Maybe I should be grateful.  In fact, I am, really.  There is obviously a lot of crap out on the market today for fitness information (though there always has been), but I see through it.  Really, just about all of it.  It’s not an inherent talent or some sign of superior intelligence on my part; it’s about a difference in philosophy.  No one holds a philosophy that they think is likely to be wrong, but as I look around at some of the fitness products that people buy into, I can’t help but wonder if the makers of it have a philosophy at all.

Think about it:

Turn on your TV late at night and flip the channels.  You’ll see 30-60-90 day programs promising to get you in shape and look great naked and make all your friends/family/neighbors hate themselves and you by extension because of how out-of-control hot you’ve become in the past 30-60-90 days, followed by tons upon tons of sweaty, greased up sexy dudes and chicks gushing over how people crawl over throngs of their newfound fans just to catch a fleeting glimpse at their six-pack abs and single-digit bodyfat, and how they have to fend off invading hordes of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter) with a pointy stick.

For the record, I’m not knocking that (I mean c’mon, who secretly DOESN’T want that?), and I’m not even knocking any of these programs, most of which are perfectly good in the right context.  I have better things to do with my time than make veiled attacks at successful info-products on late-night TV.

What I want to get at is, What do you do on day 31?  Or 61?  Or 91?

Strength, fitness, and health are not things you just attain at some level and then just HAVE for the rest of your life like a college degree or a picture with a celebrity.  Your body isn’t going to maintain something just because – it’s going to take some outside influence on your part, namely focusing on a goal and then working toward it.

So in light of this philosophy – which I’d like to think everyone deep down inside them understands – I’m coming up with my own training plan.  It’s called the 90 Year Plan.  Why 90 years?  Because odds are you’re going to live for a very long time, particularly if you’re reading this in the Westernized world, thanks to advances in medicine.  You can either live it in agony and poor health, your entire existence scaffolded by medicine and outside assistance just to get by, or you can punch life in its uncaring face by consistently staving off the ravages of age and disease by being pro-active and taking care of yourself for more than 90 days at a time.  Thought of another way: 90 days (three months) is 1/360th of 90 years.  Ask yourself: if your only goal was to exercise one day per year and be relatively sedentary (as most of us are) apart from that, would that one day matter?  Don’t bother offering up some esoteric answer about how it would somehow add up in the long run.  The answer is no.  A 90-day program will only matter in the long run if it is built on a philosophy of consistently maintaining and improving your health, strength, and fitness. 

I’m gonna give you the base categories, you can fill in the details as you go along.  Take your time.  You’ve got 90 years to perfect this, so enjoy it along the way.

For the next 90 years, you’re going to eat, exercise, and show some gratitude.
What will you eat?  Something from the following categories.

Vegetables Meat Fruit Nuts/seeds Various herbs/spices Water.
Again, the above gives you lots of options and opportunities for variety.  Be creative.  Drinking water, btw, is non-negotiable.  That should be your main beverage.

How will you exercise?  This is a two-part answer.  First, you should choose any activity that you enjoy doing (playing a sport, practicing a martial art, etc.) plus do the following:

Kettlebell exercises

Turkish Get Up
Goblet Squat

Calisthenics exercises
Pushup
Pullup
Bridge
Leg-raise

No gym?  No equipment?  No problem!

Odds are you all have some fond memories of college.  Odds are also that you all remember doing something you’re not very proud of during that time.  I know I do.  In my junior year of college I signed up to undergo one of those medical testing studies that seems to lure so many undergrads and other assorted weirdos into its sterile, scrubs-laden clutches with the promise of a quick $1,000+ in exchange for you to become a human guinea pig for a weekend. 

That in and of itself isn’t what I’m not proud of (at the time it was the fastest $1,000 I’d ever made; don’t judge).  Far from it.  What shamed me that weekend was the sad predicament I found myself in – nay, CREATED for myself.  After being told that I couldn’t bring a kettlebell into the facility with me to workout and pass my time during the weekend – and yes, I asked – I thought to myself “no problem, I’ll just figure out something else to do.”  How wrong I was.

At this time I was familiar with bodyweight training, having read Pavel’s pedestal-worthy classic The Naked Warrior.  I had done pistols before and had feasted on a face full of dirt more times than I could count after hurriedly attempting (and failing at) one-arm pushups.  I had no patience, and was certainly lacking a hefty amount of foresight.  Because I always had a kettlebell handy, I relegated calisthenics to the side, deciding that I’ll learn more about it “one of these days” when I had more time on my hands.

