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The reason that calisthenics typically do not

help people build size is because they follow the


principles of muscular endurance NOT growth.

1. THOUGH
REPETITIONS

SHALT

GO

FOR

LOW

Bodybuilders focus on low repetitions. Their


goal is to build size so they overload the muscle
faster, causing micro tears and allowing for the
muscle to grow. If you want to build size using
calisthenics you have to do the same thing.
You have to perform rep ranges within about 812 for muscular hypertrophy.
Is it really that easy? All I have to do is
stop at 12 reps and my muscles will grow?
Not so fast. The reason bodybuilders grow is
because their tear their muscle tissue by
fatiguing at that low rep range. You have to do
the same thing using calisthenics. How do you
do this? Try these

Method 1: Angular Training

Angular Training is simply a method of adjusting


the angle of your body to make an exercise
more difficult.
Play around with your body angle while
doing calisthenics to make an exercise
more challenging.

Method 2: Adjust Your Weight


Distribution
For now, realize that weight distribution is an
extremely effective way of fatiguing the muscle
fast. Lets use the push up example again.

Instead of keeping your weight distribution


50/50 on both arms shift your weight to one
side so that its about 70/30 or 80/20.
2. THOU SHALT DO MULTIPLE SETS
In order to do this you need to perform multiple
sets of the same exercise. Most body building
routines include at least 4 sets, often more. In
my Bodyweight Overload program I have
participants do eight sets for many exercises.
The reason that multiple sets are so important
for building muscle is because it takes TIME to
fully fatigue the muscle. You need to
consistently bring the same muscle to fatigue in
order to tear muscle tissue.
3. THOU SHALT DO SPLIT WORKOUT PLANS
What is a split workout plan? A split plan is
where you do one body part per day. For
example, you do a chest workout on Monday,
Back workout on Tuesday, Legs on Wednesday,
etc.
Why is this important? If you bring your muscle
to full fatigue, it will need more than one day off
to recover. Remember that the muscle does not
grow while you are working out. Working out
tears the muscle tissue. Growth happens AFTER
the workout when you are resting the muscle.
4. THOU SHALT ISOLATE YOUR MUSCLES
5. THOU SHALT PROGRESSIVELY OVERLOAD
Progressive Overload means that it gets harder
and harder over time. The way to make it
harder is to increase one of several different
factors. Here are some of them:

1. Number of exercises to be performed in


each session:
For example, say you are doing a chest
workout. You can tack on extra X Push Ups at
the end of your workout.
2. Number of sets per exercise:
Instead of doing 3 sets of push ups you could do
4, 5 or even 6 sets. Your muscles will not be
used to it so they will fatigue faster.
3. Number of workouts per week:
Be careful with this one because you CAN over
train. Adjusting the number of workouts each
week can be a very effective method of
progressively overloading the muscle. If you are
used to 4 workouts per week add a 5th or 6th
workout to your week

Bodyweight muscle? no problem!


How is that that bodyweight training has made these guys so strong, so fit, but
not as massive as bodybuilders?
The answer has to do with training methodology. Generally speakingIm
paraphrasing here, kidthere are TWO types of resistance training, both at
different ends of the spectrum. The first is nervous system training. The second
is muscular system training.
Modern bodyweight students tend to adhere to methodologies built around
nervous system training. They make their nervous systems much more
efficient at utilizing their muscles. They develop superior coordination,
balance and spatial skills. Because of this, they dont require significantly
larger muscles to be able to perform their feats of bodyweight strength.

2. The Ten Commandments of Calisthenics Mass

COMMANDMENT I: Embrace reps!


The best way to exhaust the energy in your muscles is through tough, grityerteeth, 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.
COMMANDMENT II: Work Hard!
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!)
Dont ever be afraid to push yourself into new zones of pain and effort if you
want to get bigger
COMMANDMENT III: Use Simple, Compound Exercises!
But if you want to get swole, you need relatively low skill exercisesthis is
what I mean by simple exercises. Simple doesnt mean easy. Doing
twenty perfect one-arm pushups is simpleit aint 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 exerciseswhere you go up and downare
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. For example, focus on:
Pullups
Bodyweight squats, pistols and shrimp squats
Pushups
Australian pullup variations
Dips
Bridges
Handstand pushups (against a walllower skill, more effort)
Leg raises

All of these movements can be made increasingly difficult to suit your


musclebuilding rep range (see Commandment V). There are no excuses for
not kicking your own ass, here.
COMMANDMENT IV: Limit 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.
I usually advise folks looking for maximum growth to perform two hard sets
per exercise, following a proper warm-up.
Many eager trainees ask me if they should perform more sets. The trouble is,
adding sets does not encourage hard, high-performance trainingjust 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.
COMMANDMENT V: Focus on Progressand Utilize a
Training
Journal!
In a nutshell, the secret to drugfree 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.
COMMANDMENT VI: You Grow When You Rest. So Rest!
Working any muscle more than twice a week is usually a mistake if you
want to gain size.
How often you train doesnt matter a s***how often you make
progress is what matters.
Old school bodybuilders like Steve Reeves and Reg Park became huge by
traininghardonly 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 weekand actually making progressis

