As I said in my blog post, I’m going to be focusing more on proper movement patterning by way of primarily body weight exercises. Yes, I will be doing some deadlifting with a very light weight on the barbell, but aside from that, every exercise I will be doing will be body weight focused.
In a way, this decision is somewhat convenient given the current COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of gyms, so this might help to give you some ideas for your own training if all you are able to do right now is body weight type stuff for the time being.
Of note for the workout below, I took nothing to complete failure, except for maybe the pull-up volume but that’s simply due to my base level of strength on vertical pulling is fairly low, so the total volume I wanted to accumulate was relatively high. Additionally, everything was done as non-competing super sets. For instance, I did a set of body weight squats, and then went immediately into pull-ups. I went back and forth until I accumulated the total volume for one of those exercises (squats), and then started super setting the pull-ups with push-ups, and so on until all exercises were completed.
My goal for this workout was to get all of the calisthenic/strength work completed within 30 minutes. I had no idea how long this would take, but the point was to be able to devote 30 minutes to aerobic conditioning. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but I did restrict myself to 60 minutes for the whole workout. In general, I think this is a good idea, and will give me a good barometer for progression over time.
Here’s the workout:
A1. Body weight squats – 200 total reps
A2. Pull-ups – 100 total reps
A3. Push-ups – 200 total reps
A4. Back raises – 50 total reps
A5. Olympic ring fallouts – 50 total reps
Total time: 40:30
B1. Airdyne – remainder of the hour (18:42 total time)
With the squats, I moved around my stance every set, and tried to hit my lower body from a variety of angles. Generally, my knees felt a ton better after about 60-75 total reps of squats, and I’m hoping that number will improve over time. I did the same with pull-ups moving my grip in and out, and supinating and pronating as I felt like. Push-ups were done on handles (The Perfect Push-up) and back raises were done with very strict tempo. For the Olympic ring fallouts, I set the rings to the height from where I do inverted rows, and started with my feet at the back of the squat rack, and fell out to the front of the rack.
I have a few concepts for progression moving forward from here:
- Faster completion
- Fewer sets per exercise
- Pain free execution of movements
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be able to gauge my progress mostly based on feel, but the number of sets per exercise will speak directly to my conditioning and work capacity.
As far as fatigue management, and periodization across the weeks, I’ll be taking a slightly undulating approach. I’m going to try and have 4 different workouts that I will rotate through every 4 days, with the goal being to workout 7 days per week. The workout above is focused almost entirely on bilateral movements and a very high volume. The next workout will be moderated down in terms of volume, and will use 1 or more unilateral movements. The workout after that will go back up to a higher volume overall, but still utilizing unilateral movements, and then back down for the 4th workout with a return to some bilateral movement. That’s the plan at least, we’ll see how it all goes as I move forward. The majority of the unilateral/bilateral switches will occur with my lower body movement selection, simply because I don’t have the capacity yet to do any upper body unilateral body weight movements. Maybe one day.
Ramble on Fitness 