summary Introduction 2 - visualisation, projection, relativisation 3 - body Optimising body 4 - Period of strength - period of form 5 - Balance your variats level 6 - The 3x (50% 80% 100%) 7 - Working with degressive form 8 - Spam 9 - Partial reps 10 - EMOM 11 - Short combos (focus on technique) 12 - Long combos (focus on endurance) 13 - 95% max to press / pushup 14 - THE xxx 14 - The xxxx 15 - rubber band weighted INTRODUCTION Hi and welcome to this ebook dedicated to skills endurance growth. In this content, I will present to you various training principles that you can use at any level, to get more strength/endurance. You can apply these training principles to work on your Planch as your front-lever. visualisation, projection, relativisation All levels Today everyone in Calisthenics talks about visualization, but it is not the adapted word, as if seeing something would be enough to do it. Visualizing means that you will see something in your head before you do it. If I visualize myself traveling from France to Spain, I will just see it, there is no feeling associated with this word. The right word is PROJECTION, the goal is to live, to feel, to identify the difficult part of the movement and understand the solution in advance, it is a great tool to teach your body what he will have to do, a necessary part of the process, to do things you’ve never done. visualisation, projection, relativisation All levels When it is about doing more of something you already do, it is different, even projecting yourself doing it, could not be enough. You need to relativize, what do I mean by that ? I mean that, to do something you need to trust it to a point that you can feel that you have it. To feel it, it needs to be coherent, it has to be possible, till your subconscious. If a part of you can not trust it, you have much less chances to achieve it. visualisation, projection, relativisation All levels The best way to explain it to you is to give you an example. When I arrived at 121212, in my mind it was impossible for the moment to go higher. It was not coherent and i was not able to trust that i can do more. Adding more volume was impossible, it was too hard, so I reduced the volume and added intensity using the last training principle of the document, the rubber band weight. I worked to get a 101010 with band weight. It was so hard that, after doing it, it became much more coherent to reach a 131313 or a 141414 without weight, and I began to feel able to. Without surprise, I did my first 131313 ultimately. visualisation, projection, relativisation All levels The way you will have to adapt will be contextual, it will depend on the skills you want to work, the reason that makes you stuck, but to resume : project yourself and try to live it in advance. If you can’t, find another way to make your goal trustable, that will help you to relativize, and tell yourself, if i can do this, so i should be able to do this too because somewhere, its relative and pretty equivalent. At the moment it will sound logical to reach something, you will reach it. Body optimisation All levels I should not have to mention this but in calisthenics, too many people neglect this essential aspect of being an athlete. It can lead to incredible performance, as to stagnation or even injuries / sickness. You don’t realize how much it is impacting your performance and even your daily life. To give you an example, in hoping that it pushes you to take care of it, at 70 kg I feel a lot heavy, and can produce 30% less endurance than when I'm at 64/66 with a low body fat %. An interesting fact is that, the last kgs and % of body fat / water you can lose, are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on your level. Body optimisation All levels It is not a training principle, but it is one of the most important things you need to control if you want to be able to express a maximum of strength and endurance. you need to be as light as possible and as healthy as possible. To perform complex movements, you need to feel good in your body. You need to have a strong nervous system. To do so, you should not care about Macronutrients only, your organs, nervous system, muscle functions, and endocrine system depend much more on Micronutrients that are vitamins and minerals. Body optimisation All levels Eat your veggies, quality meat, eggs and fish, it is better to eat less but higher quality food with good nutrients, than a lot of low quality food full of poisonous substances. You have to avoid processed & junk food, avoid tap water that are full of toxic substances, estrogen and/or endocrine disruptors. In the world of today it is much more about : what to not eat than what to eat. Intermittent fasting is a great way to clean the body, in letting the digestive system to clean himself and eliminate the excess of fat/water we have in our body. To learn everything you need about this topic, here is a 50% discount code for my Nutrition ebook. everything you have to know is inside. Period of strength - period of form All levels The development of strength is a binary process that requires you to get strength and then learn to control