There is something better you should be looking for instead.

Ladies and gentlemen, STOP looking for fitness hacks.

There are no short cuts to any place worth going.

Granted, there’s no doubt that there are certain paths that will get you there sooner, but they will still demand a few things from you. My vote goes to the following things:

1) “Eat like an adult.”
Dan John’s now-famous admonition to eat the way you KNOW you’re supposed to eat. Don’t pretend you don’t know that fruits, vegetables, and meat is good for you, and that kids cereals and food with a commercial is bad for you.

2) Get out of the gym and go for a walk.
If you can manage to get in 30 total minutes of walking per day, you’ll be amazed at what it will do for your physique. In this case, more is better, so pile it on. Find excuses to do it. Walk to the neighborhood store and carry your groceries back. It is literally your birthright as a human to walk on two legs, so get off your duff and watch as amazing things happen when you just walk more often.

3) Train for strength and stick with compound movements
If you have to sit down for it or use some sort of pulley, it’s probably not a great exercise. Learn the basic bodyweight and kettlebell movements and watch as you lean out, feel more energized, and make everything else in your life easier. If you’re just starting out, my money would be on learning the following things:

Bodyweight: Pushups, rows/pullups, crawling (yes, crawling)
Kettlebell: swing, Turkish Get Up, goblet squat, loaded carry

In all likelihood, if you get these down pat you won’t need much else for a long, long time.

4) Go to bed, dammit!
Getting 5 hours of sleep a night and mainlining Starbucks crap-uccinos straight into your veins just to stay awake during the day is nothing to be proud of. Sleep is the ultimate recharge for your proverbial batteries, and missing too much of it will torpedo your health and fitness. Seriously. Most people find themselves much leaner just by sleeping 8+ hours per night regularly, and it’s not a coincidence. Sleep is the closest thing to a cure-all there is.

5) Keep showing up.
If there *were* an actual fitness hack out there, this would be it. Be consistent! It doesn’t matter if you workout an hour a day 5 days a week for 6 weeks if you take the next 46 weeks off. If you train twice a week for 20 minutes and you do it 52 weeks a year, I promise you that you’ll be light years ahead of your fickle, late-night-fitness-infomercial-purchasing friends.

Fitness is not mysticism. The stuff that is so obvious that you ignore and overlook is most likely exactly what you need – whether you’re a beginner or advanced. It works – always has and always will.

Now get off your computer and get crackin’!

(This article originally appeared on Chronicles Of Strength)

“Gymnasts are NOT totally, completely, irretrievably ripped to **#!@ shreds” said no one ever.  Which is to say that pretty much everyone can agree that male gymnasts sport some pretty eye-popping, jealousy-inducing physiques, and guess what?  It’s not because they’re better, smarter, or taking better supplements than you – it’s because the exercises they do support their Greek god bods better than any old school sculptor with a hammer and chisel could.  Specifically, I’m talking about straight-arm strength exercises.

What are straight-arm strength exercises?  And why do they have such a big impact on your strength?

Straight-arm strength exercises are just as they sound – exercises that require you to keep your arms straight throughout the duration of the set. 

More specifically, they typically require your entire body to stay frozen in an awkward, gravity-defying position, meaning that even seemingly unrelated body parts take an isometric thrashing.  As such, your muscles are kept under tension at some very odd and awkward positions for some time, encouraging them to fill out and develop despite their perhaps otherwise insouciant disregard for your intentions to build a statuesque figure.  In fact, gymnastics coach and author of the book Building The Gymnastic Body Chris Sommer has said that gymnasts owe their eye-popping pipes more than anything to such exercises as planches and crosses and not the familiar weighted exercises that you love so much.  On top of it all, to say it leads to an outstanding, muscle-building workout is an understatement akin to saying that the Arctic is chilly.

The aforementioned exercises (planches, crosses) are going to be out of your reach if you’re a mere mortal.  Sorry.  BUT, the good news is that there are a few that you can start progressing toward right away if you’re ready to do some work and get a jaw-dropping physique.  Best yet,it doesn’t have to get in the way of your current programming, and due to the immense amounts of scapular stability you’ll gain, you are likely to start seeing some big gains in your favorite upper body exercises.

