Danny Kavadlo

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

January 6, 2015 By Paul "Coach" Wade 255 Comments

Danny Kavadlo 1 Arm Push Up

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

Another ****ing year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to really do it: six keys to success

You are probably expecting a routine here, right?

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

Joints first

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

Work the basics.

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

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

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

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

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

Mix low AND high reps.

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

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

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

Sets and reps?

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

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

Hit it hard or go home.

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

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

Stay away from the weights.

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

Yes—bodyweight training WILL jack you up.

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

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

Programs, Paulie?

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

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

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

WORKOUT 1: Pullups, Squats, Bridges

Pullups

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

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

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

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

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

Squats

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

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

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

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

Bridges

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

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

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

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

WORKOUT 2: Handstand pushups, leg raises, pushups

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

Handstand pushups

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

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

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

Leg raises

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

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

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

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

Pushups

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

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

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

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

Got the idea?

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

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

Fit Rebel Push-Up

Just Do It

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

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

I believe in you, kid.

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

***

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

Happy Days At PCC Milwaukee

November 11, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 25 Comments

Al and Danny Kavadlo in Milwaukee, WI

It’s no secret that since its inception just over one year ago, the Progressive Calisthenics Certification has grown and grown, gaining strength, momentum and community as the days go by. After all, the first rule of PCC is you DO talk about PCC; it’s good to see we’re all doing our jobs!

For our twelfth certification, we headed up North to Drench fitness in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prepared to have a great workshop in a great city on a Great Lake. And that’s exactly what we did!

Alex Cordero Archer Pull up — You see ‘dem Packers? I mean, packed shoulders?

As is the case when so many bodyweight gladiators get together, something incredible happens. Anyone who’s ever partaken in a push-up contest or a pull-up jam knows exactly what I’m talking about. You see, when you put so much fire and passion together in one place, the room itself ignites in a celebration of energy, inspiration and motivation. It’s an incredible thing to behold.

The calisthenics killers of the Badger State proved their epic power, as personal bests were achieved by just about everybody. There’s nothing like the feeling of earning a one arm pushup, stand-to-stand bridge or human flag when you’ve never done it before. Like they say, you never forget your first!

Katie Petersen One-Arm Pushup — Pushing the limits at PCC

It’s with a heavy heart that we leave America’s heartland. It’s amazing how such a life-changing weekend can go by so quickly, but the friends we’ve made and the experiences we shared will transcend time. These days are ours. PCC is forever.

Congratulations to the new wave of freshly appointed Progressive Calisthenics Instructors. We are proud to have you represent!

Milwaukee_PCC_Group_Photo

The posse’s getting bigger,
-DK

***

Danny Kavadlo is one of the world’s foremost authorities on calisthenics, nutrition and personal training. He is the author of the Dragon Door titles Diamond-Cut Abs and Everybody Needs Training. Danny is known for his minimalist philosophy, simple approach and motivational talents.

A true in-person experience, Danny is a Master Instructor for Dragon Door’s Progressive Calisthenics Certification. He has been featured in the NY Times, TRAIN, Men’s Fitness and is a regular contributor to Bodybuilding.com. Learn more about Danny at www.DannyTheTrainer.com

DIAMOND-CUT ABS: Here It Is!

October 28, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 42 Comments

My inbox has been overflowing.

People email me about abs more than anything else… more than tattoos or even human flag! It’s no surprise. Abs fascinate us on a cultural level. Always have. In fact, even those who don’t work out are often obsessed with abs. Abs are everywhere in pop culture, from billboards to music videos. Magazine covers to TV commercials. Abs all day, every day.

Danny Kavadlo Abs Diagram

The questions I get asked often require long answers. While I do my best to reply as detailed as possible, a subject like “what I eat” cannot be properly addressed in a Facebook message. That’s why I had to write Diamond-Cut Abs! It’s also why I included a chapter specifically titled What I Eat. People want to know what exercises they can start with. How to design a program. They want to know what workouts I did back in the day, as well as what I currently do now. It’s all here!

I also made sure to include exercises for men and women of all fitness levels and body types. This book has all my answers to these and many more questions. As a matter of fact, DCA is just about everything I have to say about abs. This is the raw uncut. The real deal. There is a lot of conflicting information out there. Read this book and find out exactly where I stand.

Danny Kavadlo Abs — Caption: Find out exactly where I stand on nutrition, training and cardio.

As much as it’s about exercise and nutrition, DIAMOND-CUT ABS is also a book about lifestyle, balance and harmony: a philosophical (as well as physical) approach to achieving the rock hard six-pack of your dreams. You have to buy this book!

