each rep, adding an extra challenge to an already difficult move.

I still did my handstand push-ups and pistol squats like I normally would. Exercises that require no equipment at all will forever be available to you no matter what!

At the end of the workout, I was over my initial disappointment about the missing bar and I actually started to see the whole thing as a blessing in disguise (the endorphin rush from a good training session often gives me better perspective). I’ve always believed that the universe opens a window every time it closes a door. I was looking forward to seeing what other variations I might come up with in future workouts, as it appeared I would no longer have access to the high bar that facilitated so much of my training for so long.

Indeed, the next few times I trained at the park, I continued to work around the missing high bar. My L-Muscle-ups began to get a bit smoother. The neutral grip pull-ups quickly started to feel just as comfortable as the standard pronated grip. I almost forgot there was anything missing. Just when I had fully accepted the situation, things suddenly went back to normal just as quickly as they initially changed.

On Friday, December 13th I showed up to train at TSP and the high bar was back! The bar appears to have been reinforced and it feels more secure than it has in years. The low bar also appears to have been reinforced – an extra bonus! It felt great to muscle-up on that high bar again; it didn’t roll around or squeak at all.

Though it appears to be the very same bar that went missing two weeks prior, the exact details of what happened remain a mystery to me. There are still questions that I may never know the answer to:

What was the final straw that brought it down? A plyo muscle-up? A giant rollover? A simple bar hang? Was anyone hurt?

Or was it just taken down by the NYC Park’s Department as a precaution until they could properly reinforce it?

And what brought it back? A crafty calisthenics practitioner with some welding prowess? My brother Danny’s phone call to 311? Or maybe it was just a Christmas miracle!

Whether it was the work of the NYC parks dept, a fellow bar athlete or the supernatural, I may never know. However, this much I can say for certain: Pull-up bar or not, it is always possible to have a great workout; our only limitations are the ones we place on ourselves.

And to whoever it was that fixed the pull-up bar at TSP: Thank you!

***

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

The Week of a Thousand Push-ups

December 10, 2013 By Danny Kavadlo 23 Comments

As 2013 winds down and I reflect on the days and months behind me, I find that it’s impossible for me to go a moment without mentally celebrating the launch of the Progressive Calisthenics Certification. From the United States to Sweden (and soon to Australia, Ireland and more), the energy and talent that fills these rooms is simply magnificent. It is almost becoming a common occurrence to witness amazing feats, such as a first ever muscle-up, back lever, or pistol squat. As mind-boggling as that seems, these spectacular displays of strength, balance, and sheer training ethic are becoming what could almost be considered “normal.”

But it isn’t. Not to most.

The truth is that in the world of commercial fitness, these feats are about as far out as it comes. With machines comprised of shining stacks on sliding tracks have become the standard, our simplicity is bold like a ruby in a pile of rocks. We stand proud, defiantly deviating from product-based workouts encouraged by the man. Given the tightness of the calisthenics community, it is sometimes easy to forget how far we fall from the mainstream. We’re not looking for 7-minute abs and 21 day transformations. We seek something more. We are on the outskirts of physical culture, the edge of the norm. Dammit, we are the freaks and geeks of fitness!

So, what does that have to do with the Week of a Thousand Push-ups? Well, quite a bit. Even though the noble push-up is one of the most popular—and best—upper body exercise of all time, like the room full of Personal Records at the PCC events, the thought of doing nothing but a thousand push-ups for a week would blow most people’s minds. But that is exactly what my personal training client Mike did recently. As you know by now, we are definitely not “most people.”

Mike’s Story

Mike was going out of town for a week and planned on continuing his training even though we would not be meeting. We have trained twice a week for years and he is serious. On this particular business trip, his time was limited and he was going to be without a gym, bicycle, or pull-up bar. Although my personal clients know better than to make excuses, they are sometimes uncertain of what to do without me. I am often asked some version of “what should I do while I’m out of town?”, to which I generally reply: “Keep it basic–squat, push-up, pull-up.”

But this time Mike already had an idea in mind… and it was more basic and brilliant than I could have imagined!

“The week of a thousand push-ups,” he said.

The way it came out of his mouth, I thought it was a movie title: Simple. Concise. Even catchy.

Mike had it figured like this. There are seven days in the week, therefor an average of over 143 per day would put him at a numeric advantage. He intended to keep his plan as simple as possible, doing his first set to failure every day, then doing recurring sets throughout the day until he surpassed his daily goal 143.

