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I talked about how to structure mesocycles in the previous chapter. Now we are going to more in depth on the whens and the whys to provide you with a more solid basis on how to manipulate them to your specific level.
This section is mainly going to be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on intra-mesocycle related factors which will talk about programming and loading from workout to workout and week to week. The second part will focus on intermesocycle factors namely deloading, working restructuring, and maximal strength testing. These will be discussed on the basis of each level of ability.
We have not talked about individual strength ceilings before. The "ceiling" is mainly determined by your genetics. As you start to increase strength, a more long term approach towards working out must be adapted because stress from singular workouts (and eventually weekly, monthly, and sometimes yearly cycles) may fail to elicit gains in strength.
For those worried about hitting the ceiling do not be afraid; most elite athletes in any type of sport hit their ceilings after they have been training all of their lives well into their 30s. Even if you are past the age of 40, the human body still has a great capacity to adapt and get stronger with consistently productive training for at least 10-15 years of solid training. Basically, if you are not an elite gymnast or weightlifter or have played professional sports you probably have not begun to even come near your training ceiling. Therefore, do not be worried.
I am mostly going to talk about factors in terms of daily, weekly, and monthly cycles as it pertains to bodyweight strength progressions. Most of us are not at the level of ability where we need to program our workouts on a multi-monthly or yearly cycle. That type of planning/programming is for elite athletes who are competing on a national or Olympic level
Intra-mesocycle factors deal with structuring weekly workouts in terms of ability level. Earlier 1 specified four distinct levels of ability with the progression charts. I will talk about each of the factors you may need to take into account at each of these levels of ability.
I am going to eliminate elite level programming from the discussion. Once you are this strong, you will have a fairly good knowledge about how to apply these concepts when working upper level strength skills. At this level, strength consists more of working on specific weaknesses, and working combinations or sequences of strength skills. Transitional movements become important as moving in and out of strength skills requires phenomenal body control and works muscles in ways that they are not usually worked.
The novice level (L1-L5) covers most of the basic bodyweight exercises from basic wall handstands, pushups, dips, handstand pushups, to pullups, ring rowing, muscle ups, and some of the basic progressions of the isometric holds.
Most people wanting to learn bodyweight exercises will start in this range. This is the population for whom this book is being written. This is where the disconnect between the progressions and the performance is. I want to provide a logical approach of bodyweight training to take you from a low level of ability to elite strength.
The people who will not will tend to have athletic backgrounds or have pursued other strength and conditioning endeavors before pursuing bodyweight training. However, it is likely that these people may still need to train some of the skills such as handstands and the isometric positions even if they have the requisite strength. This is because these skills require lots of practice.
I would expect that most trainees working on lower level progressions (L1-L3) would be those who are currently losing a lot of weight or more women. This is fine; everyone starts somewhere. Do not be discouraged. learning and accomplishing these exercises is going to build a strong foundation on which to build on for moving up to higher level skills. You will be surprised what you will be able to accomplish given proper focus on improving and refining your workouts
As I briefly mentioned before, people within the novice level on the strength and skill competency charts have the ability to do "linear progression." When we say someone should be doing "linear progression" in a barbell program, we want them to add weight to their lifts every workout. In the context of bodyweight strength training, this will mean that we either add additional repetitions to exercises every workout, or we want to progress to the next level of progression.
A repetition scheme that selects exercises for 3x5 starting out may become 3x6 the next workout and then 3x7 the next and so on. After 3x8-10 is reached, it is a good idea to move up to the next progression if the person can do at least 3-4 quality repetitions at the next progression. This is how you use the competency level" system.
These types of novice routines should focus on utilizing a 3x a week full body program. This gives a day of rest between each workouts for the body to recover, and it also provides two days off after every three workouts. Therefore, this routine structure will operate on a M/W/F schedule or a Tu/Th/Sat. Other variations of days of the week can also be used.
Progression of repetitions in each successive workout can be accomplished easily for most beginners. We can sense when we are going to close to failure. Therefore, if you have increased your repetitions for the workout, and can complete ach set without going to failure this represents a successful workout. If You can perform a set with extra repetitions left in the bank, you may progress multiple repetitions if that s possible. That would be great. It is that simple.
Testing of isometrics/statics and moving up to the next progression requires a bit of extra work. I propose two different ways of doing this.
The first option we have is to use the second day of the two consecutive rest days (so Sun on the M/W/F schedule) as a testing day. During this testing day we would first warm up properly and then chose the exercises that we want to progress with to perform some maximal testing. If we have enough repetitions/hold time/etc. to move up via the numbers set in the competency charts — 3 repetitions, 65 isometric holds, 3s eccentrics — then we can potentially move up to the next level.
The second option is using the first day of the weekly cycle (so Mon on the M/W/F). We will schedule it to perform maximal testing before moving into the workouts. This requires a bit of extra time for the total workout, but the benefit is that you do not have to use an extra day to do exercises. The strength testing is the same as described in the previous paragraph.
Either works fine. I would schedule it depending on your preference. If you are interested in getting the most out of your workouts I would probably recommended testing on one of your off days.
In summary, what you want to do for each workout i to either increase the repetitions or to increase the progression. Usually, if you are able to increase the progression you will not be able to do it every workout, Therefore, this is why you are going to use one day every week to test if you are ready to move
up or not. Generally, if you are hitting the 8-10 or more repetition range you may be able to move up. The same is true with isometrics starting to get into the range of 25-30s holds.
At novice level, joint and connective tissue preparation and mobility are the main factors that must be taken into account aside from focusing on linear progression.
