Bodyweight Training and Beyond - Part Two

 

Hybrid Methods and Programs Utilizing Bodyweight Training AND Weighted Workouts

     For Part 2 of our series, we turn to the hybrid method of training where you combine bodyweight training with weighted workouts.  There are several different ways that this can be done, and the methods that apply to one also apply to the other.  You can combine bodyweight training with weights in the same session or you can keep the two separate, doing weighted workouts on one training day and bodyweight only on the other.   

     A great benefit of the 2nd approach is that you can still use high-frequency training without the need to go to the gym 5 to 6 days per week.  Even if you prefer lower-frequency routines, you can go to the gym just once or twice per week and then do bodyweight training at home another one or two days.  If the reason that you have for not training more, or not sticking to a training routine, is because you don’t have the time to go to the gym, now that excuse goes out the window.

     This is also a good method for the older strength athlete or the lifter who has an injury.  If, due to injury or simply years of wear-and-tear, your lower back is bothering you, preventing you from heavy pulls or weighted squats, you can train your upper body with weights and your lower body with just your bodyweight.  In our first installment, I mentioned my Uncle Kirk’s program of pushup ladders that he utilized for his upper body due to a shoulder injury.  His problematic shoulder kept him from bench pressing heavy, so he replaced the movement with high-volume pushups.  He still, however, did deadlifts, power cleans, squats, and other barbell movements for his lower body and back.

     Here are two programs that take this approach.  The first one is for those of you who may have a back injury or lower back pain that prevents you from squatting and pulling heavy.  It uses weights for the upper body and bodyweight training for the lower.  The 2nd program utilizes the reverse.  With it, you do bodyweight for the upper body and weight session for your lower body.

Program #1:

• Sissy squats: 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps

• Walking lunges: 3-4 sets of 10-20 reps (each leg)

• Bulgarian split squats: 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps (each leg)

• Bench presses: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps (straight sets after warmups)

• Barbell rows: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps

• Military presses: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps

• Barbell curls: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps

Program #2:

• Barbell squats: 4-5 sets of 6-8 reps

• Power cleans: 4-5 sets of 3-5 reps (straight sets again; limit your reps to 5 to preserve form integrity)

• Power snatches: 3-4 sets of 3-5 reps

• Pushups: 100-250 reps (total # of reps will depend on how conditioned you are to this movement; get the reps any way that you want)

• Chins: 30-50 reps (as with the pushups, get these in any manner you want)

     You can add an ab movement if you want to either day.  For the 2nd program, it would also be good to do one or two sets of some sort of loaded carry, such as farmer walks, stone carries, etc.  Do each program 2 to 3 days per week, such as Monday and Thursday or Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  

     I’ve worked with lifters before who, because of a busy work week, could only make it to the gym on the weekends.  If you’re in the same boat, you can do your two weighted sessions on Saturday and Sunday and then do your bodyweight workouts once or twice per week.  Tuesday and Thursdays would be good if you utilize two days of bodyweight training.  Wednesday is good if you only fit in one workout.

     Here’s what a program might look like for the weekend (weighted) warrior:

Saturday:

• Barbell squats: 5 sets of 5 reps, doing 5 progressively heavier sets

• Deadlifts (sumo or conventional): 5 sets of 3 reps, doing 5 progressively heavier sets

Sunday:

• Flat bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps, progressively heavier

• One-arm dumbbell rows: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps (straight sets; each arm)

• Barbell curls: 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps (straight sets)

Tuesday:

• Bodyweight squats: 100-250 reps; # of reps depends on how well conditioned you are.  You can do the reps anyway you want - ladder clusters, straight sets, etc.

• Walking lunges: 100 reps

Thursday:

• Pushups: 100 reps; once again, get these however you want.  You can do 5 sets of 10, 10 sets of 10 reps; if you’re not that strong on these, or haven’t conditioned yourself well, then you can do 5 clusters of 2-3-5-10.  For more info on that particular method, and other ladder clusters, read my recent article Skill Training as Size Building.

     If you want, you can combine the Tuesday and Thursday workout together into one session and do it on Wednesday.