Diamond-Cut Abs is also by far my most personal work to date. It meant a lot to me to be able to open up to you. I tell of my journey through life (and abs) starting as a kid in Brooklyn doing sit-ups and watching Incredible Hulk reruns, to who you see before you today (whatever that is!) I tell you how I trained every step of the way.

Al Kavadlo Danny Kavadlo Adrienne Harvey

Check out the book that Paul Wade calls “The best book on abs training ever written” and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Keep the dream alive,
-DK

***

Europe’s Most Wanted

October 21, 2014 By Al Kavadlo and Danny Kavadlo 33 Comments

Danny Al Ferris Wheel Europe PCC Workshops

This October has been a groundbreaking month for the Progressive Calisthenics Certification. For the first time ever, two PCC workshops took place on consecutive weekends, both overseas – and both a rollicking success! The PCC family continues to grow and grow. The passion for calisthenics transcends intercontinental boundaries.

First, we conducted our inaugural workshop in The Netherlands at Trainingscentrum Helena in Haarlem, Holland. Hosted by the #1 Krav Maga instructor in the world (outside of Israel), Martijn Bos, our premiere event in The Netherlands resulted in new calisthenics achievements from each and every attendee!

Support Press Holland PCC

Human flags, muscle-ups and elbow levers were all fair game for participants, as were handstands, archer pull-ups and back levers. Every single person who came to PCC Holland achieved at least one personal best. It’s an exciting experience to witness firsthand the birth of such excellence!

Europe PCC Muscle-Up

Knowledge was shared, friendships were formed and new PCC instructors now walk among us. The solidarity and kinship among the newest members of the PCC family is a heartwarming thing to behold. As usual, it was hard to say goodbye at the end of the whirlwind weekend!

PCC Group Photo Holland 2014

There was little time to relish in the success, however, as we soon headed over to Sweden to conduct our second PCC event in Gothenburg. The momentum of groundbreaking achievements that began in Holland didn’t slow down one bit once we arrived in the land of the midnight sun. Positivity breeds positivity, and the Sweden crew proved it. Some of the most recognizable faces from the international street workout team Barstarzz even showed up to earn their Progressive Calisthenics Certifications!

PCC Sweden 2014 Barstarzz

The fierce calisthenics vikings of Gothenburg continued in the tradition of previous PCC classes by smashing personal bests, inspiring one another and having a blast the whole time! We love our job!

PCC Sweden L-Sit on Danny and Al

Now that we are back in the States, it’s hard to believe how quickly it all went; time flies when you’re having fun! The good news is, we get to do it all over again next month! PCC wraps up the 2014 season with a return to the good ol’ USA. Our final event of the year will take place at Drench Fitness in Milwaukee, WI on November 7-9. Spots are still open for this event. Go sign up right now!

And for our European fans, do not fret! You will have three opportunities to attend the PCC next spring when we come to Germany, Italy and Ireland on three consecutive weekends!

No matter where we go, spreading the joy of calisthenics is fresh and exciting every time! We can’t wait to see YOU at our next event!

PCC Group Photo Sweden 2014

***

About Al and Danny 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.

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.

The First Rule of PCC

August 19, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 45 Comments

Danny Kavadlo fight club tribute photo

People are always asking me if I know Coach Wade. “Is it true?” they ask. “Can he really do one-arm handstand push-ups? What does he look like? Is there a Progressive Calisthenics Certification coming to my city?”

“Yes there is!” I tell them. Tell everyone you know! The first rule of PCC is you DO talk about PCC.

The second rule of PCC is you DO talk about PCC. The next event is October 10-12 in Haarlem, Holland! This particular workshop really looks like something special. My brother and PCC Lead Instructor, Al Kavadlo, have personally met and trained with Martijn Bos, owner of Trainingscentrum Helena, Holland’s #1 Calisthenics and MMA studio, where we will hold the country’s first ever Progressive Calisthenics Certification. We are looking forward to meeting a lot of new friends there!

Danny Kavadlo Coaching Hanging Knee Raise — Danny Kavadlo coaches Martijn Bos at PCC Germany.

No wait. Back up. Let me start over.

For months, I couldn’t sleep. My brother Al and I were literally the top Personal Trainer and Fitness Manager in a company that employed thousands. Our job was to train everybody generically regardless of individual situations. Which company did we work for, you ask? A major one. In fact it is one of the biggest chain gyms in New York City. But we wanted something more.

Tired with the standard conventions of the industry, we chose to walk off the beaten path. Commercial fitness teaches trainers to believe that with isolation machines and protein powders, we will grow to be athletic, strong and functional. That if we buy this product or that pill, all our problems will be solved. But they won’t.

We’re a generation of men and women raised on gimmicks and machines. Advertising has us chasing treadmills and Shake-weights. Thigh-masters. Bowflex. We were wondering if another piece of equipment was really the answer we needed.

