muscle mass

Natural Muscle—How Much Can You Gain…Really?

November 8, 2016 By Paul "Coach" Wade 333 Comments

Al and Danny Kavadlo for Paul Wade

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

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

How much muscle can I gain without steroids?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best bodybuilder in the world in 1945 (Clancy) weighed 185 lbs.

Twenty years later, the best bodybuilder—the 1965 Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott—weighed 200 lbs: heavier AND leaner than any Mr. America in the forties. (All this, and he was three inches shorter than Clancy!) What caused this huge jump? By now bodybuilders were using the oral steroid Dianabol and almost definitely injectable steroids like Deca-Durabolin, which was available from the late fifties. They were probably taking fairly light to moderate doses (by modern standards) and only using the drugs before competition, coming off them for long periods.

Twenty years later—it’s 1985 and the world’s greatest is Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney. At 5’11, Haney weighed in at a phenomenal 245 lbs. With paper-thin skin and dehydrated, Haney weighed about 70 lbs more than old Clancy! What caused this quantum leap? Maybe Haney was just more intense in the gym, or trained better? In fact, no—by all accounts, Clancy Ross could outlift Lee Haney on his best day: so it wasn’t the training. The real reason is that by now the top bodybuilders were using much larger doses of drugs, for much longer periods. They were also “stacking” multiple oral and injectable compounds, and beginning to use low doses of Human Growth Hormone (HGH)—which, at the time, was extracted from corpses, meaning that if the dead body had a disease, you got it too. (Oh, it made you a bit bigger than the competition, though.)

Fast forward another twenty years to 2005 and basically things have got ridiculous at the top level. Mr. Olympia now is Ronnie Coleman, and he’s stepping onstage weighing 290 lbs (!), ripped to bejesus, and looking something like a cross between a walking chemical toilet and a badly-drawn comic book. This guy weighed well over a hundred pounds more than poor little Clancy, while being only about an inch taller. What caused this latest “improvement”? Huge doses of the same old steroids, now stacked year round, plus much larger doses of more modern, synthetic growth hormone, along with widespread heavy use of insulin, which it turns out, is a another massively anabolic drug when applied in a certain protocol. Hell, guys are now literally shooting oil into their muscles just to keep the expansion happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 Unique Push-Up Variations to Help You Increase Strength & Size

July 14, 2015 By Todd Kuslikis 14 Comments

5 Push-Up Variations

It could be argued that the push-up is the most popular exercise ever invented. Before we had chrome plated dumbbells and Olympic sized barbells people had to rely on their own body weight for building strength.

Yet is the push-up outdated? Should it be used only as a simple conditioning exercise or as a “finisher” after the “real” weight-based exercises are completed?

Of course not.

There is still tremendous value to the push-up. It is the Godfather of all exercises so we must pay it due respect. Yet, descendants of this exercise have sprung up around the world to help bodyweight enthusiasts continue to improve their strength and build more muscle.

Today, I’d like to share with you my five favorite unique push-up variations to help you increase strength and size.

These exercises are super effective for three main reasons…

1. Challenge Different Muscle Groups

The typical push-up targets mostly the middle portion of the chest, front deltoids and triceps. In order to get stronger, you have to challenge your muscles from different angles and in unique ways. Some of these exercises you might have never heard of before, but after you try each of them, you’ll feel muscles you never knew you had.

2. Build Whole Body Strength

True bodyweight enthusiasts know that one of the greatest benefits to calisthenics exercises is that they build whole body strength. Isolation exercises can cause weak links in your armor that may eventually lead to an injury.

The exercises below surpass most other forms of exercise because they strengthen the entire chain (whole body) as a functional unit.

3. They Are Fun To Do!

Let’s be honest, haven’t you gotten tired of cranking out rep after rep of basic push-ups? When you add unique exercises to your normal routine it becomes fresh and exciting again. Which makes you WANT to do it!

That’s one of the most important aspects of fitness. Sure, getting a nice physique and becoming healthier is great, but we only get one life to live – why grudge through your normal routine? Have fun with it!

Changing up your exercises and adopting new and unique styles will help you do this.

Ok, now on to the exercises…

Variation 1: Barbwire Push-Up

The Barbwire Push-Up (also known as the Diver Bomber Push-Up) is great for developing strength through a large range of motion. You’ll work the upper, middle and lower portions of the chest along with the front, middle and rear delts.

