Calisthenics: High Rep Gory Glory
What is it about cals that just hits all the right spots? If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll give you a little bit of my experience.
From 2007-2015 I served with the Seabees, combat construction battalions, and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. While I eventually made heavy use of barbells, kettlebells and odd objects, such as heavy sandbags, I got my start in calisthenics.
In boot camp I used to get in trouble so I could knock out more push-ups and burpees. I could keep up better than anyone when I got my reps in.
In Seabee A-Scool I led 0400 fitness regimen and always opted to act as road guard during runs. I started to develop amazing muscle mass when pushing my limits.
Once assigned to NMCB 25/26 I vied to become Command Fitness Leader. I always opted to seek higher states of strength & conditioning and felt compelled to motivate and share what I learned with my peers. My strength, power and speed skyrocketed. I went from 110lbs to 150lbs through force of will and up to a gallon of raw milk each day!
When preparing my team for Iraq, we would routinely endure brutal high repetitions sessions, one day we did around 2,000 squats and variations!
Many of the special forces operators I trained were getting injured with CrossFit and barbell work in general. I put them on a high rep regimen and it blew their minds.
Actually it blew my mind as well basis some of these guys were just on another level of mental ability and could push themselves beyond what I even thought possible.
Not only did a few of these guys get MORE muscular than they’d ever been lifting heavy weights, but they never got injured on these routines.
In fact, they just kept moving better! While the majority of the operators doing the same old weightlifting routine were essentially useless by 30, the guys who stuck with high rep cals just kept on getting better and better!
Even before the military; I grew up as a scrapper, always the smallest kid but most willing to go all the way, regardless of danger or pain. I was constantly being bullied so I learned from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies!
Knuckle push-ups, rope climbing (my parents put a 20’ tall rope in the backyard and I’d climb it every day with no legs!), pull-ups, tree climbing, sprinting, and punching various surfaces conditioned me to hold my own against kids twice my size.
Calisthenics was MADE for me. You can push yourself beyond your perceived limits and do it relatively safely. I’m talking about super high rep basics and they can heal you!
As a matter of fact, whenever I get an injury I always come back to this methodology. It’s difficult to describe exactly what is going on with the insane spectrum of benefits you get but I’ll give it my best shot!
Let’s start with PREhabilitation. This can also be viewed as ”tendon conditioning” since the tendons (the SINEWS) are far more impactful on overall athleticism and capability than muscle. The tendons are best prepared with exceedingly high repetitions!
In that vein, REhabilitation is also magical with cals. When you’re injured the affected area (and the entire chain of weak points) needs blood flow, heat, nutrients, synovial fluid and hyaluronic acid as well as remodeling in short and extended ranges. Weight movements check all these boxes!
The best way to heal is to never get injured in the first place and something about doing high reps (I’m talking 30-100 or more at a time) is that this time under tension floods connective tissues with blood, saturating weak points with nutrients. By doing this work you will minimize risk of injury. You’re keeping the joints lubricated constantly as well!
Nervous system regulation. The constant stimulus of moving your body through space activates the vestibular system and creates a tonic environment for the nerve ganglia. This makes your body move as a unit and more efficiently overall.
Heart and lung health! This one is pretty obvious. All the reps just flush blood around the body and rewind the clock on your old bones. The heart becomes so calibrated that your stress levels reduce even in times of emergency. Your lungs become more efficient and so much stronger. You can just go for days!
Muscle mass. Now this one is only evident to those who have put in a lot of time and pushed past their limits repeatedly. We like to believe that 1-5 reps is for strength, 8-12 is for muscle and anything above 20 is just pointless cardio.
That seems true until you do cals the way I teach them. When we have a leg day, for instance, you may have to put up 45, 60, 90 or more minutes of work and most of it is time under tension. Excessive? Not if you want muscle and strength.
Here’s what I think may be going on when we go to the extremes. Let’s look at the humble push-up… if you weigh 200lbs then it’s almost akin to bench pressing 135lbs. How could such light weight do anything other than give you endurance?