Though it’s nice to start with a plan, like many activities in life, it’s often best to improvise. As I would have done under the same circumstances, Mike changed his intended plan throughout the week. Some days, he did indeed go til failure on his first set; others, he did multiple sets of twenty or thirty throughout the day. There were days of over 300 push-ups before noon. There were also days where he barely met his goal. There are many ways to skin a cat.

Needless, to say, my man Big Mike wound up doing way over the thousand push-ups he planned on! (The next time I saw him, we trained legs.)

Keepin’ It Real

Prior to his week of a thousand push-ups, Mike informed me that to “keep an even playing field’” he would be doing only push-ups of the classic variety—feet together, two handed, no incline. He explained that this method would eliminate the temptation to switch to easier variations if his goal of 1,000 proved too challenging. I respect his decision. The classic push-up is honest, strong and true. It’s a classic for a reason.

However, there’s also something to be said mixing it up, in push-ups and life.

Mix-Master Mania

Any one who truly knows me is well aware of my passion for the push-up in all of its wonderful forms. From the fragility of knee push-ups, to the muscular methods of plyos, to me, every single type of push-up has an art and beauty intrinsic to it that makes it stand on its own.

We already discussed some training techniques and methods (Divide evenly, go until failure, multiple daily sets), but what about different kinds of push-ups?

Although some push-up varieties are more challenging than others, it can be fun to do a thousand push-ups of several variations. Have fun and be creative. Mix it up! Here are just a few of my favorites:

The narrow grip push-up, shown here, places more emphasis on the arms.

The wide push-up is also a great variation and is a precursor to archer push-up.

Doing push-ups on your fists places a unique challenge on your hands, and extends the range of motion of your push-ups.

Get creative. Employing inclines is an excellent way to step up your game. Combine this method with different grips (like fingertips) for an added challenge. Have fun with it. The sky’s the limit!

As with the Week of a Thousand Push-ups, Mike and I have continued to keep our training exciting and, of course, effective. That’s what it’s all about. As is often the case, the client inspired me!

***

The Straight Handstand—The Door to Amazing Strength Development

November 19, 2013 By Co-written by Lionel Ng and Bruce Dierl 9 Comments

If you are reading this blog, chances are you are looking to make some physical improvements to yourself – e.g. you want to be able to run faster, or to jump higher, or to churn out amazing feats of strength, etc.

Being able to do and hold a straight handstand for one solid minute will aid in all-round athletic development.

But before we begin, let us first take a look at a couple of handstand photos.

Even though there is no one “perfect” handstand form, so to speak, the straight handstand that we are talking about here should approximate the one shown in the picture on the left, as opposed to and contrasted with the handstand depicted in the picture on the right.

Essentially, a straight handstand should find the back flat, with no arch in the lower back. The major limbic joints of the body, i.e. the wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles should find themselves “stacked”.

The reason for the difference between a straight handstand and an arched one is also the reason why being able to do and hold the former is going to make you stronger and more coordinated.

The key word here is “tension”.

In order to perform a handstand, as with any other physical feat, one requires some level of bodily strength. If you are able to stand and balance using your arms, just imagine the kind of strength, coordination and body awareness that you will achieve.

In a straight handstand, the entire body is tensed in a coordinated manner, with the exception of the facial and neck muscles. We are talking about conscious muscle engagement (you are using it, not just training) to hold this unnatural position, it makes subsequent hand balancing elements ‘easier’ to learn. When one finds his or her lower back arching in a handstand, chances are that some parts of the body are not being engaged as needed to achieve the straight form, or some structural issues subsist that makes the straight form difficult to achieve.

The ability to generate and hold this muscular tension throughout the body such that a straight handstand is achieved comprises two key ingredients: coordinated strength and body awareness.

Our legs are strong not only because they make up a large part of our bodies; it is also because we tend to stand a lot. We are able to stand on our feet so well because we have been doing it since we were little. Using the concept of perceived effort level (PEL), over time as your musculature has been doing prolonged hours of work keeping you standing upright, you get so used to it that you stop perceiving this effort level as an undue strain or demand. Of course, we don’t remember much from when we were really little. Otherwise, you might have recalled that learning to stand was a real pain.

The same broad principles apply in the handstand. Because the handstand is a relatively new and somewhat unnatural position for those of you who are not acquainted with it, you are going to find it terribly difficult, at least initially, to tense your body in the requisite manner while trying to hold it in the air, on your hands. This is normal, and only to be expected.

And, make no mistake, the handstand, especially the straight handstand, is a powerful physical tool that unlocks many doors in the realm of physical fitness and culture.