That time had come.  And this naked warrior was completely unarmed and caught totally off guard.  I lost a decisive and quick battle that weekend and my punishment was to spend a long three days as a shiftless layabout watching bad movies and avoiding the other walking medical experiments.

As with most early 20-somethings, it took me a long time of making the same mistake over and over before I learned my lesson.  But I’m proud to say I’ve learned it well and have since taken on calisthenics training as a serious discipline, and I’ve been reaping the rewards ever since – both in terms of health, physical development, and, of course, strength.

One of the major things I learned that weekend – and something that it seems just about every strength fanatic learns the hard way at some point or another – is that lifting yourself into a very narrow corner will stunt your physical development on two fronts: first, in terms of your overall gains, and second, in terms of what you can get accomplished in less-than-favorable circumstances.

The sad truth is most of us are still lost without our kettlebells.  Most of us are lost without our barbells.  But no matter how lost you get, you will never be without your bodyweight – and that means your strength doesn’t have to get lost along with you. 

So how do you work on continuing to get stronger when you are limited to next to no equipment, save for the ground, a wall, and something to hang on?

The program contained later in this article will address just that: how to get freakishly strong  on a carefully crafted and logically progressed skeleton crew of exercises: a push, a pull, and a squat.

The first thing is to realize that you are, in fact, unlimited in your options with that skeleton crew of “equipment” and exercise selection.
The second thing to realize is that this is a golden opportunity to take advantage of what calisthenics does best: forces you to be creative, fill your training gaps, and build a strong scaffold for future kettlebell and barbell success. 

“If I had two hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend an hour and a half sharpening my axe” – Abraham Lincoln

At StrongFirst we place a premium on fine tuning the basics for the simple reason that everything else is built upon them.  And what could be more basic than learning (or perhaps relearning) how to generate tension from nothing and how to maintain the proper body position for the techniques in question?  (The answer is “nothing”, for those keeping track at home.) 

For the record, this is the hollow position: an open C shape of the body, with the distance between the sternum and the navel shortened, and everything between the fingers and the toes held tight as possible.  Because there are plenty of fine details that go into this otherwise simple position – details that are beyond the scope of this article – you’ll get only a crash course here (attend an SFB one-day course or weekend certification to dive deeper into the details).

Okay, scenario time.

Let’s say you’re…

* Unschooled in the secret, dark arts of epic strength training and the techniques contained therein.
* Don’t have any proper weights or don’t know how to use the ones you DO have.
* Can’t (for whatever generously presumed-to-be-legitimate reason) afford a personal trainer even for a few lessons.
* Are as strapped for time as you are cash and don’t have even an hour a day to spare.
* Feel hopeless, helpless, and other adjectives containing the suffix -less.

Well, despite your sorry state of affairs, you’re in luck, if you can believe that.

Here’s a program that takes no skill, no special equipment, and not much more than 20 minutes a pop to get some top quality freaky strength and conditioning.

You’ll do it in a circuit (because you love circuits):

A1) Crawl – forward, backward, sideways, dragging a load, I don’t care. Just crawl until you can’t feel feelings.
A2) Pick something up. Carry it any way you can. Put it down once fatigue starts to set in.

Rest as little as possible, but as much as necessary. Put 20 minutes on the clock 2-3 times a week and have at it. Vary the distance, difficulty, and density of your workouts. Just do them.

Why is this program so great? For a few reasons.

1) as mentioned previously, it really takes no skill, so there’s no impediment to starting immediately. If you don’t know how to crawl, here’s a video that will have you crawling like a boss in short order ===>

If you don’t know how to pick something off the ground, it’s simple. Look forward (keep your eyes on the horizon) maintain a flat back and a big chest, and push your butt back as if you’re trying to make it touch the wall behind you. Stand up and walk. Bam.

2) It hits every muscle in the body

3) The time spent under tension while using every muscle you’ve got will help wake up old muscle and invigorate new muscle. Plus, these are two very natural movements as they train your gait (your walking pattern) – movements that will have great carryover into other techniques once you can afford to learn them.

4) Your will build both a goofy amount of strength as well as some insane conditioning. If your heart and lungs are not pumping out of your chest, then you’re clearly a mutant and not much advice I can give you is gonna take you any further. 

5) You will slice slabs of flab from your frame in record time given how much muscle you’re working, particularly if you’re eating a diet laden with protein, veggies, and good fat and minimal processed garbage.

6) It will leave no stone unturned, and will do so in the shortest amount of time possible.
​
7) It’s doable in varying degrees by anyone from age 2 to 200. That means you.

