Why does bodyweight training rock so much?  Let me count the ways…

1) It is the ultimate test of body control and coordination. 
Unless you walk around with a weight glued to your hand on the daily – which I sincerely doubt – the primary physical challenge you’ll face is moving your own body through free space with occasional bouts of moving other things around. Bodyweight training teaches you how to dominate gravity and control your body in all manner of ways in challenges that go above and beyond your daily challenges, thus making them mercifully and exponentially easier.

2) It is a rock-solid test of your overall strength-to-weight ratio. 
Jason Ferruggia has pointed out that by gaining a lot of weight, it’s often easier to lift heavier weight, but it’s mainly because your leverages change as well as your ROM in many cases, and even your ability to bounce yourself off your belly. But if your chinups and dips are going down, for example, your strength-to-weight ratio is going down. If you don’t think this is important, ask yourself: Am I more impressed by someone who can squat 600 lbs and can’t even do more than one shakey, sad-sack pullup, or a dude who can squat 600 lbs AND can do 20 solid-ass pullups in a row? 

3) It will teach you to create tension from nothing.
One reason (among a few, in my opinion) that gymnasts so often go from never having touched iron in their lives to doing jaw-dropping feats of strength with barbells is due to their ability to create tension out of nothing. They are masters of feeding tension forward, rather than simply reacting to outside stimuli. Cases in point: American Gymnastics coach Chris Sommer tells of a number of his students who have experienced what can only be described as balls-to-the-wall impressive results on their first dance with the barbell, including one high schooler who – in his first day of weight training – pulled a triple bodyweight deadlift. His students are hardly the exceptions to the rule. Strength Sensei Charles Poliquin has told have teaching two similiary iron-starved gymnasts who – within 3 weeks of learning the bench press – benched 350 lbs (160 kgs). Chew on that for a bit.

4) It goes with you no matter where you find yourself.
From a pure practicality standpoint, bodyweight beats all other forms of resistance hands down. Traveling? Well, you didn’t leave your dips, chinups, and pistols at home, nor did you leave your front lever or back lever or sprints there, either. Get to work.

5) An immense catalog of movements with enough variety to be approachable by all.
We are made to move – first through free space, then through free space with external objects. Because we are made to move our bodyweight first, bodyweight-based training is something that can be done on some level or another by literally anybody, young and old. You may not be able to do a full pushup yet, but you can most definitely do it with an elevation of some sort – even if it be higher than eagles’ nuts. In time, harder variations become easier to you, and the same is true for practically any movement in the calisthenics cadre. 

The list could go on and on, but I think you’ve heard enough. Now go forth and push, pull, squat, bridge, sprint, crawl, and have a good ol’ time.

​I could really go on and on about why calisthenics – as a serious pursuit – is the missing link in most people’s training, but instead, I’ll break it down into 5 simple, no BS reasons why:

1) It is the ultimate test of body control and coordination. 
Unless you walk around with a weight glued to your hand on the daily – which I sincerely doubt – the primary physical challenge you’ll face is moving your own body through free space with occasional bouts of moving other things around. Bodyweight training teaches you how to dominate gravity and control your body in all manner of ways in challenges that go above and beyond your daily challenges, thus making them mercifully and exponentially easier.

2) It is a rock-solid test of your overall strength-to-weight ratio. 
Jason Ferruggia has pointed out that by gaining a lot of weight, it’s often easier to lift heavier weight, but it’s mainly because your leverages change as well as your ROM in many cases, and even your ability to bounce yourself off your belly. But if your chinups and dips are going down, for example, your strength-to-weight ratio is going down. If you don’t think this is important, ask yourself: Am I more impressed by someone who can squat 600 lbs and can’t even do more than one shakey, sad-sack pullup, or a dude who can squat 600 lbs AND can do 20 solid-ass pullups in a row? 