Thus, I would not recommend any types of eccentrics exercises as they can be tough on the joints and connective tissues. There are a few exceptions at this level where they are effective. For example, using eccentrics to help gain the strength for pullups or dips is fine. Other than that I would avoid eccentric exercises at this point in time. Proper range of motion concentrics and isometrics should make up the majority of the full exercises.
Additionally, a lot of work on joint flexibility and mobility should be undertaken. As you view the charts you will notice that the L-sit progression starts to require increasing degrees of compression (hamstrings/hips flexibility) to move from the L-sit into the V-sit progressions. Likewise, other skill based strength movements that will be critical to the development of strength such as the straight arm press handstands require significant amounts of compression. To improve mobility we should aim to get the chest to the knees in the pike and straddle positions, and the hands to the floor when standing and bending over.
The key areas to focus on to mobilize and strengthen will be the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and thoracic spine. 1 will talk about these topics further in the Part II which is the management of health and injuries.
Ending a mesocycle is based on two different factors. I will leave the choice up to you ag:
Since linear progression can often be continued for many consecutive months, one scenario for ending a mesocycle is to terminate it when you hit a plateau phase in your training. In terms of novice bodyweight scheduling that would be after a week has gone by without progression or increase in repetitions in all exercises. On the other hand, the alternative is to end the cycle after about 4-8 weeks to have a rest week to recover.
I would recommend termination of the cycle within 4-8 weeks if the joints or connective tissue is starting to get sore or overused. It is never a good idea to train our bodies into oblivion. Our joints and connective tissue can be the limiting factor in the beginning rather than actual nervous system fatigue or muscle recovery. However, if you can continue on and keep making progress then by all means do that if possible.
The intermediate level (L6-L9) consists of developing the strength and body awareness to execute some of the commonly desired gymnastics progressions. Namely, we are working on solid handstands and progressing towards one arms, rings handstand work, freestanding handstand pushups, straight arm pres handstands, full back and front levers, straddle planche, slightly past vertical V-sit, and lots of other cool multi-plane pulling/pressing strength.
The main key at this phase of progression is consistency. People often want to progress the fastest and find the best routine which makes them start over thinking everything (c.g. "paralysis by analysis"). A lack of consistency would be defined as sporadically performing workouts only one or two times a week or skipping weeks entircly. If that is the case, it is likely that you will not progress well in this stage of training. Indeed, many people I know are stuck on this stage of strength development for 5+ years. Similarly, you see the same results from people going to the commercial gyms.
Do not get caught up in focusing on minute details that may or may not make your programming better. Programming is not that complex for this stage of development. It should not be approached by thinking that you need to change a lot of exercises up from cycle to cycle.
At intermediate level, we have a solid base of strength and conditioning of approximately 12-18 months. For heavier trainees (175 lbs) it may take a big longer such as 15-24 months to get to this level.
At this point it is your decision on whether to add an extra day of workouts or not. My general recommendations for adding an extra day/session of workouts is 1 per each year of consistent strength and conditioning. This is on the safe side of things. Certainly extra workouts can be added earlier, but you run the risk of burning out and overtraining.
If an extra day of workouts is added the schedule it may look like M/Tu/Th/F or Tu/We/Sat/Sun. The other alternative is to add an extra exercise for each of push and pull to the M/W/F schedule. If you are transitioning to a 4x a week schedule instead of 3x a week, I would drop down to 2 exercises per push and pull for each workout for at least a cycle. Build volume up accordingly as you get stronger and conditioning increases.
If you are moving up to an extra workout day in your schedule make sure to track how you feel for the first couple weeks or so for the signs of overreaching/overtraining (such as loss of appetite, sleep quality deteriorating, motivation decreasing, etc.). If so, it would be a good idea to drop back down to M/W/F until a better base of strength and conditioning can be built.
Progress is going to be expected more along the lines of every few workouts or weekly. If the M/W/F scheduling is being used then I would definitely suggest that the second day in the two consecutive rest days (Sun) be used as a testing day each week to determine weekly progress.
Likewise, the M/Tu/Th/F system has the option of utilizing the Sun or doing extra volume on the Mon of the first workout of the week to decide on any progression increases or jumps in repetition numbers.
Quality of work is more important than quantity. More is not always better, especially in the case of bodyweight work where significant energy must be expended into the skills to not only learn them correctly but also perform them correctly. Form deteriorates much more easily with bodyweight work than barbells.
If you are thinking about adding more exercises consider how your body is reacting first:
If there are other factors that are causing problems such as lack of sleep or outside stressors then it may not be a good idea. If you are struggling with soreness of any kind whether it be muscle or especially joint then it may not be a good idea.
If you are making good progress then why change what works for now?
Clearly, undertraining is not good, but overdoing it can be much more frusirating and confusing. It is always a good idea to push your limits once in a while to see where they are at. This will give you an idea what you are capable of at that particular point in time; however, you have to realize that you will likely need to back off after you push past your limits 50 you can properly recover without developing overuse injuries. When in doubt, take a couple of extra rest days and then see how you feel.
From here as you start to achieve your goals, you need to progressively implement harder exercises.
As stated before, I recommend full body routines for beginners and intermediates. Likewise, for all beginners I recommend full body routines regardless of total volume given by other activities or other sports that one is doing.
However, when we start to move into intermediate strength range I need to talk about splits in the context of progression. This is because many people learning bodyweight work on the side are training other sports or combining it with weightlifting. Therefore, they cannot allocate all of their training resources to solely bodyweight training.
I will talk about this more in depth in the cross training chapter, but I will introduce most of the concepts on how to structure workouts here.
There are three different workout structures I like if you are going to split up exercises. You can choose for yourself what you like the most.
You may notice that there is no isometrics/movement day. This is because there are not enough static exercises to perform full routines necessary to stimulate adaptations. You can try this if you want, but it is at your own risk of not progressing effectively.