There ya have it. Give it 8 weeks and take a before and after pic. You’ll be amazed by the internal and external transformation.

“To build a superman, slow movements and quick lifts are required.”
– Bob Hoffman, York barbell

As easy as it is to gravitate toward one or the other, a really great all-around training program that doles out the best overall results is no doubt the one that teaches you the value of brute strength with heavy weights and explosive strength with moderate weights (or my favorite, explosive strength with HEAVY weights). Here are some examples for you to play with for a few weeks. Take note of your strength, stamina, physique, and leanness both before and after.

Kettlebells: 

Program 1: 
– Turkish Get Up
– Swing 
(a classic program)

Program 2:
– Clean 
– Press
– Front squat
– Swing
(double the ballistics, double the grinds, quadruple the fun)

What if you have no access to equipment?

Bodyweight: 

Program 1: 
– Pushups
– Rows
– Box jumps 
(step down rather than jumping down from the box)

Program 2:
– Weighted dip
– Weighted chinup
– Weighted pistol
– Hill sprints

Whether you find yourself more in love with fast, explosive movements or slow, grit-your-teeth-and-grind brute strength movements, a mixture of the two will take you from a one-trick pony to a well-rounded recreational athlete (and quite possibly bad mofo, but don’t quote me on that).

Try one out, stick with it for 6 weeks or so, and enjoy reaping the physical rewards.

Have fun.

By now you should have read the article “Kettlebells: the most asked question.”  If not, click the link here and go back and read it before you read this.

I’m wary of referring to myself as a “personal trainer” as so many people have a sad-but-usually-true image in their heads of what that means: some shameless, skirt-chasing meat head who spends his days in the gym counting other people’s reps, acting cocky for his clients, passing judgment on others, or asking everyone he meets “Do you even lift, bro?” (I’ll admit, that last one is actually funny to do from time to time).

To avoid this comparison, when asked what I do, I generally tell people “I’m a kettlebell and bodyweight strength instructor.”  Longer title, but a bit more accurate.  What always surprises me is that more often than not, the follow up questions are almost always about kettlebells, where I teach, etc.   It’s as if I didn’t even mention calisthenics training!  Even if I try to re-inject the topic of bodyweight strength training into the equation when I answer, people more often than not just get that glazed-over look and still act like I just said something in a foreign language, or they’ll ask “bodyweight training?  You mean like pushups and sit-ups and stuff? Can you get results from that?”  I’ll start going on and on about it, but unless I’m dealing with someone with a good imagination, they can’t see how using no equipment to train can have any value.

What a damn shame too, because much like kettlebells, once my clients start seeing the benefits they get from calisthenics strength training, separating them from it is like separating a mama bear from her cubs. 

Once I start explaining this to people, the mystique sets in and they’ve gotta know: “Why calisthenics?”  As in, “Why structure a workout that only involves the weight of your body?

The answers are many.  First and foremost, “functionality” (I put “functionality” in quotes because what often goes by “functional” in the fitness world has become a byword for “funky, complicated and seemingly random movements on a Swiss ball” rather than “useful in real life”).  Your body has a myriad of uses, and part of your body’s abilities include both moving objects in free space (such as weight training) as well as moving itself in free space.  Oftentimes people neglect that last part and you are left seeing people who can move impressive amounts of weight in the gym, but are “all show, no go” when it comes to lifting something or moving quickly and effectively in real life.  Isolated movements in the gym, as strong as they may get you, are only half the equation.  Half the equation = half the results.  Regardless of your preference in weighted implements, be they kettlebells, barbells, or dumbbells, if you can move weight but not your OWN weight, can you truly be “functional” for most any real-life task?  Think this over for a  while. 

Second of all is variety.  While kettlebells – as much as I love them – lend themselves to an incredible variety of exercises, the variety of different worthwhile exercises in calisthenics training goes beyond incredible.  It is absolutely dizzying.  I can think of more than two dozen different types of pushups alone just off the top of my head – and that’s without even racking my brain.  I have little doubt I could come up with 100 more if I just did some searching.  The same goes for variations of pullups, squats, handstand pushups, dips, bridges and a massive collection of other major bodyweight strength movements.  Not only will this keep you from getting bored, but it makes it much, much easier to scale exercises based on difficulty level for anyone from beginner to elite.  Even better yet, the huge variety of different exercises means that you can work a lot of “in between strength” necessary for keeping your body supple and free of overuse injuries.  And naturally, scaling the exercise from easier to harder requires no more equipment than your own body.  Cheap, effective, no excuses.