3) It will teach you to create tension from nothing.
One reason (among a few, in my opinion) that gymnasts so often go from never having touched iron in their lives to doing jaw-dropping feats of strength with barbells is due to their ability to create tension out of nothing. They are masters of feeding tension forward, rather than simply reacting to outside stimuli. Cases in point: American Gymnastics coach Chris Sommer tells of a number of his students who have experienced what can only be described as balls-to-the-wall impressive results on their first dance with the barbell, including one high schooler who – in his first day of weight training – pulled a triple bodyweight deadlift. His students are hardly the exceptions to the rule. Strength Sensei Charles Poliquin has told have teaching two similiary iron-starved gymnasts who – within 3 weeks of learning the bench press – benched 350 lbs (160 kgs). Chew on that for a bit.

4) It goes with you no matter where you find yourself.
From a pure practicality standpoint, bodyweight beats all other forms of resistance hands down. Traveling? Well, you didn’t leave your dips, chinups, and pistols at home, nor did you leave your front lever or back lever or sprints there, either. Get to work.

5) An immense catalog of movements with enough variety to be approachable by all.
We are made to move – first through free space, then through free space with external objects. Because we are made to move our bodyweight first, bodyweight-based training is something that can be done on some level or another by literally anybody, young and old. You may not be able to do a full pushup yet, but you can most definitely do it with an elevation of some sort – even if it be higher than eagles’ nuts. In time, harder variations become easier to you, and the same is true for practically any movement in the calisthenics cadre. 

The list could go on and on, but I think you’ve heard enough. Now go forth and push, pull, squat, bridge, sprint, crawl, and have a good ol’ time.

Start with these, then create a million more of your own.

First, let me just say that literally ANY sort of movement you do – whether it’s gardening a few times a week, going for walk or a hike, or yes shudder even Zumba, is light years better for you than filling in the butt-groove of your favorite La-Z-Boy. If your idea of a marathon is watching as many episodes of House of Cards in a row as humanly possible, this post probably won’t make any difference.

If, however, you see the value in fitness and moving yourself around, let me take a minute and explain why in addition to focusing on what you already like to do, you should really also add in some serious, no-nonsense strength work.

5) “Building strength = building confidence.”
Out of all the people I have trained in my life, not a single one of them has failed to gain a new-found sense of self confidence, self respect, and happiness with who they are once they start strength training. This self confidence spills over into all aspects of their lives – career, family, and how they handle difficult situations. This leads me to my next point…

4) “Being strong makes you harder to kill.”
Or injure. Or screw with. Strength builds a good deal of resilience to all sorts of challenges that “fitness” (whatever that means) can’t even touch. Can you think of even one hero from any culture of years past who was renowned for his ability to jog flaccidly at a medium pace for who-knows-how-long, and yet be easily injured and piss weak at defending his people and overcoming throngs of blood-thirsty enemies? Is it any wonder that regardless of other physical qualities our ancient heroes possessed, super strength was always dominated the number one spot? Same thing today: life and fate like to tag team you with physical mishaps all the time. Strength will help you take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

3) “Strength training will torch fat and give you the physique you want.”
It’s easy to convince men of this, but women should know this applies equally to them. Renowned fat loss expert Josh Hillis has noted that typically by the time a woman can deadlift or squat at least 135 for 5 reps AND do 3 pullups, they probably will have arrived at their physique goals. There are a thousand reasons why. If you don’t know, ask. And with your goals in mind…

2) “Strength is the foundation for the development of the rest of physical qualities”
This is the observation famously made by Professor Leonid Matveyev. Strength is definitely not the ONLY thing to work on, but as it is the base for everything else you want to do, spending some time getting “entry level strong” will make improving your speed, cardio, fat loss, explosive power, etc. a MUCH easier affair. As Master SFG Brett Jones has noted “Maximal strength is the glass in which all other strength qualities fit into and at a certain point you will be limited by the size of the glass.” Get a big glass and then pile whatever physical quality you want into it.

1) “Strong fixes almost everything.”
One of the lesser-known geniuses of the strength world, Mark Reifkind, has stated this, and I can’t think of too many instances wherein it’s not true. From frustrating plateaus to overcoming aches and pains (my mom and many others can attest to that one), gaining strength means gaining a foothold over a vast number of physical maladies.