You will get stronger from holding your handstand. This is because the tension that your body generates and maintains while you are performing a handstand is an exertion of strength.

Through the practice of handstands, we learn to generate muscular tension in some pretty challenging circumstances. Which means to say, the finer balance involved while you’re standing on your hands will compel you to tense your muscles harder than when you are standing on your feet. What this in turn means is that you are able to contract your muscles rather powerfully, and hold this contraction over a certain period of time.

Speak to any strong power lifter and he or she will tell you to brace your trunk while you are lifting. The act of bracing the musculature in the torso is a cornerstone of the ability to move some serious weight. Bracing is a requirement for a straight handstand and can be translated into the other athletic disciplines or types of movement that you may be interested in.

Since your hands are smaller than your feet (pardon my presumption if this isn’t true for you), and they lack a proper heel that would allow for effective balance in the direction away from your fingers, you will find that in holding a handstand you will be needing to perform many micro-adjustments in your musculature as a form of re-balancing exercise in order to continue staying on your hands.

When all is said and done, while the handstand is not going to make you as strong as the Hulk, or as finely-balanced and superbly-coordinated as Spiderman; but what it is going to give you is a sound foundation upon which these traits can be more readily built and refined.

Envisioning your body in space while holding an inverted position on your hands helps with development your body awareness, in terms of muscular effort and proprioception. For those of you dreaming of flags and front levers and the like, all these skills share a similar trait that requires full-body tension as in the handstand. Main point of difference – since in a flag or a front lever, or a back lever or a planche, your major limbic joints are not going to be as stacked under your bodyweight as in the handstand, they are going to require far greater and more specific arm and shoulder strength in varying scapular positions.

For a novice, the tremendous arm and shoulder strength required for a proper planche or lever isn’t going to come as quickly as is hoped. Tensing the body while struggling to hold a desired position is often nigh on impossible. That is why one should start with the handstand if one aspires to these other skills – the handstand, by the law of simple physics, does not require the same staggering levels of arm and shoulder strength. Learning it will teach you the body tension that will then stand you in good stead as you pursue the other static strength holds.

Often, the exertion of the scapular complex to fight the pull of gravity in a lever or flag or planche is going to be rendered extremely challenging if the body is not tensed. A loose and sagging torso and legs represent far greater resistance by leverage than a torso and legs that are powerfully-tensed/engaged. Acquiring the ability and the capacity for this tension in the handstand will greatly expedite the learning process for the other, more strength-demanding, exercises.

On a side note, even if the freestanding handstand is not your goal, hand balancing training has benefits which should not be overlooked. Hand balancing training is more than just kicking up onto the wall and holding for time. The alignment and balance drills and flexibility training will help with many of the mobility issues faced by the individual on a daily basis.

Due to the nature of the practice, hand balancing training helps with shoulder health and strength. Strength and health should go hand in hand unlike today where the pursuit of one aspect (usually strength) solely results in poor long term health (joint problems, imbalances etc).

***

Post is Co-written by Lionel Ng and Bruce Dierl of Basic Training Academy. Credit to Ling Qinghu, ex-acrobat from the Fujian Acrobatic Troupe, for teaching me (Bruce) the fundamental principles behind the handstand. Credit to Yuval Ayalon, former gymnast and former Le Reve performer for his guidance in understanding the finer intricacies of hand balancing. Bruce and Lionel previously attended a workshop by Ido Portal.

Structuring a PCC Recovery Day

November 5, 2013 By Angelo Gala 5 Comments

Hey there! How is your training going? Are you making lots of progress on your pistol, handstand push-up and bridge progressions? That’s awesome! How is your body feeling? It’s about time we address the purple and pink striped elephant in the room. Do you take the time to work on skill/technique development and regressions rather than just focusing on cultivating specific strength? How often do you take a day off? Do you include some active recovery or are you inclined to just take it easy and catch up on some youtube or boobtube? Yep, lots of questions coming your way, I know. I’m not trying to poke or point fingers at what you may be or may not be doing. Lets talk recovery and building a happy body that wants nothing more than to rebuild and be better than ever!

I personally LOVE the PCC minimalist approach, especially when it comes to recovery days. But what exactly is a recovery day? Following a simplistic approach to fitness, to me a rest and recovery day incorporates more of what you typically do less of.

