Grind Style Calisthenics Page 2
Legendary strength coach Dan John once told me that the two most difficult things to do in fitness were to build muscle and lose weight. Hearing him say that really struck a chord with me as I thought, “If one of the best coaches in the world thinks it tough then it must really be hard!”
Most everyone is struggling to lose weight and build muscle, which is why helping people achieve those goals is such big business. You don't find too many products on how to successfully tie your shoes because people don't have much trouble making that happen. Key lesson; the bigger the industry is around a particular self-help topic, the more people are struggling to accomplish those goals.
It's a sobering thought, to think that the muscle and strength building industry is so large because most people are struggling to achieve the results they want. The very fact that the weight loss and muscle building industry is so significant is a testament to the fact that we have yet to produce a very effective and practical solution to these challenges. If we did, we wouldn't be buying all the books, courses, supplements, and other products promising us we can finally achieve results.
I know, what a motivating way to start a chapter, right? Usually, books like this are full of pump-up motivational sayings about how you can finally achieve your goals. Personally, I'm getting kind of sick of having false positivity shoved in my face. It doesn't do you any good to put rose-colored glasses on a tough situation. All of that stuff can dull your edge and make you relax at a time when you should be tightening the strap on your helmet and preparing for the battle that is to come. Make no mistake about it; building a bigger and stronger body is one of the most challenging missions you can accomplish in fitness.
The good news is that while success may not be easy, it is certainly possible. The world is full of strong and impressive people who have paid their dues and serve as inspiration to what is possible. Yes, there's genetics and potentially underground methods to consider, but that's not the whole story. Most of the time, an impressive physique is owned by someone who's found a way to minimize the following muscle building threats, so he stands the best chance on your overall results.
Threat #1 Inconsistent training
As I mentioned earlier, building your body is like building a sand pile on the beach. While you do need a broader base to build yourself up, there's another lesson this analogy teaches us. You build that sand pile by continuously scooping sand into the same area. Whether you're using your hands, a shovel or a bucket no single deposit of sand is going to amount to very much.
Your workouts are the same way. Every workout is always a relatively small influence on you overall result. Even if you exercise super long and hard every day, each effort is just a drop in the bucket in the long run.
Just like that sand pile on the beach, your body is under the constant erosive forces of catabolism. If you leave that sand pile on the beach, it will erode down due to wind, rain, surf, and activity. Your body is the same way as you'll wear and break down over time.
Natural physical erosion is why effective training is first and foremost about long-term consistency. Along with safety, consistently adhering to a workout routine should be your number one priority. Without a stable and consistent approach to training your ability to build muscle stands as much of a chance as a sand castle during a monsoon.
How GSC helps you avoid this threat
The practical nature of bodyweight training is one of your most substantial assets in effective training. The low-maintenance approach to calisthenics means you don't have to go to a gym, pay monthly membership fees, or spend much time going through your workout. All of this convenience makes it a lot easier to maintain a consistent training routine for months, and even years at a time with minimal effort.
Threat #2 Lack of training proficiency
Far too many people are trying to work their way to the body of their dreams. Every day, they head into their workout with nothing more than the resolve to work as hard as they can (or are willing to) and cross their fingers in hopes that it will be enough.
Hard work is an essential part of successful training, but it's certainly not enough on its own. You cannot get very far on just hard work alone because it's impossible to scale. Your time, energy, and focus are very limited resources, and it's easy to run out of them. When your goal is only to work harder, you're constantly bumping up against those limitations which can cause endless plateaus.
How GSC helps you avoid this threat
The best way to break free of the work-harder trap is to improve your training proficiency. When you improve how well you do basic exercises, every rep becomes more productive even if you're still putting in the same amount of work.
GSC is first and foremost, a system that's designed to teach you how to improve your training proficiency. Doing 20 push-ups can be hard work, but doing 20 better push-ups will be more effective even though the amount of effort you're spending will be about the same.
Threat #3 Workout discomfort
Effective training isn't always a walk in the park. Your muscles will burn, your heart will race, and you'll have to dig deep within yourself to push beyond your limits. Building muscle and strength is certainly not for the faint of heart.
With that said, several types of discomfort can stand in the way of being able to push yourself to the levels of exertion required for success. The most common type of discomfort is neurological stress that comes from putting yourself in precarious situations. This can include feeling stress in your joints, pressure on your body, or generally feeling unsafe about what you're trying to do.
All of this physical and mental unease can short circuit your mind's desire to push your muscles to the levels required to make them bigger and stronger. If doing an exercise makes you feel shaky and unsafe, you'll end the set before you've pushed yourself hard enough to stimulate further progress.
