Odds are you have some fond memories of college. Odds are also that you 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 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 the 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, thinking I’d learn more about it “one of these days” when I had more time on my hands.
That weekend, locked in that clinic, the 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 lay-about watching bad movies and avoiding the other walking medical experiments.
What Would You Do Without Your Kettlebell?
As with most early twenty-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—in terms of health, physical development, and, of course, strength.
One of the major things I learned that weekend—and something it seems 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 body weight—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. But in order to take advantage of this program, you must first realize two things:
You are, in fact, unlimited in your options with that skeleton crew of “equipment” and exercise selection.
Being “equipment-less” 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.
Step 1: Perfect the Hollow Position
“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, the photo below shows 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 Course or SFB Certification to dive deeper into the details).
The Hollow Position
To get into the hollow position:
Lay on your back, lift your head to look at your belly button
Point your legs toward the sky and lower them until it feels like your legs are resting on your butt
Extend your hands overhead
Holding this position alone will ratchet up the tension in your body, but a few simple drills, such as squeezing a towel between the legs, crushing a towel with the low back, and pressing your hands together will send the tension levels sky high. This will come in handy not only for the bodyweight exercises you’ll be practicing, but will have an unbeatable carryover into your favorite barbell and kettlebell exercises.
The hollow position will apply in varying degrees to nearly all the major bodyweight strength exercises and you will need it to ensure the proper linkage, tension, and control in each move, so don’t gloss over it.
Step 2: Learn the Moves
In The Anytime, Anywhere Bodyweight-Only Strength Program, you’ll have three main days wherein you’ll work each of your three major movements—a push, a pull, and a squat—at varying intensities. You’ll also have two optional variety days to fill in the gaps and scaffold your success at your main movements.
The Handstand Pushup (and Progressions)
The Tactical Pullup
The Pistol Squat
For the pistol, you can remain perfectly hollow throughout. With the pullup and handstand pushup, for both performance and shoulder health reasons, I would recommend you open your chest a bit. Your abs, glutes, and legs, however, should stay locked down for strength, tension, and control.
The pistol and the pullup make perfect sense as the go-to squat and pull exercises in a bodyweight-only program for a variety of reasons so blindingly obvious they don’t even bear repeating in this short article, but you might want to know why I’d go with handstand pushups over one-arm pushups in a program like this.
The answer is simple: from my experience, one-arm pushups respond best to lower volume, plenty of rest between sets, and a grease-the-groove or Easy Strength schedule. Trying to cram a move that requires the level of tension, precision, and technical skill as the one-arm pushup does into a higher volume program is a recipe for disappointment.
What’s more, your stabilizer muscles such as your quadratus lumborum and hip rotators probably won’t appreciate the double shot of demands placed on them by both higher volume pistols and one-arm pushups in a single program. If you’re really proficient at them, by all means, give it a shot, but in my correct opinion, you’ll be better off with handstand pushups.
Step 3: Understand the Rep Scheme
A rep scheme I like and that allows you to get a lot of volume in a relatively short amount of time while still focusing on strength is the following (all listed as sets x reps)
15×1
12×2
10×3
For the 15×1, use your 3TRM, for the 12×2 use your 6TRM, and for 10×3 use your 10TRM. TRM, for those not familiar with it, is your technical rep max (see StrongFirst Certified Master Instructor Fabio Zonin’s fantastic article “The 5TRM Back Squat Program” for further details). Your TRM is the rep max you can do while making each rep look exactly the same—no loss in rep speed, no loss in technical soundness, and no loss in quality. If you can do six reps of a given exercise, but the sixth rep looks like a struggle, it’s not your 6TRM. In order to qualify, each rep must look really solid. This may require you to get your ego in check, but you can only train one thing at a time: your body or your ego. Pick one.
As for how to get to your 3, 6, and 10TRM, the method is different for each move:
For starters, with the pullup and pistol you should simply add weight. Do not complicate things with fancy variations; stick to the tried-and-true standard variations of both for this program and play with more complex variations later. If you cannot get at least ten reps with your bodyweight with both the pistol and pullup, I suggest you work on that before beginning this program.
For the handstand pushup (HSPU), I recommend manipulating the range of motion. Since most people only ever do them from head to ground on up, they miss out on all the strength benefits there are to be wrought from increasing the range of motion (ROM). An increase in ROM with HSPUs, however, is kind of a tall order. So how do you get stronger through the full range of motion when you’re struggling to add even a little to this movement? Enter the souped-up pike pushup. I started doing these many moons ago to bump up my regular handstand pushups and sure enough, I went from five to nine in a single week’s worth of practice, so these are not to be ignored.
The strength benefits of a farmer’s tan are almost universally underestimated.