One of the greatest benefits is that with each rep, you are improving spinal mobility. The spine is so important for keeping up your strength. As soon as your spine starts to stiffen you lose functionality which leads to poor performance.

How To Do The Barbwire Push-Up

Start off in a “Downward Dog Position”. Lower yourself down toward the floor as if you were sliding under barbwire. The more arc you can get in your spine the better. As you “slip under the barbwire” arch up while pressing down against the floor. At this point you should have a full arch in your back. Make sure to look up, too, which will extend the arch into your cervical spine.

Begin to arc back down “under the barbwire” while curving your spine the entire time. Press back to starting position.

Coaching Tips

1. The key to this exercise is getting a full range of motion. Make sure you that you are arching as much as you can.

2. To make the exercise easier you can do any number of modifications:

Perform the exercise on your knees (you won’t get much range of motion but it will still help you build strength).
Decrease the range of motion in your spine (i.e. don’t go down as far or arch up as high).
Do the first part of the movement normally but instead of arching back “under the barbwire” come straight to the starting position, which is also known as a Hindu Push-Up.

Variation 2: X Push-Up

The X Push-Up is one of the greatest exercises to develop whole body strength. Normally, with any exercise, you’ll have some muscles that are working much harder than others because the exercise targets a particular muscle group.

With the X Push-Up it seems that it targets ALL of your major muscle groups. In order to perform this exercise your chest, back, core, shoulders, and glutes will be firing on all cylinders.

How To Do The X Push-Up

From a normal push-up position, separate your legs so that your feet are 1.5x shoulder width. Then separate your hands 1.5x shoulder width and bring them up so they are NOT in line with your head. Your body will look like a big “X”. The further you separate your hands and the higher you bring them, the harder the exercise will be.

Lower yourself down until your nose gently touches the ground. Push back up.

Coaching Tips

1. It is important to maintain proper alignment when performing this exercise. One tip that will help you is to keep your glutes and core tight throughout every rep.

2. If the full X Push-Up is too difficult, bring your hands and legs in to 1.2x shoulder width. This will create less demand on your muscles and allow you to progress up to 1.5x shoulder width or even more.

Variation 3: Diamond Kiss Push-Up

The Diamond Kiss Push-Up is a go-to calisthenics exercise for developing strong triceps. It also helps to target the inner portion of the chest muscle and lats. You have probably heard that form is very important when performing any exercise. Well, when performing the Diamond Kiss Push-Up, it is especially important because you are putting tremendous demand on your shoulders. If you can not perform the exercise without your spine being perfectly in-line, then switch to an easier progression.

How To Do The Diamond Kiss Push-Up

Start off in a normal push-up position. Place your thumb and pointer finger together creating a diamond in-between. The diamond should be in line with your head. While keeping your spine perfectly straight lower yourself down until your nose touches the ground in between the diamond. Then press back up.

Coaching Tips

1. As mentioned before it is very important to keep your spine straight.

2. Elbow positioning is also important. While performing this exercise the more you flare your elbows out to the side, the greater likelihood of injury. Try to keep your elbows tucked close to your body as much as possible.

3. Easier Variations: If you can’t complete 5-6 reps of this variation I recommend separating the fingers so that there is more space between your hands. This will decrease the emphasis on your triceps and rely more upon your chest muscles. As your triceps get stronger you’ll be able to bring your hands in close.

Variation 4: Spider Push-Up

The Spider Push-Up is an exercise that incorporates abdominal specific training into the normal push-up. If you have a strong upper body this is a great exercise to incorporate into your training because it will help tighten not only your abs but also your obliques.

How To Do The Spider Push-Up

Start off in a normal push-up position. Lower yourself down like normal while simultaneously bringing your left knee up toward your left elbow. This may take some flexibility but eventually you’ll get it. After you reach the “down” position, press up to starting position while simultaneously bringing your left leg back. Repeat on the other side.

Coaching Tips

1. Maintain proper spinal alignment while performing this movement. You may find yourself arching up to get enough space to get your leg up. Don’t do this. If you don’t have enough flexibility to get your leg up high than just bring your leg up as high as you can (while maintaining form).

2. While performing the movement, consciously contract the abs. This will help you engage more muscle fibers and get more out of the movement.

