Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Workout – Week 3, Day 4

ANCILLARY WORK: Abs, grip, calves, lateral chain

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Hanging knee raises: 3 x 10
Straight bridges: 3 x 10

Perform the next three “primer” exercises in a circuit, then repeat:
Ankle rolling: (sit down and work both legs simultaneously): 3 x 15 reps each way
Eagle claws: 3 x 15 reps

Fingertip wall pushups: 3 x 15 reps

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
One-leg calf raise: 3 x max reps
Twin towel hangs: 3 x max holds

Clutch flag: (or clutch flag progression) 5 attempts

Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 3, Day 4 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

Workout – Week 3, Day 3

UPPER BODY 2: Vertical pulling and pushing

Arm circles: 45 reps each way

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Overhand pullups: As many strict reps as possible – 3 sets
Handstand hold: (against wall) 3 x 30 seconds

Take a 3-4 minute break to recover, then move to:
Kipping pullups: (underhand grip): 1 x max reps (aiming for double figures)

Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 3, Day 3 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

Workout – Week 3, Day 2

LOWER BODY: Strength, explosiveness, conditioning

Running on the spot: 1 minute
One-leg squat: (or one-leg squat progression) 4 x 10
Spinal twists: 3 x 30 seconds per side
Tuck jumps: 5 x 5
Burpees: 1 x 35
Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 3, Day 2 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

Workout – Week 3, Day 1

UPPER BODY 1: Horizontal pushing and pulling

Arm circles: 40 reps each way

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Pushups: 3 x max
Horizontal pullups: 3 x max

Shake the arms loose for a couple of minutes, and move to:
Dips: (feet raised or parallel bars) 3 x max perfect reps

Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 3, Day 1 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

EDITOR’S NOTE: While we normally interview our featured coaches, that was not possible with Paul Wade. In fact, Paul Wade does not do interviews and does not allow photographs of himself. Why? Because the “convict” in Convict Conditioning is no joke.

The following in an excerpt from Coach Wade’s book Convict Conditioning:

Old School vs New School Calisthenics

When the barbells and machines began to really take over in the second half of the twentieth century, all of the hard-earned, ancient knowledge regarding bodyweight training became considered redundant.

Immaterial to the modern age. Dazzled by the new gadgets and the methods associated with them, fewer and fewer people continued using these ancient old school methods and they began to die out.

Today, bodyweight strength training has been almost totally replaced by weight-training with machines, barbells, and dumbbells. Bodyweight training is seen as the feeble sibling of these newer approaches, and has been relegated to the sidelines. The old school skills and systems dwindled through disuse and became lost. All that survived was the basic minimum.

Today, when people – even so called strength “experts” – talk about bodyweight training, they only really know the beginners’ movements – pushups, deep knee-bends, etc.

To this they add a few useless and pathetic modern exercises, like ab crunches. These exercises are given to school children, weaklings, or are done as warm ups or to develop light endurance.

Compared to the traditional, strength-based attitude, this approach could be called new school calisthenics. Old school calisthenics – which involved bodyweight systems designed to progressively develop inhuman power and strength – have almost died out.

Almost.

The Role of Prisons in Preserving the Older Systems

There was one place that the old school calisthenics never died out; a place where the older systems were perfectly preserved, like an ancient insect trapped in amber – in prisons.

The reason for this is obvious. The massive revolution in training technology, which killed off old school calisthenics on the outside, never occurred in prisons.

Either that, or it occurred very late. The barbell and dumbbell-based gyms that became the rage in the fifties and sixties? Not in prisons. Very primitive weight pits didn’t start appearing until the late seventies.

The “indispensable” strength training machines upon which most gyms became built in the seventies and eighties are still largely absent from prison gyms.

In effect, this means that – while the rest of the strength training world was undergoing a huge “modernization” during the twentieth century – prisons were like a bubble.

