Very fit 60 year old, does 700 push ups plus ten sets of pull ups and dips 5 day s a week. From the lower east side of Manhattan. Calisthenics has kept him looki ng young. ------------I was intrigued reading this the other week and decided to do something similar. Let me just say that for the last 30 years i have trained HIT style,each bodypar t once a week.But recently i have trained my arms twice a week and they have sta rted to look better.I decided to do a workout of one set of one exercise per boy part,but for 50 reps,and to do this everyday.I started last monday and the worko ut was to be just bench press,pulldowns,preach press,pulldowns,preacher er curls,lying rope exts,squats an d sit ups.My bench press has been stuck at 3 plates for a single now for the las t 2 years,and i`ve tried every powerlifting routine and equipment i can think of ,so i put it down to my age (nearly 48) as to why i couldn`t budge the reps up o n the 3 plates. The first workout i tried to figure out the poundage to use on bench by thinking how many reps i get with 2 plates a side,and decided to just try a 10kg plate a side,i thought this would be easy.At 35 reps my pecs were on fire and it was a real struggle to get to 50,my breathing was hard.I used 35kg on pulldowns and my forearms were pumped like crazy and the breathing was that hard i thought i wou ld puke.The preachers and extensions followed and by now i was so out of breath i chickened out of doing squats.The next day i added a 1 and a quarter kg plate on the bench and got 50 reps,the same on pulldowns and this time the breathing w as a bit better so i did the squats just using boyweight for 50 reps.I felt like passing out after this set. I`ve spent the last 30 years doing HIT type workouts,built good strength and dec ent size,but the last couple of years as i hit my mid 40s the joints started to hurt and i was losing size and strength.Then one day i decided to just play abou t in the gym and do a set of 50 reps on the bench,couldn`t believe the pump i go t,so did it on each bodypart.The next day i wasn`t sore so i repeated the workou t and got 3-4 more reps extra on every exercise so i noted down the reps in a bo ok and just went from there.After a couple of weeks this thread was started so i relayed what i was experiencing. -------------------------------------I have been bodybuilding for 25 years. I competed from my teens until my last co mpetition in the late 90's. Many, many workouts full of hardcore weight lifting. Over the past 5 years, my workouts slowly changed from the basic bodybuilding s tyle workouts to more full body olympic weightlifting lifts along with some kett lebells and basic compound exercises. Stopped any direct arm exercises 5 years a go too. No direct side delt training and no direct calf training either. This ro utine kept all of the same muscle on me that my conventional bodybuilding routin e did. No loss in size on my arms from no direct arm training. No loss of side d elts from no lateral movements either. And no loss of size on my calves. The Oly mpic cleans and snatches I believe really hit the calves and side delts suprisin gly well. ANYWAY...... Over the past year, I have become really fascinated by stories of s ome great physique men who had built up their bodies with calisthenics only trai ning. One man in particular that I have been intrigued by was the great black ac tor from the 60's and 70's by the name of Woody Strode. The man had an incredibl e physique and was heavily muscled and admitted that he trained on a routine tha t consisted of daily high volume pushups, sit ups and knee bends. He wrote in hi s autobiography that he did 1000 reps of each a day until he was 40 years old an d then scaled back to 500 reps a day after the age of 40.
So 3 months ago, I decided that I would give daily high repetition basic bodywei ght training a go and drop any form of weight lifting and see what happened to m y muscles. For the past 3 months I have religiously done the following workout 7 days a wee k upon rising on an empty stomach. Pushups for 500 reps total. Overhand Grip Pul lups for 100 reps total. Bodyweight only Jump Squats 250 reps total. Crunches 10 0 reps total. I do all of this every morning. I have not missed one workout in 3 months. The pushups are now done as 5 sets of 100 reps. The pullups as 10 sets of 10 reps. The Jump Squats as 5 sets of 50 reps and the crunches as 1 set of 10 0 reps. I do not circuit through them. They are just straight sets. The pushups were brutal at first and I had to do them initially as 10 sets of 50 reps. The Jump Squats were brutal as well.Had to do them as 10 sets of 25. Duri ng the first month, my body was constantly sore and my wrists really felt the bu rden as well as my elbows. But not throughout the day. Only during the first few daily sets. I continued on and after a few weeks any pain went away. What has happened from this routine is absolutely astounding to me! My muscle ma ss in all bodyparts has went up immensly. My side delts blew up. My forearms gre w a lot. My lats really, really grew! And I got way leaner than I had been and I have not changed my diet at all. My thighs and calves look just as good as when I was weight training. My bodyweight is up 5 lbs but I am way leaner now. Overtraining? Working the same bodyparts 7 times a week? Well all I can say is that I now really question all of what I had learned and read over my 25 years o f bodybuilding regarding overtraing and rest between bodyparts and isolation exe rcises and so much more. The high repetition/high volume pushups are unbelievable and I will never stop d oing them. After 1 set of 100 reps even my lats are on fire from what I believe to be a sort of reverse negative tension from the pushup portion. Do I miss the weight training? I must say, "NO". And I have been a lover of the iron game for 25 years. The results from this routine are beyond what I ever th ought. I must admit that when i started this routine I was really fearful of how much m uscle I was going to lose. But I was intrigued by stories of old timers that did bodyweight training only and had heavily muscled physiques to match. Like I sai d, guys like Woody Strode. Also guys like Herschel Walker and many prisoners tha t do not have access to weights per the state prison laws. I also worried that m any of these men where arican american men who in general seem to have a predisp osition for a natural muscularity even with minimum training. And muscular growt h for me throughout my years has never been easy and i am not one of those Casey Viator genetic freak types. In closing all I can say is that I have no intention on going back to any form o f weight training. This routine is fantastic and very theraputic to me. I love d oing it in the early morning and I love the regimentation of it. Many of you may have thought about such a routine of have read of some who built up well on such routines. An many may have thought them to be overtraing of jus t pure B.S. I know how you feel, but all I can say is that the routine works! At least for m e it does and I cant imagine going back. I am still an ironager. Maybe more than ever and in a very primal form. Give it a try based on your own needs and see h ow it goes. If you have any questions feel free to post or message me. All the b est guys.