Al Kavadlo bridge

Many do what they’re told. Pull a lever, push a button. At PCC, we do Push-Ups instead of pushing buttons. We don’t pull a lever; we become the lever. It was right in everyone’s face. We just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. We just gave it a name.

Danny Kavadlo Human Flag — Welcome to PCC

Every time we arrive in a new city, we meet people we’ve never trained with before, yet we have an instant kinship as fellow bodyweight warriors. We’re all part of the same family. Déjà vu all over again.

Al and Danny Kavadlo at Munich Airport — You wake up in Munich

To date, we’ve had nine Progressive Calisthenics Certifications in seven different cities, spanning three continents. Bodyweight training, the oldest and noblest form of strength training, is gaining a resurgence. Progressive Calisthenics is becoming this incredible, global community. PCC is the first and best bodyweight certification.

PCC Workshop in Sweden

“What’s next?” everybody wants to know. “Is it true? Is Coach Wade building an army?”

DO talk about PCC! Tell everyone you know!

The posse’s gettin’ bigger!

-DK

***

New York State of Mind and Body

June 24, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 18 Comments

Danny Kavadlo One Arm Chin Up at the NYC PCC Workshop

Start Spreadin’ the News

One year ago, when Dragon Door launched the Progressive Calisthenics Certification, we knew we were onto something big. It was an idea whose time had come. As the calisthenics movement exploded worldwide, more and more people wanted to learn about training themselves and others in the art of beautiful strength. A practice we’d been doing for decades started receiving big accolades in the past twelve months.

The Progressive Calisthenics Certification began with a single 3-Day workshop in Dragon Door’s hometown of the St. Paul, and has quickly made its way across the globe. To date, there have been PCCs in places as diverse as Germany, Ireland and Australia, with future certifications scheduled in Sweden, Holland, Italy and more. PCC unites bodyweight enthusiasts from all parts of the world and all walks of life. You could call it a “melting pot.” Reminds me of a place I know well…

Progressive Calisthenics in the New York Times — One year ago. (Click here to read the article)

The Hometown Crowd

My brother (and fellow PCC Instructor) Al Kavadlo and I are native New Yorkers, born and bred in the County of Kings. So was legendary calisthenics forerunner Jasper Benincasa. Many of the earliest, (and most contemporary) practitioners of “Street Workout” are from New York. It’s a magical place. There’s a reason NYC is the quintessential Metropolis: the bright lights of Broadway, the charm of Little Italy, the Coney Island boardwalk.

Like the City itself, the people of New York are known for a great many things, particularly their passion. Just like the people drawn to Progressive Calisthenics.

Whether practicing advanced pull-ups or manipulating mobility, we celebrate every moment.

Al and Danny Kavadlo Archer Pull-ups at the NYC PCC workshop

Fuggetaboutit!

Trainers, fighters, martial artists, athletes and working professionals gathered around and trained side by side. There was no competition. Each individual was focused on being the best version of themselves. We all worked together to bring out the best in each other.

Fellow New York native, forefather of the One-Arm Chin-Up, and training partner of Jasper Benincasa, Jack Arnow was a teacher as much as a student. In his signature style, Jack generously shared his wisdom and knowledge with a new generation of bodyweight aficionados. Jack also demonstrated muscle-ups and front levers. He even did the entire Century test while talking. The man inspires everybody.

Jack Arnow One-Arm Chin-up Comedown at the NYC PCC

Represent

It’s hard to believe that it’s over. After making so many friends and witnessing so many PR’s (levers, flags, pistol squats and more), it seems to have flown by in a New York minute.

Still, the experience we had will last a lifetime. From the bottom of my heart, I am proud of every single one of our newly certified PCC’s. I look forward to having you represent Progressive Calisthenics everywhere. Train hard and be true to you. The posse’s gettin’ bigger.

NYC PCC Workshop June 2014 Group Photo

Keep the dream alive,
-DK

***

An Irish Blessing

May 13, 2014 By Danny Kavadlo 13 Comments

Five days ago I boarded a plane to Ireland with my brother and fellow PCC Lead Instructor Al Kavadlo and Dragon Door CEO John Du Cane. It was uncharted territory for us and we did not know what to expect. This was Ireland’s first Progressive Calisthenics Certification. Not to mention the fact that we’d never been to the Strong Room or met our host Adrian Harrington. In fact, none of us had even been to Dundalk, Ireland. We were really going out on a limb with this one.

You could say we were “lucking” it.

