initially I was resisting the urge to make any content dictated by coronavirus it's a stressful time and in many ways I think it can help to simply take our minds off everything with a bit of escapism but a lot of people started requesting advice on how to train from home and of course ideal what to help out if I can this is something I know a bit about too and actually feel quite strongly about the issue I see for a lot of people trading with body weight is that they don't know how to increase the
intensity sufficiently to so many people body weight training means three sets of ten push-ups but it could be a lot more than that in fact you can use it to tap into all kinds of crazy strength gains that aren't accessible in other ways and this will lead to immediate growth and performance I mean you come back stronger than ever in this video then I'm gonna share these strategies so that you can use them to create a genuine challenge and trigger an adaptive response with your body weight training I'll also be sharing a free pdf that
includes a complete bodyweight routine which will be available to download from the website that'll be linked in the description down below no need to give an email address or anything like that just click and download and as a side note seeing there's a lot of you are stuck at home and bored looking for something to read my ebook super functional training will also be on heavy discount for the next few weeks you'll find that in the description below team so the challenge we have is training in such a way as to mimic the intensity you
would normally accomplish with a much heavier weight the first tool that I want to share is using high volume training that means training using extremely high reps of movements perhaps you're doing three sets of 100 push-up or maybe you're doing five sets of 20 pull-ups of course because you're only using very light weight your upper body in many cases this won't cause a lot of muscle damage require the recruitment of the larger twitch muscle fibers or even create high levels of mechanical tension in other words you won't trigger quite the signals necessary for large growth
or strength gains but the key here is that we're not only going to be training for a high table volume we're also going to be aiming for a high level of continuous time and attention that means we'll be aiming to perform extremely high rep ranges without ever letting the muscles completely rest this is the method that has long been used by bodybuilders but is somewhat contested and debated among researchers turns out has a lot of merit though here's what extremely high rep bodyweight training does for you firstly aiming for those extremely high rep ranges will
allow you to improve your work capacity that's something you might have been neglecting in the gym and it means that in future your strength won't be limited by your endurance secondly continuous time and attention creates a natural form of occlusion that means that blood travels to the muscle and then stays there encouraging the build-up of more metabolites the signal more growth by a metabolic stress part of the reason we experience muscle fatigue in the first place is that the build-up of metabolites interferes with the release of calcium necessary for contraction thus if you go to
failure you're maximizing that metabolic builder this then stimulates growth this is why bodybuilders use a similar strategy to create non contractile hypertrophy and it works I've seen countless people have helped rate and gain massive growth in their chest simply by doing high rep push-ups at the same time this kind of training can actually create new capillaries that means you'll be creating more tiny blood vessels directing blood to the muscle this can have huge benefits as it means the muscles will be better served by hormones and nutrients in future allowing for improved recovery and growth an
article by Christian Thibodeau on tea nation recently discussed the merits of performing a hundred rep leg presses for this very purpose he recommended doing this daily he explained how this helped many figure athletes with stubborn legs just seem sudden an impressive growth in the same article he also explained how golden era bodybuilders like Tom Platts used a very similar methods not only did this building same size in flats as case but also crazy strength endurance he was eventually able to perform multiple sets of 100 reps on the squats with 225 pounds finally there's another reason
that super high rep body weight training to failure is beneficial it might build strength by increasing the motor unit recruitment when we attempt to contract a muscle against resistance or otherwise we do say by sending a nerve impulse from our brain across the neuromuscular Junction and into the muscle the strength of the signal partly determined by the firing rate will then determine how many of the motor units are called into action motor units of bundles of muscle fiber within the muscle the more that work together the stronger the contraction but the bigger and the stronger
the motor units the stronger the signal that is required to push them past the excitation thresholds and call them into action so if you only use light effort then you will only use a small percentage of the slower twitch muscle fibers to perform that movement but as the challenge ramps up you try harder and the bigger more explosive motor units get involved this is called Henneman size principle training 80% of your one rep max and above therefore builds more strength by actually challenging the most powerful components of the muscle and by increasing your ability to
access your muscles full strength the amount of weight moved during the press up is unlikely to challenge you enough to require those large twitch muscle fibers but guess what once you reach the end of a super long set of push-ups you'll find that the smaller motor units that you've been using primarily consisting of slow twitch muscle fiber begin to fatigue and drop out this is why you start shaking now you can give up or you can keep pushing through when you do that your nervous system has no choice but to recruit the larger more explosive
motor units to continue the set after all that's all that's left this can now create many of the conditions necessary for strength games along with developing a stronger mind muscle connection the key is to go to the point of isometric failure that means that you can no longer complete a full set or even hold yourself at the toughest point in the movement without slowly dropping ideally you'll also eventually isolate as few muscles as possible meaning that you're targeting specific areas and that it's the fatigue in those areas that's preventing you from completing a movement rather