The following is an approach to ease you into practicing these awesome moves.  You’ll do it just two days a week to start out, but you’ll be amazed at what those two days will do for you in terms of strength development.  And naturally if you want you can do 3 or 4, though you’ll want to limit other training accordingly to handle the workload.  I’d recommend a few weighted pullups and dips of a moderate weight at the end of a session (or handstand pushups.  Or heavy rows.  Pick your poison, just take a lower dose of it).  And, of course, squat and deadlift/swing heavy, otherwise you’ll look like an upside down pair with toothpicks for legs, and we’ll all point and laugh behind your chiseled barn-door back.

Pair #1: Front lever and back lever progressions

f these were all you did in the straight-arm strength arena, you could still be awesome.  But there’s a lot of other fun stuff to play with, so this won’t be all you’ll do, but because they’re more demanding than other moves, they’ll be the first thing you do.

Start off by finding how long you can hold each appropriate progression (“appropriate” = appropriate for your current level).  Generally the flat back tuck version of each is best for most intermediate trainees.  Beginners will want to move their knees closer to their chests.

Here’s an example program:

A1) Front lever progression – 5 seconds
A2) Back lever progression – 5 seconds

Repeat 5 times to start with, and work your way up to 10 total sets.  For your next course…

L-sit + handstand.  You’ll build some badass abs and boulder shoulders – a must if you wanna look like a stud/studette on a beach.  For your handstand, go with the hollow version, meaning face the wall rather than back to wall.  This requires an ability to roll out of it when it starts going south, lest you take your trips on a quick stroll through Snap City, so if you can’t roll out of a handstand yet, stick with the back to wall version for now.

Because handstands tend to be rough on the wrists, the next move (the L-sit) can either be done on a set of parallette or kettlebell handles OR on the fists, both of which should spare your wrists a bit.

B1) Handstand – 5 seconds
B2) L-sit – 5 seconds

Hollow position handstand.  Tip: Shrug your shoulders a bit.  Your shoulders will show their thanks by not hurting AND building speed bump-like traps.

The L-sit.  If you can’t figure out how it got its name, please slam your face in a **#!@ door.

Though these are simpler and more achievable moves than the front and back lever, don’t be too ambitious about the time you spend in them – the front and back lever will smoke you harder, particularly your abs, so be conservative.Again, start with 5 sets, work your way up to 10, and you’ll have options on how to progress from there by the end of the article.Bonus!  Because the above moves require you to remain still as a sniper, it’s nice to throw in a straight arm exercise that will allow you to move a little bit.  There are a couple of options, but my vote goes to the pullover as the ultimate, particularly considering people curiously just don’t do them anymore.  I don’t know why.

C1) Pullover – 3×3

Pullover step 1: notice the hand position.  Thumbs fed through the kettlebell handle.

Grab an appropriately sized kettlebell (be conservative) and do 3×3 or 3×5 if you’re ambitious.  Start at the top position, as if you’re doing a close-grip bench press (I know you’ve done them) and with straight arms, lower as far as you can.  Due to the close-grip nature of the move, you may find your shoulders wanna shrug a bit as you go down.  It probably won’t kill you, but it may be too much for some people’s shoulders, so proceed with caution.  If you have access to a barbell (an EZ curl bar would do) it might be better to go with something that will provide you with a wider grip.

And that’s it!  Do this twice a week and watch as your strength soars higher and your muscles get stronger and denser.  Doesn’t sound possible, but 6 to 8 weeks worth of dedicated practice with a steady increase either in time under tension (add seconds to each set) or a reduction in rest between sets should change your mind.  Increase the difficulty conservatively by straightening one leg in your front/back levers and adding time in your handstands and L-sits or add weight in your pullovers.  The possibilities are endless, and your ridiculous upper body strength is only getting started.  Have fun.

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

One you’ve never even tried, I reckon.

The Best Bodyweight Exercise You’ve NEVER Done.

Wanna build some upper body beef and turn those shoulders into SWOLE-ders? How about them triceps into…well, bigger triceps? And how would you like to improve your handstand pushups/military pressing strength along the way?

Got your attention yet?