     There’s another reason that you might want to combine bodyweight training and weighted workouts: if you are trying to excel at a bodyweight exercise and push your strength/endurance limits on it.  For instance, if you’re trying to be the best “pushup athlete” around, you may need more than just pushups in order to achieve that.  It’s similar to bench pressing.  Some powerlifters need little, or even nothing, outside of the actual bench press, whereas other lifters need several different additional movements for their triceps, front delts, and lats—the 3 muscle groups outside of the chest that most aid the exercise—in order to be their strongest on the bench press.  Usually, whether or not you need auxiliary movements comes down to whether or not you are “built” for the lift.  I, for instance, and most definitely built for the squat and deadlift.  I needed very little outside of just the squat and the deadlift to get stronger on those movements.  But I’m definitely not built for the bench press.  The only way my bench press got stronger was to include plenty of triceps, front delt, and lat movements at the end of my bench sessions.  So, if you’re trying to increase the amount of pushups you’re trying to do, but you’re not built for the exercise, you will need more than just pushups.  At least, eventually.

     To show you an example of what this might actually look like, here’s a pushup program that includes other movements to aid it.  This is a 3-days-per-week routine.  Train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or any other 3 non-consecutive days a week.

• Pushups: 3-5 “speed” ladder clusters.  The reps you do in each workout will increase as you get stronger.  This is a method I mentioned in Part 1.  Here, you start with 1 rep, adding a rep on each set.  STOP doing the ladder whenever you reach a rep where your speed slows down.  For your first workout, you might start at 1 rep and do ladders up to 15, but you stop at 15 because that is the rep that’s slower than your first.  That’s 1 ladder cluster.  As you start your next ladder cluster, you might slow down at, say, 12, so you stop there.  On the next cluster, it might be 10.  And so on and so forth.  As you get stronger, your “slow down” rep will get higher and higher.  For the first week of the program, do 3 ladder clusters.  Add a ladder cluster at each workout until you reach 5 ladder clusters then stick with that for however long you run the program.

• Triceps pushdowns: 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps.  For these, take each set 1 to 2 reps shy of muscular failure.

• Wide-grip chins or wide-grip lat pulldowns: 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps

• Front plate raises: 3-4 sets of 12-16 reps.  For these, use a weight plate, whether it’s a 25, 35, or 45 pound plate.  You can stop each set several reps shy of failure here.  This is a movement that is simply meant to work your front delts directly.

     While doing this program, since it’s a specialization regimen for your pushups, do 2 days per week of lower body work and limit it to that.  If you do the above on M,W,F then do these 2 sessions on Tuesday and Saturday or Sunday and Thursday.  These workouts can be weighted sessions or bodyweight workouts.

     If you don’t have access to weights, or simply want to see what you can achieve with just your bodyweight, then you can focus on pushups and nothing but pushups—in fact, don’t do anything else for your upper body if you try this program—by training your pushups daily.  On the first day, do the pushups just as described in the above scenario.  On the 2nd day, do 75% of the total reps performed the day before.  On the 3rd day, do 50%.  On the 4th day, return to the day one workout.  Repeat in this manner for a few weeks.  Four weeks will probably be the limit of how long you want to run this.  Take a day off whenever you feel as if you need one but train a minimum of 5 days per week.

     So far, we’ve only discussed combining bodyweight training with barbells and machine work.  (You can also substitute any of the barbell movements above with a dumbbell version.)  Now, let’s turn to one of the more popular forms of hybrid training: combining bodyweight training with kettlebells.

     Kettlebells have exploded in popularity this century, mainly due to the influence of Pavel Tsatsouline.  He was virtually unknown in the American strength community until he replaced Charles Poliquin as a monthly columnist for the (now defunct) bodybuilding magazine Muscle Media (originally known as Muscle Media 2000).  The monthly column was called “A Question of Strength,” and in addition to Pavel’s unique insights into barbell and bodyweight training, he introduced readers to kettlebells.  In the decades since, it has slowly become one of the most popular forms of resistance training.

     If you enjoy bodyweight training and train at home and you haven’t tried kettlebell training yet, then I would encourage you to go out and buy a pair of ‘bells, or even a couple of pairs.  With only a few kettlebells, you can get a complete workout, especially when you combine them with bodyweight training.

     Being a lover of heavy barbell and dumbbell training, I personally didn’t give kettlebells a chance for a number of years.  I thought they were more hype than anything else.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think they’re better than barbells or dumbbells, which is a position that more than a few kettlebell enthusiasts take.  But they do offer some unique benefits that you can’t get with other free weights.