this strength. Beginners as professionals are following the same process in a way that needs to be adapted to their level. For a beginners : Let's take the example of someone able to perform a bad form straddle for 3 seconds, correcting the form with that little amount of strength would not be a smart move, he would be able to perform only 1 second of a form that would not be perfect. Instead, strengthening this bad form straddle to reach at least 7-8 seconds of hold, and then taking a time to focus on the clean form and reach 2-3 seconds of clean form would be much smarter. In this case, it will begin by a strength period, 80% of the training will be strengthening. Period of strength - period of form All levels At the same time, the beginner can work on form with a rubber band at the end of the training to learn the activation of planch, but it will be a ‘background work’ (20% in end of training). At the moment this person reaches 7-8 seconds of bad form straddle planche, then he will enter in a form period and will do the opposite. He will spend 80% of his training trying to perform a better form straddle with assistance mainly, and sometimes without. During a form period, the strengthening will become the background work: 20% of strengthening after the form work to maintain his level of strength. Period of strength - period of form All levels For advanced levels: We will take as example a person with a 1-1-1 clean form in full planche. At this point trying to go to 2-2-2 in keeping the same form will be impossible and could be dangerous because it is too intensive. He will have to accept to lower the form to make it easier and reach his first 2-2-2 or even 3-2-2 in medium/bad form. When he gets used to this new volume in medium/bad form , he will be able to clean it progressively. Remember this phrase : You can not perform clean in feeling heavy. Grow strength - get used - get clean This principle applies to EVERY level till my level. balance your variants level All levels We all have good and bad points, some feel better in hold, others on pushups , others on press. Even after mastering every aspect of planch, if you focus on a variant, it can again create disbalances between this variant and the others. To get better and better you need to switch your focus regularly and logically from a variant to another. Every time that you feel that a variant becomes weaker than the others, it means it's time to focus on it for a moment. balance your variants level All levels For a beginner : The first thing will be to get a good hold, to get it you can work on hold and press, both are a lot similar and will impact each other. At the same time you can work on the planche pushup technique with a rubber band to understand/assimilate the position and the trajectory. you should do it dynamically 50% time to get brute strength, and in dead stop 50% time to learn how to hold after a pushup ( generally pushup is the hardest in the beginning ). For intermediate and advanced levels, you can do it in performing different combos, each of them will focus on a variant and include a little of the others, this way you will be able to focus more on 1 variant in keeping a background work on the others. balance your variants level All levels One combo focusing on hold , example : straddle hold - pushup to hold - press negative to hold - L sit - straddle hold. One combo focusing on press , example : straddle to press x 2 to hold - L sit - to press - negative to pushup hold One combo focusing on pushups, example : straddle - push ups x 2 to hold - L sit - to press - to negative to spam pushups - L sit try straddle hold To conclude, if my press feels weak compared to my push up and hold , I will do more combos including presses. It is pretty simple but people don’t do it. Your bad point can become a good point if you temporize intelligently. In the beginning I was much better at press than hold and pushups, today I'm pretty balanced between all variants, and you can too. the 3x (50% 80% 100%) Beginner training principle When you begin and have only a few seconds of hold whatever is the form, you can’t really reach the maximum effort in only one planch try. Instead, you can try to do 3 holds consecutively. The first time you will hold only 50% of your maximum, then stop and breathe for 3 to 5 seconds. The second you will stop to hold at 80% before you feel you begin to fall, then breathe for 5-7 seconds. The third will be a real max holding at 100%. This way, you have to take 3 times the planche position and your body will memorize it faster + you can reach your real maximum effort. Work with degressive form medium to advanced training principle Having a movement in clean form doesn’t mean you should try to perform it perfectly every time, it depends on the context. In a context of demonstration, sure you need to perform it clean, but, if you’re training and aiming to progress that’s not the solution. In staying in good form, you’re staying at maximum intensity, and you can’t reach more volume at max intensity. It would be similar to a powerlifter with a 1RM at 100 kg, trying directly to reach 2x 100kg, it's