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Bodyweight Hypertrophy with calisthenics protocol

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Kettlebelephant said:
A lot of times the problem with the advanced progressions is that they demand more than pure muscular effort or too much effort from little muscles.
Take the pistol for example.
For hypertrophy you need certain volumes and rest periods. If you try to build mass with a squat movement you want to hit and exhaust the major muscles involved. In this case quads, glutes and to some extend hamstrings. In a pistol though it's not uncommon that a smaller stabilising muscle group or something like balance/equilibrium is the limiting factor.
You have to stop a set, because your stabilisers are fried, but your big muscles groups (quads, glutes) didn't get enough stimulus to illicit growth.
Or take the OAPushup/OAOLPushup. Most likely your core and stabilisers give out before your pressing muscles (shoulder, tris, pecs). This is good for strength and tension, but if your goal is hypertrophy of the pecs it's a mediocre movement at best.
Also a lot of the advanced proressions in calisthenics are more CNS-intensive (again take the OAP as example) and high rep, low rest, high volume coupled with CNS-intensive is bad news.
Click to expand...
What do you think of the feet elevated pushups for the pecs?
 
Kettlebelephant said:
A lot of times the problem with the advanced progressions is that they demand more than pure muscular effort or too much effort from little muscles.
Take the pistol for example.
For hypertrophy you need certain volumes and rest periods. If you try to build mass with a squat movement you want to hit and exhaust the major muscles involved. In this case quads, glutes and to some extend hamstrings. In a pistol though it's not uncommon that a smaller stabilising muscle group or something like balance/equilibrium is the limiting factor.
You have to stop a set, because your stabilisers are fried, but your big muscles groups (quads, glutes) didn't get enough stimulus to illicit growth.
Or take the OAPushup/OAOLPushup. Most likely your core and stabilisers give out before your pressing muscles (shoulder, tris, pecs). This is good for strength and tension, but if your goal is hypertrophy of the pecs it's a mediocre movement at best.
Also a lot of the advanced proressions in calisthenics are more CNS-intensive (again take the OAP as example) and high rep, low rest, high volume coupled with CNS-intensive is bad news.
Click to expand...

This a great point. A closely related issue is when you lose it at one element of the movement but could continue with an assist.

Take pull-ups for example, once you get the elbows bent and able to more fully engage the lats they get (slightly) easier until the elbows need to be bent past 90° and it gets harder again. Still, just as with a push press, you can extend the duration of effort by getting a very small amount of help to get the movement initiated. You might also give a hop to get into the full upper position and work the eccentric.

I normally include pistols at the end of many of my sessions as a super set with some form of upper body exercise. When I first started doing these I couldn't get more than a couple per leg, so I'd put the other foot down at the bottom, assist on the upward portion, and do a slow eccentric down. In fact I used to do these with dips, and at the end of the session I'd be pretty spent, so for the last few reps give a small push with one foot on the step-up plate to get into the up position and then slow eccentric down.

To make bodyweight really work for hypertrophy, it pays off large to get some variations in place and well practiced that allow you to adjust the "load" as you might with cast iron. It might be pausing at the halfway point in the ROM, rest/pause, "drop set" assist by shortening the body length, swapping to eccentrics with an assist on the concentric.

Plus, I'm still coming across variations on standard BW movements I've never seen before that help with this aspect - just an amazing amount of variety but based on common themes.
 
Kozushi said:
What do you think of the feet elevated pushups for the pecs?
Click to expand...
Good for hypertrophy because all it adds to the regular pushup is more load. EMGs might prove me wrong here, but to my understanding stabilisers or core don't need to work harder during feet elevated PUs, just the pressing muscles.
Pushups are easy to overload without the need for weight plates.
Feet elevated PUs while wearing a 45lbs weight vest, chains around your upper back, band resisted or even all together will take you a long way.


or look at Ben Bruno...


I know calisthenics are about minimum equipment, but it's not a big problem to have one or two chains, some resistand bands and a pair of rings in your car or taking one or two resistand bands with you when traveling via airplane.
 
Kettlebelephant said:
Good for hypertrophy because all it adds to the regular pushup is more load. EMGs might prove me wrong here, but to my understanding stabilisers or core don't need to work harder during feet elevated PUs, just the pressing muscles.
Pushups are easy to overload without the need for weight plates.
Feet elevated PUs while wearing a 45lbs weight vest, chains around your upper back, band resisted or even all together will take you a long way.


or look at Ben Bruno...


I know calisthenics are about minimum equipment, but it's not a big problem to have one or two chains, some resistand bands and a pair of rings in your car or taking one or two resistand bands with you when traveling via airplane.
Click to expand...

Thank you. This confirmed my suspicions about the move. I was noticing serious hypertrophy happening with the feet elevated pushups; definitely more than what I noticed with the one arm ones. Just what I noticed though - I could have noticed wrongly.
 
I haven't read it myself but Convict Conditioning (ebook) got a good rap amongst people I know who are only into bodyweight training. Some of them are surprisingly big guys, although never having picked up a barbell or dumbbell
 
Kozushi said:
Thank you. This confirmed my suspicions about the move. I was noticing serious hypertrophy happening with the feet elevated pushups; definitely more than what I noticed with the one arm ones. Just what I noticed though - I could have noticed wrongly.
Click to expand...

I notice it in my upper pecs and triceps. Regular pushups seem to target more middle and lower pec.
 
Away at the moment but wanted to quickly chime in.