We got off the plane in the Land of a Thousand Welcomes, and rather fittingly were welcomed by Mr. Harrington himself. Looking into his smiling eyes, it took no more than a handshake and a few minutes to find out we were all kindred spirits. You see, in the world of body-weight training, there is a bond that exists which defies geography, history, even culture. There’s something special about the solidarity between calisthenics aficionados—we are connected, even when oceans apart. It seems that wherever we go, we stand united with our PCC brothers and sisters. The enthusiasm, dedication and purity bring us together from all around the globe, no matter what our roots. We’re all here for the same reason: to better ourselves and learn from each other. I love meeting people from different backgrounds, age groups and walks of life who share my passion. And the posse’s gettin’ bigger!

Adrian took us out to the lush, green, Irish countryside and served us a homemade breakfast of fresh eggs, “homegrown” ham, coffee (with butter!) and of course, homemade blood pudding, prepared fresh by his Mum. If you truly want to experience a culture, eat the food. We had never been here before, yet we felt right at home.

When the workshop began the next day, it was déjà vu all over again. We could see that each and every one of the attendees, regardless of any differences in past history or present skill level, stood exactly where we stand. (Not to mention the fact that the Strong Room turned out to be one of the finest facilities I’ve ever practiced calisthenics.) We worked on push-ups, pull-ups, human flags and muscle-ups. In addition to the thrill of teaching these skills and the satisfaction of seeing so many PR’s (first muscle-ups, flags, one-arm push-ups and more), we got to make so many new friends. That’s the part you can’t really see on the internet. It can only be experienced firsthand.

Day two was even better. So many folks who were on the fringes of achieving the elusive back lever, one-legged squat and back bridge got to see their dreams become reality and so did we. Have I mentioned that I love my job?

In what felt like an instant, it was already Sunday, the third and final day of PCC. The pleasure of witnessing so many brand new inversions and elbow levers, the emotions running wild during Century testing and the tears of joy at the end of the day made it an experience none of us will ever forget. But it was is bitter-sweet; we shared so much with so many! Just two days ago, the people we met were perfect strangers, but now we see they were just like us all along. It’s so hard to say goodbye.

PCC Dundalk proved to be the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We are thrilled to have made the trip and are looking forward to coming back. I await with anticipation the prospect of meeting more future members of our PCC family and doing it all over again. As the Irish saying goes, “Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb… that’s where the fruit is.”

***

PCC is Taking Over The World

April 29, 2014 By Al Kavadlo 52 Comments

Last weekend my brother Danny and I led Dragon Door’s fifth-ever Progressive Calisthenics Certification along with PCC Team Leader Adrienne Harvey. With the rapid growth of the PCC, it’s amazing to think that it’s been less than a year since our first certification course last June in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In that time, we have certified nearly 200 trainers in 3 different continents. Every one of those new PCCs is now sharing their knowledge with others and spreading the word about calisthenics. It blows my mind sometimes to think about the impact that PCC has already had on the fitness world, but we are still just getting started!

In the months ahead we have workshops booked all over the world including Ireland, Germany, Holland and Egypt. It’s amazing to travel the globe teaching calisthenics, but I’m also very excited about my hometown gig in NYC this summer.

It’s beginning to feel like PCC is taking over the world!

For our most recent certification, we returned to the Twin Cities. This time the event was held in Minneapolis at the city’s downtown convention center. Once again, an extremely impressive group of fitness enthusiasts, fanatics and aficionados showed up to hone their skills, inspire one another and attempt to take on The Century test to earn the title of PCC instructor. I’m proud to say that this group had our highest passing percentage yet since beginning the certification!

The caliber of candidates we’re seeing at each PCC seems to be continually improving. It’s an amazing feeling to be in a room with so many incredible bodyweight athletes who all have the same love for calisthenics. Everyone at PCC comes away with a unique experience, having both shared their own knowledge and received new ideas in return. We can all learn from one another and I am continually learning more myself each and every time we do the PCC.

If you’d like to attend (or host) a PCC event in your city, let us know in the comments section below. In the years ahead, we want to bring the PCC to as many places as possible! There’s nothing quite like the in-person experience of spending 3 intense calisthenics-filled days with other like-minded individuals.

We’re Working Out!

***

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 four books, including Stretching Your Boundaries, 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 Bodyweight Revolution

April 15, 2014 By Paul "Coach" Wade 146 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

What does that mean?

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

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

Fairly simple, huh?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The CC-Style Template

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

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

Popular Strength/Mass Templates

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

The 5×5 system
Pyramid training
Ladders
Heavy singles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the Mentor: Joe Hartigen

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

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

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

The Hartigen Method

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

Here’s how it works:

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

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

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

4. Perform 4 reps of the same exercise.

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

6. Perform 3 reps of the same exercise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exercises, post-set work and warm-ups

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lights Out!

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

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

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

***

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

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!

***