Keeping a healthy diet is incredibly important, but what’s even more important is the purpose behind the food choices you make. As they say, find your “why” when you’re trying to make something important happen. This will both motivate and help you make the best choices possible. As I mentioned in the last post, the biggest why for most “healthy …
The Diet and Weight Loss Myth
Eating better in an effort to lose weight or body fat is one of those things that’s assumed to be true. It’s practically assumed that cleaning up your diet is the most important component in a weight loss plan. If you eat right then the fat should just fall off and stay off. While eating well is certainly an important part …
Build a Bigger Back and Biceps w/ Single Arm Rows
There’s a very good reason why single dumbbell rows are a staple exercise in bodybuilding; they work and they work really well. We have a very similar calisthenics exercise called the single strap row. It’s simple, easy to adjust and builds your back and biceps. They are also a great addition to pullups for use on your preliminary days in …
How to do Archer Push Ups
Archer push ups are one of the best push ups progressions you can do. They are a great way to continue building strength and muscle after you’ve become proficient with 2 arm push ups. Like all progressive calisthenics exercises, the secrets for building more strength and muscle rests in the technical details. That’s why I made this video for you …
Why Time Under Tension Builds Muscle
Time under tension is the most effective way to train for building muscle that I know of. This is because it directly focuses on the root cause of hypertrophy. Many criticise the idea of training time under tension claiming it’s some sort of a fad or gimmick. In this week’s podcast I discuss the science behind training time under tension …
5 Ways to Reduce Workout Stress
While stress is an important component in exercise, too much of it will prevent you from building muscle or burning fat. I’m not just talking about physical stress either. Mental and phycological stress can also put a serious dent in your workout. The real shame is most of this stress is not at all productive nor is it necessary. It’s …
Reach Your Fitness Goals Faster
Have you every felt like reaching your fat loss or muscle building goals is going slower than it should? Do you want to breathe some new life into your routine to jump start your progress? Give this video a quick view to attack the habits that are slowing you down while increasing the habits that will speed up your progress.
How to Break Your Bad Fitness Habits
Your habits will make or break your success. They can make it easy to shed fat and build muscle, or nearly impossible to make any progress at all. In this week’s podcast, I bring a refreshing, and slightly uncomfortable, perspective on what’s really holding you back from making the progression want. Hold onto your hats because this might get a …
My Favorite App for Muscle Building Workouts
When it comes to building muscle, everything boils down to the root cause of time under tension. If you can put a muscle under more tension and/or for more time you will grow. The only challenge is being able to measure that time. Using things like a stopwatch can be terribly inconvenient, not to mention impossible to use with any accuracy. …
Diet vs Exercise for Long Term Fat Loss
Many claim diet is more important for fat loss, and it may be in some situations, however, fat loss through diet is a temporary scenario. Regardless of what diet you follow your body will find a way to return to calorie balance one way or another. This is why physical activity might be a stronger, more potent variable towards your …
Instantly Improve Your Strength & Control
This technique is one I’ve long known about but have never fully applied it. Now I’m wishing I took this much more seriously. It would have saved me a lot of wasted effort and improved my technique a heck of a lot faster. Check out this video on limb torque or “screwing” to quickly improve every exercise in your routine.
How I Combine Calisthenics & Weight Lifting
I’m all 100% body weight, but most of the clients I teach use a combination of body weight training and weight lifting. To ensure both methods gain an equal share of the workout I use a method based on the BIG 6 from Convict Conditioning. This ensures your workouts stay balanced, efficient and very effective. Check it out below:
Instantly Improve Your Push Ups
Your push-ups live and die by your scapular control. The more control you have over your shoulder position the more you’ll control every aspect of your push-up. The issue is, achieving that control is not easy to do, but this simple trick will solve that for you:
Is Walking the Best Fat Loss Exercise?