Variation 5: Dolphin Push-Up

This is one of my favorite conditioning and strength movements. Is it the hardest progression? No. But it targets muscles you don’t normally work, which makes it challenging (especially when you get into high reps) and is very fun to do. Also, I’ll teach you a variation to make the exercise even harder.

How To Do The Dolphin Push-Up

Start off in the plank position, resting on your forearms and elbows. Lower yourself down a bit further (you won’t get a ton of range of motion but the little bit that you get will help to engage the middle rhomboid muscles in your back), then press your butt up into the air. Go as high as you can. You’ll feel muscles in your shoulders that aren’t normally targeted, which is great for developing a healthier shoulders.

Coaching Tips

1. Just like the Barbwire Push-Up, this exercise is focused on spinal mobility as well as developing strength. You don’t need to perform this exercise quickly. Keep a strong, steady pace and try to get as much range of motion as you can.

2. How To Make It Harder: Instead of resting on your forearms, start off on your hands. This is the “Horse Push-Up” variation and is harder than the Dolphin Push-Up. You’ll perform a normal push-up but instead of maintaining a straight spine up to starting position, you’ll lead with your butt and come up all the way to a downward dog position. This will increase range of motion in your spine and shoulders as well as put greater demands on your chest.

The traditional push-up is the Mac Daddy of all calisthenics, yet performing endless reps of the same exercise will eventually lead to diminishing returns. You must challenge your body in unique ways in order to get it to grow. You must apply the principles of Progressive Calisthenics so that it adapts and gets stronger. All of the above exercises are unique variations to the normal push-up. They’ll not only challenge you in new ways but also add more enjoyment to your routine.

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Todd Kuslikis is the founder of a bodyweight exercise blog called AShotofAdrenaline.net. He teaches men how to build muscle using only calisthenics. You can download his free 3 month bodyweight training program by clicking here.

Lower Body Calisthenics

September 9, 2014 By Corey Howard 50 Comments

Corey Howard One Arm Plank With Cast

One of the best things that happened to my training was rupturing my triceps in late May. It was devastating! Right after the injury happened, on the way to the ER my 10 year old son said, “Dad now you won’t be able to do push-ups for a long time!” He was right. After surgery it was 3 full months before I could do anything upper body related and even then that would only be light pulling movements. That being said, it was the best thing to happen to my training. I couldn’t do any upper body training, I couldn’t touch any weights, and the only thing left to train was calisthenics only for legs and abs. To most people that sounds like Hell, but to me it sounded like fun!

When you look at some of the calisthenic practitioners online, you notice they have a lean muscular athletic look, yet typically don’t carry a ton of thick lower body muscle. The week of my surgery, Dragon Door published Paul Wade’s book, C-Mass, where he shows how to add size using calisthenics. This ignited my plan. For 12 weeks I would train legs and abs twice a week using only bodyweight movements. My goal was to gain two full inches on my thighs and glutes, and at least an inch on my calves. I emailed Al Kavadlo, told him about my injury and to expect an article about my journey. Here are some things I learned over the last 12 weeks…

First, know your progressions! Paul Wade gave us all an excellent training guide in Convict Conditioning. For success, you need to know what level you’re at in the pistol squat progression, and how many reps you can do. This way, if you can only do three reps, you know to work on adding reps. Or if you’re proficient with a movement, you can pair it with an “easier” exercise to thoroughly exhaust the muscle. An example of how this worked for me was pairing sissy squats with shrimp squats, or pistol squats with split squat jumps. Over time I developed some proficiency with shrimp squats, so I did sissy squats first to make them more difficult. This exhausted my quads and cut the total number of shrimp squats I could do in half.

Corey Howard Shrimp Squat

Adding a plyo movement immediately after a high skill movement like pistols also pushed the limits of my ability. Remember, your body has no idea if you’re holding a dumbbell or simply tweaking a calisthenic movement, it just knows you’re asking it to work harder and generate more force. By pairing various squat or bridge progressions, you can really push the limits of your lower body.

Second, don’t be afraid of reps. It frustrates me when someone says, “Any more than 5 reps is cardio.” Really!!! If you want to add size, anywhere from 1-20 reps should be performed. Embrace reps. Think about bodybuilders, typically they perform 4 sets of 12 with a shorter rest period between sets. Basically they are increasing the amount of time the muscle is under tension.