Push/pull is pretty self explanatory and will encompass both legs and upper body into two splits routines. A common solution is to do 2 push and 2 pull days a week for 4 days of total volume. However, since the volume is split up between four days instead of going full body 3-4x a week that means the overall stress on the body is less and more work can be devoted to other sports.
This also works well in integration of bodyweight exercises with weighted because you can always substitute any type of push exercises such as bench and press for any of the bodyweight push exercises like handstand pushups, planche progressions, and dips. The same goes with pulling exercises.
Squatting movements typically align with pushing. Deadlifts and the Olympic lifts fall under pulling for the most part. Remember, pulling exercises move the weight closer to your center of mass. Pushing exercises move the weight away from your center of mass.
Upper/lower splits tend to work well if your other sport(s) or activities have a lot of lower body work or running. You can adequately section off the lower body lifting onto days where there is no sporting activities to limit fatigue and increase recovery.
Straight arm/bent arm is more of an exclusively upper body split where you work on more of the static movements and handstands on the straight arm days. On the bent arm days you work more of the full range of motion movements. This gives a balanced range to the strength that will be developed and also gives a variety of exercises to work on if you like variety and hate doing the same routine over and over
Overall, full body work is going to tend to be the best most of the time, but different circumstances in life may require that you use type of split. Therefore,if you need to use one these are some of the options with their different pros and cons. Heavier athletes may need to use a split because their recovery is reduced because they are moving heavier weights (their bodyweight) each session compared to lighter trainees.
Programming according to different split days such as light/medium/heavy days and low/medium/high volume days will be discussed in the advanced section.
The full range of motion concentrics and the isometrics are still at your disposal.
However, the eccentrics start to tend to be more useful, especially for a lot of the different pulling exercises. In particular, they work very well with the back lever, front lever, one arm chin-up, and pr handstand variations.
I assume by this point you have worked your flexibility and mobility drills such that your compression (hamstring / hips) is becoming very good or near the maximum levels. This is where your chest can touch your knees in pike and to the ground in the straddle position, and your hands can be flat on the floor when standing with straight legs. If this is not the case, it is something that is extremely important to work on.
If the above flexibility/mobility has been taken care of then joint and connective tissue preparation plays a higher role now since we are starting to move into the strength based moves that are tougher on the joints. For example, the main techniques that most people want to start to progress towards which are near the top of this level or into the next level range are the "B" skills which are the iron cross and one arm chin-up which can be devastating on the shoulder and elbows if the body is not adequately prepared.
I have highlighted in gray color on the charts certain exercise progressions which help build up connective tissue strength at the shoulders and elbows. By following some of those specific progressions, these exercises should adequately prepare the body to start attempting the one arm chin and iron cross dons in the future. There are other preparation things that can be done which will be talked about later in the prehabilitation section.
Progression at this stage should generally happen from every other workout to weekly. You should at least be able to progress in either repetitions in progressions every couple workouts or every week or two.
However, do not be surprised if the results are not coming as usual, especially as you get to some of the higher levels within this structure such as L8 or L9. If you find that you can keep progressing for § weeks or longer then feel free to as long as you are making good progress and are pain free.
If there is absolutely no progress over the course of at least 4 weeks I would recommend terminating a cycle, Remember that fatigue tends to mask fitness, so proper and adequate stimulus must be applied over a longer period of time. If we prematurely terminate workouts at the 2-3 weeks, we may do so before having adequately applied a good amount of accumulated stimuli to force the body to adapt.
Thus, if no progress is attained at the 4 week mark I would terminate a mesocycle. You may find that even though there was no progress during the cycle after the recovery week is initiated you will come back stronger. All in all, that is not a failed cycle if you end up with progress.
If, however, there was no improvement whatsoever then additional volume or intensity should be applied next cycle to force adaptations. This can be in the form of adding an additional workout, adding an additional exercises, increasing the sets, manipulate exercises with a weight vest to increase intensity, or many other options. If this occurs more than 2 mesocycles in a row, then look at the advanced section for additional options for programming.
Again, I would recommend terminating a mesocycle if the joints or connective tissue is starting to get sore or overused. It is never a good idea to train our bodies into oblivion. Our joints and connective tissue are often a more limiting factor in the beginning rather than actual nervous system fatigue or muscle recovery. The rest week or two may be required to perform more types of prehabilitation work aimed at healing the connective tissues and joints before another cycle as prescribed.
The advanced level (L10-L13) takes us through the iron cross, the planche, the manna. Also, it takes us through developing a lot of the combinations on rings/parallettes/floor such as straight body press to handstands
Unless you have freaky good genetics or great sense for intuitive training, consistency is likely not enough at this point to progress far in this category. Training may require some of the more advanced concepts such as periodization and its derivatives that will be described shortly. These will help bridge the £ap to get you to the next level.
The core concepts such as exercise selection and frequency are similar, but we may start manipulating volume and intensity by changing around the sets and repetition structure on various days. Consistency must be coupled with this to produce the results we are looking for as missing workouts puts a weak link in our planning and will most likely throw off the results we are looking for.
Advanced level typically requires about 24-42 months to reach depending on your genetics, dedication, training schedule, and other recovery factors such as sleep and nutrition. The typical time 1 would say that it takes most people to reach this point with consistent training is about 30-36 months or 2.5-3 years. For heavier trainees (=175 lbs) it may take 36-54 months to get to this level. If it takes longer, you may be starting from a lower level of strength than I have predicted (which would be around the L4-5 level for most).