     The first benefit is the one that is my personal favorite.  I love the quick lifts; cleans, snatches, and high pulls.  I think “full” versions of them are great, though they are harder to learn than the others, and they’re not necessary.  But adding in power cleans, power snatches, and high pulls, whether they’re from the ground or from the hang position, can be a real “game changer” for a lot of lifters.  However, when doing barbell versions of them, you need to keep your reps low.  This is one of the issues I have with Crossfit as it’s typically trained.  It often involves really high reps of the barbell quick lifts.  Even lifters who have perfect form should stay away from higher reps, less so lifters who are new to the lifts.  Once you reach 5 reps, you’re at the upper limit of what you should do on a regular basis (lifters with perfect form, and have trained the lifts for a number of years, can get away with as many as 8 to 10).  Higher reps cause a lot of form degradation and can lead to some injuries, particularly to the rotator cuff.  Kettlebells are different.  You can push the reps as high as you want without either the risk of injury or the degradation of form you see with barbells.  This allows you to take advantage of the metabolic benefits of high-rep quick lifts—one of the reasons that Crossfit is fond of them—while staying injury free.  Being able to do the quick lifts with a wide range of repetitions, from low to high, also gives you plenty of training options.

     Another perk I like is that you can do a wide range of complexes, which are basically circuits of movements that can be performed without ever setting the weights down.  My personal favorite is the so-called “armor-building” complex of double kettlebell front squats, double kettlebell cleans, and double kettlebell overhead presses.  The term “armor-building” comes from Dan John, who found that this particular complex has the benefits of putting muscle on a lifter in all of the “right” places, creating a sort of “armor” of muscle for competitive athletes, football players and fighters in particular, allowing the athlete to take hits because of the protective muscle.

     The other benefit is just the wide range of exercises in general.  Even with just one kettlebell, you can do a dozen different movements.  The most popular kettlebell exercise, and the one movement that the implement is probably most known for, is the single kettlebell swing.  In addition to that, you can do the 3 movements I already mentioned, the clean, the squat, and the press, and you can do single or double kettlebell versions of all 3.  You can also do snatches, high pulls, deadlifts, curls, rows, lunges, along with different versions of the squat, such as the overhead squat, and full-body lifts such as the Turkish get-up.  In Part One, I mentioned that, in the Karate dojo I trained in as a young man, we would do Cossack squats.  For high reps, those can be hard even with just bodyweight, but you can do them with kettlebells and make them even more difficult.

     In our first installment, I also mentioned the 10,000 swing challenge, where you do 10K swings over the course of 20 workouts, doing 500 kettlebell swings at each session.  Here’s a version of it but one that combines it with bodyweight movements and other kettlebell lifts (as opposed to barbell lifts in the original).  First, the rules:

• You will perform 500 swings at each workout.  Between the swings, you will perform other exercises.

• Train 4 to 5 days per week.  Dan John recommends a 2-on, 1-off program.  You can also train on a 2-on, 1-off, 2-on, 2-off schedule if you want to train on the same days each week, say Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, for instance.

• For men, use a kettlebell that’s around 50 pounds.  For women, 30 pounds.

• Use an undulating rep scheme to reach your 500 swings at each session.  Set 1: 10 reps.  Set 2: 15 reps.  Set 3: 25 reps.  Set 4: 50 reps.  That’s 100 reps.  You will repeat this undulating cluster 4 more times for 500 reps total.

• Between each set of swings, select a movement that is completely different.  Pushups, dips, chins, and kettlebell presses are all good options, which we’ll use in the sample workout below.

     A week of training might look like this:

Day 1:

10 swings

Pushups: 2 reps

15 swings

Pushups: 3 reps

25 sings

Pushups: 5 reps

50 swings

Pushups: 10 reps

Repeat 4 more times for 500 swings and 100 pushups

Day 2:

10 swings

Chins: 2 reps

15 swings

Chins: 3 reps

25 sings

Chins: 5 reps

50 swings

Chins: 10 reps - If you aren’t strong enough for 10 reps, simply do another set of 5.

Repeat 4 times

Day 3: off

Day 4:

10 swings

Double kettlebell overhead presses: 2 reps

15 swings

Double kettlebell overhead presses: 3 reps

25 sings

Double kettlebell overhead presses: 5 reps

50 swings

Double kettlebell overhead presses: 10 reps

Repeat 4 times

Day 5:

10 swings

Dips: 2 reps

15 swings

Dips: 3 reps

25 sings

Dips: 5 reps

50 swings

Dips: 10 reps

Day 6: off

Day 7: off or repeat the training cycle

     I think for the “perfect” home workout, it’s good to also have some dumbbells.  A couple pairs of kettlebells, a lighter and heavier pair of dumbbells, and your bodyweight can equal plenty of workouts with plenty of variety.

