Calisthenics and AAS

[tenpoundsleft]

I distinguish between a personal trainer and a coach. I have the latter. I believe most personal trainers to be undereducated and basically worthless. A coach on the other hand can be a great thing especially when you're powerlifting or competing in bodybuilding. You need an objective eye at times unless you're used to and experienced in Accurately and honestly critiquing yourself. My coach is worth it and then some.

My PT is ex-military and has military and civilian credentials - he's put together a good program for me - it keeps me motivated, mixes it up. And gets me to the gym.

About calisthenics - so impressive what they do, but just like gymnastics, it feels like it is for little (short) guys. Seems like all the famous guys are 5' 6 to maybe 5' 9"? I'm 6' even and clearly, the taller and heavier you are, the pivot points work against you, mass scales at the 3rd power, strength only scales at the 2nd power versus height.

Any taller (6' +) guys doing calisthenics well?

 

[showstoppa]

Your right it is harder being taller but it also means as your strength increases you will be able to progress more then a shorter guy because you will be able to strain the muscle more do the leverages. By progress i mean abioity to build muscle. Your advancement in the movements will be slower for sure though.


As far as the op goes. The key to calisthenics is the same as weight training....progressive overload. How you do that is just reducing the leverage you use to do the movements. For example basic pushup advancing to incline pushup to ring Pushups to weight pushup to weighted bar pushups to incline ring pushup the weighted ring pushups.

Dips would be bar dips to weighted bar dips to ring dips to weighted ring dips.

Inverted bar rows to feet elevated inverted bar rows to ring rows to elevated ring rows to weighted feet elevated bar rows to weighted ring rows to weighted ring elevated ring rows.

Gymnasticbodies, overcoming gravity, greyskull lp and dinosaur bodyweight training and convict conditioning do a really good job going over these.

I believe bodyweight training is an amazing compliment to weight training. I really like the frequency method taught by greyskull and grease the groove method by paval. I prefer to do these through out the day to way below max sets. So i might do 10 sets of 30 pushups and 10 sets of Chinups 10 reps each. Once i can complete certain goals in those lifts i move to the next level. This allows me to add tons of volume for hypothrophy while not messing with my strength training and allows me to get lots of volume in with the weights also.

I also like to take a break from lots of volume sometimes and do 531 just main lifts with the gymnasticbodies routines. Allows me to recover and i feel awesome while doing this.

 

[tenpoundsleft]

No I haven't seen or heard of that guy. Most vegans I've come across have left a bad taste in my mouth as they want to claim some sort of moral high ground for their diet and continually try and prove how much better they are than anyone else. Bc of that I go out of my way to avoid vegans for the most part. There are exceptions obviously as I've met some cool ass vegans but most of my experiences with them have been bad.

May I ask what your current stats are? Im curious what your goals are too as they might be able to be achieved without the risk of AAS use and everything that comes with it. It's your choice if you use them or not but I'd be irresponsible if I at least didn't bring this up to you.

+1 vegans are sanctimonious pricks, and sickly-looking too, most of them. It's not a diet, it's a weird cult.

 

[tenpoundsleft]

I've never hired a personal trainer. Do you feel they are worth it?

I want to become a personal trainer eventually.

I use one once a week, makes it a killer cardio workout too, it really keeps you going, with someone setting up stations ahead of you and pushing you along.

I've found that I learn a lot of new approaches with the various trainers, keeps it fresh.

And it gets my ass to the gym at 6:30 when I'm paying for it.

Just bought a weekly group session for the year for my wife and two daughters (13 and 14) - nice to not have to be the bad cop. And gets me to the gym too, since I drive them. Bonus!