As I stated in the intermediate weekly scheduling, I tend to recommend only adding one extra training day per year training. Thus, if we started out with 3 training days and have already added a fourth I would wait until at least 24-30 months to play around with adding in a another training day to bring the total to 5. Remember the factors that I discussed in the previous section about progress and recovery factors. If you are not getting enough sleep, quality foods, or otherwise have outside stressors it may not be a good idea 10 add in more workout days.
With the 5 days of training I like the M/Tu/W/F/Sat or Tu/W/Th/Sat/Sun ~ basically the 3/1/2/1 schedule where the "1" is the rest days. The 5/2 schedule where you workout M-F with Sat and Sun off can work as well, but from my experience it is slightly less effective,
I also would not recommend going any more than 5 days of training for the rest of your training career because it is easy to burn out with high frequency. However, I know some people like playing around with much higher frequency routines because of the potential for achieving high degrees of strength much quicker. If you want to play around with this type of higher frequency work which may start including two-a-days be careful. If this is the case, I would tend to recommend shorter cycles (2-4 weeks instead of the typical 4-8 weeks) and/or significantly reducing the volume per workout.
If you are at this level of strength or beyond and are interested in experimenting more with 6+ training days then I would suggest utilizing the 5 spread days a week such as a 3/1/2/1 schedule with "1" as the rest days (e.g. training days of M/Tu/W/F/Sat) first. After you have adapted to that schedule, you will double up on Sat so you have AM and PM workouts. Training throughout the week without at least 2 rest days is extremely taxing on the body. For the 2-a-days the volume should be split between the AM/PM workout to start instead of actual adding in another whole workout. It can then be ramped up from there as needed. Like I said though be very careful with this type of experimentation. Training is a journey not a rush.
You can sill progress well using the 3 day a week training schedule. However, the 4 day a week training schedule or 5 day a week training schedule are valid options. I will talk about these each in tur.
I am sure that most of you have heard about utilizing light/medium/heavy days in various training programs, or speed-strength/limit-strength or power/dynamic method with max strength from Westside Barbell's conjugate method. Basically, all of these methods are ways to change training intensity and volume through modulation of repetitions and sets on different training days to provide various stimuli to the body.
When we reach this level of strength, applying a constant stimuli (c.g. similar/same workouts even with improvement in progression or repetitions) fail to produce a stimulus. Progression tends to taper off from workout to workout to weekly progress. However, once we get into the upper advanced range, progress will be weekly to biweekly or even slightly longer. You may not see gains until after a whole cycle is completed and you recover fully from the fatigue after the deload.
Varying the amounts of sets/repetitions (and therefore intensity and volume) has differential effects on the body. Training the tougher progressions (closer to 1 RM) takes more of a toll on the nervous system to produce benefits. Dropping the intensity and working more power or dynamic effort progressions tends to work more of the muscular component while not as heavily stimulating the nervous system. Therefore, alternating between these two can allow us to keep up the overall training volume for gaining strength without overtaxing a particular part of the neuromuscular system. Hence why the more light/heavy alternating workout days tend to work effectively.
The conjugate method in particular takes this one step further and focuses on supplemental work that I rotated so constant progress can be achieved. This model has achieved great success in powerlifting, so I figured I should at least mention it so you can check it out if you want to.
However, the method that | am going to explain here which I think works the most effectively in bodyweight training is daily undulated periodization (DUP). This method is not for beginners as I underestimates their ability to progress through linear progression. It is also not for elite athletes as they conjugate method or concurrent models may be better. Progress on DUP is unquestionably good for trainees in the advanced strength range. Plus, it is very easy to implement and for our purposes that makes it a very good choice.
On a basic level, DUP alternates repetitions and sets from workout to workout. On a traditional DUP model, in a 3 workout a day schedule your workouts will start from less intense and become more intense
at the end of the week. This is similar to the traditional periodization model where you move from less intense phases to more intense phases (introductory — hypertrophy — strength — power). However, the training is varied from workout to workout instead of in weekly microcycles.
For example, on Monday you may use exercises with a 3x8-10 repetition scheme, Wednesday may use exercises with a 3-5x3 repetition scheme, and Friday may use exercises with a 5-8x3 repetition scheme. As the week goes on you start from less intense exercise by starting with higher repetitions at easier progressions and then move towards lower repetitions at harder progressions with more sets. These tend to work with exercises where you can add weight such as barbells; however, now that you have been working out enough to know your abilities you can seamlessly drop between two competency levels if you need to modulate the intensity level
For instance, on Monday since you may not be able to do 8 repetitions of full front lever pullup, so you may drop down to 8 repetitions for straddle front lever pullup. Likewise, on Wednesday you may not be able to do 5 repetitions of the full front lever pullup, so you have to drop down to the straddle front fever pullup again with some added weight to increase the difficulty. However, on Friday you may be able to execute the 3 repetitions of the full front lever pullup, so you can do the 4x3 full front lever pullups that day. Therefore, this weekly DUP would look something like this:
Four days a week workouts are a bit odd. The traditional DUP model utilizes 3 days a week structure as described above. With 4 days you can alternate something along the lines of light/heavy with doing 3x8-10 the first day followed with a 5x5 the second, the latter two workouts go to 3x6-8 and 6x3 respectively. Therefore, it would look something like:
Likewise, the 3/1/2/1 plan or 5/2 plan can go with something along the lines of 3x8/3x5/5x3/3x8/5x3. It depends a bit on personal preference and the exercises chosen. If you have no access to a weighted vest or ankle weights it may be harder to modulate intensity, so you may have to rely on the limitations of the exercises themselves to determine the repetitions.