nonsense. Work with degressive form medium to advanced training principle Instead he will reps multiple times a lower weight, to finally reach 2x 100 kg. It is the same for your bodyweight training. If i have 1 press clean , trying to produce a second press with the same quality of execution would be too much, instead, you should accept to produce a second and/or even a third press, in lowering the quality of execution along the ‘combo’, and then, correct the second press , reach a third bad form , to finally correct it again. This principle applies to ‘variates’ combos too, you will lower the quality of execution along the combo to produce more and more volume. Spam All levels The only goal of spamming it is to grow your brute strength. Spam work is about one variant at a time generally. For a beginner, using legs to bounce during your pushups, or using the jump into planch to spam presses can help you to produce a big amount of volume, and get serious strength gains. But be careful : don’t spam using the head, don’t lose your shoulder position, and don’t lose the engagement of shoulders, neglect the form is not neglecting the activation, you can spam but in engaging the muscles the right way. Spam All levels For more advanced levels, using legs movements is not a good solution anymore. It is better to simply work as much dynamically as possible, because faster you work, less you lose stamina, and more you can produce volume. ( working fast make the control and the good form much harder to maintain, but allow you to save stamina , so don't try to go super fast, and super clean at the same time, or there is no benefice to do this.) Let the body move as needed to reach the max volume. Be careful to not be doing too much spam, do it only sometimes when you feel good , never do it on a tired day. Partial reps Beginner to advanced training principle This way of training is efficient in two situations : to get access to a new movement, or to isolate the problematic part of a movement, focus on it and get endurance. Get access to a new movement : Let’s take the negative full as example, you have the negative straddle planche but can’t perform a negative full for the moment. In this situation you can simply focus on the range of motion you can perform, then repress before to fall, and do repetitions of this range of motion to get progressively more range. Partial reps Beginner to advanced training principle It does apply to pushups and any other movements, on push ups the problem is often to hold after the pushup, so here the solution will be to do short range pushups, just to unblock the elbow, block it again and hold shortly after. To get endurance: You want to get better at deep push ups but it is exhausting, you have only 3 normal pushups and 1 deep that dont hold. Here the solution will be to get more endurance with only half range (90 degrees), more you will get reps on this range of motion, more it’s going to be easy to reach more reps of deep pushups. EMOM medium to advanced training principle famous way of training meaning ‘Every minute on the minute’. Sometimes getting more reps in working on combos, spam ( one shot effort ) is hard, so this solution can be helpful. you have to define the number of reps you can do every minute during a chosen number of minutes, it has to be your maximum for this amount of time. for example 3 straddle push ups to hold every minute for 10 minutes. Then, the game will be to become able to do it for more minutes, here for example 15 minutes. At the moment you can finally do it for 15 minutes, you can begin to try 4 reps to hold for 10 minutes, and then go again progressively to 15 minutes. If you want this training principle to be efficient, it needs to go to failure. Tips: don’t do it too many times in the week, with complex body weight movement as planch, it can be nervously exhausting. The short combos (focus technique) Medium to advanced training principle Transitions are an important part of Calisthenics performance, they are often harder than the movement itself. Short combos are a great solution to work on your transitions to make it smoother. Smoother it will become, less you will have to spend strength to do it, more you will save stamina to perform the rest of the combination. Yes, with the same amount of brute strength, you can express much or less strength, depending on your level of control. Saving strength is gaining strength. Let’s take the pushup to press as example, this transition is often a lot problematic, so an example of short combo to assimilate it faster would be: Full hold - push up - press - negative simply to focus on this transition and make it smoother. The long combos (focus endurance) Medium to advanced training principle To make an efficient long combination, you need to follow three logical points . 