I believe the best fat loss exercise isn’t done in the gym or sweating your sock off in some sort of class. It’s simply walking out your front door and continuing to put one foot in front of the other. All of the high-intensity stuff is still great, but when it comes to long-term, lasting fat loss walking just might be the …
Cut Your Workout Time in Half
I love working out, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend all of my time and energy training. If anything, I love the fact that most of my workouts take me an average of 20 minutes. I’m a busy person, and I bet you are too which is why this week’s podcast is all about shortening your workout time …
The Link Between Range of Motion & Muscle Growth
Range of motion is one of the most important elements in progressive calisthenics. It’s why many of the steps in Convict Conditioning use range of motion as a way to progress and regress almost every exercise. It’s just a shame many people fall for the idea that there’s an ideal range of motion to use in each exercise. This is …
How to Do Bridges Like a Boss
Bridging is one of those calisthenics exercises that plays second fiddle to moves like pull-ups, push-ups and squats. Many athletes hardly practice them at all which is a shame. If there’s one move that can improve your performance and results in calisthenics it’s bridging. The biggest reason bridges fall out of favor is because many people do “pushing bridges” where …
Escape the Gym and Burn More Fat
In this edition of the R.D.P Podcast I explore why betting your weight loss hopes on gym based exercise can be incredibly limiting. If you really want to burn as much fat as possible, your best bet might be to use methods that don’t require a membership fee and a TV to keep your mind distracted from how bored you …
6 Moves to Improve Your Muscle Tension
All muscle building and strength success comes down to muscle tension. Your ability to control your muscles can literally make or break your gains regardless of what your workout routine and diet looks like. That’s why I created the Chain Training Ebook which you can download here. It’s a muscle tension management system to ensure your workouts are of the …
The Cure for Skinny Hamstrings
Hamstrings play a major role in both the performance and appearance of your legs. Often times, skinny legs are caused by skinny underdeveloped hamstrings. Many claim body weight training is a poor choice for hamstring, or even leg growth. I used to think this too until I started playing around with these moves and my jeans started to fit quite …
Rules of Progression & Results
Progression is the bottom line in strength and fitness. If you have progression you get the results you want, it’s as simple as that. However, if you have the perfect routine, the perfect diet and the best equipment, but no progression, you’re stuck. So there’s a lot at stake here. With progression comes the results you want. Without it, nothing …
Bodyweight Triceps Routine
Biceps are great, but triceps are the true source of arms that stretch out the sleeves of your T-shirt. If ya wanna be jacked ya gotta build those triceps! This simple, yet brutal bodyweight routine is a killer for that horseshoe muscle hanging on the back of your arm.
A Simple Tip For Harder Abs
I just love simple little tweaks that make an exercise safer and more effective. This especially goes for abdominal and core training because I’ve long struggled to nail down techniques like hanging knee raises. Moves that involve hanging from a bar always seemed to be crazy-good one workout and flat and bland the next. This simple tip I stumbled upon …
Bodyweight Pre-Exhaust Chest Workout
Is there anything as satisfying as feeling your pecs all pumped up and burning? I mean, besides driving a steam roller over a mile long sheet of bubble wrap. Yea, I didn’t think so. I would take a pumped-up set of pecs over watching a great movie or eating a fine meal any day. Thankfully, you don’t need a long …
Bodyweight Biceps Workout
Pre-exhaustion has been a tried and true muscle building technique since the down of body building. It’s simply using a focused exercise on a specific muscle group, and then immediately using a compound exercise that includes that same muscle group to create a higher state of fatigue. No muscle group seems to gain more focused attention than the biceps, which …
7.5 Facts About Fitness Progression
Progression. It’s the single Delta Principal that can make or break your success. Or to put it another way, no progression no results. If you get progression you get results. Simple eh? The trick is understanding a few key basic principals about progression which will make it a lot easier, let alone possible. Check em out:
Should You Advance Your Convict Conditioning?
Progression speed is a bit of a topic of debate when applying the workouts in Convict Conditioning. On one hand there’s the advice from Coach Wade who says to start on the first steps and progress slowly. On the other hand, there are those who are coming to progressive calisthenics from years of strength training and feel like the introductory …
Eating Right vs Eating Better
People ask me if I eat right, to which I enthusiastically reply no, as a matter of fact I don’t eat right. I love their reaction, it’s always a mix of disbelief and sympathy like I’m a darn fool. “Oh you’ll learn” they say. Just wait until you reach age, 20, 30, 40 or whatever. “You won’t be able to eat …
Unlock Your Hips and Unlock Your Squat
We live in a modern world, where sitting is the normal state of things. Now, I’m not someone who believes standing desks and sitting on the floor is the ultimate solution. No, the biggest issue from sitting is a situation I like to call “dead hips.” Dead hip is the condition where your ability to use your hips withers away and …
Should You Do Pistols on a Box?