Is your mental jury still out? If so, do an experiment: seek out an StrongFirst-certified instructor and learn the basics of strength training. Follow instructions to a T, and notice the myriad transformations that will rush in to your newer, larger figurative glass. Experience it for yourself; you will be amazed.
​
Pictured is a Abby Stockton, who looks pretty darn good and was strong as an ox. Probably two of ’em.

“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve thought of probably about a million different ways to start this article (well, at least half a million), but some conversations I had over the past few days spurred me to write something, ANYTHING, about a topic I think is really important.

What are you doing to protect your spine?

 crickets chirping 

Anything?

I mean, if you injure your arm, your leg, an eye, an ear or whatever else, that sucks, but you’ve got a spare to get by with.  Injure your spine and you’re closed for business.

I got to thinking about this because as much as I hate to admit I’m scared of anything, I’m terrified of back problems.  Both of my parents have had surgery on their spines – my dad had surgery on his back about 10 years ago due to a damaged disc, and my mom has had not one, but TWO surgeries on her neck, which have severely limited her range of motion and made life much harder for her.  One of the reasons I grew up unathletic and shying away from physical expression is that both of my parents had bad backs/necks, and could never be all that physical.  I never got to see my parents be especially physically active – no backyard sports games with their friends, no weightlifting, no nothing.  To this day, it surprises me when I see my friends parents in their 40s, 50s, and beyond being physically active and enjoying physical culture.  I just can’t fathom it because I don’t see my own parents doing it.

So when I talk to people about taking care of themselves and training smart, it surprises me that a lot of people either a) had never thought of it and don’t know how to take care of their joints, or b) don’t give a $h!t.  One 19 year old I talked to a few days ago told me about how much he loves wakeboarding, but how much it hurts his spine because of all the thrashing around that he goes through.  The concerned trainer in me said “You’d better be careful, man; you jack your spine up and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” He kinda laughed and told me “yeah, I know.”  Another dude I once talked to (a 20-something skateboarder and BMX biker, so go figure) told me “I figure now’s the time to screw all my joints up, while I’m young and can have fun, rather than when I’m old and can’t do as much.”  No, I didn’t make that quote up for this article.  And no, I couldn’t even begin to think of a way to respond to him. 

Welcome to Snap City.  Population: That Guy

So, back to my original question: What are you doing to protect your spine?

Tightening your abs and butt while you practice your strength training is a good start but just like tightening your belt won’t make you thinner, you need to go above and beyond if you want to truly protect the thing that allows you to move, breathe, stand upright, etc.  In my experience, the there are two things you have to do to make your spine less injury-prone: Improve your mobility and improve your strength.

Fortunately, it’s not that complicated.  Your spine has 24 articulating vertebrae – so just move them!  They’re meant to move!  Forward, backward, twist, bend, repeat.  Do it carefully and slowly as the video below describes.

One problem with a sedentary lifestyle (apart from the fact that it’s boring as hell) is that all that lack of movement makes movement tougher as the nervous system picks a much shorter range of motion for the muscles we use the least.  This can also happen if you’re big into strength training but not big on flexibility practice (shame on you).  The Trifecta from Convict Conditioning 2 has worked wonders on my spine’s flexibility and mobility.

Now that you can move your spine like a stud, it’s time to strengthen it. There is a ton of ways to strengthen your back, but for the ultimate in flexible strength and overall resilience, nothing, but NOTHING, beats the back bridge.
There are many ways to do it, but I like the ConvictConditioning method.  Rather than use it as a static hold, treat it like a dynamic (moving) exercise.  You start from the floor, arch your back and raise your hips to the ceiling, return to the floor, and repeat.  This has a myriad of benefits:

1)      It greases a solid groove for the exercise, making bridge holds much easier if you decide to do them.
2)      In my experience, it builds strength faster than a bridge hold would, since you can rest as long as you’d like between reps, minimizing fatigue and maximizing the flexible strength benefits from the exercise. 
3)      It stretches EVERYTHING in front of your body.  I often feel it especially in my quads, which can get tight from a lot of squatting, and in my abs, which get tight from a lot of heavy ab work.
4)      It will encourage better shoulder flexibility, as one of the hallmarks of a good bridge is straight arms.  Pair this with some serious back extension and your shoulders will be as flexible as they’ll ever need to be. 
5)      Women love a sexy set of beefy spinal erectors.