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, dont 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
programeven 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 progressin muscle
size, but also in performance. If you are working hard but your reps arent
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 realizeas a result, they never
even come close to their full potential.
COMMANDMENT VII: Quit Eating Clean the Whole
Time!
If you are trying to pack on some muscle, eating junk now and again is not
only okay, its positively anabolic.
The muscle-building hormone?) is synthesized from cholesterol. Thats
rightwithout taking in enough cholesterol from high-fat foods, your body
cannot create testosterone, and it cannot build muscle.
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.
COMMANDMENT VIII: Sleep More!
I have been asked on many occasions if theres a natural alternative for
steroidsand I always answer the same: there is, but you cant buy it from a
drugstore. Its called sleep. During sleep, your brain essentially orders your
body to produce its own performance-enhancing drugs.

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!
COMMANDMENT X: Get Strong!
In other words; if you wish to gain as much muscle as your genetic potential
will allow, just training your muscles wont cut it. You need to train your
nervous system tooat 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 muscleshow much
stress you can put them throughpartially 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 theyd
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.

Successful bodybuilders today do the samethey mix

hypertrophy (growth) work with strength work.


They understand that just one wont 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. Youll get better gains if you cycle
(or mix in) pure bodyweight strength trainingwhere you
train your nervous systemwith your bodyweight
bodybuilding.

The best biceps exercise in the world is the underhand


pullup often just called the chin-up
Another great compound move for the biceps (and forearms) is rope climbing.
The old school strongmen often used to climb from sittingand retain an
L-hold position.

This set-up means that when you pull yourself up, the
elbows (pushing on the plank) cannot move forwards,
and the biceps are forced to lever you up. Pure power!
Titanic Triceps

In reality, all these muscle-heads like to work as a unit if they can. To recruit
them as a team, you need the challenge of a heavy load. This equals lots of
hard presses, using the most bodyweight you canone-arm pushups,
handstand pushups, and dips are the Big Three here. Work these hard, and
you are unlikely to need anything else.
Those of you who want a little extra arm work (beyond the Big Three)
should throw in one of the specialist long head movements listed above. More
than this is unnecessary.
Tiger bend pushups
Tiger bend handstand pushups
Bodyweight extensions

Its not abs its midsection, BITCH

Leg raises are a compound exercise. They work the abdominals, but also the
crucial (to combat, running, etc.) hip flexors, and the deep muscles of the
thighs (rectus femoris).
Always avoid isolation exercises like crunches; they are designed to
strengthen only one area of the chain. What would happen in real life if an
engineer tried to use a chain with only ONE strong link? You got it, the
f***ing thing would break

So train your midsection with big, compound exercises!

Maximum Chest
What should you do if this is you? Focus on dipping progressions. I definitely
favor pushups, because they are much less stressful on the shoulders, elbows
Dem pecs. and forearms
If you are serious about dipping for pec development, then your ultimate goal
should be mastering dips on a straight horizontal bar like at the top of a
muscle-up, but without dropping all the way down, under the bar. In the PCC
this is called a horizontal bar dip. Regular dipping involves pushing off
parallel bars; these allow you to place your hands to your side. The side-on
hand position allows the powerful lats to assist in the dip push (some athletes
get sorer lats than pecs when they dip). However the more advanced
horizontal bar dip involves the athlete pushing up with the hands forced in
front of the bar; and when your hands are in front of you, the lats are
disabled and less able to helpso the majority of the workload is shifted
onto the pecs. I have never seen an athlete who can handle double figures in
the horizontal bar dip who doesnt have thick, imposing pectoral muscles. If
you need it, it WILL do the same for you.
Take for example, classic pushups. A regular grip works the arms and front of
the shoulders fairly equally; but as soon as you bring the hands close together,

the movement turns into a monster of a triceps workout


Spread your hands as wide as you can, and the shoulders suddenly get worked
harder (along with the chest muscles, which work in conjunction with the
front delts).
A wide grip works the (rear) shoulders. Close grip pullups are a go-to biceps
exercise, but take a wide grip and suddenly your rear delts suddenly wake up
and pop out to say hi.

Ahll be Back
The traps get a workout from handstand pushups and bridging; the mid-back
and lats get worked by horizontal pulls and pullups; and nothing on earth
works the spinal muscle like bridging does. But lets check out these areas a
little closer.

Lats

Mid-back
Pullups alone will get you a long way. But as you become more advanced, you
may wish to add in some kind of permanent horizontal pull to your upperback routine. Why? Well, vertical pullups mainly work the vertical torso
muscles the lats. Horizontal pulling shifts more work onto the horizontal
muscles of the backthe rear delts, scapular muscles and the lower heads of
the trapezius. These are the detail muscles of the back, so loved by
bodybuilders when they grow and thicken, resembling serpents swirling
around the shoulder-blades.

Low back & spine

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