Doing pistol squats on an elevated surface makes it easier to dial in some of the technical aspects such hip control and balance. This is why many people might benefit from doing them on an elevated surface. There are some downsides though and you don’t want to spend too much time doing single leg squats on ledges or boxes. Strive …
The Calisthenics Advantage of Earned Strength
“It’s so much easier to build muscle and strength with Weightlifting, you just add weight.” I’ve heard the above argument for why weight lifting is better than body weight training for years and have always thought it was a valid point. After all, when it comes to calisthenics making your muscles work harder is a lot more complicated. You have …
Is Core Training Upside Down?
For the past several years I thought I was optimally training my core and abs. My primary strategy has always been to move the lumbar spine since that’s the collection of joints moved through an abdominal contraction. While this movement is important, I’ve come across some new information suggesting the primary movement should be in the hips which flips my …
Build More Muscle With Less Joint Pain
Tension is the bottom line in your quest to build muscle and strength. If you use it well you get everything you want. You grow muscle, improve performance and generally gain everything from your training you could ever want. On the other hand, if your tension is mismanaged it will break you down and bust you up. Almost every chronic …
Tackling the PCC With Adrienne Harvey
Here she is, the one and only Adrienne Harvey! Yes, the one and only Girya Girl is on this week’s episode of the R.D.P Podcast. In our conversation, Adrienne pulls no punches about what it takes to excel at the coveted Dragon Door PCC Century test plus. We also get into some of her best tips for diet, nutrition, fat …
New Research in Building Muscle vs Strength
Muscle and strength, the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Usually, the two should grow together. As you get stronger you should be getting bigger and vice versa but it doesn’t always happen that way. Some people do get stronger without getting much bigger. I’ve also known some people who are pretty big but they are not nearly …
Stronger & Safer Body Weight Training
I’ve been using this simple way of training my basic compound movements (push-ups, pull-ups, squats etc) and the effects have been nothing short of fantastic. My joints feel stronger and safer, my muscles are working harder, and I feel like I’m moving as my body was meant to move. This “trick” calls into question some of the classic ideas about …
Are Stabilizer Muscles Important?
Stabilizer muscles were a big buzz word back when I first started working out. They were a point made by free weight guys like me in the debate over free weights vs machines. When the functional movement craze hit a lot of focus was placed on working these muscles through things like balance boards and unstable positions like standing …
Should You Eat Less For Fat Loss?
Eating less can potentially jump start fat and weight loss but it’s not always a sound plan. Some folks can, and should rein in their diet while other people should focus more on being more physically active. In this video, I show you if you can calories to cut out or if you should focus on physical activity for fat …
Veterano Plus Bridge Workout
When I first discovered Convict Conditioning I didn’t take bridging seriously. I thought it was a move that was more of a circus trick and wasn’t worth more than a few moments of my time each week. I now know that was a BIG mistake. Not only are bridges not just some trick, but they lay the foundation for your …
Do More Pull Ups & Push Ups in 7 Days
Adding more pull ups and push ups in a set is not always a matter of just working harder to push your limits. Most of the time, increasing your reps isn’t about doing reps you couldn’t do before but instead improving the reps you can already do. I cover a few ways you can do this to become stronger and …
Stimulate Don’t Annihilate Your Muscles
The advice to stimulate a muscle rather than annihilate it is fantastic to follow. It will save you from injury, speed up recovery and improve motivation to train. It might even save your training career! The only question is how do you that? What does it mean in application? I attempt to answer this and give you some solid ideas …
A Tip To Learn Pistol Squats Faster
The pistol squat can be a real challenge to learn and an even bigger challenge to master. Not that I’ve got mine dialed in perfectly but I’m making progress every week. A simple trick I employ to make my squats easier and more proficient is to do them on a slight incline. It doesn’t require as much posterior chain strength or …
Fix Pistol Squat Knee Pain
The lofty pistol squat used to wreak havoc on my knees. At one point it got so bad I had trouble climbing a flight of stairs. Now my knees are super strong and can withstand all kinds of abuse. The funny thing is, it’s the very pistol squats that caused my knee pain that helped me get rid of it. …