The top repetition range is about 8-10 for the high repetition days, and 5-7 for the medium repetition days, and 3-4 for the low repetition days. The main thing to keep in mind is that because we have increased overall stimuli via increased frequency (e.g. more days per week or more exercises), we can alternate the emphasis on the neuromuscular system or musculoskeletal system respectively to allow us to operate at this volume without accumulating too much fatigue.
You should experiment with what types of repetitions work best for you because some trainees might do better alternating between the 8-10 repetitions and then the 5-7 repetitions and not using the 3-4 at all. Some trainees may need the 8-10 and only 3-4 repetitions. The more genetically gifted trainees tend to work best with the lower repetition ranges so 5-7 and 3-4
after you have trained for some amount of time you tend to have a better idea of what types of repetitions your body works best at so choose those accordingly. If you are just starting, you may use a standard template such as 3x10, 3x7, 5x3 and then modify from there as necessary.
Alternatively, we can operate on the same concept as light or heavy days. Since we know we may need to apply additional stress on the body to force adaptations, we can use the concept of heavy/medium/light volume days. Typically, we are going to do say 2-3 pushing exercises. When we first start out 3 exercises may be more than adequate to progress with our pushing exercises. But as our strength and conditioning improves, it becomes inadequate.
The concept of heavy days is to provide an overload stimulus much like the lower repetition days with the more difficult exercises. During a heavy push day we may want to do something along the lines of 4 pushing exercises. This can be followed up with a light day if there are 2 consecutive workout days where we would only do 2 exercises for pushing.
As you can sce, the concepts of varying the repetitions to make high/medium/low repetition days is very similar to the concept of alternating light/medium/heavy days. Both can be utilized by themselves or in combinations. Typically, with the lower repetition days you will want to use a light amount of exercises since the intensity is high with lower repetitions. And vice versa.
When combining the two protocols, a typical light/high intensity day at advanced level would consist of 2 pushing exercises (light) with 3 sets of 5 repetitions (higher intensity) for each. Then a heavy/low intensity day would consist of 4 pushing exercises (heavy) with 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions (low intensity).
If you are at this level I would suggest playing around with some of these concepts over a few 6 week cycles followed by a rest break and see what works best for you. If you are confused and do not know. what to pick, I know for a fact that repetition DUP work M/W/E by itself works well for the iron cross progressions. This means it also works for all of the exercises at the cross level of the ability as well.
Remember, we have 3 different variations of workout days — 3, 4 and 5 workouts per week. We have 3 different variations of amounts of repetitions with high/medium/low repetitions. And we have 3 different amounts exercise days with heavy/medium/low exercises. There are a lot of possible combinations that can be useful depending on your individual schedules and goals.
I would suggest starting with DUP via the high/medium/low repetition days OR the heavy/medium/light exercise scheduling. Generally, only one needs to be used to start making consistent progress again from the intermediate level. If after a mesocycle you do not notice any improvement then it may be a good idea to combine the two. However, this will probably only be when you are at elite strength range.
If you still have no idea what I am talking about I have provided some examples in Appendix A on sample programming.
All of the regular types of exercises apply: concentrics, isometrics, and eccentrics. Remember to use the charts in structuring the workouts because 2 eccentrics = 15 eccentrics = 1 repetition. Thus, according to our abilities we can choose our exercise to hit the repetition range that we want for that particular workout day.
Constructing the routine from exercises and then planning a repetition scheme according to the type of days takes a little getting used to. However, it only needs to be calculated once to get a handle on how 10 do it. For example, say we want 10 repetitions for an isometric hold. That is going to be an isometric hold that is 10* 25 = 20s hold. So we are going to pick the appropriate isometric hold that we can do 20 according to our max hold times. It may have to be straddle planche or straddle front lever instead of the full variation. As we move up towards a higher intensity day such as a 5x3 block where we are doing the 3 repetitions or 3*2s = 6s holds, we will pick the appropriate planche or front lever progression that we can do all of the holds with 6s at.
Another potential solution is combining exercises for the advanced group. This is a good solution for isometrics that need to be made more difficult. For example, say we were working up to the full planche but could not hold it for the adequate 6-8s needed to advance to the next level. To counter this problem, we could start out our set with a maximum hold of say 2-3s of the full planche, and then as we fatigue quickly open up the legs to move into a straddle planche position. Then we can hold for another period of time to get additional volume. This provides an intermediary step of a strong stimulus plus the follow up completion of the set which helps to bridge the gap between each of the higher levels of the planche progressions. Additionally, moving from various other exercises into the isometric such as a dip to planche isometric may work just as well to provide an intermediary step. Many of the press handstand ons are based on this concept.
These type of exercises should only be used by advanced trainees because they do not work well when the exercise technique is poor. This is because the ability to change from a good body position such as a straddle planche to a good body position of the advanced tuck planche requires a lot of precision. Notably, novice and intermediate trainees often lack good shoulder and core stabilization when moving between these positions which precludes them from good quality holds. Therefore, it is best not to utilize these types of exercises for these populations.
I do not like recommending isolation exercises, but they can be used more effectively when you arc at advanced strength level such as for targeting weak links. In particular, trainees at this particular level may know their weak links, or they have inklings of what the weak links in their bodies may be according to their abilities. For example, I know that my lats are much more developed than my pecs and biceps for pulling movements. I know this because of multiple factors — I feel them activating and contracting more during pulling exercises, and they have greater hypertrophy and strength than the aforementioned muscles.
Thus, I can use biceps curls if I need to add isolation work to specifically bring up my biceps weakness. This would be a good reason to target these specific weak links.
Likewise, lowering the stress on the connective tissues from the compound movements, and targeting the weak link that may be prone to injury is another good reason to use isolation exercises. For instance, biceps curls may be required if the elbows start to get significantly sore during back lever work. We would perform the biceps curls and simultaneously eliminate that back lever work for a period of time. These are the types of situations where isolation exercises can be most effective. However, do not go overboard as most of the benefits will still come from doing the compound exercises.