Well, you have Type I (slow-twitch) muscle fibers which are fatigue resistant and used for things like submaximal effort for long periods of time.
You also have Type IIa (fast-twitch oxidative) fibers used for middle effort and are like a combination of Type I & Type IIb.
Then you have Type IIb (fast-twitch glycolitic) which are the most potent, “shotgun” muscle which dump intensity in short window.
Honorable mention goes to Type IIx fibers which are thought to be able to adapt to a variety of situations but gears more towards explosiveness.
Now, when you’re doing push-ups for many many reps you’re in that Type I realm. After a while you begin to burn and ache. You must keep going. You begin to fail, don’t stop yet… now you’re using some of your Type IIa fibers.
Keep going to where you’re barely able to move but putting 100% intensity and effort into it! You’re passing through those Type IIx fibers and into the Type IIb!
To finish the job you come up on your knees then control the negative slowly until you just give out. You have properly exhausted all your fibers and, in doing so, you have increased the demand of your body to prime your nervous system for more endurance, more strength and more power…
It is not uncommon for serious calisthenics practitioners to bench press 315lbs even at light bodyweights with minimal to no bench press experience!
To further expand on this idea, consider all the other benefits that go along with training like this:
There’s little to no need for warm-ups.
The high reps build endurance, strong heart and healthy lungs.
This endurance helps you recover from maximal effort much quicker.
You condition your tendons to elite levels of dexterity, reducing injury risk.
The sustained pain and effort level tempers your mind to withstand all sorts of other difficult things in life.
Endorphin release is similar to the “runners high”.
You build muscle… a TON of muscle!
All the initial reps warm you up enough that when you begin to fail you can actually push yourself past your previous limits relatively safely!
You feel GOOD all the time!
I could go on but the main point is just how contrary this methodology is to everything you hear these days.
Most fitness professionals would have you believe the “science is settled” but the reality is there’s a whole other world past the ice wall…
Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the drawbacks. The main one being a potentially higher training time. If you have a low tolerance for pain then it will take you a much longer time to build enough volume to make significant changes to your body. This is fine if you have the time.
Of course you can nullify this, even with the legs, by just being able to Spartan your way through fatigue but this also has a higher injury risk. The legs, in particular, really need an inordinate amount of volume to grow so it may be easier for most to do, my favorite, 20 rep squats with barbell back squats. This is a solid substitute. You only need one set.
The weight isn’t heavy enough to compress the spine too much and allows you to get a bunch of quality reps before things start to get dicey. It’s heavy enough, however, to create and unbelievable change in an exceptionally short period of time.
Another drawback is you’ll be limited by your creativity. If you’re not able to think on the fly then this will seem impossible to train every muscle group sufficiently.
Take, for example, the lower back. My favorite exercise is back raises on a 45* extension bench but what a joke a when you don’t have access to one?
Do supermen exercise
Put a sandbag across your legs and hang off the bed of your truck
Hang your legs off a bench and hold onto it while doing reverse hypers
Do high rep hip thrusts
Do single leg deadlifts
Lift a sandbag to shoulder
There’s an infinite amount of creative exercises to work your low back properly but it can be difficult to figure out which ones to try, how many reps, etc.
That’s why you must be willing to experiment and just put in work on SOMETHING, no matter what it is you put in a maximal effort. That’s how you change.
Lastly, certain muscle groups may end up not developing as much as you’d like. Usually this is really just the calves, maybe the low back and possibly quads if you’re not putting in the work or the reps.
This is where something like a sandbag lift once a week or kettlebell swings / snatches can help. Even barbell deadlift variations work well.
Remember, there’s no need to be dogmatic here. Do what WORKS for you and your goals. Calisthenics is not for the feint of heart. You have to have GUTS to do this sort of training. It’s worth it, in my option.
If you want to begin the journey into unknown realms of hardcore cals then shoot me a message, new 6-week challenge is coming soon to the Sinew App!
Hard bodies, soft hearts!