-------------------------------------Hey guys! Thread starter here. I am happy that many of you have commented on my training program. I feel the need to post some feelings I have about the routine . But first as to before and after pics..... I do not have any. I have not taken any photos of my physique in quite a few years and I never thought to do so whe n I started this new routine. I just had the desire to strip my training down to one of the most basic form. I do want to be clear about something. My muscular size and bodyweight fo r much of the past 10 years has been around 200lbs. Relatively lean and I am 6 f eet tall. I am not on any form of anabolics or GH. The last time I competed in t he late 90's, I weighed in at 222lbs and I was ripped. I was also taking anaboli c steroids at the time too. No GH. Just anabolic steroids. I have not taken any steroids since that last show. So I want to make it clear that the muscle that this routine had initiall y kept and has since added, was not the heavy muscle that I used to compete wit h, but the much smaller sized muscular body that I have enjoyed living with over the past 10 years. I would compare the difference between my competition body a nd my body of the past 10 years with the difference between Frank Zanes competit ive years and the look he had when he wrote his fit at 50 book. The shape was st ill there, but just quite a bit smaller. (NOT SAYING THAT I LOOK LIKE FRANK ZANE !!!!!) I dont want anybody on this site to think that this routine is keeping an d building top heavyweight competition class muscles. But it sure as hell is adding more muscle than I have had in the past 10 years. As I stated, in the first few weeks, I was really sore in my wrists and elbows, but only for the first few sets. But after 4 weeks, all of this pain went away. I have suffered from rotator cuff issues over the years and I must admit that th is is the first time that I have not had any issues with my shoulders in ages. Pushups are always an issue for those with shoulder problems and I was co ncerned about that. But over the years I have found that if I do my pushups with my elbows held close to my torso and I keep my shoulder locked in tight in my a rmpit area, that I have no problems with pain. So my pushups have my elbows poin ted more towards my feet than flaired out to the sides. As for bodyparts like my side delts ballooning up, I can only say that at a bout 50 reps, my side delts are on fire. By 100 reps, the burn is unreal. I feel that the extended time under tension that these high rep and high volume sets p rovide is what is making me grow. Even ny of us pullups e to the
though they are calisthenics, I am training compound movements which ma know are great to add mass. The pushups are like bench presses. And the have always been known to some as THE UPPER BODY SQUAT. Pullups add siz back,biceps and forearms no matter what. They are just plain tough.