All right, so I made that last one up.  But everything else and more is absolutely true.  When you’re ready to bulletproof your spine and say no to weakness and injury in the most important part of your body, you’re ready for some bridges!

Unlike a lot of exercises that you can just launch into and make fast progress on, like the kettlebell swing or the clean and press, you’ll want to take your time and milk each bridging progression for everything you can.  We in America are not a culture of bridging, so the learning curve is longer for most than it would be for an exercise we’re more familiar with, like the bench press.  Check out the video below and start working on these progressions one by one.  Couple the mobility exercises in the videos above with the bridgework in the video below, and before you know it you will have unjacked your back, strengthened your spine, and improved your back health. 

Feel free to high-five me from across the Internet.  Putting back problems in the grave deserves a little celebration.

StrongFirst, Strong Always!

Aleks Salkin, SFG II

(This post originally appeared on Pat Flynn’s legendary ChroniclesOfStrength.com)

NOTE FROM PAT:

The following is a guest post by that scriptural varmint Aleks Salkin, or The Jew Hammer, as he’s known, a miscreant, it must be obvious, of the most rascally sorts. But because he writes a very plain and deeply beguiling English, and uses short sentences and the words of everyday, unlike so many of the rambling, incoherent streams of Germanic nonsense churned out by the nub of my pen, I suspect you will be hearing from him again soon, and welcome it as a refreshment each time you do.

– Pat

PS – This is a significantly text heavy post with minimal visual accompaniments, causing it to look like The Constitution, and forcing that most onerous and beastly labor upon the cortex of having to read a fully formed paragraph or two. I put pictures on my site mostly to encourage the engagement of children, congressman, and college professors; a thought which hadn’t occurred to Mr. James Madison.


Fitness minimalism: what it is, what it isn’t (By Aleks Salkin)

It’s February now, and you know what that means: the New Year’s Resolution crowd has mostly given up and gone home, leaving the year-round devotees of sweaty equipment, bad pop music,  and macho posturing in cutoff shirts and baggy basketball shorts in peace to do their thing.  If you’re among those folks, listen up:  as enticing as other people’s sweat and bad taste in generic music may be to you, immersing yourself in it for too long so that you can finish up your highly detailed and overblown program isn’t the best way to get results.  More often than not, it will just lead to confusion and frustration faster than the results you’re after.

Enter minimalism. 

Fitness minimalism is a concept that has been gaining popularity over time not only because studs like Pavel Tsatsouline, Dan John, and Chronicles’ own Pat Flynn have been espousing it since you still thought minimalism referred to Phillip Glass’s music, but because – surprise surprise – it works!  Like a charm, in fact!  More and more people are starting to find out that the missing piece in their training for all these years hasn’t been a plastic doodad that you can buy on late-night TV, but the concept that you don’t need more in your program, you need less.

Now, you could take the above paragraph, strip your program down all willy nilly and say “All right, I’m a convert to minimalism!  Now I’m gonna go forth and spread the word on every Internet forum I can!”  Not so fast.  I admire your enthusiasm,  but let’s make sure we get on the same page before you take advantage of your anonymity online and start swearing at people you don’t even know for disagreeing with you.

First, let’s take a look at four things that minimalism IS.

1) Minimalism is minimal equipment

The only thing you need to stock your workout space with is yourself and the most essential of equipment to your goal.   Let the latest gadgets clutter someone else’s workout area.  Why only the most basic of equipment?  The reason is simple: the more you have at your disposal, the more choices you have.  The more choices you have, the more you’ll stray.  The more you stray, the more you stay – at square one, to be specific.  Think about it.  If you are driving down a road and suddenly you come to 10 different forks in the road, with each road looking different and winding off into the distance, but only one leading to the destination you need, how many more opportunities do you have to make the wrong choice and end up in a place you didn’t want to be?  Now, imagine that you’re driving down the same road and all but one path are blocked off – which one do you take?  The only one available to you.  Close off as many roads as possible and leave only the one that will most directly get you to your goal, whatever your goal may be.  This will mean different things to different people, but to wit, here would be an example of some good equipment to keep on hand.
– A few kettlebells
– A pullup bar/rings
– A barbell and some weight plates
– Some floor space and room enough to raise your hand over your head.