How GSC helps you avoid this threat
Every exercise in the GSC system is designed to help you feel comfortable and safe even during moments of great duress. This approach removes a lot of the mental hesitation you may experience so you’ll be free and clear to push your muscles much harder.
Overall, an effective program will be something that's relatively low maintenance while teaching you how to work smarter, and makes you feel comfortable enough to push yourself beyond your limits. Combining these three attributes produces a powerful formula for success and it’s why GSC can be such a potent muscle building program.
Chapter 3
The Grind Style Workout Routine for Complete Muscle Stimulation
I'm going to change the format of the typical exercise book here. Usually training books cover a selection of exercises first and then give you a routine or program to best apply these exercises. GSC program is more about the workout routine, and you'll be using the exercises to utilize the program. Plus, the structure of the exercise chapters will make a lot more sense once you understand the GSC program routine since there are specific exercises for each phase of the workout you'll be doing.
A GSC workout routine uses each of the levels in the muscle tension hierarchy. Each level supports the others above it, you'll be programming each workout in 4 phases to optimally cover each level of the muscle tension Hierarchy. Let's explore how these work.
Phase 1 Tension control
You walk into the gym, or a corner of your basement, and you're ready to get grinding. Maybe you’re feeling motivated, tired or distracted. Whatever the case, you never come to a workout routine as the same person twice.
Life is continuously changing, so every workout begins under a different set of physical and mental circumstances. Maybe you've been sitting in meetings all day, or perhaps you were out painting the fence. Whatever the case, just jumping into a workout would be ill-advised because your tension control could be anywhere when you're just getting started.
That's why the first phase of a GSC workout is to practice a few simple tension control exercises. These drills wake up sleepy muscles
, improve neuromuscular connectivity, and prepare both body and mind for the work to come. This phase also helps you identify positions where your tension control may be weak, so you can address your weaknesses before they compromise the integrity of your workout.
Tension control exercises shouldn't feel like hard work. They should employ only a little bit of resistance to your muscles. Your mind is much more likely to apply tension into your muscles how it's habitually used to when you're working with even a modest amount of resistance. Keeping the resistance low will make it much easier to rewire your neuromuscular system so your exercises are safer, more comfortable and more effective.
Phase 2 Stability
Once you've woken up your working muscles, it's time to use that tension control to create a safe and secure neurological environment to work in.
Stability work uses a modest amount of resistance, so your nervous system starts to ramp up and get used to applying force through the muscles. This sort of training will also improve your mobility and balance, releasing stress in your joints and areas where you feel stiff.
The primary form of stability training is what I call shift work. Shift work involves applying a moderate amount of resistance to the body, as you shift and move your body around in various positions. Doing this helps you address areas of weakness, poor tension control, and stiff muscles that need to be loosened up. It's a very satisfying way to work out the kinks in your system, and you may find it’s more effective than stretching for loosening up tight joints.
Above all, control is the name of the game during this phase. Control your tension, control your body, and control your breathing. It's all going to come together in the next phase of your workout.
Phase 3 The strength / grind phase
This phase is the meat and potatoes of your workout. This is the point where you flood your muscle chain with a massive amount of tension to stimulate the progression of strength and hypertrophy.
Some people like to start a grind phase with 1-2 warm-up sets, but this is usually not necessary due to the warming up effects of the first two phases, but use a couple of light sets if you feel it will work best for you.
The grind phase can include anywhere from 2-4 sets, and most people find that three sets are perfect for their needs. Plus it's about all they can handle as your mission is to pour most of your focus and energy into each set you do. Do not save anything for later or pace yourself. Complete each set to the very best of your ability and perform as many clean reps as you can manage.
High neuromuscular capacity, low technical challenge
Veterans of progressive calisthenics will notice that there aren't many "skill" based exercises in this phase like handstands, muscle-ups, or archer pull-ups. The reason for this is because the grind phase exercises are meant to be some of the easiest ways to challenge your muscular work capacity without much technical difficulty.
Technically advanced calisthenics exercises are a great way to build muscle and strength, provided you have the skill do them well enough. If you're lacking the skills to make an advanced exercise technically easy, then the move becomes more of a technical challenge than a neuromuscular challenge.
The technical challenge of advanced calisthenics moves is why some people are critical of advanced exercises claiming that they are great for building skill but not muscle and strength. To a degree they are correct; if you're struggling with the technical aspects of an advanced exercise, you won't be able to push your muscles hard enough to progress your muscular work capacity.
In an ideal world, you'll become a technical master, so those advanced moves become less of a technical challenge and more of a muscular challenge. However, doing that can take a lot of practice, time, and sometimes money to hire a good coach.