Third, believe it or not, is your education in strength training.  You will learn more about the discipline of building strength from calisthenics strength training than from anything else.  I began to notice this once I had begun diligently working my way up to one-arm/one-leg pushups, and had my observations validated by Pavel Tsatsouline at the Naked Warrior certification workshop in October of 2012, where he said the exact same thing.

But why?  And how?

The reasons are many.  The use of progressive exercise to gradually get more difficult, the need for creative thinking in ways to make the exercises more difficult, etc. etc.  The list goes on.  But if I had to give just one reason why calisthenics training teaches so much about the discipline of building strength, it’s because it solidifies using the skill of tension in order to overcome major leverage disadvantages found in all the most difficult bodyweight strength feats. 

When leverage is in your favor, you need much less tension to move (for example: pushups against the wall).  When leverage is NOT in your favor, the only way to keep yourself from crumpling up on the floor like yesterday’s newspaper is by getting tight everywhere.  For example: one-arm/one-leg pushups.  Your entire bodyweight is being supported by the ball of one foot and the opposite palm.  Holding this position is hard enough.  Pulling yourself down and pushing yourself back up as a solid unit and under perfect control takes skill.  That skill is tension.

This has big carry over into other activities.  Once I could do a solid one-arm/one-leg pushup on either side, I was able to press an 80 lb kettlebell over my head with ease – something that had eluded me for years.  My body was now better at linking itself up – and I reaped the rewards because of it.  Another example: My friend Corey Howard, owner of Results Personal Training in Sioux Falls, SD, told me that upon showing him drills to improve certain bodyweight feats such as pistols and one-arm pushups, his kettlebells started to practically float when he lifted them.  Perhaps the best evidence for this is elite gymnasts.  They train ONLY with their bodyweight, and it is not uncommon for them to deadlift 2 and even 3 times their bodyweight upon their first barbell lesson thanks entirely to their mastery of full-body tension.  Coach extraordinaire Charles Poliquin has noted that a number of gymnasts that he’s trained have worked up to 350 lb bench presses within weeks of learning the exercise – despite never bench pressing before.  When was the last time YOU benched 350?  Don’t answer.  I know.  The take away point is that your body is one big piece – the more you can use it as such, the faster you’ll get results.

But perhaps the most obvious reason is convenience – pure and simple!  In my early days as a kettlebell fanatic, I ran into a problem.  Whenever I travelled, I was stuck not working out because I didn’t have the foggiest notion as to how to put together a training program with anything else.  More often than not I had no weights at my disposal, so I was just plain out of luck.  As time went on, I started to make it a point to learn pullups, REAL pushups (not what passes for pushups), pistols, and a variety of other bodyweight essentials.  The more I did them, the stronger I got.  The day I first nailed one-arm pushups, I was officially hooked – kettlebells from there on out made room for bodyweight strength training, and I was better off for it.

Not only that, so were my clients.  I finally had a solution for them when they went travelling and had no access to kettlebells.  One of my clients, Jessica, whose job requires her to travel monthly and often for a week or more at a time asked if I could give her a routine to do while she was away.  I gave her a very basic but no BS routine to do when she travelled, and later she told me it helped her lose 8 lbs!  Pretty impressive considering how easy it is to eat poorly and exchange exercise for shopping and entertainment while you’re away on a business trip. 

So how can you structure a workout completely around bodyweight training?  I’m glad you asked!  Below you’ll see the beginner’s workout I gave her, followed by a more advanced one that I myself have done while travelling.

Beginner’s bodyweight-only program:

5 pushups from the knees
10 second Hardstyle plank
10 squats
10 second Hardstyle plank
5 towel rows (rows down with a towel around a door handle)
10 second Hardstyle plank
10 mountain climbers

rest as little as possible, as much as necessary

Repeat 5 rounds

Advanced bodyweight-only program
One-arm pushups – 1 per side x 5
Pistol squats – 5×5
Pullup ladders – 1,2,3,4,5
Hanging leg raises – 3×5
Bridge pushups 2×10

A bodyweight strength program could be made even more challenging by working up to front and back levers, one-arm chin-ups, stand-to-stand bridges, handstand pushups, muscle ups, and much more.  Your imagination and discipline level are your limits.  Master those and your strength levels can soar to heights most people’s dreams can’t even take them. 

Well, what are you waiting for?  Look up a Specialist in Bodyweight Strength (SBS) near you and get cracking.  You’ll be wielding unreal strength in less time than you thought possible, and the body you have now will help you get the body you want later.

StrongFirst, Strong always!

Aleks Salkin, SFG, SBS