Try making a point to emphasize eating and sleeping. Food provides the nutrients and building blocks that support the demands we place on our bodies. When we sleep, are body’s little worker bees put on their hard hats and rebuild our foundation to be bigger and better, allowing our muscles to grow stronger and longer. Catching up with friends and family reminds us of what is important in our lives providing a necessary distraction from the mental grind of vigorous exercise. Light cardiovascular activity is a must. Yes, I said it. I know that High Intensity Interval Training is all the craze right now with plenty of scientific research to back it up but please don’t forget that we need to be easy on our bodies from time to time. 20+ minutes of easy-moderate steady state exercise is a very heart healthy activity to include. Lastly restoring range of motion to our body’s joints and increasing our flexibility will keep our physical body in balance.

If you are wondering where to fit this in, take a step back to look at your weekly training block. How many days in a row are you pushing your body? The acclimated body can go hard for up to three days in a row before it will be asking for a de-loading day. If you are a little more advanced in your age, or have less than 3-5 years of consistent vigorous exercise under your belt, your body may require a break every third day. At a minimum one should back off at least one day a week with a preference of two (maybe three) days depending on your training history. Again, this does not require a total day of nothing on the agenda, just enough of a change of pace to allow the battery to recharge.

Structuring a Recovery Day:

It can be next to impossible to recommend a routine for everyone who reads this article, but I can at least provide some guidelines to help structure a recovery day based on the demands these workouts place on the body.

Recovery can actually to be very intuitive. Many of us are goal oriented and have been working on obtaining certain skills like a back lever or freestanding handstand push-up. Along the journey to these benchmarks we stumble across tight backs, sore shoulders and wrists or maybe even creaky knees. These are all signs from our body telling us that it may require a little extra love and dedicated time where you give back to your self.

Looking specifically at the movements found in the PCC curriculum, we ask a lot out of our shoulders, chest, triceps, forearms and core musculature as we work to support our entire body weight practicing all the push-up, handstand and arm lever variations. Though the single leg squat progressions do not place a significant demand on the lower body compared to a 2x body weight barbell squat, we may find that limits in our mobility hinder our ability to achieve full range of motion in the pistol squat, or at least challenge our confidence in the movement’s execution. If the bottom position of the pistol is easy to obtain, compare it to the shrimp squat, or even the double shrimp? Most likely we will find some difficulty along that journey.

I always structure a recovery workout for my athletes to begin with 20-30 minutes of a steady cardiovascular activity. A few suggestions may be an easy 5k run on a mostly flat to rolling course, a bike ride on the smallest chain ring of your crankset, a steady swim or up to a 5k row focusing on mechanics, cadence and breathe work. The steady cardio is programmed first in our recovery for a few reasons. Most importantly it will generate body heat and prep your soft tissue for manipulation and stretching. Steady cardio creates a calming / meditative effect on the body and mind. It also promotes an environment of self-exploration where you may develop the intuition of what areas of your body may need a little extra attention when it is time to stretch.

After the heat-building phase of the cardio warm-up is complete, it’s time to address some binding in the soft tissue with self-myofascial release techniques (self-massage). For this you can purchase all sorts of tools to address every area of the body such as foam rollers, PVC piping, rumble rollers, tennis balls, a tiger tail and so on. I suggest picking up a lacrosse ball, as it is the most universal tool, you can easily take it anywhere and it can generally apply enough pressure on your trigger points to promote change.

Using the lacrosse ball or roller is theoretically very simple. Pick a muscle group to work on and lay your bodyweight over the tool. Initially you will scan around your soft tissue on the tool looking for any tender spots or pain spots. Once something jumps out at you, stop moving and isolate the discomfort. Try your hardest to not move off the spot, then apply a contract and relax activation with the muscle group you are rolling over. You can do this by either squeezing the muscles you are resting on or moving the stimulated joint through its natural range of motion over and over. This will most definitely cause a bit more discomfort but let me be upfront and completely honest with you. When it comes to restoring / improving mobility or flexibility, its going to be uncomfortable. The more discomfort you can tolerate (aside from sharp pain, which is always bad) the more change you will make. If its not uncomfortable, then you wont be making much if any progress. Your only other option to break up the binding is to get a deep tissue sports massage on a weekly or biweekly schedule. If your budget isn’t big enough to afford regular body work, then get comfortable with being uncomfortable on a lax ball 😛

Personally, I beat my body up enough that I can spend all day doing soft tissue work, so in order to keep ourselves within a reasonable time cap, pick an area on the front side and back side of the shoulders as well as an area both on the front side and back side of the hips. Spend about 5 minutes on each or at least until you feel a bit of the discomfort begin to subside.

Now that we have successfully built requisite body heat and prepped our soft tissues to make change, its time to focus on increasing our flexibility since many exercises in the PCC curriculum require a fair level of specific flexibility. To do this we will work from the ground up.