The DD thread in question is called "The Naked Warrior Bear". Just Google that. It was my (and other more veteran posters including Pavel) attempt to make a calisthenics hypertrophy thread.

Exercise selection, sets and rep schemes are all covered. I never tested it much but that would be the thread I'd check out.

I'm not too familiar with hypertrophy as it pertains to calisthenics. Never done much of it so can't recommend. However, I'll be doing it during the summer and can give much better advice at the end of the summer. For now, if check the thread. You won't be disappointed
 
You could design a hypertrophy program based on the principles outlined in Pavel's article about ST fibres(How to Build Your Slow Fibers, Part II)
Diamond pushups cover all your pressing muscles. For pulling muscles you could choose pullups and for legs I would recommend airbourne lunges. They are relativeley easy to learn and really fry your quads and glutes. Another alternative would be bulgarian split squats as a progression to airbourne lunges.
Doing high rep pistols (30-60sec TUT) is very hard for most people and all the small stabilsers will probably fatigue before the quads. Same thing with OAPU. I would therefore safe pistols and OAPU for low rep, high tension FT style training. Diamond pushups/band resisted push ups/feet elevated push ups and airbourne lunges/bulgarian split squats are better suited for ST training and also much safer to do for a longer TUT
 
Lots of wisdom you've just outlined there @Marc . Smart exercise selection. I'll admit that doing OAPUs and pistols in a hypertrophy style workout is pretty miserable, likely due to the role of the small stabilizing muscles as you mentioned.
 
Great points Marc!

I would concur, simpler exercises would seem much better suited for this type of programming.

I like dips in place of diamond grip push ups but both can get the job done with enough effort. Airborne lunges are really underrated I think as a move in their own right.





Marc said:
You could design a hypertrophy program based on the principles outlined in Pavel's article about ST fibres(How to Build Your Slow Fibers, Part II)
Diamond pushups cover all your pressing muscles. For pulling muscles you could choose pullups and for legs I would recommend airbourne lunges. They are relativeley easy to learn and really fry your quads and glutes. Another alternative would be bulgarian split squats as a progression to airbourne lunges.
Doing high rep pistols (30-60sec TUT) is very hard for most people and all the small stabilsers will probably fatigue before the quads. Same thing with OAPU. I would therefore safe pistols and OAPU for low rep, high tension FT style training. Diamond pushups/band resisted push ups/feet elevated push ups and airbourne lunges/bulgarian split squats are better suited for ST training and also much safer to do for a longer TUT
Click to expand...
 
Yes, dips are also a great alternative.
I mentioned diamond push ups because Pavel writes about them in his article. Plus they require zero equipement.
I would argue if OAPU/OAOLPU + pistols are the NW bodyweight go-to moves for strength, diamond push ups + airbourne lunges are the hypertrophy equivalent.

One can easily train these two aspects simultaniously following the plan outlined by Pavel in his article
 
I'd also emphasise that your exercise selection for leg training is on point. Should I ever decide to run a bulk of any sort in the future I shall remember to use some form of split squat or lunge as the primary exercise as opposed to pistols... high volume pistols just aren't fun, and I've done 50 consecutive reps per leg. I did not repeat that feat...
 
305pelusa said:
Away at the moment but wanted to quickly chime in.

The DD thread in question is called "The Naked Warrior Bear". Just Google that. It was my (and other more veteran posters including Pavel) attempt to make a calisthenics hypertrophy thread.

Exercise selection, sets and rep schemes are all covered. I never tested it much but that would be the thread I'd check out.

I'm not too familiar with hypertrophy as it pertains to calisthenics. Never done much of it so can't recommend. However, I'll be doing it during the summer and can give much better advice at the end of the summer. For now, if check the thread. You won't be disappointed
Click to expand...
This thread was excellent! Thanks so much for pointing it to us! I've been really frustrated with my training of late and maybe part of it is simply not doing the appropriate amount of volume to "practice" the movement. I've been focusing on pullups/chins, OAPUs, pistols, and SLDL. Also been doing a couple sets of HLRs at end of each training session. Can do full, dead stop, toes to bar piked versions now!

I love the ladders idea of sneaking in volume with lower fatigue. Love ladders anyway-not sure why that never occurred to me before! Am going to go back through the thread and restructure a little. Switch up movements a little (airborne lunges instead of pistols but still keep my supported OAPU) and work with volume and number of training sessions/week. Same but different!
 
Guys what exercise are you talking about when you say "airborne lunge" ?

This...


...or this...


???
Because for me the first ones are called skater or shrimp squats and jumping/airborne lunges are interchangeable names for me.
Just want to make sure we are all talking about the same exercise.
 
Kettlebelephant said:
Guys what exercise are you talking about when you say "airborne lunge" ?

This...


...or this...


???
Because for me the first ones are called skater or shrimp squats and jumping/airborne lunges are interchangeable names for me.
Just want to make sure we are all talking about the same exercise.
Click to expand...

I was referring to the first version.
 
I was referring to the one by Max Shank. Skater squats and airbourne lunge are the same. Shrimp squats are a whole other beast...
 
Shrimp squats are just skater squats with your airborne leg pressed against your butt using your hand. I find they require a bit more stability, but otherwise are not harder than skater squats/airborne lunges.
 
Kettlebelephant said:
Shrimp squats are just skater squats with your airborne leg pressed against your butt using your hand. I find they require a bit more stability, but otherwise are not harder than skater squats/airborne lunges.
Click to expand...

Unfortunateley not the same for me: I can do 5x5 pistols with my left leg but not one single shrimp squat
 
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