Simple, effective.  Still endless possibilities here, but a solid program to narrow your choices even further will come in handy.  Simple equipment + solid plan = guaranteed results

2) Minimal exercises

I get it, exercise ADD is hard to defeat because doing boatloads of exercises is just fun!  If your end goal is to have spun your proverbial wheels as much as possible while having gone essentially nowhere, then exercise ADD is perhaps the thing for you.  You may also enjoy elevating your car off the floor, hopping in the driver’s seat and gunning it as hard as you can.  You’ll rack up plenty of mileage on your car, but you won’t have actually gone anywhere.  Meanwhile, the minimalist will love to tell you how they took the fewest and shortest roads possible to get to a few far away and exotic destinations, and they won’t care that they didn’t take the scenic route; they’ll have exciting stories not only about their recent destinations, but plans for their next one.  They’ll also politely not ask you WTF your car is doing revving so high without going anywhere.

Frankly, the best success I’ve had in training is when doing 2-5 exercises maximum, and I’m willing to bet it’ll be the same story for you if you don’t already have said success stories.  If you wanna go as minimalistic as possible, pick one push and one pull and have at it.  Make them far reaching ones, too; Deadlift and military press, for example.  The fewer the exercises, the better you get at them.  The better you get, the more you can lift.  The more you can lift, the more results you’ll see.  If you have to break up a minimal amount of training time into 10 different exercises, you’ll have a hard time getting from “suck” to “good” at any of them.  Which leads me to my next point…

3) Minimal time spent training

This is an important one, and one that people miss probably the most frequently.  People either spend minimal time training and not enough impact within that time, or maximal time training and TOO much impact.  It matters more how much you can recover than how much you can work.  Anyone can work themselves into the ground every time they walk into the gym…they just can’t do that forever.

Shoot first for the minimal effective dose.  Are you just starting to train?  Twice a week for 20-30 minutes will elicit a change.  It’s meat and potatoes we’re after, so don’t fill up on bread and salad; big-bang exercises only and done at an appropriate pace and stopped LONG before your form starts to take a trip southward.  When the time’s up, you call it a day.  The rest of the day you get to enjoy your life rather than lick your self-inflicted wounds.  Those who call that sort of wound-licking the sign of a good session are the same people doctors and chiropractors like to call “Benefactors to my kids’ college funds.”

4) Minimal complexity in programming

The more moving parts anything has, the more likely it is to get jammed up.  Compare the M-16 to the AK-47 in the Vietnam war.  The M-16 had loads of problems, but the AK-47 shot practically no matter what.

Your programming should be similar: Simple as hell, and with only one variable to manipulate at a time.  Case in point: Add in another set of squats to your programming each week.  Once you can’t reasonably add more, do the same amount of work in a little less time.  Once you can no longer reduce the rest, go up in weight or switch to a new variation.  Repeat until beast-like.  Just don’t do it all at once or you’ll likely not be able to figure out what worked and what didn’t, assuming that there’s even an impressive change by program’s end.  Why do three, four, or more things to move forward when you can do one with more certainty?  Again, it may not be entertaining, but if its entertainment you’re after go see a movie.

What minimalism is not

Because of all the interest surrounding minimalism, many mistakenly apply a hack-away-at-literally-everything approach when trying to simplify their programming, believing that it will still help them get to their goals and that the only key is less of everything.

Not so.

Not even close, in fact.  In short, minimalism is about hacking away the unessential, and that requires both a keen eye and a sound mind.  Failing that, at least a well-written program from an experienced trainer will do you some good.