At the end of the week, I have done 3500 reps of compound exercise based pus hups. 700 reps of compound exercise pullups. 1750 reps of explosive jump squats which blast my quads,glutes and calves. If I look at those total reps, common se nse tells me that is why my muscles have grown. As for overtraining and needing time in between bodyparts to let the muscle grow? I dont know what to say. Over the decades, bodybuilders have stopped hitt ing bodyparts as frequently as they used to. I know that many ironagers of the 7
0's used to hit a bodypart 3 times a week before a contest. NOTE: I AM SURE THAT KEN(OLD GOLDS GUY) CAN ATTEST TO THIS). They sure had serious muscle. I remembe r Albert Beckles telling me that he would train his quads everyday the last 6 we eks before a show because he wanted to keep his hard earned off season gains tha t he put on them. I have read about frank Zane purchasing a nautilus leg extensi on and doing daily sets on it in his palm Springs home prior to one of his later Olympia competitions. So who really knows. All I know is that this routine is a wesome and I love it. And I am really enjoying the discipline it takes to get my ass up every morning no matter what and crank out these sets. I keep in mind Bi ll Pearl and his daily 4am workouts that he still does to this day. One other thing. I have not changed my eating routine. I have been a vegan for m any years now and I consume about 120 grams of protein a day from some soy powde r, tofu, beans, and brown rice protein powder. That is another topic for another day. I havent added any calories to my diet. Same routine monday through friday and then I binge eat on saturday and sunday while still staying with my vegan e ating. Hope this answered some more questions you may have had. Feel free to ask more. All the best guys. -------------------------------------I am happy that this interests you. The routine takes me no more than 90 minutes . If I go like a madman closer to 60 minutes, but that is rare. And yes, the sim plicity of it is awesome. I can do it anywhere. I have traveled during this time and all I had to do was bring my mobile pullup bar with me and that is all I ne ed. For a few days I was at a location in which I could not rig the pullup bar s o I just wedged a towel under a door and did an odd type of door pullup from the top of the door. It was hard on the hands and my elbows pressed into the door, but it still provided an awesome workout and I was sore as hell the next day fro m the new movement. I love the mobilty of the routine. Absolutely love it! -------------------------------------Herschel Walker stated that he never missed a day of his daily routine of pushup s, chin ups, situps until he was 40. And at that point he still continued the 7 day a week routine but he dropped out the chin ups. Hello Dean. Happy that this interests you. My rest periods tend to go by feel, b ut I would say I rest about 2 minutes between sets these days. Anything less and I would not be able to make the reps especially on the pushups because they are 100 rep sets. 2 minutes approximately between sets. It definitely has become ea sier as time has gone by. My body just apdapted to the workload. -------------------------------------I just jumped right in as to the total rep numbers per exercise. For the pushups it was initially 10 sets of 50 reps and the jump squats 10 sets of 25 reps. And in the first few weeks I would have to take longer rest periods on the latter s ets so as to hit the desired reps. If I couldnt get all the reps, I would kind o f rest/pause the last few. But that was brutal as all hell. But eventually I ada pted and became stronger and was able to get the reps straight out. As the weeks went by I would up the reps to 8 sets of 60 some odd reps. Then 7 sets of 70 o dd reps. Etc.... until I reached 5 sets of 100. Hope this helps. -------------------------------------Hello Stu. Happy you brought my attention back to my thread. I have changed my w orkout up a bit since the intial post. And here it is. I have switched my pushup
s to the the pedestal variety with my feet elevated off the top of my bed. My fe et are about 2 feet off the floor and my hands are holding onto pushup pedestals and I hold them parallel to eachother. My palms face each other during the move ment. The movement is incredible. I get way more of a stretch and range of motio n at the bottom of the movement and it make the pushups much harder. When I swit ched to this version, I did 10 sets of 50 reps. I now am doing 5 sets of 100 rep s. My chest,delts and triceps grew a whole lot more from this style of pushups. As for my Pullups, I am alternating 1 day of regular shoulder width grip of over hand pullups with shoulder width Parallel grip pullups on the next day. I prefer the parallel pullups to the former. I have gained more size in my biceps since adding the parallel variety. Also has added size to my upper forearm. Probably f rom the hammer curl sort of movement that Parallel pullups mimic. So I am still doing all of these exercises daily with an occasion day off every few weeks. Joi nts are feeling fine. Not pushing the sets anywhere near failure. Could easily d o about 20 more reps per set on the pushups. For the pullups, I do 5 sets of 20 reps. Could crank out maybe 5 more reps on them but dont want to push close to f ailure. I believe that not pushing the failure reps saves my joints. I just trai n the movements each day. That is how i mentally look at my workouts. As for leg s these days. All I do is hill sprints and jogging. No more jump squats. I did n ot have problems with the jump squats but just wanted to work my legs in a compl ete sense with a running movement and to be outdoors. I have a nice large hill n ot too far from where I work and I do 5 sets of full speed hill sprints up it ev ery other day. When I reach the top and am gasping, I walk back down and when I reach the bottom, I run back up. These are the hardest things I have ever done w orkout wise, but they really have kept up my leg development and have really lea ned me out this past summer. On the other alternate days, I do sprints on the pa vement around the block of my apartment complex immediately after my daily pushu ps and pullups. The block is pretty much a perfect square. So I will walk one qu arter block and then sprint full force the next quarter block.Then walk the next and then sprint the next. I do 4 full revolutions around the entire block. Thro w in 100 crunches a day at the end of the workout and there you have it. Hope th is is of interest to you and others. All the best. --------------------------------------UPDATE!!!! I am the topic starter and here is where I am these days. It has been quite a long time since I began this routine and here is where I am at as of to day. A few months ago, out of boredom from the repetitiveness of my daily routin e, I decided to switch to training only 2 exercises total. And to alternate them every other day. So this is what the routine looks like now and for the last fe w months. Day 1.....Parallel Pushups on pedestals with elbows close to body. Feet up on th e edge of bed 3 feet high. 10 sets of 50 reps Day 2......Parallel Grip pullups (medium width). 10 sets of 20- 10 reps( less on each set) * Crunches every other day 100 reps total * Leg training/Cardio Combo every other day in the form of hill sprints. 5 inter vals. Full force on the way up for approx 50 yards and then I walk down and repe at as soon as I reach the bottom. The results are still incredible. I have not lost any muscle from the reduction in sessions each exercise gets hit each week. Havent grown any more muscle that I can see, but I am not trying to. Just trying to keep what i have and concentra te on staying lean. Joints feel great. I was not having any joint trouble prior while doing the same every day 7 days a week. Legs are looking just as good and a bit more muscular all around from the hill sprints. The sprints did lean me ou t quite a bit. With no change in diet, I lost 8 pounds in 8 weeks from them. The se 2 exercises are the total package for me. The parallel grip on both of them. For the pushups, this grip on the pedestals allows me to go really deep and incr ease my range of motion. Plus I get a massive contraction fighting the gravity.
