Progressing on Calisthenics for Grappling/Fighting

Follow Along/Instruction

Now that you have worked on the “sphinx” routine and worked calisthenics and stretching as a long term process into your lifestyle, and are getting consistency on it, it’s time to start progressing on calisthenics. If you haven’t built consistency on basic stretching and calisthenics into your lifestyle, keep working on elements of the “sphinx” routine until you start to get bored with it and need something harder to make it interesting.

This video shows the bodyweight strength training variations we use on the floor to develop our true strength (as distinct from muscular hypertrophy), over time and build up to peak-strength advanced calisthenics moves.

The take-away here is that it may take you several years of consistency to be able to do multiple rep sets (or slow-motion reps at full depth) of hard moves like 1 arm pushup and 1 leg squat! That is okay. The reason these moves are so captivating is that they are a symbol of long term achievement.

Explore these three methods of making bodyweight strength moves easier, so you can build up incrementally to your goals:

1.) Partial reps – doing a shallower depth of the movement in order to get more reps, and increasing your depth over time until you reach full depth.

2.) Positives (assisted descent) – this is where you use an assist on the descent portion of the exercise, such as in using a two-footed lunge to kneel down, then floating up on one leg. The descent, or “eccentric” phase of a strength exercise is more challenging to the muscles.

3.) Assists – this is where you use additional support to lower the resistance; such as when an athlete is developing the one-arm pushup, and they begin assisted by 5 fingers of their other arm, then 4, then 3, then 2, then 1, then after enough weeks can complete the 1 arm pushup without the assist. Other common assists are using a knee or both knees to take leverage away from the resistance of gravity.

Always remember – working  from where you are at is all you will ever be able to do to improve your performance level in any area of fitness or life. Keep at it and you will see improvement. 

There is no shame in doing what you can. Often making an exercise easier is the fastest way to achieve it, because it allows you to work from where you’re at and make progress from there.

Also remember that hypertrophy (muscle development) and strength are closely related, and that high rep exercises build muscle mass that allow you to achieve harder low-rep strength moves. So do not forgo your basic high rep exercises once you begin progressing to harder exercises! High rep exercises also build endurance adaptations that are specifically valuable to combat sports, through vascularity and metabolic capabilities of the muscle tissue.