The Real Problem With Dangerous Exercises
I’m starting to develop a serious issue with the idea that some exercises are dangerous and should be avoided. Dips are bad for the shoulders. Squat and lunges hurt the knees. Pull ups hurt the elbow. Leg raises are bad for the low back or hips. Jumping is bad for the tendons. Now, I’m not someone who’s claiming all of …
High vs Low Sets For Building Muscle
Some people build muscle using as little as a single hard work set. Others enjoy workouts involving set after set after set. It’s certainly possible to build muscle with either strategy. I’ve done it with both myself, but you might have an affinity towards one style over the other. That’s why I made this video, so you can compare the …
How to Love Leg Day
There’s a reason why skipping leg day is a popular meme on the internet. Training legs is hard, really hard plus it sucks a lot of energy out of you. Couple that with the fact that a lot of guys just don’t appreciate leg strength in comparison to the beach muscles and you’ve got quite an uphill battle. All of …
Your Most Important Core Muscle for Fitness and How to Work it
Sure the abs are sexy, and the obliques earn you street cred, but neither of them comes close to your TVA (Transverse Abdominis). Mostly because it’s the foundation to your entire core which means all of your hopes for a strong, functional and even sexy six pack depends on how well you train it. You won’t find many magazines with …
Is Modern Fitness Ridiculous?
I came across this super cool video showcasing some of the fitness trends of the past century: I’m really fascinated by the history of our modern fitness culture and videos like this are both educational and highly entertaining. Despite its entertainment value, I can’t help but ask myself “How did people back then take this stuff seriously? I mean, why did …
Pull Up Combo for a Thicker Back
They say that if someone has large biceps from pull ups they will suffer from a skinny weak back. This is because of what I call elbow domination which is when the mind if more focused on flexing the elbow as opposed to extending the shoulder. That’s why I love this funky little pull up combo that involves twice as …
Veterano Plus Workout for Muscle Mass
It’s been a few months since I unleashed my Veterano Plus workout and the results have been nothing but positive. People are recovering faster, getting stronger and just generally having a blast with it. I’m often asked if it’s a good workout for building muscle. I hear ya, personally, I need that muscle building potential to keep me motivated. I have …
Honest Muscle Building Facts
In this week’s podcast I pull back the curtain on what’s most important towards your muscle building exercise. I’m pulling no punches on this one and you’ll want to listen to it at least twice to get everything important from it. What happens at a cellular level that causes muscle growth. Why the workout tools you use are not really all …
Body Weight Exercises for the Upper Back / Traps
Lifting a heavy weight and shrugging it isn’t the only way to build an impressive range of mountainous muscle on your upper back. There are plenty of ways you can beef up your upper back and traps with body weight training and I highlight just a few of them in the video below.
2 Weaknesses Preventing Your Muscle Growth
I’ve written about fragmented muscle tension in the Chain Training PDF and in various articles. Basically it means your muscle activation is lacking in certain areas of your body which create “holes” of weakness. These holes can prevent some of the bigger muscles from optimally working. In short, tension holes hold back your entire strength and physical development. In this …
The Complete History of the Red Delta Project
People have been asking me about my personal history and how my current fitness ideas came about. Well, here ya go folks! This week’s podcast pulls back the curtain on my personal history, most of which I’ve been reluctant to talk about before now. I got into my years of struggling with various diets, and even why I never did …
Burn Fat & Build Muscle Faster
This week’s podcast is a refreshing perspective regarding both the fat burning and muscle building process. If you’ve been frustrated with either fat loss or building muscle listen to this to learn why most fat burning and muscle building methods are not entirely truthful.
Improve Chain Training With Isometrics
Your muscle building success depends heavily upon how well you create and manipulate your muscular tension. When you improve how well you generate and control you make much faster progress. Using isometric exercises can greatly improve your muscle tension use and thus your muscle building gains. Check out this video for some prime examples!
Is Body Weight Training Safe if You’re Overweight?