Of course, if one of your goals is hypertrophy feel free to add in some isolation work on top of the compound movements. Though be sure to remember that more is not always better
Like I discussed in the previous chapter, routines tend to become more useful at advanced strength levels than at novice and intermediate levels. Smaller sequences of skills tend to be more effective at lower levels. It is your choice whether to use them or not at any particular level though
Routines are an excellent alternative of practicing a lot of different types of skills and strength moves that you may have already mastered but you have not used in a while. Combining some of these mastered strength moves and skills with current strength moves you are working on can create some interesting combinations/sequences/routines that will work the muscles in many different ways than usual. This is one of the big reasons on how high level strength is developed especially moving into elite levels. At advanced and elite level strength, the focus starts to shift from obtaining some of the higher level isometric holds to moving between these skills. The transitions between these types of isometric holds such as from the front lever to cross may be actually harder than the isometric holds themselves — front lever is an A rated skill, iron cross is a B rated skill, and front lever to iron cross is called a Pineda which is a D level skill. Indeed, many high level gymnasts stop doing specific strength work and focus solely on the strength skills in their routines to provide stimulus for adaptation.
Now, I would not remove all dedicated strength work depending on your goals. But routines and sequences can be used successfully to work on all around movement strength. Routines/combinations/sequences can be fun to do and film as well.
Do not be afraid to play around with these types of movements once you can perform a lot of the higher level isometrics especially on rings. You may find that you like performing these types of routines more than strict training of particular movements. Remember, there is some trade off between working specific movements in a dedicated fashion to gain strength versus routines much like there is some trade off between doing the full range of motion concentrics versus the isometrics. If that is a trade off that you are willing to make for the sake of variety, or your goals, or for fun by all means go for it
Progression at this stage should and can happen weekly. You should see the ability to add repetitions or increase the progression difficulty at the very least every two weeks. If not, then some factors are likely off with your training.
As you get higher up in the advanced range you may not notice progress until the end of a mesocycle and after the rest week. However, this is very rare if you are using DUP correctly. Like the intermediate level do not be surprised about this; by now you should have learned patience in progressing with these types of skills. The strength gains required to jump from level to level at this point will take a while as well,
We have similar indications for terminating a cycle. For instance, if there is absolutely no progress over the course of at least 4 weeks I would recommend terminating a cycle. This is because if we prematurely terminate a cycle before about the 3 week mark, it may be before we can adequately apply enough of an accumulated stimulus to force the body to adapt, Thus, if no progress is attained over about the 4 week mark I would terminate a mesocycle. You may find that even though there was no progress during the cycle after the recovery week is initiated you will come back stronger. Overall, that is not a failed cycle. If, however, there was no improvement whatsoever then additional volume or intensity should be applied to force adaptations in the next cycle. If this occurs for more than 2 cycles without visible progress then it would be a good idea to try the combination light/heavy exercise with high/low repetitions respectively or look very closely as specific recovery factors namely stress, nutrition, and sleep.
Again, I would recommend terminating a mesocycle if the joints or connective tissue is starting to get sore or overused. It is never a good idea to train our bodies into oblivion. Our joints and connective tissue are often the limiting factor in the beginning rather than actual nervous system fatigue or muscle recovery in these cases. The rest week or two may be required to perform more types of prehabilitation work aimed at healing the connective tissues and joints before another cycle is prescribed.
There are three main factors that we are going to discuss in this section which are deloading, maximal strength testing, and workout restructuring. None are actually specific to novice/intermediate/advanced levels, so we will look at them individually.
Deloading is an art. Unless you have a great coach, it often takes a lot of experience to deload well such that you supercompensate fully but do not lose some of the adaptations that you developed from the previous mesocycle because of the increased amounts of rest.
I will try to-give you a general basis for deloading, but depending on other recovery factors such as time availability, sleep, nutrition, etc. then you may need to vary some of the protocols to adapt to all these different situations.
Overall, complete and full rest is not as productive during a recovery week as still performing some type of exercise. I will present a couple alteratives that tend to work well.
If it was a particular brutal cycle on the body it may be worth it to eliminate all of the isometrics and exercises and exclusively focusing on the skill work and prehabilitative exercises.
For instances, this type of deloading would focus work on handstands and ring supports, and improving shoulder, wrist, back, hip and ankle mobility and health.
What I typically recommend is to only train maybe one or two days during that week and only do one exercise from each of the pushing/pulling/legs at likely only one or two sets. This keeps us from any type of strength decrements, but the volume is low cnough that we can recover well
The rest of the time is best spent on the soft tissue massage, mobility work, any prehabilitation, and any rehabilitation work that needs to be done. Most of all rest weeks are for the body to recover, and for you to work on any of these weaknesses that we often neglect during training.
I talked about maximal strength testing in the novice and intermediate sections previously. The concepts I stated there will apply here too, except you only strength test at the end of the week after a deload period. Subsequently, if you ended your cycle on Monday then you would test on the next Sunday. The next day after which is Monday would be the start of the next cycle.
Maximal strength testing for the concentric exercises, isometrics, and eccentrics will give you a general idea of how much you have improved after most of the supercompensation from the previous cycle takes place from allow the fatigue to dissipate and the fitness to manifest itself.
This testing after the supercompensation gives us quality numbers from which to base our progressions and hold times for the next cycle.