Let’s now take a look at things that minimalism is NOT:

1) Minimal preparation

If you show up at the gym or your preferred place of workout-age without a plan to make that session another brick in the larger structure (i.e. your physical betterment), you’re missing the point.  Showing up unprepared with no overarching plan and no end goal is an example of minimal preparation, not minimalist fitness.  In this regard, minimalism follows the same rules as most reputable fitness schools of thought: Make a plan and stick to it.  Strength is a skill, and you can’t out-perform a lack of practice.

2) Minimal effort
This seems to be the most confusing for people.  To be a fitness minimalist, the idea is reducing WASTED effort, not exerting minimal effort.  If you can bang out a set of powerful, explosive swings, crisp, smooth presses, and heavy, authoritative squats, that’s great!  Why succumb to your ego and try to eke out a few more sloppy swings, bad-posture presses, and knee-knocking squats?  What good do such reps do for you?  And what good CAN’T quality reps do for you?  To be a true fitness minimalist, you don’t give up the benefits of working hard; you give up the detriments of constantly pushing your limits for no real outcome other than to say you did it.  True minimalism is about squeezing a lot out of a little, not desperately grasping at a little from a lot.  If it helps, think about it like trying to pick up a chick from a bar.  Are you gonna half-assedly talk to some women, use tired pick up lines, and basically make yourself look like an asshat because you’re just trying to talk to as many women as possible or are you gonna take some pride in yourself and your efforts and make them worthwhile?  It ain’t a numbers game, folks – both require some skill, not a steady climb to higher numbers.  And yes, I’m including exercise in this – stay focused!

3) Minimal attention to detail
This should really go without saying, but regardless of how few elements you may have in your plan, don’t let that fool you into believing that you have less to consider.  Sure, you may not have 15 exercises to juggle, but 50 crappy swings will end up being nothing more than 50 crappy swings.  Take that freed up brain energy and make it into a laser-sharp focus directly on whatever exercises you’re practicing.  If all you’re doing is swings and presses, make sure that the energy you saved from everything you were able to cut out of your program goes into perfecting each and every rep.

4) Minimal focus
I’ll admit it – losing focus and wandering into other things is as easy for me as it is for anyone else.  But if you make it your goal to squeeze as much as possible out of front squats, pullups, and dips only for the duration of, say, a 6 week program, don’t get bored in week 2 and decide to find out how many snatches you can manage in 5 minutes or how quickly you can run a mile or how many 400 meters you can run in half an hour.  Stay on task and save those things for a later date and time when you can logically include it in a program to reach your next milestone, lest you stay right where you are.

There are plenty of other things I could say about minimalism and its myriad of applications, but that’d kinda defeat the point of getting a lot done with a little, wouldn’t it? 😉  If you have any questions about how to apply it to your goals, feel free to drop me a line on my Facebook page and we’ll talk.  Also, soak up as many of Pat’s articles as you can.  They’re free, and abound in solid, no bullshit advice.  Do yourself a favor and bookmark this page: Chronicles of Strength is your home for minimalist fitness domination.

In closing, take heed of Pat’s wise words about what it means to become minimalist:

A few reminders about this page, and my philosophy.

1. Fitness minimalism is not about doing very LITTLE, it’s about doing the LEAST you need to do to get the job done (to hit your goals).

2. Minimalism is not about doing MORE exercise, it’s about doing BETTER exercise. [Don’t do in an hour what should only take thirty minutes. And don’t waste thirty minutes on something that can get done in fifteen]

3. Minimalism is the cross section between effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right).

4. In brief, minimalism uses the FEWEST possible components (time, effort, equipment, etc) to produce the MAXIMUM effect.

In other words, don’t jog. SPRINT!

– = +

– Pat

ChroniclesOfStrength.com

Aleks Salkin is a Level 2 StrongFirst-certified kettlebell instructor (SFG II), StrongFirst-certified bodyweight Instructor (SFB), and an Original Strength Certified Coach. He grew up scrawny, unathletic, weak, and goofy until he was exposed to kettlebells and the teachings and methodology of Pavel in his early 20s. He is currently based out of Jerusalem, Israel and spends his time teaching clients both in person and online as well as spreading the word of StrongFirst and calisthenics.  He regularly writes about strength and health both on his website and as a guest author on other websites. Find him online at alekssalkin.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alekssalkintraining