Corey Howard Single Leg Bridges

So if you do 20 single leg bridges per leg, then immediately follow it up with 15 glute-ham raises you’re increasing the time under tension for your posterior chain. Things like this will create muscle growth as well as a deep soreness the next day! Don’t be afraid to push a set to failure, especially with lower body calisthenics. What’s the worst that can happen? Maybe you fall on your butt while doing pistols? If you’ve been doing your bridges it will only cushion the blow! This simple philosophy reminded me what it’s like to step off a curb and have my legs collapse!

Third, two sets will work. Why on earth do we need 4 sets of anything? For the last 12 weeks I never took a movement past 2 sets. Once you’re warmed up and locked in, fire up the grueling sets. After pushing the reps to as many as possible and doing it twice, the muscle gets the message that you need it bigger and stronger. Two working sets also gives you time for other movements, and that means you can play with some variety.

So what happened at the end of 4 weeks? I added an additional 2 inches on my thighs and glutes, and an inch on my calves. Twenty-four ab and lower body calisthenic workouts later and I have a meatier, stronger, more powerful lower body than I ever have. Keep in mind, I’m not a newbie to strength training. I’ve been working out for 22 years! After all that time, even I can add size using only calisthenics!

A side benefit from this has been the carry over. As I start with some upper body work I’m noticing that I really haven’t lost much strength, despite surgery, a cast, and upper body inactivity. If your foundation is strong, you will be strong. If anyone is interested in what I did or would like to see some of my workouts, just message me or comment below. I’d love to help. I will warn you though, none of it was easy! Fire it up!

Corey Howard added 2" to his legs after 12 weeks calisthenics only leg training

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About Corey Howard, PCC, RKC, CK-FMS: Corey Howard strives to constantly become stronger, and to help others to achieve their fitness goals. He is the owner of Results Personal Training, and can be reached at www.resultsptonline.com or www.coreyhoward.com.

Building Strength Without Mass

October 29, 2013 By Al Kavadlo 53 Comments

I’ve been getting at least one almost every single day for a while now. In the beginning they were annoying, but after the first few times I actually started to get a kick out of them. I even came to find them flattering. After all, the people who send them are generally well intentioned and often don’t realize they are being rude. Some of them are actually very polite. I’m talking, of course, about emails like this one:

If I had seen the me of today when I was a teen, I probably would have wondered the same thing. After all, the main reason I got into strength training was because I was a scrawny kid who wanted to build some muscle. Fourteen-year-old Al would be very disappointed that after 20+ years of working out I still wasn’t as massive as the Incredible Hulk.

In fact, even though I’m about 30 pounds heavier now than I was at age fourteen (in spite of not growing an inch taller since then), I’m still a fairly small guy. And though my bodyfat percentage sits comfortably in the 8-12% range (I tend to naturally lean out in the summer), at a height of 5’11’’, I’m incredibly small by bodybuilding standards. Good thing I’m not interested in becoming a bodybuilder!
As a kid, however, I desperately wanted to bulk up. Though I managed to beef up to 190 pounds by my early twenties, I eventually came to find that I felt and performed better when I wasn’t carrying so much mass. Though bulky muscle-men seemed ubiquitous to me in my youth, as an adult I soon discovered that to people who weren’t fans of pro wrestling and Arnold movies (which, shockingly, is most people), being overly bulky is a turn-off. It took me a long time to change my perspective, but I’ve since learned to embrace my physique and take advantage of its benefits.

Though there are a few notable exceptions, most advanced bodyweight practitioners tend not to have huge, imposing physiques. Instead, high level calisthenics athletes usually have more of a lean, athletic build. After all, if pound-for-pound strength is the goal, it helps to be relatively light. The higher your muscle to weight ratio, the better off you’re going to be in regard to bodyweight training. Though you definitely need some muscle mass to achieve high levels of strength, it’s more pragmatic to make a little muscle go a long way. At a certain point having too much mass becomes cumbersome. It’s weighs you down more than it helps.

Build Your Foundation

Regardless of whether your aim is to add muscle mass or simply get strong, the first thing you need to do when you begin training calisthenics is build a solid foundation. Though everyone starts at a different place, building to at least 40 bodyweight squats, 30 push-ups, 20 hanging knee raises and 10 pull-ups (those numbers might look familiar) is a prerequisite that should be achievable within a few months (or a few years, depending on where you’re starting).