1st you will present the skill in a degressive way ( full straddle adv tuck) 2nd you will switch the muscle group along the combination to take time to breath, rest and then make the combo longer. ( with an L sit for example) 3rd: the form will be degressive too, if you try to perform everything perfectly, so you stay at max intensity, you can not get more volume. In following these 3 indications, you can perform long combinations that will help you to get big endurance gains. The 95% max to press / pushup Medium to advanced training principle As the name of this training principle is saying, here the game will be to do a max hold, and execute a press + negative or a pushup to hold, before to fall. To do so, you will be obliged to keep the right trajectory of work, and a maximum of height. To make this training principle efficient you need to identify your max hold before executing your push up or press, then each training you will try to add a second to your previous max to X. the xxx advanced to pro training principle The xxx is the best training principle you can use to get more endurance, it's certainly the best training principle I created. It is THE training principle i used mainly for the past year to go from 555 in my beginnings to 131313 / 101010 weighted with band and 8888 (on xxxx). This training principle will bring you to the best level you can possibly reach for 3 reasons. First : This training principle will never lead to stagnation due to bodily habituation because, anytime the evolution is slowing down, you can modify and adapt it to your needs, to keep doing it in a different and efficient way. Second: you can work on every main variant of the movement at the same time and constantly balance your level between these variants. the xxx advanced to pro training principle Third : The xxx is a never ending game that is so stimulating and challenging, you will never get bored, I didn't find the end of the game in many years, and it will be the same for you if you apply the following indications correctly. To make it efficient you need to follow the advice I gave you previously. You need to get access to a certain amount of volume before you clean it, and then go one step higher in bad form to clean it again. But this training principle goes much deeper than volume form only volume form. there is a lot of different sens to do an xxx : push press hold push hold press hold press push hold push press press push hold press hold push the xxx advanced to pro training principle Now, why would you do a version and not another ? Why is the use of each version contextual and answer to a special need ? It is pretty logic but, if your xxx is balanced : for example 444 The first 4 will be the easiest so it will be the variant that is the hardest for you . The second 4 will be harder so it will be the variant that is feeling ~ ok. The last 4 will be the hardest so it will be the variant that feels easier than the others. This way you can work equivalently on each variant, even if there is the same number of reps on each one because you do it with a different level of tiredness. the xxx advanced to pro training principle That’s not the only way to work on your xxx. You can work on your xxx in an unbalanced way to focus more on a variant and increase its level in keeping a background work on others. Let’s take someone with a 555 with difficulties on hold, this person can try to do a 9/10 - 3 3 hold push press to focus on hold and make his 555 easier or cleaner. You can do it 1 to 3 time in the training, with big rest in between ( 7- 10 min ). . the xxxx advanced+ to pro+ training principle The XXXX is complementary to the xxx and follows exactly the same logic as the xxx. It should be used after reaching minimum 555 to keep a sufficient amount of volume after the first x reps. The first x can be a handstand pushup, a wide planche, a Maltese or even a one arm planche. The idea here is to introduce another movement, relative to the xxx coming after. This first movement will be here to create tiredness, before trying to get your usual xxx. To progress, you can manage the duration of the pause between the first x and the xxx following. For example , someone with a 555 feel stuck , he will begin with a 1 press maltese + 555 with 20 s pause between. the xxxx advanced+ to pro+ training principle After he gets used to this, he will do a 1 555 with 10 second pause. then he will try 2 press maltese + 555 with 20s pause again, and try to reduce the pause to 10s pause again. after reaching the 2 555 with 10 second pause, this person should be able to go up to 666 or even 777 bad form. You can do it 1 to 3 time in the training, with big rest in between (7- 10 min). rubber band weighted advanced to pro training principle This way of training is as hard as helpful, it will grow your endurance and your control because of the rubber band, making your movement harder and less stable. To get 100% of the benefits of this type of training, you have to use the right band, to make it more intensive IN KEEPING a sufficient volume of work. ( at least 50% of your normal max) For an advanced level 5 kg will already be a lot harder. For a pro, 15 kg will be the maximum, a 25kg band will be too heavy, it will not let you express enough endurance, and could be risky because of the too high intensity. You can do it 1 to 3 time in the training, with big rest in between (7- 10 min). Follow the pictures to set it up right.