than just losing the collective strength necessary across your body at this point you're now trying to lift a weight you can no longer lift the humble push-up has become an overcoming isometric movement a tool that was used by the likes of bruce lee and old-time strong them to build crazy strength how do you get to that point will you achieve this by doing really high rep to an extent we can go further with the mechanical drop set go to failure on your push-ups but then rather than stopping continue performing more push-ups now on your knees
the core is now being challenged by less your legs aren't involved anymore but your pecs shoulders and triceps are still being challenged with a slightly lighter weight allowing you to continue pushing past failure you can then end with an isometric hold or even burns these are reps with bare minimum rep ranges you're still capable of achieving so could you build muscle strength and size using a program simply consisting of push-ups pull-ups sit-ups and air squats to failure well yeah but that would not be optimal still there are still some limitations to training purely this way
the first is that performing hundreds of air squats every day for weeks on end could eventually get tough on the knees it shouldn't in theory your knees should be up to the challenge but there are more factors that make this likely that's why it's a good idea to vary the precise movements between workouts in order to keep challenging the body in new ways and provide the connective tissue with some chance to recover take it slow to begin with as you should do with any new training program and listen to your body take a break from
specific movements if you notice any discomfort that is not simply delayed onset muscle soreness this is an intense way of training in general so it's important that you leave enough time to recover between workouts as well at the same time introducing a greater variety of movements will help me to improve aspects of your strength that are often overlooked calisthenics has many complex and challenging movements that challenge the body in three dimensions and that works smaller supporting muscle groups that go overlooked this is an ideal time to work in the frontal plane and the transverse plane
for instance likewise you can train for skills like the planche or the handstand that work your straight arm strength and your core the problem is that relying on this type of training alone won't allow you to benefit from the muscle fatigue and fiber recruitment I discussed earlier this is why many pure calisthenics skills athletes don't have huge muscular bodies it strained your inter muscular coordination and recruitment rather than intramuscular what we can do here is to either combine these strategies with the mechanical drop set which were also significantly lower the amount of time taken to
each failure or use them at the start of a workout structuring it like a reverse pyramid for example you might start a push workout by performing one-armed push-ups and pseudo planche push-ups then move on to the super high rep push-ups alternatively if you want to use a mechanical drop set you might perform as many dips as you can only to then drop to the ground to continue with regular push-ups immediately taking no break in between and treating this as one long set you'll reach that point of isometric failure much quicker there's one thing that's still
missing from this program though explosive starting strength using plyometrics our program will also give us the ability to engage the fast twitch muscle fiber we're going to failure might not clapping push-ups jump squats and explosive pull-ups will all help to add an explosive component to this training and should go at the very start of the workouts or straight after whatever the more complex calisthenics skills are another option is to use something I've developed myself and have recently been experimenting with bodyweight isometrics here you put yourself in the position where you can't perform any reps lying
on the ground with your arms wide apart for instance and then attempting to push yourself up anyways this example looks and feels like you're trying to fly the earth so I call it the crusher thanks to commenter roland rush for suggesting that name as far as the neurological effect is concerned that this is like trying to benchpress 110 percent of your one rep max to form this ballistically and then hold the contraction for six seconds I won't be incorporating this into the program as it's experimental at the moment I stay tuned for more on this
to finish up we're going to use a yielding isometric that means moving extremely slowly through the movement taking a minute to complete a push-up for example this is another highly effective way to improve your mind muscle connection as you exert just the amount of force you need and as you listen to the feedback from the muscles at each point in the movement so also you can help you to develop strength at the weakest point in your range of motion as you won't be able to rely on momentum to carry you through there's a perfect cool-down
method as well as an opportunity to practice some moving meditation if that's your jam combine high rep push-ups and really slow push-ups like this and when you come back to the bench press in a matter of weeks or months you'll find you have not only more explosive strength not only more muscle endurance but also greater stability and control this one will be included in the program and you can also check out my video on yielding isometrics for more on how it works so hope you guys found that useful let me know if you have any
comments or questions and likewise feel free to share your favorite home workouts in the comment section for others to check out if you did enjoy this video and please like it and share it around subscribe the channel all that stuff really helps me out staying indoors sucks but if it means sparing even one at-risk person from the virus then it's more than worth it and as you can see there's no reason we can't keep making amazing gains nevertheless I'm also taking this as the perfect opportunity to work on some other neglected aspects of my self-development
and I'm sure I'll be sharing more of that with you as the week's go by I hope you're all staying safe and healthy and most of all keep punching thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you next time bye for now
