Making Bodyweight Workouts Fun

by Ryan Murdock

“Bodyweight workouts are boring! I’d rather eat nails than do another hundred situps or burpees!”

How many times have you heard such complaints? Or better yet, how many times have you uttered them yourself?

As humans we thrive on variety: in our meals, in our lives—and in our workouts. The surest way to kill someone’s enthusiasm is to give them a program that repeats the same couple exercise for hundreds of repetitions, week after agonizing week.

Bodyweight exercise doesn’t have to be like that—at least it doesn’t if you train the CST way.

CST Specifically Programs Variety

The Circular Strength Training® approach to bodyweight workouts specifically programs variety as one of its main training goals. Variety is valued, but there’s nothing random about it. Allow me to explain…

Most exercise systems tend to manipulate the same few variables: number of reps, number of sets, or the weight being used. A few others also manipulate rest time, compressing the rest between sets so the body begins to recover within a shorter period of time. To the best of my knowledge, CST is the only fitness system which specifically manipulates the variable of movement sophistication.

Any time you change one of these variables, the perceived difficulty of the exercise will increase. As you probably know, Fitness 101 says that we cause adaptation in the body by introducing novel demands. The more you work with sophisticating your movement, the faster your body will begin to adapt to it. But this approach doesn't just result in superior condition or greater strength. You also get better at assimilating new skills quickly. Your body becomes capable of performing increasingly complex movements, with ease. You also develop your attributes (strength, endurance, etc) in all dimensions. In other words, you become more capable of undertaking any endeavour, whether in sport or life.

How Can I Sophisticate Basic Calisthenics?

Let’s take a look at the pushup. This is a straightforward heaving movement in which you lie on your stomach and press the earth away with your palms. Yes, it’ll result in greater muscular development. But the problem is that it doesn’t carry over very well to many real-world activities. How often do you press things away with both hands, especially things that are directly in front of you? We tend more often to move asymmetrically: pushing with one arm while rotating and pulling with the other, for example, or pushing in odd directions.

So let’s first sophisticate the pushup by making it asymmetrical. Rather than just do the obvious one-arm pushup, we’ll also add rotation.

Try a few of these, then work them into your program until you’re up to a base of 5 sets of 5 reps (one left and one right equals one rep) before moving on.

Beyond Pushups

The CST Screwing Arm Press Up is just the beginning. After establishing this asymmetrical and rotational movement pattern, I would next take a closer look at the wrist. This is typically a weak area for most people. How can I increase the tensile strength of that joint? How many ranges does it move through, and how can I safely and incrementally increase the strength of the wrist in each of these ranges?

Note: when zooming in on the wrist it’s never my intention to take the bodybuilding approach of exercising “muscle groups” in isolation (which I tend to think of as training a bag of spare parts). Rather, my goal is to come up with movements that integrate the entire body while stressing the wrist in interesting ways. I also want to train slightly outside the scope and depth of my normal movement range. This provides a “safety valve” for when movements deviate from the expected. “Injury-proofing” like that can go a long way.

The following two promo clips show examples of how I’ve sophisticated the CST Screwing Arm Press Up.

Beyond Pushups Trailer 1
Beyond Pushups Trailer 2

Join the Revolution

By now you should have a pretty good idea of what it means to alter the training variable of movement sophistication. That’s great and it’s an improvement for sure, but movement sophistication must also have a purpose.

Sophisticating a few random exercises is one thing, but creating a program tailored to meet specific goals is a little more complicated. It’s so complex that it isn’t covered until the CST II (Coach level) instructor’s certification.

Thankfully, you don’t need to understand the methodology to be able to benefit from it. You only have to joint the revolution. No, not the Communist Revolution. Not even the Green Revolution. I’m talking about the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution.

Together with CST Head Coach Adam Steer, I’ve put together an ebook filled with fun and exciting CST bodyweight exercise programs that you can start using right now, with no equipment and no monthly gym fees.

Both Adam and I are overachievers when it comes to product design, and so we weren't content to just throw together a bunch of fun and interesting workouts simply for the sake of variety. No, we'd prefer that you learn something along the way.



We've grouped this first volume into chapters focused on particular training goals: Fat Loss, Functional Hypertrophy, General Athleticism, and more. In the introduction to each chapter we explain how you go about approaching each goal and the reasoning behind our decisions. Those of you who are interested in the theory can study these notes, work through the programs, and keep track of the specific effects on your body as a way of going deeper into CST. And for those of you who simply want to follow along without having to think, you can simply plug and play. The directions are clearly laid out. You have only to begin.



Each individual workout in the book contains 3 to 4 different levels of movement sophistication, so if you were to work through each level of every program you'd have 16 different 28-day training programs, or just under a year and a half of training! By working through these programs you’ll also come to an innate understanding of the concept of purposely sophisticating movement, because your body will own it on a visceral level. Oh, and you’ll see incredible results while doing so.

Bodyweight workouts just got a whole lot more interesting—and a hell of a lot more fun!

If you’re tired of the same old exercise programs, grab two free manifestos revealing our picks for best exercises to incorporate into your bodyweight workouts.  Just enter your name and email address below and you'll immediately receive download instructions for your detailed manifestos and tutorials.

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Comments

[Henri Henell]

Awesome!
Past two weeks has been really busy at work and home, but I have done Bodyweight program with my 11 years old son almost every day - and it's really worth the cost (actually cheap)- We feel ourselves much better - full of energy and smoothness. I'm Physical Therapist and use Bodyweight exercisis with my customers. Really nice extra beside kettlebells and clubbells. Thanks to you Steer and Murdock!

[Adam]

Henri,

Glad you are getting such great results from your bodyweight exercises!! That's awesome that you are sharing the experience with your son.

Cheers,
Adam