-Single leg squats require a significant amount of ankle mobility so here we can utilize a standard Standing Calf Stretch focusing on dorsi-flexing our ankle as much as possible. Don’t forget to practice this stretch with the knee straight as well as bent.

-To get the outer hips, a Standing Figure 4 Stretch is achieved by crossing one ankle over the opposing knee. From this position, sit back as if you were sitting in a chair while simultaneously reaching your rib cage over the top shin. Do your best to keep your hips as neutral as possible rather than shifting them to help counter balance the posture.

-Inner thighs are most accessibly stretched in the Bound Angle Pose. Here push your lower back up against a wall and pull your heels together as close to your inner thighs as possible. For the remainder of the stretch, place your hands on your knees with fingers pointed toward your midline and gradually apply pressure down into your legs as if you could press your knees all the way to the floor.

-Stretch the backside of your legs with the traditional Head-to-Knee Pose. From a seated position, extend one leg forward and align the sole of your opposite foot against the inner thigh of your extended leg. From here, square the center of your chest with the knee of your extended leg and lean forward in an attempt to rest your bottom rib on your upper thigh bringing your nose-to-knee.

-Half Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch with a side bend will open the front of the hips as well as prep the spine to bend and twist. Set up in a lunge position with the back knee on the floor. Bind your fingers and stretch both arms over head. From here slide your hips forward until you feel a significant stretch in the hip flexor muscle of the down knee then begin to side bend over the front leg focusing on a long stretch sensation from the top of the hip all the way to the bottom of your armpit.

-You are only as young as the mobility of your spine so to improve this, hang tight in the half kneeling position while you twist your opposite elbow over the front knee. Place your hands in a prayer position with fingertips facing forward then press your hands together to engage and deepen the twist.

-Heart Opener’s Pose is a great stretch for the mid to lower back, it improves your overhead position and acts as a great prep for bridging. Find your way into this posture by setting up in a quadruped position (kneeling on all fours). Prioritize the stretch in your middle back first by pressing your belly button down towards the floor, arching your spine. Finally, to stretch your shoulders and deepen the back bend, keep your hips stacked on top of your knees while you walk your hands forward until you can rest your forehead or even your chin on the ground.

-Address your shoulders with a Butterfly Shoulder Stretch. Again starting in a quadruped position, cross your elbows in front of your shoulders with the tops of your hands pressed against the ground. Stretch your arms away from each other, shrug your shoulders down away from your ears then slowly begin to rock forward until your chest aligns in front of your elbows and you feel a stretch on the outside of the shoulder that is stacked in front.

Following this blueprint may not cure all or any of your ailments, but it will certainly aid in your weekly workout recovery. It is easy to get consumed by the exercises that build strength and conditioning while losing sight of benefits gained by slightly backing off the intensity. Try adding this to your program at least once a week and let me know how it affects your progress.

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About Angelo Gala, RKC / PCC Team Leader: Angelo Gala has been a fitness professional in the Boston area for greater than 11 years. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NCSA, and has studied the Pranavayu system of yoga under David Magone. He is a Dharma friend at the Sakya Center of Buddhist Studies in Cambridge, MA where he completed a 1 year intensive study of Mangalam Yantra Yoga under the guidance of Lama Migmar Tseten. Go to http://www.dragondoor.com/angelo-gala/ for more info.

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.

***
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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A Look at the 3 Way Kick

October 1, 2013 By Matt Schifferle 8 Comments

There is nothing like a strong pair of legs.

You can keep your strong core, wide shoulders and massive arms. My experience has taught me that all of the strength and conditioning in the world is practically worthless without a strong set of legs.

But hold the phone, strong muscles alone won’t build strong legs. True strength for the field, court or mountain requires much more than a lot of horsepower in the engine. In order to fully unleash your lower body strength you must also possess the following:

– Balance and control

Strong muscles without balance and control is like putting a massive engine in a car with bald tires and worn out brakes. Either you’ll never use all of that power or you’ll end up crashing. Control ensures you can use all of the power you have and use it in the most effective way.

– Flexibility

For every muscle you contract there is one that must lengthen. When the muscles are tight and resist lengthening you’re literally fighting your own tension. Becoming even a little more flexible ensures that you’ll have less resistance holding you back in everything you do.

– Strength and stamina in supporting muscles

When it comes to leg strength, we tend to focus on the bigger muscles in the legs like the quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves. These are important for sure, but what about some of the smaller and more subtle muscle groups like the ones in the feet and hips? While not the biggest or most powerful lower body muscles, weakness in these smaller muscles can greatly handicap the bigger muscles.