Summery: Yes, calisthenics is ideal for those who are overweight and this guide is a great place to get started. Here’s why: I understand why someone, who is over weight, would be nervous about body weight training. Their whole goal is to become lighter and leaner. They have been told by countless influences, including health experts, that that their weight …
Building Muscle With Calisthenics vs Weights
Despite the differences, building muscle and strength through calisthenics is not any different than using weights. The principals are the same: Use basic compound movements. Keep a consistent routine. Focus on progression. Optimize recovery through adequate rest and diet. It doesn’t matter if you prefer push ups over the bench press or weight machines to suspension straps. You can get …
Don’t Worry About Holiday Weight Gain
Don’t worry about gaining weight this holiday season. Seriously it’s not even a mild threat to your belly and waist line. Especialy considering there’s an even bigger threat to your figure than even your most indulgent office Christmas party. Even worse, it’s lurking just under most people’s awareness all year long. The good news is, once you recognize and handle …
How Often Should You Change Your Routine?
I’m not a big fan of changing a plan or workout routine for any old reason. Contrary to what I used to believe, progress isn’t made by random change and variety. Every time you randomly change anything you go from a plan that’s working to some degree to a plan that might or might not work at all. But …
Escaping the Cardio Trap
The cardio trap is easy to get caught up in, especialy for those looking to lose weight. It’s characterized by a vicious cycle of eating more due to an increase in appetite from doing a lot of exercise and then needing to exercise more because you eat so much. With each repetition of the cycle the need to both eat …
Hamstring Building Crab Crawls
Hamstrings are the backbone of your leg strength. If they’re weak you’re weak end of story. While bridges and squats are great, there’s still the potential or a kink in your armor to hold you back. These crawls do wonders to fill in the gaps and make sure your whole posterior chain is as strong as it can be.
Flat Palm Suspension Strap Handles
The human hand wasn’t built to optimally press against a handle. This is why I’ve built these pads you can clip onto any suspension strap system. They build stronger hands, flexible wrists, and better dexterity.
The Front Lever for Beginners
Front levers are magic. They work your entire back super hard, yet keep your spine and lower back safe. They will also lock down your back tension which carries over to improving almost every exercise imaginable. They are crazy efficient too. Just grab a bar, hang for a 10-15 seconds and you’re done one set. Check out this video …
Build Muscle Without Adding Reps
When it comes to building muscle through calisthenics you don’t want to become a rep chaser. A rep chaser is someone who’s primary focus of progression is doing more reps. Forget adding intensity or improving technique, the best way to get stronger is just doing more reps than ever before. Adding reps is good, but it should not be your primary …
UPDATE: Veterano Plus Workout
I’ve been using this Veterano Plus program for over a month with great success. Now I’ve made a few key changes to include the shotgun muscles from Convict Conditioning 2 and a tip to speed up recovery to help you build even more muscle and strength!
Cure Muscle Imbalances With Calisthenics
Muscle imbalances are running rampant through our fitness culture. They cause joint pain, poor performance, weight gain, frustration and not to mention they screw up your body language and make you look terrible. So…yea they more than suck. Problem is, hard training isn’t always an ideal solution. Half the time it’s that hard training creating those imbalances in the …
How to Breath For Faster Muscle Growth
Your breathing can make or break your muscle building workout. If your breathing is off you can fatigue in the wrong way making your muscle building efforts almost pointless. On the plus side, proper breathing can take your workouts, and your muscle building, to a new level.
How to Turn on Your Abs
All of the core training and scientifically proven workouts are worthless if your mind has trouble turning on your abs int he first place. Our modern society has created an epidemic of “sleepy abs” and no amount of leg raises or sit ups are going to save you until you improve your abdominal engagement. Thankfully, it’s not difficult to wake …
Does Convict Conditioning Cause Muscle Imbalances?
I continue to come across people who are concerned that a Convict Conditioning will create muscle imbalances. This is understandable because there are two upper body pushing moves (push ups and hand stand push ups) and only one upper body pulling move with pull ups. Well rest assured you won’t have any muscle imbalances. If anything you may even iron …
Slide Bridges Build More Muscle
Bridges just might be one of the most important exercises you can do. It’s not just because it cures almost every problem afflicting those who sit all day. It’s also trains your back to provide better support for every upper body exercise from push ups to biceps curls. So bridges don’t just make your spine, back and health better, they …
The Squat Myth That Causes Knee Pain
I’ve suffered knee pain, in one way or another for most of my life. Most of it was due to stupid stuff, like ignoring that knee pain and continuing to train hard, but now I realize it was also due to following unnatural squat rules like trying to keep most of my weight on my heels and preventing my knees from …
.
