A simple way to increase number of push ups

Here, I will cover a simple way you can use to increase your number of push ups. This works for pull ups, dips, squats and pretty much any other exercise you can think of. This can be split up into 4 steps.

Step 1 - find your max: Do as many push ups as you can with good form, this is your max

Step 2: Multiply your max by 4, then for the next 10 days, do a total of 4 times your max throughout each day, in multiple sets. Don't go anywhere near failure, stay at least 2-3 reps away from your max per set.

Step 3: Rest 3 days, do not do any push ups during this time, eat well, sleep loads and drink a lot of water.

Step 4: test your new max, and start from step 2 again.

Example:

Step 1: I test my max and can do 20 push ups

Step 2: 20 x 4 = 80. So throughout the day, I will do 80 total push ups. One day I might do 8 sets of 10, the next 16 sets of 5 etc. Stay creative, and listen to your body, if you are feeling weak, do more total sets and less reps per set.

Step 3: I take 3 days rest, eat well, drink milk and play Tekken.

Step 4:  I re-test my max and get 30 push ups, and start from step 2.

This is perfect for beginners, but will work for any level of strength. Remember, you have the whole day to complete the reps, don't be intimidated by the total number of reps, you can just do a set every hour, or 10 minutes, be creative and clever with it and you will find it a lot easier than it seems.

Hope this helps
Enjoy the gains.
Alex  

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 2

This is part 2 of a selection of things I am using to change up my pull up training, if you haven't seen part 1, click here to check it out
Baseballs

Just put a bolt through a baseball and hook it to a chin up bar, you can also use hockey ball or anything strong enough to hold your weight. This requires a whole new level of grip strength. When training these with lock offs, it would give me a dead arm after every rep, this will kill your biceps as well.
Fat gripz

These are grips, that are fat. They will make the chin ups more difficult. Stick them on the bar and use them for the next 4 weeks, take them off and your chin ups will be stronger
Gymnastics rings

These are difficult as hell, but I am not really sure why, one arm chins on this are crazy difficult for me, but I'm working on it.
Rock rings

These are a cool tool by Metolius, normally used by rock climbers. They have 3 levels, each one gets more narrow and the ledge gets smaller, making it more challenging, you can also grab the top and just use it as a chin up handle. I am currently using them to try and get a door frame one arm chin. So I can do them Anywhere.

Thanks, hope this helps,
Enjoy the gains
Alex

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 1

In this post, I will be going over the different grips I am using and the grips I am trying to use in order to keep my one arm chin training. Even though I will be speaking about them in regards to one arm chins, you can also use these variations with 2 arms, rows, front levers or even deadlifts if you are a freak.

1: Towels

I know a few of this may find this weird or stupid, but this, in my opinion, is the best place to start. I remember buying 6 tea towels when i was 16, and just doing one arm hangs, and one arm lock-offs on them, and my forearms grew and my grip got stronger, they are also great because the twist, so you can supinate your hands at the top of the pull up and get a great contraction on the short head of the bicep, this free rotation can also help avoid elbow and shoulder pain.

2:Rotating handles

I'm too poor to buy a 'rolling thunder', so I just brought a pair of those cable attachments that rotate, and strapped them to the pull up bar. When you try and hang of them with just one arm it will try and tear your hand off your arm, and may succeed. But when I got a one arm chin on it for the first time, I knew I had reached a milestone in my strength. You could add a fatgrip on it and make it as thick as a 'rolling thunder', I am yet to get a one arm chin off that. But when I am able to do that, I will go out and tear someones arm off just because I can.

3: Eagle loops

These were a little bit cheaper than the 'rolling thunder' so I got them. Normally. Whats cool, is that you can slowly reduce the number of fingers you use until you you get down to one finger, my current best is a one arm chin on 2 fingers.

4: Homemade chin up handle

I just made this from chain and a pole my mate found in the woods, all we had to do was wash the blood off it and lay low for a while (that was a joke). This is good because it allows you to be able to do one arm chins anywhere, just strap it to something overhead. You can also put fatgripz on them. They also allow you to do neutral grip one arm chins on a regular chin up bar. I found the neutral grip the easiest to learn when first doing the one arm chin.

This post is already pretty long, so I will be back with more ways to switch up your chin ups.

Enjoy your gains
Alex

Me and 'ladies man' my local paper boy

Getting 100 reps of a difficult exercise (periodisation method)

Everyone that has been doing calisthenics for a while has at least heard of a program that gets you 100 push ups or 200 sit ups. And these programs are fantastic. But what if you want to get super high reps of an 'advanced' exercise (e.g dips or handstand push ups)?
when it comes to doing difficult exercises for high reps, you will plateau quickly, so multiple methods will have to be used, this one is called the periodisation method.  I will be using push ups as an example, when your target reps is 100.

1. Start a routine where you are doing 100% - 200% of your target reps a day. Example: make sure you are doing 100-200 push ups a day
2. find your max, during the day, just go for max efforts when you feel like it, only go for a max effort 2 or 3 times a week. Example: you currently have 32 push ups.
3. add some kind of small resistance, for example: resistance bands, pause reps, a different variation. and work up to your current max without the resistance.Example: change to diamond/ close grip push ups and work back up to 32 push ups (While keeping your total volume daily at 100-200 push ups)
4. Test your max, it should have increased 
5. Take a week of just doing your regular variation, getting 100% - 200% of your target reps daily. Example: go back to doing 100-200 push ups daily, making an effort to increase the reps in your sets. 
6. Repeat steps 1-4

 Now obviously the harder the resistance, the longer it will take you to get back to your max, but the rep increases will be much better, so have a think about how much resistance you will use. Also change it every cycle, keeping up variation is another way of keeping from hitting plateaus.

Enjoy your strength gains.
Alex