Good. Then look no further than perhaps THE most underrated bodyweight exercise OF ALL TIME. So underrated no one’s even doing it. How do I know? Because I’ve been doing them for years but as far as I know I invented them, as I’ve never seen them done anywhere else (save for a few colleagues of mine from around the world who have put their students through them to great results).

I call them souped-up pike pushups. They’re done like a regular pike pushup (body piked, legs on an elevation), only unlike your regular, run-of-the-mill pike pushup which is pretty easy to bang out tons of reps on, these mofos require that you elevate your hands as well, adding an additional challenge that – as I’ve found – builds not only an exceptional amount of strength, but an appreciable amount of muscle as well – and in a relatively short amount of time. Despite muscle building not currently being on my agenda, in the last few weeks that I’ve started doing these again I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that my shoulders are more and more resembling cannon balls while my triceps are looking even horse shoe-ier.
If you’re working on handstand pushups, these are a perfect addition to your program for a number of reasons:

1) They allow for a higher number of reps, and in overhead pressing movements, more volume = more strength

2) They will greatly enhance your strength in handstand pushups. The increased range of motion that you get from souped-up pike pushups has a massive carryover into the standard handstand pushup, wherein your range of motion is restricted to your head on the floor. For example, when I first started doing these years ago, I went from 5 to 9 handstand pushups within ONE WEEK of practicing these. Nearly doubling your strength in a given exercise in one week? I’ll take that.

If you’re working on the military press, this move is similarly good as an assistance movement of sorts for the following reasons:

3) It will allow you to build up more volume in your pressing groove (similar to point 1) WITHOUT the stability challenge required of your legs and glutes, which must be kept tight sometimes to the point of cramping as your military pressing loads get heavier and heavier.

4) Unlike the handstand pushup – a typical favorite assistance exercise for the military press – with the souped-up pike pushup you’ll get a full range of motion un-available to you in the standard handstand pushup (unless you’re doing those with a full range of motion, in which case there’s not much more I can teach you about handstand pushups because you’ve arrived!)

Give these bad boys a shot and watch in amazement as your upper body pressing strength and raw muscularity starts going through the roof, previously stalled progress starts chugging forth once again, and your friends/family/co-workers seethe with jealousy. You know they’ve already got all eyes on you and your training journey as it is. You might as well give them something to talk about.

And if you’d like, check out my quick YouTube tutorial on the souped-up pike pushup.  Don’t forget to share your secret with your friends when they start asking why you’re busting out of your shirt all of a sudden.

Happy training! And as always, enjoy crushing weakness.

Are you ready to take the step – and take a huge leap forward in your fitness?

​Lee Iacocca – the man known for saving Chrysler in the 1980s – was once asked “What quality do you look for in all of your top managers?” He answered simply “Decisiveness.” Decisiveness is – not surprisingly – your ability to make a decision.

What does this have to do with fitness?

Allow me to regale you fine people with an answer via anecdote.

A while ago I was working out at my local park doing light weighted chinups and dips (12 kg of stones added in a backpack that someone carelessly threw away. I am obviously a fitness MacGuyver) and several onlookers and fellow exercisers marveled, commenting that that seemed heavy. I was flattered. One guy, however, attributed my strength to “genetics and age” as well as “having tons of free time.” I was not so flattered.
Before I go on, let me regale you once again – this time with an interlude about my magnificent genetics and how they manifested themselves from elementary school to high school.

* Throughout elementary, middle, and high school I was generally picked next to last for sports teams since I was weak as a kitten (cute as one too, but still, weak) and about as quick, agile, and athletic as a ficus tree.

* In high school weight training in my junior year, I remember getting pinned like an amateur wrestler under a barbell whose weighted equivalent was likely in the same league as that of a broomstick with a couple of bagels on it (maybe less). When the gym teacher noticed my struggle, he yelled at my inattentive, chatty-cathy spotter so f***ing loud the entire class stopped to watch the debacle (our teacher was a mountain of a man who could bench 350 like it was his job). While my spotter was visibly embarrassed, he could not possibly have been more embarrassed than I was at getting pinned under such a paltry weight.

Genetics? Age? Excessive free time? No. The only quality I have to benefit me is my decisiveness – which is to say my decision NOT to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I am not cut out to be naturally strong and I never have been (never mind that chins and dips with 12 kgs isn’t exactly an effort I’d call strong unless you have polio), but I love being strong and I love the process and journey toward becoming stronger.