The great thing about calisthenics and bodyweight training is you can train anytime you like. You’re not restricted to a gym and you can jump into a set of push ups or squats anywhere you find yourself. The bad thing about calisthenics and bodyweight training is you can train anytime you like. You run the risk of quickly doing too much, …
The Veterano + Calisthenics Workout
I haven’t been this excited about a new workout program since, well, since ever. Seriously, I’m in love with this new workout because it solves so many issues I’ve been struggling with over the years. I’ve don’t high volume training which was great at honing my calisthenics skills but it stunted my recovery and muscle growing potential. I’ve done low …
How Stability Helps You Build Muscle
There are many reasons why you’re struggling to build muscle and strength. Muscle control and stability is one such reason. Your body is only going to allow you to become so strong if your balance and body control is lacking. Some methods build strength but not stability. Other’s build stability and not much strength. That’s why I recommend methods …
Set Training vs Circuit Training
There are a million ways you can structure a workout, but most methods fall under the category of either set and rest style training or circuit training. We could debate for ages over the merits of each but I made it simple for you with this video. It should tell you everything you need to know so you can select …
Is “Follow Your Passion” Bad Advice?
Following your passion is common advice in the business world, and it’s something I’ve stood behind for years. After all, that’s the “red” in Red Delta Project with red symbolizing passion and desire. While passion and desire is still a critical component to your success recent lessons I’m learning some new information that’s turning the idea of “follow your passion” …
Overlap Progression in Convict Conditioning
One of the most popular topics I’m asked about is when and how someone can progress in body weight training. Progression in calisthenics still seems to be a mystery for many people. Most of the time, it’s just a simple case of people over thinking things. It’s a myth that you have to progress along a very specific path in …
Calorie Hacking 3.0
Calorie Hacking the the art and science of using the universal law of homeostasis to support your weight loss goals. Many diet and weight loss programs intend to fight against homeostasis which sets them up for certain long term failure and frustration. You can’t fight homeostasis anymore than you can stand on a beach and fight off a tsunami. …
Why Even Small Distractions Kill Results
Distractions are pure poison for your fitness results. No matter what you want, from weight loss to running faster, distractions make you work twice as hard for half the result. In this week’s podcast I expose why even small “harmless” distractions can halt your progress for years regardless of what your routine looks like.
Why I Don’t Do Fat Loss Workouts
I actively avoid working out with the goal to simply burn fat and calories. I believe it’s very unproductive and not very effective for long term fat loss. Granted, I used to practice weight loss workouts for years, but now I use a very different approach. I explain why in more detail in this video:
9 Things I Did to Build Muscle Faster
Building muscle and strength is a process that takes consistent practice over long periods of time. Sometimes, you’ll do something that will speed up your progress. So I wanted to share with you a handful of things I’ve done that have resulted in a quick jump in muscle and strength.
The Miracle of Modern Nutrition
Modern nutrition and food often get’s a bad reputation. Be it protests against GMO labeling or people claiming snack cakes are not real food we’ve regressed our appreciation of food to the point where some claim we even ate better when we were living in caves. While our modern food supply certainly isn’t perfect it’s never been easier, cheaper and …
How to Begin Practicing Calisthenics
The first step towards any success in fitness is to build a plan. It doesn’t even have to be a good plan, it just has to be a plan in some shape or form. After all, winning never happens by chance. You can’t “wing it” and do “whatever” from one day to the next and expect substantial results. The best …
Hit a Plateau? Good!