The traditions that were being killed off in gymnasiums up and down the country stayed alive in prisons, because they weren’t choked to death by technology and the money associated with novelty gimmicks.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the guys who got incarcerated and knew how to do true bodyweight training based on strength – the gymnasts, acrobats, circus performers and strongmen – passed their knowledge on to other inmates.

This knowledge – old school calisthenics – was gold in prisons, where no exercise equipment at all was to be found, with the exception of the bars overhead and the floor below. And being physically strong as well as agile was essential – those days were tough.

Life in prisons today is harsh, but going back a century or so, things were even harder. Beatings and cruel treatment were a part of the expected daily grind, and inmates killed and seriously wounded each other as a matter of routine.

The handful of guys who trained for strength in their cells did so to literally stay alive.

They trained furiously and with enormous seriousness – being powerful was a life or death matter! In this sense, those inmates from our past were no different from the Spartans led by Leonidas sixty-eight centuries ago. They all depended on their power to survive, and in order to develop that power they trained in traditional calisthenics.

The Origin of Convict Conditioning

To this day, prisoners all over the world still train using old school calisthenics. During my decades inside the nation’s prisons, I’ve been obsessed with strength and fitness. Over time, this changed into an obsession with bodyweight training – calisthenics.

Only after several years inside did I begin to understand the true nature and value of productive bodyweight exercise, and it took years after that until I was able to piece together the “secret history” of old school calisthenics, and the role that prisons have played in preserving these arts.

In my time, I’ve read everything I can about training and exercise, and ways of developing the body with little or no equipment. I’ve had the privilege of seeing how hundreds of unbelievably strong and athletic prison-trained men work out, using only their bodyweight.

Many of these guys have had phenomenal ability and practically Olympian strength and fitness; but you’ll never see them or get to read about their training in magazines due to their personal histories and lowly place on society’s ladder.

I’ve seen what these men can do, and spoken to them in depth about their methods. I’ve been honored to befriend and spend long periods with the previous generation of convicts, guys who were old enough to remember the strongmen who were actually trained by the strongmen of the second Golden Age of physical culture; guys who met the old strongmen, heard their theories and knew how they exercised.

Following their lead, I’ve trained myself day and night with merciless techniques until my body ached and my hands bled; I’ve coached hundreds of other athletes, further honing my knowledge of bodyweight exercise.

I’ve made it my job to find out more about old school calisthenics than any other man alive.

Over the years, I’ve collected dozens of notebooks and taken the finest ideas and techniques from all the systems I’ve learned on the inside, to develop the ultimate form of calisthenics… a method that can be used progressively to develop titanic power, agility and fitness; a method that requires no special equipment, minimal time and minimal complexity in application.

This system represents the best of the best of what I’ve learned. It is the system which is known today as Convict Conditioning, and it’s the subject of this book.

But despite the name and the origins, Convict Conditioning isn’t just for prisoners—it has a whole host of benefits to offer anybody who wants to become extremely powerful and fit while staying at the peak of health.

Read other excerpts from Paul’s books:

• How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time
• The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

To follow Coach Wade’s three weeks of workouts here on Breaking Muscle follow this link: Strength & Conditioning Workouts from Paul Wade

Convict Conditioning and Convict Conditioning 2 are available through Dragon Door.

The post Convict Conditioning: Old School vs New School Calisthenics (Book Excerpt) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout: Week 2, Day 4

ANCILLARY WORK: Abs, grip, calves, lateral chain

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Hanging knee raises: 3 x 8
Straight bridges: 3 x 8

Perform the next three primer exercises in a circuit, then repeat:
Ankle rolling: (sit down and work both legs simultaneously): 3 x 10 reps each way
Eagle claws: 3 x 10 reps
Fingertip wall pushups: 3 x 10 reps

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
One-leg calf raise: 3 x15 reps
Twin towel hangs: 3 x 15 second holds
Clutch flag: (or clutch flag progression) 4 attempts
Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 2, Day 4 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout – Week 2, Day 3

UPPER BODY 2: Vertical pulling and pushing

Arm circles: 35 reps each way

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Overhand pullups: As many strict reps as possible – 3 sets
Handstand hold: (against wall) 3 x 20 seconds