Calisthenics is a very effective way to condition all three of these characteristics. It’s impossible to even attempt moves like lunges and single leg squats without developing balance, flexibility and strength in the supporting muscles.

That being said, it doesn’t hurt to further develop those weak links in the lower body chain. Doing so can make your weakest link so strong that your entire body can reach new levels of performance.

The following video showcases an exercise which is great at developing your balance, flexibility and strength.

This exercise does wonders at unlocking some of the lower body strength that’s been dormant in your lower body. Just running through this routine a few times before each leg workout will leave your legs and hips feeling brand new within a few weeks. It’s also a great cool down afterward to refocus your mind.

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

10 Hot Bodyweight Exercises You Should Be Training

September 10, 2013 By Alex Zinchenko 39 Comments

Ok, so you got serious about this “progressive calisthenics” thing. And now your head explodes from endless dilemmas: should you train this or that? What’s better: the planche or the one-arm push-up? Should you be working on one-arm chin-up or front lever pull-ups? Possibilities are limitless while our resources are definitely limited. You can’t think “screw it”, and train with every technique at once. You must choose something if you want to make any meaningful progress. So what should you choose? Let me give you 10 hot calisthenics exercises you should spend time training (in no particular order).

1. Handstand

If you don’t train this exercise you are missing out big time. This would be my number one priority. Why the handstand? Well, if you can stand on your legs, shouldn’t you be able to stand on hands? Not convinced? Ok, then here is what I can tell you from experience. The handstand develops your upper body like nothing else. There’s simply no substitution. It makes your shoulders and arms more stable and robust. You’ll definitely feel the newly gained strength and stability in all other pushing movements. For example, all my training clients benefited from implementing handstand training into their routines and increased their pushing numbers (some of them had a 20% increase, which is great, in my opinion). Anyway, no matter what your goal, you should strive to learn the handstand as soon as possible. And, of course, it looks awesome. If you are struggling to learn the skill here are 10 tips that will help you.

2. Handstand Push-Ups

I differentiate handstand push-ups into two types:

Wall-Assisted Handstand Push-Ups [WA HSPU]
Free-Standing Handstand Push-Ups [FS HSPU]

They are two quite different things. When we are talking about WA HSPUs we are talking about an almost purely strength move. Balance is not an issue here, while FS HSPUs will require decent balance and stability as well as proficiency in the handstand. No matter what you prefer, it is good idea to train both. Once you get good at them you can increase difficulty in one of these ways:

Increase range of motion;
Add a weighted vest;
Move to one arm work.

Ideally, you should end with weighted full ROM one-arm handstand push-up.

3. Chin-Ups/Pull-Ups/One-Arm Chin-Up

Everybody knows these exercises. You can call them whatever you want, but you can’t deny the fact that chin-up is one of the best lat and biceps builders known to man (if not the best). It is an essential pulling movement pattern and it should be practiced a lot. I won’t get deep into details here, but for the regular chin-ups your main technique points are:

Back should be arched
Shoulder blades together
Chin up until chest touches the bar

Also it would be a good idea to practice chin-ups on different apparatus. Do them on bars, monkey bars, rings, towels etc. This will add spice to your training.

Another interesting thought would be to perform them every day (of course, assuming you can do at least 10-12). Try doing 30-50 Chin-Ups total (in as many sets as needed) every day for the next 3-4 weeks and you can be amazed with your new set of guns and barn door back.

When you are able to perform at least 15 chin-ups it will be a good time to slowly introduce one-arm chin-up work. My main tip would be to get into it very slowly. You don’t want to experience intolerable elbow pain, right? Anyway, I believe that the one-arm chin-up is definitely an exercise you need to master someday.

4. Pistol

You can’t ignore your leg training unless you desire that set of toothpicks you can often see in commercial gyms. There is an exercise that can help you not to look that stupid. It is one-legged squat a.k.a. the “pistol”. You know that it works your legs from all angles and pretty well. But there’s a problem with the pistol. Once you can do 10 reps in the exercise it becomes more endurance oriented rather than strength. What to do in such situation? The simplest solution is to add weight. A weighted vest should be ideal. If you don’t have one then you can use a backpack. Here’s the article on how to do it. Also you can use kettlebells, a sandbag, or a barbell. If you have nothing you can grab a stranger (girl, preferably) and put him/her on your shoulders for added resistance.