To perform maximal strength testing you would start with a typical warm up to get the blood moving. Next, warm up with about 5-8 repetitions of a lower progression of the skill or strength progression that you are testing. Then do a couple repetitions or short hold of the progression that you are maximally testing. Finally, after about 3-4 minutes rest you can maximally test the exercise or isometric in ques
From there you want to organize your exercises according to the strength and progression charts.
This process is relatively simple. It is most applicable in more advanced training when you may not sec any strength gains for most of the cycle but will typically see a lot better results after the supercompensation period takes place.
Working restructuring occurs when you complete your goals or have reevaluated to add or subtract certain exercises.
There is no hard or fast rule for switching between goals, but I should remind you again that the key to strength is building it from movements that are repeated in a progressive manner. If you have workout
ADD and frequently switch up your routines you may build muscle and strength, but you may find that high level strength is elusive,
This is how to restructure. When you complete a goal such as a full back lever you have two options. You can keep it in your workout once a week to maintain, or you can move on to more progressive goals such as front lever and other pulling exercises. The great thing about the push/pull system is that there is at least some overlap between all of the different goals in each category. This means that even if you drop goals that you have completed from your routine you will likely be able to do them at a later point without any practice.
If the goals are approximately 2 levels below your current strength competency then you can even throw them into your warm up as they will not negatively affect your workouts
I do not recommend switching goals every mesocycle. If you have multiple long term goals it is in general best to stick with a goal over at least 2-3 mesocycles to see significant improvement — if not being able to reach the goal — before you decide that you may want to put it on hold for a time. Remember, being consistent is the best way to progress.
However, if you really feel that you need to go in a different direction with your exercises then you can always evaluate and possible substitute the exercise(s) in or out of your routine.
I hesitate to suggest A/B routines (or two different workouts with different exercises) or push/pull splits or upper/lower because you do not get that same amount of frequency with the skills that you do with a full body. But if you want to add in more of a variety that is your choice. However, expect that gains towards working towards your goals may slow down.
Elite strength programming depends on the individual more than it does the programming. But this should not deter you for aiming your goals this far.
For example, some women may never reach higher level rings strength skills even with perfect training for decades. Although you can argue that women have not traditionally trained strength, so it may not necessarily be the case that women cannot achieve strength moves such as the inverted cross. After all, in women's Olympic weightlifting the competitors are putting up nearly 2x bodyweight snatches and 2.5x bodyweight clean and jerks. Lillian Leitzel, in 1918, was said to have performed 27 dynamic one arm chin-ups which through some analysis points to ~6 regular one arm chin-ups These types of strength feats are incredible and dare I say elite. So who knows the true capabilities that women have.
However, we have to talk about genetic limitations. Some guys have poor genetics where it will take 10 years to reach a high level. Maybe longer in some cases. Most may not even stick it out that long if that is the case. Some guys with crazy good genetics can reach this level of ability in 2 years or less. I have had athletes walk into the gymnastics gym with very little formal weight training or gymnastics and be able to perform an iron cross or front lever.
If you are one of the people reaching this point after a solid decade of dedicated training you still have some potential for greater strength gains although it may start to plateau out faster. That is just the luck of the draw. At this point I would ride out as much as the DUP and/or heavy/medium/light days can give you in terms of gains. Then I would start looking into some more specialized work via either the conjugate method or concurrent methods of periodization. Supplemental isolation or specific strength work may be necessary as well
I am sure if anyone is at this level with at least this much time spent on training then they should be smart enough to look to eke out every bit from their nutritional and sleep as well. If not, that may be a good place to optimize to continue to increase your strength.
On the other hand, there are those progressing past or up to this point in under 5 years. If so, be glad you have good genetics. You may not have used any type of periodization or format training to get this far. I so, DUP and the programming mentioned above will help you get started once you stall out from whatever training plan you are exccuting.
The FIG COP contains an amazing number of strength moves on rings that I have not referenced in the skill and strength progression charts. Moves such as the maltese, victorian, and other strength combinations that you may only see in the Olympics are on your doorstep to be taken given enough dedication and time. I hope if you are at this point and progressing towards these types of skills to take someone under your wing and teach them. This is how knowledge is most effectively passed on.
I am quite confident based on all of the people I have coached of various body types, backgrounds, ete. that at least L9-10 on the strength and skill progression charts is attainable for everyone given enough time training. Planche may not be attainable for everyone, but I am confident with proper sleep, nutrition,
training, and other factors that everyone can accomplish a full back lever, full front lever, straddle planche, and possibly one arm chins and iron crosses.
Obviously, those with higher bodyweight are at a disadvantage, but it is certainly doable. One of the famed strongmen of the early 1900, Bert Assirati, was able to obtain 3 one arm chins and iron cross at 266 lbs. He clearly had good genetics on his side, but even so with dedicated training and 99% of the people with significantly lower bodyweight than his should be able to attain the same skills. This is why I never say never for one arm chins and crosses even for those trainees who are 200 lbs. It may take a while, but it is certainly possible.
In the end, my conclusion is this. Train hard. Train consistently. Deload properly. Get your sleep, nutrition, and stress in order. Do not use "genetics" as an excuse to not have fun or to not attain your goals. Most people will never even know if their "genetics" are good or not because they fail to be dedicated to training for more than a couple years. Do not worry about things you cannot control.
One final thing. It must be noted that for the high end advanced and elite strength that any type of workout you plan you should follow it This means that any of the heavy and intense days must be heavy and intense, and any light or low volume day needs to be kept light and low volume. Since you need to put high end stress on the body to keep adaptations coming, there is less and less margin for error in programming. Likewise, recovery factors must be dialed in: sleep, nutrition, and stress. This is not to say you should ignore these even when at novice and intermediate level either — you should have them dialed in at all times for maximal progress
This is why there is the saying "train hard, rest harder." You must never forget that training require rest for the adaptations to show themselves. Recovery reveals adaptations. Without both a good training regimen and a good recovery schedule at some point you will fail to progress.
