What do you think of the feet elevated pushups for the pecs?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.
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.
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.What do you think of the feet elevated pushups for the pecs?
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.
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.
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
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!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
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.
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.
Complete opposite for me. I can do a couple of shrimps but not a single pistol. The human body and the differences between two individuals are fascinatingUnfortunateley not the same for me: I can do 5x5 pistols with my left leg but not one single shrimp squat