The close grip saves my rotator cuffs and really blows up my tricpes and delts. And I end up with a major lat pump from what i assume is the high reps on the ne gatives. And for the pullups, the parallel grips is best result wise because it hits by biceps really well, but more importantly it is like a super hammer curl. Really added shape to my upper forearms and outer biceps. And I like the power I get from the grip. Works my inner forearms well just from holding on for so lo ng and for so many reps. And my lats get an awesome workout. Way better than any lat pulldowns and bent over rows. Rear delt gets hit well too. The only part of my upper body that is not getting hit directly from these 2 exercises are my si de deltoids. But for some reason I am noticing a huge lack of side delt. Possibl y because of all of the years of side delt training and the indirect tension tha t they are experiencing from the pushups time under tension. So , I am still enjoying my bodyweight only training. And one other thing.....in regards to my strength, I have always read that hi rep bodyweight training is o nly for endurance and doesnt build strength. Well all I can say is this.....Last month, my wife and I were at our friends home and we were in the garage as ther e son was working out and I decided to see what I could do on the bench press an d the lat pulldown. I warmed up well with stretches and light pulldowns. I was a ble to use the entire stack on the pulldown after 3 sets for over 10 reps and it was a solid stack of plates. Then being warmed up , I proceeded to the flat ben ch press and started with 135lbs which I wasnt sure of how it would feel. Did an easy 10 reps. Went to 185 and did another 10 reps. Proceeded to 225 and did a s et of 5 reps. Did another set of 225 for 5 reps. Added 50 more pounds and did a single rep at 275. Did another single at 275 and then went to 315 after a 5 minu te break. Made sure that the young man gave me a solid lift off and stayed atten tive. Was able to crank out 1 very hard rep with 315. All I can say, is that I w as shocked with the poundage that I was able to handle. I havent touched a weigh t in over a year and hadnt bench pressed with a barbell in over 5 years. I was a lways a solid bencher. Back in the day on steroids I would routinely incline 405 for sets of 5. But still, my recent weight training session had me suprised at how strong I was. There is no way to tell how strong you may or may not be when you train bodyweight only for so long. I mean, you know that you are strong base d on being able to pullup yourself 20 times for multiple sets, but as for pushup s, there is no way to knowhow strong you have stayed. The reps are way to high. So if anybody tries to sell you on the bodyweight training makes you weaker, all I can say is bullsh*&. Hope this update is informative to some of you. All the best -------------------------------------- Mark Baldwin said the biggest he ever got was from doing push-ups in the morni ngs and evenings. I think he did a few SR curls, too, but that was it. He said h e stayed far from failure. - yes on the old board there were some guys that wrote how they got big doing ma inly (or nothing more than) pushups for their upper body and had great success e ven without doing too much reps (100-200 a day) - btw i had my best results doing a lot of variations of pushups for a total of 500 a day for 3 weeks -------------------------------------A local personal trainer has a radio show and he brings guests in from time to t ime for new information, a different perspective, etc. I was only half listening yesterday when they hit on the topic of exercise selec tion and the physiologist noted any exercise(s) that go outside of the body's op
timal leverage are actually being defined as detrimental. she listed include:
Some of the exercises
- Lateral raises, front raises, rear delt raises. - Leg extensions - Many biceps moves Wish I'd caught the whole list, but, she and the trainer both said research is s howing basic is best where you're working within your optimal leverage ranges. Standard pushups or dips, chins and deadlifts, shoulder presses performed in goo d form are all the best bet. Abs? She immediately reference Dr. Stuart McGill and said planks, ab flexion (they look like crunches but aren't), etc., are all superior choices.
