[ZenNode]

Check out these pushup variations for throwing into your workout routines:

Maltese Push ups

Pseudo Planche Push ups

[buituyenjr]

sticky sticky
and... butt muscle O___O never thought that LOL, must try to work and woo the ladies

[yusef]

Great post man, especially the calisthenics bit.
However, you wrote about not wanting american footballers' muscle size.
Any exercise in the 10-15 rep range is building both endurance and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. These exercises increase size of the non-functional non-contractional portions of muscle.

There is no such thing as 'tone'. Muscle' tone' is body fat and its ratio to mass.
If you want endurance, work with higher reps. If you want strength, work with lower reps.

[ApprenticeBBoy]

Alot of people seem to be asking about how many reps. Someone earlier said he got different opinions from like 8 different BBoys on whether to do 6 reps, 7-5, or 15-25 I believe were the numbers, or close.

Basically here's the break down.

These all assume you are lifting a weight you fail on with the final rep. For instance, you don't curl 10 pounds 5 times and say you're building power. You need a weight that on your 5th rep, you either can't do a 6th, or you fail the 6th.

6 or less reps(some people even do 1 or 2 rep "sets". It depends on your goals)

You're building burst power, for very short periods. This is the equivalent of, say, popping from a turtle freeze to a hand stand. It's a big burst of power, but not something you can do over and over. You don't go turtle, hand stand, turtle. hand stand 20 times. Another example is when you see Hong 10 go from his Halo freeze, and fires himself up onto 1 hand(not sure of the name of that freeze, or move. Maybe someone can help me out there.)

These are not muscle building exercises. They are burst power exercises. Yes, you'll build muscle, but not as much as you would doing the 6-10 reps. For proof, look at your olympic weight lifters. These guys overhead press insane amounts of weight, but they, in many cases, are smaller than the guys you see on shows like Bodyshaping or in muscle magazines. They do this by training to lift that weight only once.

6-10 reps is the major range for muscle building. It will also build "power/endurance" to an extent. Basically, your endurance to hold a reasonably heavy weight. This would be your range for stuff like certain freezes, or handstands, and such where you're holding your whole body weight, and you want to be able to do it for maybe 30 seconds.

15+ reps(the higher you go, the more you're working endurance) are for endurance. Examples of this would be footwork. You do high rep shoulder and arm exercises and it's gonna let you do footwork without your shoulders and arms tiring so easily.

So for BBoying, all ranges are useful. So what do you do? Pyramids are a great way to work fully. Pyramids are 5 or 6 sets starting with light weight, high reps, working down to high weight, low reps. So say you were doing curls. You might do a set like this:

20lbs - 15 reps
25lbs - 12 reps
30lbs - 8 reps
40lbs - 6 reps
45lbs - 3 reps
50lbs - 2 reps

Now you just lifted in all ranges. Keep a journal if you do these though. As I said before, you want to lift to failure, and when doing this many sets, and changing reps so much, it's gonna take some experimenting to know how much weight you need to add to achieve a certain number of reps.

Well, I'm short on time, so I'm out. But hopefully this clears up some of the how many reps questions.

[[Sikk]]

I thought in pyramids you were supposed to start with the highest weight and then go down to do more reps.

[ApprenticeBBoy]

It's possible people do them that way, but I've never seen or heard of them done that way. The reason being, in my opinion, is that as your workout goes on, usually your muscles aren't capable of lifting more times. They lift less times before failing.

For instance, if I lift a weight 10 times the first set, and keep the weight, the next set, I might only get 8 reps before failing, and the set after that, I might only get 6. So, to me, it would seem more logical to work from light weight to heavy weight and drop in number of reps, rather than the other way around.

The other thing is the first couple sets, with high reps and low weight act as a warm up as well. Let's say your max bench press is 200 pounds. You don't walk into a gym, throw 200 on the bar and press it. That's gonna eventually get you hurt. You might start at 150. Then 180. Then 200.

I keep logs of how much I lift and how many times, so the next week I know exactly how much I have to lift to make a gain. For instance, if I do 3 sets of bench presses at 150x10reps, 180x10reps, 200x8reps, I know the next week I either need to lift 210 lbs my last set, or I need to lift 200 but get at least 9 or 10 reps for it to be a gain. That's what I aim for every week. If I failed to lift a weight 10 times, I use the same weight next week, until I lift 10 times. If I lift 10 times, the next week I add weight.

But despite knowing for a fact what my max lift is, I don't start at that weight. I always start lighter and work my way up to avoid injury. I know my ultimate goal for that workout may be to end at 210lbs, but I don't start there, I end there.

The other reason for doing pyramids from low weight to high weight is called "pre-exhaustion" which is when you work a muscle so that it's already tired before you throw on the heavy weight.

What happens when you lift to failure is that you recruit muscle fibers that may have been sitting around being lazy in order to get that last lift. So through pre-exhaustion, your primary muscle fibers are already spent, and you force the secondary ones to get involved. If you start heavy, then you just use the primary strong ones, and you never force your body to use the secondary fibers because you lightened up the load before they were forced to lift.

Just to support that, anyone who has lifted weights knows that the first 6 weeks results in major strength gains, despite not having noticable muscle mass increases. The reason for this is because you're teaching your body to get the most out of the muscle it has. Your brain begins sending stronger signals to the muscles, and begins using more of the muscle fibers to do the lifting. Basically the muscle doesn't become bigger, just more efficient.

[rezboy08]

oy mates! I just wanna say great site. love everything about it. are any of u from az? jus moved hea, and lookin for some events. c ya

[[Sikk]]

Check the Hook Up and Event Listing sections.

[milkshot]

Holy crap, great guide man o-o.
Let's get someone to sticky this asap!

Might want to fix the broken youtube link though.

[onefutui2e]

you should include a strength/power lifting routine. it trains your brain to recruit more muscle fibers during a lift. basically, choose HEAVY weights. like, a weight you can only do 5-6 reps of. some people go for as low as 1-2, but i recommend 5-6 so that your muscles get at least SOME workout.

the idea behind this is that we don't use all our muscle fibers efficiently. by forcing ourselves to lift heavy weights, our brain begins to recruit more of them to help us lift. it's kind of common sense. if you live medium weights, your current muscle fiber utilization is probably enough to lift it, and your brain will just kind chill out.

keep in mind, when you do this, you will probably be resting longer intervals between sets. this is normal. i took up to 5 minutes in between sets. this is actually beneficial, because short rest periods will cause your muscles to fatigue more and tear more, which will cause growth (something you kind of don't want as a bboy).

i used to strength train a lot. with a right diet (you can't eat TOO much, because you're not training the muscles as hard) and everything, you can get A LOT stronger without getting much bigger. but keep in mind, your strength will go up, but you won't have much endurance =P

[bboyjwonder]

this info is real helpful

[Pbmunster]

just wondering something.

i have weights and everything but no bench.

how can i get the same benefits without a bench?

[JKL]

Use your brain. Put the weights on your back and do pushups with it, put it on a book bag and do chinups/pullups.

[Pbmunster]

damn thanks?

[[Sikk]]

You could go the ghetto route and build a bench. Use a piece of plywood or something about the same size (length/width) of a regular bench, and elevate it with anything you have. If you have other pieces to use then you can hammer/nail them on and you're set.