That's why the primary grind phase exercises, and progressions, are designed to require as little technical proficiency as possible so you won't get too hung up on those technical challenges. Besides, if there's one thing that can improve your ability to enhance your calisthenics skills, it's building brute strength. Plus, the first two phases will improve your tension control and stability, both of which are not only cornerstones in building strength but technical proficiency as well.
Backfilling 101
The grind phase uses a simple progressive strategy I call backfilling. Backfilling is the most straight forward rep progression strategy I know of, and it helps you understand precisely what you need to do to make progress in every single workout. Here's how it works.
Step 1 Establish your reps the first time you do a given workout
Each workout builds off the performance of your previous workout. However, your first workout doesn't have anything to work off of so you'll need to establish a rep baseline to start.
To do this, select an exercise progression (covered in later chapters) that is pretty challenging for you to do between 5-15 reps. Do your first set and try to get as many technically clean reps as possible. Rest 2-3 minutes and now do the same thing for the second set. Again, rest 2-3 minutes and do as many clean reps as you can for your third set. Due to the accumulation of fatigue, you should notice the number of reps you can do will decrease as you continue the sets.
Step 2 Backfill the lowest number set
Now that you have your reps established for each set, your mission is to “backfill” the shortest set in the following workouts. At the same time, you want to perform the same number of reps in the other two sets.
Doing this helps you progress in several ways. First, maintaining the reps in your first two sets allows you to work on the technical quality of those reps, so you improve your technical proficiency. You'll also become more comfortable with the given exercise since you won't have to push yourself to your very limit every set in each workout.
The next benefit is it’s mentally easier to make progress when you know you need to increase the reps in one set. You don’t have to progress the whole workout, just that one small part. It also takes the mystery out of what to do each workout. You'll open up your workout log and instantly know you're trying to do more reps on a given set. That's your mission for the workout simple, clear, and direct.
For more information on how to keep a simple and clear workout log, check out the official Red Delta Project Scoreboard Progression Log. Search “Scoreboard Progression Log” at reddeltaproject.com to download the free eBook.
Be aware that as you build strength, you'll want to add reps to the first and second set. This tendency is perfectly normal, but I do discourage it. Adding reps where you can in the first couple of sets keeps the incline of the sets roughly the same and can result in inconsistent quality over time. Instead, work to apply that additional strength into better quality reps on the first two sets. The extra strength can then "spill over" into the last set increasing reps.
Once you've increased the reps of the third set to match the second, then you increase the reps on the second set only. From there, you can repeat the process with the next workout where you increase the third set. Continue this process until you "level" all three sets.
Once you level off all three sets, reset the whole thing by once again doing as many reps as you can for all three sets. Increasing the first set will result in another downward slope, and the process starts again.
It’s a simple system, but it can take a little practice to get the hang of it. Here’s a simple flow chart I made up for you to make the learning process easier.
How far do you go?
Backfilling uses the same level of resistance as you increase the reps, but at some point, you'll want to increase the resistance of the exercise. The point you increase your resistance depends on several factors like if you want to focus on low, moderate, or high rep training.
I raise the resistance once I can complete three consecutive sets of 15 reps. Some of the more "endurance" style activities I do, like knee tucks, go as high as three sets of 20 reps while heavier exercises, like dips, are increased once I hit three sets of 12 reps.
It can take some experimentation to see where your sweet spots are so experiment with various rep ranges and see what feels best for you.
A word on “going to failure”
The idea of going to failure is a hot topic of debate in strength training. Some experts claim you have to go to failure in to build muscle. Others claim going to failure is not only unnecessary, but it can be dangerous and even counterproductive.
I’ve been on both sides of the debate and have come to the following beliefs on the topic:
#1 Failure is different for everyone
Lifting to failure can make training seem simple and easy to understand, but the true nature of failure is actually a very vague concept.
There are many different types of failure. There’s mental failure, physical failure and even emotional failure. There’s technical failure (where you lift until your form breaks down) and also movement failure; where you lift until you stop moving at a certain speed or tempo.
Training to failure can be unclear so it doesn’t serve as a reliable objective to ensure an effective workout.
#2 The quality of your reps before failure are more effective than that last rep
There is no such thing as an ineffective rep. However, those who support training to failure can sometimes convey that it’s the last rep that stimulates muscle growth. While that final rep can do a lot for you, it by no means makes or breaks your set.
So don’t rush through your reps just to get to your breaking point. Put as much effort and focus into each rep as you can to make the whole set more effective.
#3 Your success doesn’t depend on seeking or avoiding failure
Your training success depends on how well you progress from one workout to the next. You can hit failure in every workout for months and still remain in a strength and muscle plateau. The same thing can happen if you’re always avoiding failure.