Women should aim for the same numbers, but with knee push-ups and Australian pull-ups in place of the full ones. This is not an issue of sexism. Biologically, women have a lower propensity for upper-body strength as compared to men. Of course with proper training, women have the potential to develop serious upper-body strength!

Once you’ve established that baseline of fitness, you’ll have likely built a bit of strength, stamina and muscle along the way. If you aren’t looking to grow your muscles past this point, however, it’s time to start training more advanced exercises and leave the high reps to your warm-ups.

Skill Out

It is often said that strength is a skill, and like any skill, the way that you get better is consistent practice. The goal of a strength workout is not to focus on the quantity of reps, but instead the quality. I recommend sticking with sets of 3-5 reps. However, it is helpful to add additional sets to offset the low rep range and allow for adequate volume. For this reason, I suggest performing 3-5 sets of each movement in a given workout when strength is the primary goal. Remember, you don’t need to do the same amount of volume as you would in a hypertrophy workout. The most you’ll probably ever need to do of a single exercise is 25 reps per workout. We’re not necessarily looking to get a pump, either. In fact, you’ll want to take longer breaks in between sets when you’re doing pure strength work than when the goal is mass-building. I recommend anywhere between 2-5 minutes of rest between sets.

It’s important to understand that strength is as much neurological as it is physical. Whenever you try to get your body to do something that it isn’t used to doing, it has to build a new neurological pathway to make it happen. Even when you ask your body to perform a familiar movement pattern, it will have a hard time if the leverage has been made less favorable than what it’s become accustomed to. Your brain has never had to send that specific message to your muscle before, so it must work very hard in order to arrive there. The message often comes in fuzzy.

Imagine using a machete to chop your way through the thick vines of a jungle. This is how hard your brain must work to get your body to do something for the first time. Now imagine you’ve lived in that jungle for ten years and walked the same few routes over and over, gradually clearing away the brush little by little. Eventually the path would be easy to walk and you’d arrive on the other side much more quickly, and with much less effort.

The same thing happens in your brain with consistent training. Over time, the pathway becomes clearer and the message arrives faster. The body adapts to whatever stimuli it is consistently exposed to. A body that is regularly called upon to apply force against resistance will get better at doing so.

Lean Machine

Diet may be the single biggest factor that determines whether or not you will increase or decrease in size. If you want to grow, you’ve got to eat a lot. Conversely, if you’re not interested in gaining weight, you shouldn’t be overeating. Though nutrition is a bit more complex than a simple calories-in minus calories-out equation, nobody ever gained significant bulk without the calories to back it up. Conversely, you can’t lose fat without being in a caloric deficit.

Personally, I follow a very simple diet: I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. I avoid mindless snacking and stay away from processed foods. I’m not trying to gain mass, but I’m not trying to lose it either. People love to ask me how many grams of protein I consume each day or how I time my carbohydrate intake, but the truth is I don’t concern myself with such trivialities. There is no need for the average person to possess a profound knowledge of nutrition in order to have a lean, strong physique. One need not understand how free radicals and antioxidants work in order to know that eating blueberries is healthy.

Regardless of your ambitions, the most important thing is being consistent with your training. Focus on making regular exercise a part of your lifestyle. Don’t over-analyze the details, especially if you aren’t doing the work physically. Of course if nutritional science is of genuine interest to you, there’s no reason to ignore that yearning.

Just don’t make your life any more complicated than it has to be. When all is said and done, the most important thing is to respect and appreciate the body you have. It’s great to strive for physical perfection, but the journey matters more than the destination.

***

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 lots more about Al on his website:www.AlKavadlo.com.

The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass: Part II

October 22, 2013 By Paul "Coach" Wade 210 Comments

How to build real muscle using bodyweight methods: Part II

Part I of this article can be found here.

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

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

Why does this travesty happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crock. Of. S**t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT IIX: Sleep More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT IX: Train the Mind Along With the Body

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

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

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

The Wild Physique (Column), Musclemag no. 132

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT X: Get Strong!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass

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

How to build real muscle using bodyweight methods: Part I

Finally the tide is starting to turn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT I: Embrace reps!

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT II: Work Hard!

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

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

Good! You are doing something right!

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT III: Use Simple, Compound Exercises!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMANDMENT IV: Limit Sets!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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