This is the quality I look for in all those who seek my coaching as well, both in person and online. Case in point: I have had several 50+ year old women who have wanted to work on their pullups, and in all cases, despite NEVER having done pullups a single day in their life, their decision to work at it and follow the program and instructions I gave them led them not to discover superior genetics or a boatload of heretofore undiscovered free time, but rather that their hard work, dedication, and determination fueled by their DECISION to achieve their first pullups is what led to their success. Not luck in the gene pool, not even motivation – just the decision to execute a plan and work hard.

There are genetic freaks out there, no doubt (Paul Anderson, Dmitry Klokov, and others come to mind). But guess what? It’s probably someone with a bunch of medals and international titles behind his/her name and not the skinny guy or girl quietly deadlifting 315 for easy reps in the corner of the gym – you know, that corner whereupon all the the inny and outty machines cast their sleek, expensive shadows as people text and talk while others are working hard.

You don’t need perfect genes.

You don’t need hours of free time.

You don’t even need boundless motivation.

You only need to decide: am I going to be better tomorrow, or am I going to be the same?

You can make progress or you can make excuses. Pick one.
​
Pictured is bodybuilding legend Clarence Bass, who has made a yearly decision to schedule a photo shoot to keep him focused and consistent. Not bad for being 77.

Do these and you’re set for life.

There is a short list of important fitness lessons that every person aspiring to improve his/her fitness MUST learn in order to be successful not only in the long term, but for the rest of your life. I’d like to cover two of them here.

1) Fitness is a dial, NOT an on/off switch.
– Remember that guy from high school who was Mr. Athletic, could bench 2,000 lbs and didn’t even brag about it, ran the winning touchdown at the state championships in the last remaining seconds of the game in a goal that was so glorious and so divine that rays from heaven shone down from above and doves were everywhere and crying like in that Prince song? And how you saw him 10 years later and he’s no longer athletic and works in an insurance office and has a gut that sticks out like an air conditioner? A stark contrast, no? Now, you can’t be an all-star elite-level athlete forever, but you don’t have to be a fat insurance agent with faded glory and stories only from your past and not your present; you can find a middle ground, and you must. Life gets out of your way sometimes, and when that happens you can put the pedal to the medal. But when life throws you curve balls like an increase in work at your job, a spouse and a few loud hell spawn (some refer to them as “kids”), rather than flip the light off you can dim it. There will still be light in your room as long as you let there be. In time you can always turn it back up, but it’s much harder to go from 0-100 than it is to go from, say, 50-75. Plus, if you’re consistently going from 50-75, you’ll be far ahead of anyone and everyone who is only going 0. Which brings me to my next point…

2) Find an excuse to succeed.
– Count how long it took you to read this Pulitzer prize-worthy post by a certain wise-beyond-his-years and devastatingly handsome (not to mention humble and totally realistic) Hebrew Hammer. Now set a timer and see how many pullups or squats you can do in the same amount of time. You’ll probably get a pretty decent amount, and even if it’s nothing eye-popping, it’s still more than you would have done had you not been moved by yours truly to do something.

And that’s the point – when the going gets really tough and you don’t even have, say, 20 minutes to dedicate to training, appeal to methods that will still allow you to get a lot of quality work in in the time you DO have. Calisthenics exercises and a Grease The Groove (doing a few strong reps throughout the day, every day) approach will allow you to continue to move forward, even if it’s not at 100 miles per hour. Forward is forward, and whether it’s at a scooter’s pace or a Ferrari’s pace, it’s the direction you must continue to go. Sure, a Ferrari is more luxurious and speedy than a scooter, but if you don’t have any other option for your transportation, would you REALLY rather just sit still and go nowhere or see how far that scooter can get you? I’ve seen people choose the do-nothing option and I’ve seen people do the “scooter” option. Those willing to do SOMETHING, though it may not be ideal, are always happier and feel more in control of their fitness than the other group. They’re also consistently fitter, too. Wonder why.
​
In short, stay the course, no matter how windy and twisted it may get. It beats the hell out of letting moss grow on your feet.

​Pictured is a sweet little baby who’s got the right idea.