The Anytime, Anywhere Bodyweight-Only Strength Program
With many strength programs, you have dedicated hard, medium, and light days. On this program, you will work different moves hard/medium/light each main day. It makes for a surprisingly tough, but effective, program. The layout will look something like this:
Monday:
HSPU: 15×1
Pistol: 12×2
Pullup: 10×3
Wednesday:
Pistol: 15×1
Pullup: 12×2
HSPU: 10×3
Friday:
Pullup: 15×1
HSPU: 12×2
Pistol: 10×3
And on your variety days? Well, they’re perfectly optional. You might find the above is enough to warrant more rest days, and that’s fine. If you’ve still got some energy in the tank on your variety days to do more than stretch, relax, and watch your favorite cat videos on YouTube, I’d recommend the following:
Variety days:
Hanging leg raise: 1-3 reps x 3-5 sets
Back bridge progression: submaximal holds
And if you must get some conditioning or power work in, your variety days are the days to do it. In those categories, my vote goes to hill sprints for your power work and crawling, Original Strength-style, for your conditioning. Keep your eyes up and move contralaterally. No plodding along like a pachyderm. And yes, I know, I know, “Crawling’s for babies.” And making passive-aggressive attacks from the safety of your computer is for juveniles, but only one of them will make you stronger, leaner, better conditioned, and a better mover—so take your pick, tough guy.
The Method: How to Progress
The above set and rep demands can be tough the first time around, so look at them as the benchmark, not the requirement. Work your way toward them if you must, but don’t bother going beyond (yet).
One thing each rep scheme has in common is they all revolve around a roughly 30% effort of your max reps in the given TRM. The way you will progress through time is by increasing the percentage effort of your TRM in each set. For example:
Week #1:
Monday:
HSPU: 15×1
Pistol: 12×2
Pullup: 10×3
Wednesday:
Pistol: 15×1
Pullup: 12×2
HSPU: 10×3
Friday:
Pullup: 15×1
HSPU: 12×2
Pistol: 10×3
Week #2:
Monday:
HSPU: (1, 2) x 5 (3TRM)
Pistol: (2, 3) x 4 + 2×2 (6TRM)
Pullup: (3, 4) x 3 + 3×3 (10TRM)
Wednesday:
Pistol: (1, 2) x 5 (3TRM)
Pullup: (2, 3) x 4 + 2×2 (6TRM)
HSPU: (3, 4) x 3 + 3×3 (10TRM)
Friday:
Pullup: (1, 2) x 5 (3TRM)
HSPU: (2, 3) x 4 + 2×2 (6TRM)
Pistol: (3, 4) x 3 + 3×3 (10TRM)
Week #3:
Monday:
HSPU: 8×2
Pistol: 8×3
Pullup: 8×4
Wednesday:
Pistol: 8×2
Pullup: 8×3
HSPU: 8×4
Friday:
Pullup: 8×2
HSPU: 8×3
Pistol: 8×4
Week #4:
Deload—Repeat Week #1
Week #5:
Monday:
HSPU: 8×2
Pistol: 8×3
Pullup: 8×4
Wednesday:
Pistol: 8×2
Pullup: 8×3
HSPU: 8×4
Friday:
Pullup: 8×2
HSPU: 8×3
Pistol: 8×4
Week #6:
Monday:
HSPU: (2, 3) x 3
Pistol: (3, 4) x 3 + 1×3
Pullup: (4, 5) x 3 + 1×3
Wednesday:
Pistol: (2, 3) x 3
Pullup: (3, 4) x 3 + 1×3
HSPU: (4, 5) x 3 + 1×3
Friday:
Pullup: (2, 3) x 3
HSPU: (3, 4) x 3 + 1×3
Pistol: (4, 5) x 3 + 1×3
Week #7
Monday:
HSPU: 5×3
Pistol: 6×4
Pullup: 6×5
Wednesday:
Pistol: 5×3
Pullup: 6×4
HSPU: 6×5
Friday:
Pullup: 5×3
HSPU: 6×4
Pistol: 6×5
Week #8:
Deload—repeat week #5
Week #9:
Here you have two options:
Retest 3, 6, and 10TRMs of each exercise at your leisure and start the program over or move on to a different program.
Start adding a set or two per workout and begin increasing the volume. If you keep the added volume somewhat moderate, you can likely maintain the same schedule, but if you aim to increase volume significantly, then you will want to break things up to no more than two moves per workout (ex: pullup and HSPU on one day, pistols the next, etc.). Once you’ve reached a satisfactory amount of added volume (between 7-10 sets), you can then start increasing the density by “racing the clock” to complete your sessions more quickly. Once you can no longer do this, take a few days off and test your maxes.
Never Miss Out on Training Ever Again
After several weeks on a program like this, you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised. This was the program that led me to my first legit full-ROM handstand pushup, not to mention helped me reclaim my weighted pullup and pistol strength that I had lost through time and disuse.
Of course, you can also choose to practice just one of the above techniques and insert it into your existing program following the same rep scheme, or do it on a grease the groove-styled schedule. The choice is yours, but no matter what, you’ll gain a lot of readily applicable brute strength as well as some mental toughness to boot.
As the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Life is guaranteed to throw you a curveball and whisk you off of your carefully plotted course when you least expect it. But your path to greater strength and muscularity can stay right on track when you learn to capitalize on one of the greatest and most under-utilized strength training tools in existence: your own fair flesh.
So go ahead: take the road less traveled, get a little lost, and along your way, find your strength—any time, anywhere.
To learn more about bodyweight training, consider the SFB Course or SFB Certification.
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