One of the better lessons is taken from the Bulgarian system of Olympic Weightlifting. They would train multiple times a day at high intensity. However, the training was interspersed with pure recovery factors ~ eating, mobility work, napping, sleeping
This can be distilled into the saying Train. Eat. Sleep Repeat. The core concepts which underlic training are universal, and if you try to sidestep them at the highest levels you will fail to improve.
Structuring a routine needs not always encompass everything. Let us say for example that I have many different goals in regards to upper body pushing. I want to obtain a bodyweight press, 1.5 bodyweight bench press, weighted dip with an extra 25% bodyweight, planche, freestanding handstand pushup, etc.
Now, there are only so many goals that you can work at one time without spreading yourself too thin that you will not make good progress. As I have talked about before, I like the system of 2 pushing, 2 pulling, and 2 legs goals and then subsequently structuring a routine towards those goals by selecting
exercises for each of those goals. I have also stated that if you are better conditioned maybe you will do 7- 9 exercises working towards those goals rather than the traditional 6. The routine would be performed at a frequency of about 3x per week with less or additional frequency depending upon the user's conditioning base, other athletic and sporting activities, etc.
Take this example from about § years ago. I worked handstand pushups and planche work for 6 months in row with proper rest breaks every 6-8 weeks. Of course I had other types of pressing goals, but those two exercises were my main focus for strength at the time. When I went to test other exercises 1 found that the second time I tried weighted dips I was able to work myself up to 90 lbs / 40kg for 5 repetitions. And later when I tried pressing for the first time after more strength work I was able to do a bodyweight press.
As you can sce, many of the various forms of pressing type exercises overlap even fairly significantly. Therefore, you absolutely do not have to try to fitin or work everything at once. Working everything at once willlikely even be more detrimental to your training
What you really want to do is make everything simple on yourself. Pick out a small subset of goals that you want to work on at once. Work those goals religiously for a whole cycle. You should see very good consistent progress towards those goals.
If at the end of the cycle you want to switch up your goals and thus switch up your exercises you can feel free to do that. If you want to strength test other movements that also works too. You do not necessarily have to strength test only the movements that you were working on during the cycle.
Adjustments can be made during the deload week if you want to change your focus. That is the time 1o focus on different aspects of your development if you want to consider changing them.
In terms of programming, this is a generalized model that can be followed:
EliteFTS has a good article published a couple years back which simply outlines various types of periodization. If you are curious about a more detailed overview, pros, cons, and types of methods or progressions, you can read that article here:
In conclusion, do make things too complicated. The reason I like selecting a few goals and building a routine around a few goals is that it is simple and easy to do. Likewise, the reason why I recommend that the level of complexity in programming only be advanced when absolutely necessary is because you do not need these complexities to make progress.
Once people start thinking about "well, maybe I should do this..." or "maybe it would work better if I changed this around..." for more than 3-4 times, they have probably already thought about it too much. It is true that programming does take a lot of practice to do well; however, overthinking programming will also have you spend a lot of time on trying to make your routine "perfect" that will likely not actually help all that much overall.
Additionally, the other reason why you want to keep it simple is that introducing too many factors at once hurts your ability to analyze your routines and modify them for the next cycle. For example, if we only change a few variables we can more accurately pinpoint if we made good improvements that those changes were major contributors to those improvements. However, if we change multiple variables up at once, how are we going to know what actually helped improve our abilities?
Even more complicated is the scenario that if we made absolutely no progress, what were the variables that were impeding our progress and what were the variables that were helping our progress?
Therefore, if anything, you want to keep anything you do as simple as possible. Make very few changes in total programming from cycle to cycle so you can see what affects your progress much more easily. This allows you to become a better programmer much faster, and it will also help you overall in progressing in your abilities faster as well.
Now that we have the whole core of our workouts planned out we can start to evaluate what factors need to be evaluated during the mesocycle and then after the mesocycle.
I would bookmark this page or make a note of it on your papers or workout log. You should come back to this section to help you reevaluate your goals, exercises, and progress after every week if you are a novice or intermediate, and every few weeks or month if you are advanced.
This material is dense for most people reading it the first time, so I would recommend rereading chapters 8 and 9 specifically if you have the time to. Knowing these concepts and then learning to apply them will make your workouts much better, and your progress will be significantly affected for the better.
In this chapter we took a look specifically at the different levels of strength programming during and after mesocycles are finished.
We noted how the weekly scheduling of workouts via frequency, overall volume via amounts of exercises, intensity, repetitions, and sets all affect how we progress at these various levels.
In general, we noted that novices tend to require less advanced programming and tend to progress the fastest while moving forwards to intermediate and advanced will require more progressive loading or complexity in programming to progress effectively.
We talked about the different factors related to exercise choice and when to terminate cycles.
We discussed deloading, maximal strength testing, workout restructuring, elite strength and how to apply these various concepts to the rest week and then integrating them to move on into another mesocycle of workouts. Deloading is very important for allowing supercompensations to occur, and to allow a rest break for additional maximal strength testing. Maximal strength testing is used for testing various progressions that we want to advance with in the next cycle. Workout restructuring can be used if you want to focus on different goals or implement different exercises to work towards the same goals. Finally, elite strength is something that takes a lot of time to attain given different inherent and environmental factors.
Finally, in the additional considerations section we discussed various forms of programming and restructuring according to level of ability and modification of routines with consideration of goals. We concluded that programming must conform to the level. However, complexity of the programming needs to be specifically kept simple to become a better programmer and to make optimal improvements.
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