Bodyweight "Archer" (side to side) pushups and squats towards Naked Warrior skills

[Kozushi]

The NW book doesn't mention the side to side squats and pushups as intermediary steps towards the pistol and one arm pushup. So, am I getting off on a tangent training these moves?

 

[pet']

Hello,

@Kozushi
IMO, Archer push ups are an excellent progression toward the one arm push up. Indeed, the permit to focus on mainly one arm. The other one is supposed to mainly secure some balance. It also permits to strongly engage the core, to develop a strong anti rotation / anti "leaning sideways" strength.

Regarding Archer squats, I also call them Cossack squat. They are very interesting as well because they also work a lot on mobility and balance. Plus, this is also quite easy to load them a little without compromising the entire move.

In both cases, very valuable move IMO !

Kind regards,

Pet'

 

[Pavel Macek]

The NW book doesn't mention the side to side squats and pushups as intermediary steps towards the pistol and one arm pushup. So, am I getting off on a tangent training these moves?

Why not - but there are way better methods that we teach at the Bodyweight Course and SFB Cert. If you haven't attended yet, stick to The Naked Warrior drills.

 

[Maine-ah KB]

so my experience is the Archer Push has fairly little carry over to a one arm pushup. yes it puts more pressure on one arm but it in my case it didn't help with getting in the groove or develop the midsection strength/stability needed in a OAPU. I prefer the one hand down by the hip version a little closer feel to a OAPU.

 

[Kozushi]

Okay, so basically, good moves worth doing, but if we're talking about progressing to NW skills, they don't really go there - different movement patterns. This is what I thought.
Not bad moves though as their own thing it seems.

 

[Kozushi]

Just as an aside, I think I've led myself astray over the past month or so trying out a lot of new and different moves (mostly bodyweight). My S&S seems to have suffered, mainly due to my shoulders getting too sore. Callisthenics puts a lot of pressure on the shoulders to hit different angles of strength. I'm going to maintain my NW stuff, but I need to be careful with the other things.

 

[Marc]

For me personally the archer pushups had/has a lot of carryover to OAPU because it targets the same muscles in a very similar way. However, the best progression towards the OAPU for me was/is the self assisted OAPU.



Archer squats or cossack squats are nice but rather a mobility move.
A better alternative is the airbourne lunge or the step up from an elevation where you only gently touch your non working heel to the floor without assisting the move (i.e. imagine there are eggs all over the floor and you don't want to break them).

 

[User 7569]

so my experience is the Archer Push has fairly little carry over to a one arm pushup. yes it puts more pressure on one arm but it in my case it didn't help with getting in the groove or develop the midsection strength/stability needed in a OAPU. I prefer the one hand down by the hip version a little closer feel to a OAPU.

same here. Archer PU has a completely different groove than OAPU in my experience.

Love Cossack squats on days when I don't want to do pistols but want to get some single leg squatting in.

 

[fractal]

I haven't achieved an OAPU yet, but I'm finding lever pushups to be very promising

 

[JonS]

I once took some time to focus on lever pushups, and the results were great. After a bit of lever pushups, I included negatives and one day decided to try the full oapu. Did one each side, on the left side my foot came off the ground for a sloppy oaolpu.

I do believe that an SFB or attending a course would be a much faster and enduring method to achieve and sustain these types of BW skills.

 

[Kozushi]

I have a suspicion that doing a lot of dips and L-sits over the past few months made my sudden ability to do sets of one arm pushups possible and even easy. I agree that dips alone, while certainly enough to develop the triceps strength needed for OWPUs, are not enough, but adding the core and stabilizing strength developed through L-sits (and N-sits I'll admit too - N-sits are good if you're big like me) seems to have been plenty to transfer over the the OAPU.

It seems like: dips + L-sits = OAPU.