     One advice that I often give to advanced lifters is to have your training days and your lifts for each day “set in stone” but let your sets/reps and how heavy you train for the day be dictated by how you feel.  You might, for instance, train on a full-body program 3 days a week using squats, bench presses, power cleans, overhead presses, and barbell curls.  That part never changes but what you do each day is more intuitive.  You will naturally rotate between heavy, light, and medium days and weeks.  You can use a similar thing with bodyweight training.  Taking this approach, use the following program.  Don’t change the movements but let your total work each day be determined by how you feel once you start the training session:

Day One: bodyweight squats, dips, chins

Day Two: single kettlebell swings, pushups

Day Three: walking lunges, double kettlebell cleans, double kettlebell overhead presses

     Train as many days in a row as you want.  You can train 6 days a week or, if you prefer to do a lot of volume in a single workout, take a day off after each training session.

     Everything we’ve discussed so far—in this essay and our first one—has revolved around doing specific workouts.  But there is another approach—one that can be used to success with bodyweight and/or kettlebell training—and that is the grease-the-groove approach.  There are different methods that can be used for GTG training.  “Easy strength” methods of training are essentially GTG workouts.  But you can also simply train an exercise throughout the entire day, day in and day out.  If you want to get strong on pushups with this method, for example, you do a set until your reps slow down.  Stop there.  In another 30 minutes or hour (or two), you do another set, stopping again when your reps begin to slow down.  Keep this up for the entire day or until you hit a pre-selected number of reps.  If you’re new to training, I would limit your daily pushup count to 100.  As you get stronger, you can increase the number of pushups you do daily.  It might be good to just increase the number each week.  For the first week, do 100 reps per day.  In the 2nd week, do 150 pushups.  For the 3rd week, do 200.  Increase by 50 each week until you reach 500 pushups daily.

     You can apply GTG to chins, bodyweight squats, lunges, Hindu squats, Cossack squats, situps, and essentially any kettlebell movement.  Pavel said he used this method on chins.  Everytime that he passed the chinning bar in his house, he simply did a set.  Bill Starr wrote about this method for getting in good shape.  In one of his articles—I can’t remember the specific article; I tried to find it in my attic-filled library of magazines containing hundreds of Starr’s articles, but to no avail—he wrote about a lifter he knew who did pushups every day using the GTG method as I described above.  He said that the man built an Adonis-like physique from nothing but pushups.

     Before we close this article out, I want to discuss one more subject that applies to both bodyweight training and kettlebells.  That subject is tension.  I advise using two different methods, what I call “fast and loose” and “hard and tense.”  We’ll use pushups as our example, but it can apply to all the other lifts, with the exception of swings, as it’s hard to maintain constant tension on them.  With pushups, I like to alternate between these two styles of training.  In the first example, you stay relaxed, or at least as relaxed as possible.  You do your pushups in a fast manner, attempting throughout the set to stay as relaxed as you can while still maintaining a straight “plank”—no sagging of your hips or midsection.  In the 2nd example, you do your pushups while staying tight throughout the set, constantly tensing your muscles so that they’re “hard” throughout the entire set.  The 1st style makes your set easier.  The 2nd style makes it significantly harder.  To develop power, both methods are indispensable.  This is the way I used to teach my students in martial arts.  Whether it’s katas or just the basic kicks and punches, I wanted them to alternate back and forth between the styles.  Fast and loose builds a kind of “relaxing power” that is necessary to stay free of tension in a fight (or in any dangerous situation) along with plenty of endurance.  Hard and tense builds power by connecting the mind to the muscles, allowing the martial practitioner to feel the muscles used in any technique.  Whether it’s martial training, bodyweight movements, or kettlebell exercises, you need both for muscular endurance, strength gains, and muscle growth.  Alternate between both styles, whether it's within a single session or form workout-to-workout.

     In a future installment, I will discuss some bodyweight workouts and techniques specifically from the martial arts.  I have several other articles going, and I want to write those before I write the third part of this series, so it may be a couple of weeks (a week at the earliest) until I post Part 3.  In the meantime, use some of the advice in this essay and our first one to discover for yourself the results that can be gained from bodyweight training and its hybrid counterparts.  You don’t need a gym membership and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get some good workouts.  All you need is dedication and consistency.