WED: Today is Body Weight, Whatcha Gonna Do?

I know, I know. A day of only body weight movements is a real drag for some. We don’t get to hear the sweet, succulent clanging of the barbell or the loud boom as the kettlebell hits the floor, or even a nice, pleasant pop of a handsome med ball smacking the rubber.

None of it.

Today, you will get silence. Except for Katy Perry and the sound of your own heavy breathing.

For those who have been paying close attention to programming this year, you may have noticed an increase in the dosing of basic push, pull, squat, and lunge body weight movements in the workouts. That’s no accident. To be honest, I think that I did a very underwhelming job of including body weight movements in your training in 2017, and was excited at the opportunity to correct that for you in 2018.

A lot of us think that body weight work is a regression meant for beginners to establish proper pattern. While true, to think that body weight work is limited to that benefit is to think that because Michael Jordan won dunk contests that all he could do was dunk.

Body weight work will help your goals in the following ways:

  1. Patterning – It creates proper movement patterns and habits. This is absolutely critical in order to be successful with load. You cannot get strong at back squatting until you learn how to repeat a deep body weight squat a thousand times.
  2. Re-Patterning – Most people are far too fast to abandon quality body weight work. It’s critical to keep the pattern that’s been established otherwise you’ll only learn how to move with a barbell on your spine. That isn’t functional. Or productive.
  3. Volume Endurance – It builds volume.  You can’t exactly perform 100 push press in a day without feeling beat up afterwards.  You can, however perform 100 pushups and be no worse for the wear the next day.
  4. Kinesthetic Awareness – It improves your balance and body awareness in ways barbells cannot.  Simply put, you learn to feel and react to your body’s movement which helps you from an athletic perspective.
  5. Injury Prevention – Stripping load and focusing on full range pattern will access muscles that might typically be overridden in barbell movements. For example, if you have weak adductors then they will probably be bullied by quads and hams at near max load.
  6. Structure – It helps build the strength and integrity of our muscle, joints, and connective tissue.

There is nothing in fitness that is more functional than you and your body moving together, with no other distraction. The ability to do that in any training condition; long, short, fast, or slow, for time or not, high rep or low volume, is a necessity for any long term success.

Go into today with the focus that you are going to own the perfect execution of every single rep.

-Dave

Wednesday, 2.21.18

First, for 5 Minutes.
5 BW Lunge
5 High Plank Shoulder Taps
5 V-Ups
—
Then, for 15 Minutes.
10 Ring Rows
10 BW Side Lunges
5 Pull-Ups
5 Split Lunge Jumps
5 Push-Ups (x2)
5/s RDL Power Jumps (Corey)
—
Then, for 7 Minutes.
A: Skater Burpees
B: 100m Run
—
To Finish:
300 OH Plate Flutter Kicks