Plateaus often get a bad reputation in fitness. After all, we’re in this game to make change happen and plateaus are when change just can’t seem to come. Everyone wants to know how to break out of their plateau, but I’ve got a different recommendation; Don’t break that plateau. Stay exactly where you are and try not to break it. …
Build More Muscle w/ Pull Ups
Pull ups are a great muscle building tool. Even the most avid weight lifter can’t deny this body weight staple is an essential muscle builder. Still, you can’t expect much from just doing them, but rather how you do them. That’s why I made this video for you covering 10 simple things you can do to help you get much …
Freedom From Fitness Criticism
I just found this and couldn’t resist sharing it. It rings so true to the challenge I seem to face everyday. Our fitness culture is awash with options. There are countless tools, methods, protocols and methods you can choose from. The variety is good, but it can also be suffocating. There are a million options but none of them are …
Getting Faster Results
This week’s podcast is all about helping you get results a whole lot faster. Forget the scenic route. It’s time to jump on the highway, put the pedal to the floor and hang on tight. Forget about getting results, “someday.” It’s time to make them happen NOW!!!!!
The Calisthenics Centerline Solution
One of the basic methods of progressive calisthenics is to pull your limbs in closer towards your centerline. This results in the classic “close” handed push ups and pull ups as well as the close stance squats. I’ve been making this sort of training a staple for my workouts for over a month now and am learning the benefits of …
Calf Training for Size & Strength
Calves are one of the most stubborn muscle groups in the body, but it doesn’t have to be so. After all, they are just like any other muscle group. They can, and will, grow if you train them well. The key is knowing how to do it. In this video I detail some of the little tricks people often ignore …
Effective Grip & Forearm Training
Today we take a look at advanced grip training as per Convict Conditioning 2. Don’t neglect your grip training! You’re only as strong as your grip. If you can’t hold onto a bar or object how can you expect to impose your will upon it in the name of getting stronger? It also makes sense to build up your …
Body Weight Neck & Upper Trap Training
Today we explore what Paul Wade calls “shotgun muscle” in Convict Conditioning 2. These muscles are the supplemental muscles in the lower arms, legs and neck that complete your physique for both show as well as go. In this video I’ll focus on neck training. Training the neck is very important for both athletic performance as well as appearance. It …
How & Why I Dumped Cardio
I used to be a full-time cardio junkie. Even in college when the university opened a brand new weight room, I was content spending more time on the elliptical and stair machine than I was spending in class. I had a few good reasons to hit the sweat inducing machines for 1-2 hours each day. – It helped me burn …
The Great Biceps Exercise You’re Not Doing
When I started playing around with this move I had no idea it was such a great biceps move. To my surprise my biceps were sore for a week! I like using it as a warm up before pull ups, or as a finisher after a pulling workout. Try 2-3 sets of 3-4 reps holding the tucked position for 3-5 …
The One Thing Holding Your Fitness Back
A sound fitness plan requires many pieces and part. There’s diet, exercise, sleep, hormones, nutrients, technique and a host of other details. It can be confusing to keep track of all of it. Despite the complexity, there’s a very good chance that your current rate of progress is being held back due to one single tiny thing. Most importantly, all …
The Over Lap Close Push Up
This push up is my latest experiment at understanding progressive push ups. The theory is this; in Convict Conditioning Paul Wade writes about doing one arm push ups with the hand directly under the body on the center line. It occurred to me I haven’t done any push ups with either hand even close to that. Even close or diamond …
Escaping the Eating Right Prison
Eating right is a lofty ideal pedestal intended to elevate your diet, your health and possibly even your entire quality of life. While it can certainly bring you some benefit, there is a risk that many of the messages supporting the notion that you should eat right can overwhelm you. This can result in an endless cycle of stress and …
Body Weight Inner Thigh Exercise
I spent years scoffing at people working hard to strengthen their inner thigh muscles. Turns out I was the crazy one for avoiding those muscles for so long especialy after discovering the inner thigh muscles are a critical part in all lower body training. Single leg squats are almost impossible if your adductor muscles are weak. I was right about one …
Programing Supplemental Calisthenics Moves
Just like traditional weight lifting methods, calisthenics includes both basic compound movements as well as single joints moves like curls, shoulder raises and grip work. Even though you may not need these moves, they can shore up a few weak points and round out your physique. The trick is knowing how to fit them into your program so they don’t …
Build Far More Leg Strength & Stability
Over the past year or so I’ve been really struggling to build up my legs. Much of the problem has stemmed from lack of lower body stability. Simply put, the less stability you have in any area of your body the less muscular tension you can handle. When you improve your stability you open up a HUGE amount of potential for …