Take a 3-4 minute break to recover, then move to:
Kipping pullups: (underhand grip): 1 x 6 reps
Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 2, Day 3 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout: Week 2, Day 2

LOWER BODY: Strength, explosiveness, conditioning

Running on the spot: 1 minute
One-leg squat: (or one-leg squat progression) 4 x 8
Spinal twists: 3 x 20 seconds per side
Tuck jumps: 4 x 5
Burpees: 1 x 25
Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 2, Day 2 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In this week’s book excerpt Paul talks about the merits of bodyweight training and how it has disappeared from mainstream fitness:

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Walk into virtually any gym in the world and you will find any number of pumped up steroid users who think that they are “strong” men because they have eighteen-inch arms, can bench press a heavy bar, or look big in a tank top or T-shirt.

But how many of them are truly powerful?

• How many of them have genuine athletic strength they can use?
• How many of them could drop and give you twenty perfect one-arm pushups?
• How many of them have spines that are strong enough, flexible enough and healthy enough that they can bend over backwards and touch the floor?
• How many have the pure knee and hip power to squat right down to the ground and stand up again – on one leg?
• How many of them could grab hold of an overhead bar and execute a flawless one-arm pullup?

The answer is:

Almost none.

You will find almost no bodybuilder in any gym today who can perform these simple bodyweight feats. And yet the kind of bloated poser you see strutting the average gym floor is viewed by the media and the modern public as the epitome of strength and fitness.

The bodybuilder-type has become the accepted status quo of ultimate conditioning. This seems like total insanity to me. What does it matter how much weight you claim to be able to lift in a gym or on a special machine? How can somebody be considered to be “strong” if he can’t even move his own body around as nature intended?

Becoming Strong

The average gym junkie today is all about appearance, not ability. Flash, not function. These men may have big, artificially pumped up limbs, but all that the size is in the muscle tissue; their tendons and joints are weak. Ask most musclemen to do a deep one-leg squat – ass-to-floor-style – and his knee ligaments would probably snap in two. What strength most bodybuilders do have, they cannot use in a coordinated way; if you asked them to walk on their hands they’d fall flat on their faces.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when see the current generation of men duped into handing over a fortune in overpriced gym memberships and for weights and other exercise gadgets, all in the hope of becoming strong and powerful. I want to laugh because I admire the con trick for what it is – a perfect grift. The fitness industry has duped the whole world into thinking it can’t get by without all this equipment; equipment it then sells to the mark, or rents out at exorbitant prices (in the case of gym membership). I want to cry because it’s a tragedy; the average modern trainee – who is not on steroids – makes little gain in size from year to year, and even less progress in true athletic ability.

To become hugely powerful, you don’t need weights, cables, fancy machines, or any other crap that the industry or the informercials are brainwashing you into thinking you can’t do without. You can gain Herculean strength – genuine brawn and vitality – with no special equipment at all. But to unlock this power – the power of your own body – you need to know how. You need the right method, the art.

Such a method does in fact exist. It’s based on traditional, ancient forms of training, techniques which are as old as training itself. This method has evolved by trial-and-error over the centuries, and has proved its superior ability to transform flimsy men into steel-forged warriors time and time again. This method is progressive calisthenics – the art of using the human body to maximize its own development. Calisthenics today is seen as a method of aerobics, circuit training or muscle endurance. It isn’t taken seriously. But in the past – before the second half of twentieth century – all of the world’s strongest athletes earned the bulk of their power through performing calisthenics progressively – to become stronger and stronger, day by day, week by week, year after year.

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Unfortunately you will not be able to learn this art in any gym in the world. It has become lost to the vast majority of athletes during the modern era – quite recently in fact. It has been mercilessly pushed out of the light of day by a childish fascination with the plethora of new training technologies that have sprung up over the last century or so; everything from plated barbells and dumbbells to cable machines and hundreds of other novelties. The knowledge of how to perform calisthenics properly has been choked, nearly strangled to death by the propaganda of fitness manufacturers who want to sell you your right to train your own body and mind.