But what to do if you have nothing at hand, there are no people around and you feel unstoppable urge to train your legs? You can combine pistols with jumps. Try to jump onto a platform from the bottom of the pistol position. Or you can try broad jumps in pistol position. Use your imagination.

5. Planche/Planche Push-Ups

The planche is another awesome gymnastic position/move you can effectively implement in your training routine. Is it essential? Probably not. But it is a very good test of your straight arm scapular strength. It works your delts, upper chest, lats and biceps quite decently. Also it’s a staggering sight to see a human being holding their body parallel to the ground on straight hands.

Here are a couple of tips:

Most people don’t have the necessary flexibility in the wrists so it will be a good idea to turn your hands a bit sideways.
Always perform this skill with your elbows locked. Otherwise, it is not a planche.
Don’t overdo it. If you want to train it more than two times per week don’t go even close to failure. Otherwise, you’ll feel very annoying pain in your forearms.

Once you master the specific planche position it is good idea to try push-ups in it. For example, once you can hold an advanced tuck planche for at least 10 seconds you can try to add push-ups in this position.

6. Front Lever

The front lever is another useful skill in our arsenal. It works arms and back while torching your core. Many people think that it is easy. Obviously, they are fooling themselves. You’ll need lots of time to master the skill especially if you are 80+ kg and tall.

Again, as with the planche you want to keep your elbows locked. And also you don’t want to overdo it for the same reasons.

A good tip for mastering the front lever is to use a “false grip” while performing it. More on this later in the article.

7. Human Flag

Everybody loves the human flag. It’s a core killer as well as test of upper body strength and stability. There are lots of tutorials on the human flag out there. What can I add? Here are couple of thoughts:

Don’t start training the human flag before the handstand is mastered.
Learn the human flag on Swedish bars first (or use some kind of ladder). Then move to pole version.

8. Push-Ups/One-Arm Push-Up

What’s so hot about push-ups? Not much. Purely the fact that they lead to the one-arm push-up. And the one-armer is hot by any stretch of the imagination.

A lot can be said about this move but I’ll concentrate on technique points. For me a one-arm push-up “counts” only if:

feet are not wider shoulder width;
shoulders are parallel to the ground;
body is perfectly straight looking from the side;
twist of the body is MINIMAL looking from the top.

You may ask: “is it even possible?” Yes, it is. But it will require lots of patience and hard work to achieve. Maybe even more than any other complex bodyweight skill. If you need some more inspiration here you can find 10 tips for mastering the Perfect One-Arm Push-Up.

9. Back Lever

The back lever is not a very hard skill but it is essential for learning the planche. Also there are lots of other skills that use this position so it will be smart to spend some time learning it. The most important thing I’d like to share with you is what to do when the back lever is mastered. The most basic thing you can do is to learn Back lever pull outs. You get into the inverted hang position, then lower down into the back lever position, hold it for a second and pull yourself back into inverted hang. Repeat for desired amount of reps.

10. Muscle-Up

I can’t leave this article without mentioning the muscle-up. You can hear or read different things about this skill. Some people say that it is essential and you should master it as soon as possible. Others (usually brainwashed with modern bodybuilding) argue saying that it’s useless because you combine pulling and pushing. They state that you can’t load the pulling and pushing pattern as much as you could if you split them.

Nevertheless, I believe that muscle-up is one of the skills you must learn. And I’m talking about controlled muscle-up here, not the kipping one.

There are two points I’d like you to concentrate on:

Use a “false grip”—with the thumbs over the bar, rather than wrapped around it. Watch some videos on YouTube on this subject. One exercise that will help you here is false grip chin-ups.
The main struggle is the transition part. There are three exercises that will help: Russian dips, chest-over-bar pull-ups (pull yourself very high) and muscle-up negatives.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain these exercises in detail, but if you want me to explain them just leave a comment and I’ll try to make it happen.

Another interesting thing about the muscle-up is that ring muscle-ups are actually easier than bar muscle-ups. Why? Due to the fact that you can pull the rings to sides during the transition phase.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, you’ll need much more than this article to create a reasonable program. My goal was to show you what exercises would develop your body and what you should focus on while programming your training. What now? You must absorb the knowledge and use it. Thanks for reading.

If you have a fitness-obsessed friend, you can do a good thing and share this article with him or her.

Play rough!

Alex Zinchenko

P.S. If you have any thoughts regarding the topic, let’s chat in comments.

