rvaldrich
Level 5 Valued Member
Good morning! I have returneded!
So I detoured during the pandemic. I spent some time doing increasingly ambitious (read: silly) calisthenics work before finally coming to the long-overdue conclusion that my body just DOES NOT LIKE unilateral exercises (I finally got the one-arm Push-up and was progressing towards the one-arm pull-up and undid months of work to stop my shoulders from aching constantly).
Concurrently, I spent quite some time doing the ATG program. I originally investigated their system as a way to help motivate my father to exercise (boy did that fail), but I ended up sticking with it and really liking it (I have become a HUGE fan of not waking up in the middle of the night due to aching knees). I’ll save the endorsement and review and simply say I feel my time with them was very well spent.
But! I’m back to StrongFirst. But! I really liked a lot of ATG so I will be incorporating some of it. How? Well, I’m glad you asked!
I reread Easy Strength and was really taken once again by the bits about Quadrant II and that being where the champions prowl and all that jazz. I also liked Pavel’s remark somewhere (Easy Strength? 4-Hour Body?) about ‘many champions have ‘the courage’ to do less’. So I’ve decided I’m going to spend some time doing ‘the bare minimum’. I’m going to run an 8-week cycle doing PttP & PM, alternating every two weeks. I plan to pair this with the ATG Zero program as it is almost exclusively mobility and ankle/knee stuff.
After that, I plan to start alternating 8-week blocks of PttP and PM (probably graduating on to S&S). I know the recommendation is to do some form of conditioning during PttP, so I’ll do either Strength Aerobics or one of the ATG ‘body comp’ systems.
Now! Because I’m me and I don’t want to spend the money to buy barbell plates to do PttP properly, I will be doing weighted push-ups and single-leg kettlebell deadlifts instead. I hope the StrongFirst Leaders can find it in their hearts to forgive me for this substitution.
As for the Program Minimum/S&S, since I was working with the Bulldog last time I did S&S, I don’t foresee much trouble on that front.
I imagine I will eventually “graduate” back to Rite of Passage and Easy Strength, but surrendering almost all of my calisthenics goals has been hard (stares into heart-shaped locket with picture of me and planche push-up). I’ll probably keep doing Stand-to-Stand Bridges and the Trifecta, but everything else will be relegated to variety days or just tossed onto the junk pile along with my exercise bands, sandbags, and Tim Ferriss books.
Good to be back!
So I detoured during the pandemic. I spent some time doing increasingly ambitious (read: silly) calisthenics work before finally coming to the long-overdue conclusion that my body just DOES NOT LIKE unilateral exercises (I finally got the one-arm Push-up and was progressing towards the one-arm pull-up and undid months of work to stop my shoulders from aching constantly).
Concurrently, I spent quite some time doing the ATG program. I originally investigated their system as a way to help motivate my father to exercise (boy did that fail), but I ended up sticking with it and really liking it (I have become a HUGE fan of not waking up in the middle of the night due to aching knees). I’ll save the endorsement and review and simply say I feel my time with them was very well spent.
But! I’m back to StrongFirst. But! I really liked a lot of ATG so I will be incorporating some of it. How? Well, I’m glad you asked!
I reread Easy Strength and was really taken once again by the bits about Quadrant II and that being where the champions prowl and all that jazz. I also liked Pavel’s remark somewhere (Easy Strength? 4-Hour Body?) about ‘many champions have ‘the courage’ to do less’. So I’ve decided I’m going to spend some time doing ‘the bare minimum’. I’m going to run an 8-week cycle doing PttP & PM, alternating every two weeks. I plan to pair this with the ATG Zero program as it is almost exclusively mobility and ankle/knee stuff.
After that, I plan to start alternating 8-week blocks of PttP and PM (probably graduating on to S&S). I know the recommendation is to do some form of conditioning during PttP, so I’ll do either Strength Aerobics or one of the ATG ‘body comp’ systems.
Now! Because I’m me and I don’t want to spend the money to buy barbell plates to do PttP properly, I will be doing weighted push-ups and single-leg kettlebell deadlifts instead. I hope the StrongFirst Leaders can find it in their hearts to forgive me for this substitution.
As for the Program Minimum/S&S, since I was working with the Bulldog last time I did S&S, I don’t foresee much trouble on that front.
I imagine I will eventually “graduate” back to Rite of Passage and Easy Strength, but surrendering almost all of my calisthenics goals has been hard (stares into heart-shaped locket with picture of me and planche push-up). I’ll probably keep doing Stand-to-Stand Bridges and the Trifecta, but everything else will be relegated to variety days or just tossed onto the junk pile along with my exercise bands, sandbags, and Tim Ferriss books.
Good to be back!