Because of this assault, the traditional arts of calisthenics have become degraded, relegated to high school fitness methods for children. “Calisthenics” currently involves pushups, pullups and squats; all fine exercises, but done for high repetitions which will build stamina though develop little in the way of strength. A real master of progressive calisthenics – “old school” calisthenics – also knows how to build maximum raw strength. Much more than the average trainee could possibly hope to develop with a barbell or a resistance machine. I’ve seen men trained in old school calisthenics who were powerful enough to break steel handcuffs, tear apart a chain-link fence, and punch a wall hard enough to take big chunks out of it, splitting the bricks in the process.

How would you like that kind of awesome bodily strength?

I can teach you how to develop it in the pages of this book, but you won’t get it from going to a gym or doing high-rep pushups. That kind of raw, animal ability to unleash your body’s own powers only comes from knowing how to do old school calisthenics.

Read other excerpts from Paul’s books:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

To follow Coach Wade’s three weeks of workouts here on Breaking Muscle follow this link:

Strength & Conditioning Workouts from Paul Wade

Convict Conditioning and Convict Conditioning 2 are available through Dragon Door.

The 16-Week Ultimate Bodyweight Challenge is available through Breaking Muscle Training.

The post Convict Conditioning: The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training (Book Excerpt) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout – Week 2, Day 1

UPPER BODY 1: Horizontal pushing and pulling

Arm circles: 30 reps each way

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:
Pushups: 3 x 10
Horizontal pullups: 3 x 10

Shake the arms loose for a couple of minutes, and move to:
Dips: (feet raised or parallel bars) 2 x max perfect reps
Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 2, Day 1 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout – Week 1, Day 4

ANCILLARY WORK: Abs, grip, calves, lateral chain

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:

Hanging knee raises: 3 x 6

Straight bridges: 3 x 6

Perform the next three “primer” exercises in a circuit, then repeat:

Ankle rolling: (sit down and work both legs simultaneously): 2 x 10 reps each way

Eagle claws: 2 x 10 reps

Fingertip wall pushups: 2 x 10 reps

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:

One-leg calf raise: 2 x 10 reps

Twin towel hangs: 2 x 10 second holds

Clutch flag: (or clutch flag progression) 3 attempts

Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 1, Day 4 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Warm up before training, and feel free to perform extra warm ups if you need to. If you are working out with your bodyweight, use bodyweight techniques to warm up – just find something easier than you are using for your work sets. I’m not a huge fan of rushing from set to set. To gain strength, rest as long as you need to between sets, even if you are performing alternating exercises (i.e., supersets). This is as true for bodyweight strength as it is for lifting heavy weights.

Bodyweight training gives awesome results, but you have to push hard and use strict form – at least, most of the time. That doesn’t mean you should push to failure, however, especially if you are hanging above the ground! So when I tell you to perform max reps, push as hard as you can, while keeping a rep or two in the bank for safety’s sake.

You don’t need to cool down after these workouts – the idea of a cool down is a myth. When I trained in prison, I’d finish sessions by sitting on my bunk and deep breathing for 2-3 minutes, so that’s what I advise here. This will help you relax after your efforts, as well as giving your lungs and ribcage some training.

To learn more about Paul, read an excerpt from Convict Conditioning:

How I Learned My Craft: Doing Time

The Forgotten Art of Bodyweight Training

Old School vs. New School Calisthenics

Workout: Week 1, Day 3

UPPER BODY 2: Vertical pulling and pushing

Arm circles: 25 reps each way

Perform the next two exercises in superset fashion:

Overhand pullups: As many strict reps as possible – 3 sets

Handstand hold: (against wall) 3 x 10 seconds

Take a 3-4 minute break to recover, then move to:

Kipping pullups: (underhand grip): 1 x 4 reps

Deep breathing: 2-3 minutes

The post Strength & Conditioning – Paul Wade: Week 1, Day 3 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.