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It is a pleasure for the PCC to present Alex Zinchenko—the Ukraine’s hottest personal trainer! Alex is a strength addict, coach and author of the Rough Strength blog, where he shares his crazy ideas regarding training and nutrition. He is honest as toothache, straightforward like a train and dares to believe that heavy calisthenics, kettlebell and sandbag training along with intermittent fasting can deliver you all the results you want.

A Brand New Day

August 20, 2013 By Danny Kavadlo 8 Comments

As the sun rises at the start of the day, the world is illuminated. The grass warms up, the birds start singing, and the mind awakens. The time is now; that day is today.

The first Progressive Calisthenics Certification in June was a life-changing experience for many bodyweight training enthusiasts. I was honored to be part of such a spectacular event, to help others in their path toward excellence, and to celebrate physical culture in its purest form. So many strong and passionate people showed up, with such a vast body of knowledge that we all walked out smiling, with our collective heads spinning.

It was a thrill to break down, train, and explore progressions of pull-ups, squats, inversions, human flag, and much more. I witnessed some incredible breakthroughs and got asked some of the best exercise questions I’ve ever heard in my life. It is noteworthy to point out that in addition to the questions of form and physiology, I was often asked about the business of exercise. You see, many of the attendees were personal trainers, coaches, and instructors.

But before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story…

I love questions and I get asked a lot of them. Playwright Eugene Ionesco famously wrote “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” In short: questions help everybody. Each day I receive emails asking me everything from dietary advice to the ever-popular, “What’s the trick for human flag?” [ANSWERS: Eat more fruits and veggies, less processed sugars and grains, and there are no tricks in fitness. That’s part of what makes it beautiful.] Again, I am frequently asked about the business. Trainers from all over the world contact me with questions about how to get a job, how to increase their client base, and, of course, how to get paid.

Professionals in other fields (which often have nothing to do with fitness) reach out to me as well. Oftentimes, they are considering switching careers and becoming personal trainers. Isn’t that how many of us got started? We loved fitness and wanted to help others achieve their goals!

According to the labor department, there are over 230,000 personal trainers working in the United States. That number grows, even as overall employment declines. Yet still, 80% of new trainers never make it past their first year. It’s no wonder: despite all the trainer schools, CPT certs, and personal training websites, I have never come across any literature that discussed how to actually make it as a trainer… in real life.

About a year ago, I sat down to write a book that addressed all of this. The world has been ready for this book—now the ebook is ready for this world (available this fall in paperback.) Brace yourself for:

Everybody Needs Training

Proven Success Secrets for the Professional Fitness Trainer
–How to Get More Clients, Make More Money, Change More Lives

You see, when I became a professional trainer, the coursework and academia did nothing to prepare me for reality. It was the knowledge and guidance of the other trainers, and of course, in time, my own experience that helped me go from a rookie, to a top gym trainer, to the fitness director in one of NY’s biggest and best health clubs. Eventually my path led to becoming an independent trainer/author/presenter. There were many roads and obstacles along the way, many stories to tell, which get covered in great detail in this book.

The reality of client acquisition, what most PT sessions are really like (as opposed to the squeaky-clean, hypothetical ones in the textbooks), and of course, how to handle the most difficult client questions, is the type of stuff we get our hands dirty with here. We talk about the differences between working for a gym, a studio, or yourself, and there’s a full chapter dedicated to my time tested secrets of personal training sales. There has never been a book like this before. Renowned lifter/author Dan John raves: “I don’t think I have ever seen this kind of depth in the field. It’s both obvious and ‘wow’ as you read it. Amazing stuff. It fills a gap in the community that, frankly, surprises me no one has really filled.”

Wow indeed.

Back to the first story…

You see, like the road toward smoothly executing advanced pull-ups, the path to being a successful trainer requires plenty of time and energy. There is no substitute for a thousand hours of practice and years of experience, for which no book, not even mine, can ever be a replacement… But it sure can help! Just remember, success in both calisthenics and personal training (and almost everything, for that matter) is based on hours and effort. Work hard; train hard!

Speaking of training hard, a new group will gather next week for the second ever PCC. I couldn’t be happier. It is an honor to be a co-presenter and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone who attends. It’s always a pleasure connecting with like-minded individuals who share my passion.

It is the dawn of a new day. Let’s get to it!

***

About Danny Kavadlo: Danny Kavadlo, Master PCC, CPT is a Personal Trainer in New York City. He’s worked with hundreds of clients, including athletes, models, and celebrities. He has been featured in the New York Times, Convict Conditioning & Men’s Fitness. His first full-length book Everybody Needs Training is now available on e-book through Dragon Door. Learn more about Danny at: www.DannyTheTrainer.com.