"The Naked Warrior" by Pavel Tsatsouline

• Strength is the ability to generate force under given conditions.
• It is a fact: respectable strength can only be built with high-resistance, low-rep exercises that impose high levels of tension on the muscles.
• The Naked Warrior program features only two anywhere-anytime drills: the one-legged squat and the one-arm pushup. These exercises are brutally hard and work the whole body. They are the body-weight equivalents of the powerlifts.
• Strength is built by tensing the muscles harder, not by exhausting them with countless reps.
• High resistance is one of the two requirements of high tension. The other is mental focus on contracting the muscles harder.
• Since strength is a skill, training must be approached as a 'practice', not a 'workout'.
• High resistance can be achieved without heavy weights by deliberately imposing poor leverage and unfavorable weight distribution between the limbs.
• The best strength gains are made by focusing on a limited number of high-resistance, low-rep, full-body exercises.
• How lifters really train:
• limited number of 'big' exercises
• multiple sets of up to 5 reps, never to failure and with plenty of rest between sets
• total focus on technique and tension
• continuous variation in volume and intensity
• There is nothing magical or mysterious about your body-weight versus iron that suddenly changes all the laws of strength training.
• Redistributing your weight is the primary approach to resistance variation you will use with the Naked Warrior drills, but it is not the only one. You will also be manipulating your range of motion in some drills.
• Practicing with an extreme lack of leverage is one of the secrets to gymnasts' super strength.
• How to customize the resistance without changing the weight:
• redistribute your weight between your limbs
• manipulate the range of motion
• train in an unstable environment
• vary the leverage
• say no to the bounce and momentum
• Since the Naked Warrior program is aimed at pure strength, do 5 reps max and select harder variations of the bodyweight exercises.
• The pistol: With your foot flat on the floor, your heel planted, and your free leg held nearly straight out in front of you, descend under complete control until your hamstring touches your calf. Do not bounce; pause for a second and get back up. Be careful not to wrench your knee. Don't let it bow in or extend forward too much.
• Do fewer exercises and pay attention to details.
• Street fighters who have polished one or two moves always dominate black belts who know 10 ways to block a punch.
• You can do lots of things and be mediocre or you can achieve amazing heights through laser-like focus.
• Do fewer exercises better.
• The one-arm pushup: Note that your shoulders must stay parallel to the floor, your chest must almost touch the floor, and your foot may not be resting on its edge but on the ball.
• Then tenser your muscles are, the more strength you will display and build.
• Tension = force
• Strength is a skill.
• One of the most crucial strength skills is 'staying tight'. The emphasis on speed compromises the tension.
• A dirty little secret of bodybuilding is that one of the best ways to build the biceps is with the powerlifting-style wide-grip bench press.
• Make fists and grip the deck with your toes to strengthen your squats.
• In one-arm upper body exercises, fire the gripping muscles of your free hand at the sticking point.
• Tensing your abs will amplify the intensity of the contraction of any muscle in your body.
• Flat abs are strong abs: a sucked in stomach is weak.
• You will not get stronger until you learn to contract your abdominals flat and strong. Doing the following 'back-pressure crunch' will teach you how. Assume the regular crunch position, your knees at 90 degrees and your feet flat on the floor. Now, instead of focusing on crunching up, put all your effort into pressing your lower back down hard.
• Tensing the glutes amplifies any exertion. An effective image is pinching a coin with your cheeks.
• Focus on applying maximum pressure to the deck with your foot when doing the pistol and with your palm when doing the one-arm pushup.
• Everything in your body is interrelated and isolation is a myth.
• Shrugging your shoulders or moving in forward is 'disconnecting' your arm from your powerful torso muscles.
• Loading tension into the muscles before an exertion increases their power. You must learn to brace against resistance the same way you brace against a strike.
• Dead-start exercises are great for teaching yourself higher tension, especially in your weak links.
• Taking controlled strikes to your muscles will teach you to tense them harder.
• Instead of going down by yielding to the gravity, actively pull yourself down while staying braced and tight.
• The stronger your midsection and the more skilled you are at maximizing the intra-abdominal pressure, the stronger you will get.
• Send the pressure into your stomach--not your chest or head.
• Inhale through your nose and into your stomach--and you will be stronger.
• Whenever you can recruit an old skill to a new skill, you will learn a lot faster.
• Never exhale or inhale all the way.
• The five Fs of "Grease the Groove":
• focused
• flawless
• frequent
• fresh
• fluctuating
• The fewer skills you practice, the better you could get.
• Practice must be perfect. Max strength training implies high muscle tension.
• Low reps are specific to max strength.
• The more often you practice, the better you get.
• Practice fresh and stop before your skill starts deteriorating.
• Low reps are easier to recover from. That means more frequent practice. That means more strength.
• Practice variations of the same exercise. It is more effective, more fun, and less likely to develop overuse injuries.
• Precede a strength test with one or two easy days and one day off.
• Use the simple rule of thumb: the more you paid for your shoes, the less suitable they are for strength training.
• Gains do not come from complex routines; they come from simple ones that pay attention to details.