CONVICT CONDITIONING by Paul Wade

• There IS a freedom that cannot be taken from you—whatever little box you may be stuck in. And that’s the freedom to cultivate the magnificence of your own body and mind, regardless of external environment.
• The average gym junkie today is all about appearance, not ability.
• The goal of being strong and in peak shape is survival.
• Calisthenics is basically the art of using the body’s own weight and qualities of inertia as a means of physical development.
• Calisthenics was never seen as an endurance training method by the ancients—it was primarily understood as a strength training system.
• Remember, plate-loading barbells and dumbbells weren’t even invented until the twentieth century. Before this innovation, the vast majority of the world’s most muscular upper bodies were developed by hand-balancing and work on the horizontal bar.
• To this day, prisoners all over the world still train using old school calisthenics.
• What most trainees need in order to really psychologically invest some energy in old school calisthenics is a good dose of reality. They need to know the differences between the unproductive, costly and damaging new methods of working out and the productive, free and safe arts of progressive bodyweight training—“traditional” arts that will become tomorrow’s cutting edge.
• Even a short way into their career, virtually all of those involved in intense, competitive sports find themselves held together by painkillers, cortisone, tranquilizers and other analgesic and relaxant chemicals which allow their joints to (again, temporarily) cope with the unnatural stresses of training and competing.
• It’s difficult to think of anything more futile, depressing and tedious than the cardio machine section of a modern gym.
• I applaud anyone who gets off the couch to go out and train, but just take a look at the results of the average person who goes to the gym.
• Ninety percent of those who join a gym quit within two months due to lack of results.
• Like so many things in our modern, money-driven world, the vision most people have been peddled regarding what they “need” to get in shape, is a big lie. It’s a scam. You don’t need all these products and extras to reach the pinnacle of strength and fitness.
• Bodyweight Training Requires Very Little Equipment
• Bodyweight Training Develops Useful, Functional Athletic Abilities
• In nature, the human body doesn’t need to move barbells or dumbbells around. Before it can move anything external
• Bodyweight Training Maximizes Strength
• Bodyweight Training Protects the Joints and Makes Them Stronger—for Life
• One of the major problems with modern forms of strength and resistance training is the damage they do to the joints.
• Bodybuilding movements primarily target the muscles, which adapt much faster than the joints; this means that the more muscular and advanced a bodybuilder becomes, the worse the problem gets.
• Bodyweight Training Quickly Develops the Physique to Perfection
• The practice of modern calisthenics mainly builds endurance and a little aerobic toning, but it does virtually nothing for the physique. Old school calisthenics on the other hand, will pack slabs of muscle onto any frame, and take the physique to its optimal development via the shortest route possible.
• Bodyweight Training Normalizes and Regulates Your Body Fat Levels
• Conventional bodybuilding is conducive to overeating.
• Because the majority of amateur lifters are not on large doses of steroids, their metabolisms just aren’t powerful enough to turn all those extra calories into muscle. The end result is that most guys become over-nourished and chubby when they begin lifting weights seriously.
• Weight-training and the psychology of overeating go hand in hand.
• Nobody ever became better at calisthenics by bulking up into a big fat pig.
• Convict Conditioning is based around six types of movements—the “Big Six.”
• As any competent weight-training coach will tell you, there are thousands of exercises you can do to train your muscles; but actually, a really good routine only requires a handful of big, basic exercises.
• Learning to do high reps is fine. But as explained in chapter 2, just adding reps to your pushups or pullups will add stamina but very little strength and muscle.
• There are ten steps for each of the movements of the Big Six; pushups, pullups, squats, leg raises, bridges and handstand pushups.
• Knowledge is power.
• knowledge is power, and is jealously guarded inside prison, like all useful possessions.
• In prison, you either learn to train yourself or you fail.
• From the moment you begin Convict Conditioning—today!—your ultimate goal must be to finally perfect the Master Steps. Not just one or two of them, either—all of them! It’s so important, I’m gonna say it again: Your ultimate goal must be to perfect all six of the Master Step exercises.
• The pushup is the ultimate upper body exercise. It generates strength, builds muscle, develops powerful tendons and trains the upper body pressing muscles to work in coordination with the midsection and the lower body. No other exercise in the world can achieve all these things.
• Pushups dynamically develop the network of pressing muscles around the torso, strongly working the pec major, anterior deltoid and pec minor.
• In reality, everybody’s “perfect” technique will be slightly different. This is purely due to different body types—variations in limb length, relative strength, body fat ratio and injury history all play subtle roles.
• When you move explosively, you inevitably rely on momentum during some portion of the movement. If momentum is doing the work, it means your muscles aren’t.
• I advise that you do the majority of your pushups with your palm or palms flat on the floor.
• Fingertip pushups strengthen the hands and forearms and are a useful addition to your routine, particularly if you are also doing a lot of grip work.
• In all strength training, progression is the name of the game. In terms of muscle heft and power, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got—no matter how many reps you mindlessly add.
• Wall pushups are the first step of the ten step series required for complete mastery of the pushup family of movements.
• Incline pushups should be done at 45 degree angle.
• Kneeling pushups are Step 3 in the pushup series.
• Close pushups are as old as the hills. They’re a vitally important exercise in the pushup series, but are often overlooked in favor of flashier techniques like plyometric (clapping) pushups and decline pushups.
• The one-arm pushup when performed with pure form, is the gold standard of chest and elbow power, and it’s an impressive sight to see.
• Without doubt, the true master of the one-arm pushup is a rare beast. Make sure you become one of this endangered species.
• Only one thing’s for sure—grit your teeth and put the work in, and you’ll achieve where others fail.
• Although the development of endurance is an interesting and satisfying sideline, I’m a big believer that bodyweight training should be first and foremost a strength discipline. Increasing your reps will improve endurance, but after you hit double figures it won’t do very much for strength.
• Dips and bench dips are not true pushup movements, but they strongly work many of the same pressing muscles.
• Raising the feet makes the exercise harder by transferring a greater proportion of the bodyweight through the hands. Because of the increased angle, this movement effects the shoulders and upper portions of the chest more intensely than the prone pushup.
• Clapping pushups add speed and are an excellent addition to your routine, once in a while. They can lead to injury however, so work into them slowly and don’t even attempt them until you have at least mastered uneven pushups.
• In an average gym, you’ll see only a few individuals doing hard leg training.
• The real strength of an athlete lies in his hips and legs, not his upper body and arms.
• Upper body strength is important in many athletic motions, but if that strength isn’t founded on a powerful lower body, it’s totally useless.
• Most athletic movements are lower body based, and it goes without saying that these movements rely largely on leg strength. Upper body involvement is relatively minimal.
• The best way to develop truly powerful, athletic legs is to use the fewest exercises—provided they work as many leg muscles as possible. The ideal would be to use only a single exercise—as long as you could find an exercise that dynamically works all the muscles of the lower body.
• By squatting I basically mean lowering the torso by bending the three major pairs of joints in the lower body; the hips, knees and ankles.
• Without doubt, single-leg squatting beats barbell squatting—hands down.
• I’m a big believer that you need to squat throughout your entire athletic career—it’s one of the few really invaluable exercises.
• Thinking in terms of sitting rather than squatting can sometimes help athletes descend more naturally, because it facilitates correct hip positioning—which is a fancy way of saying the butt should stick out.
• Needing to elevate the heels has nothing to do with balance or body structure, and everything to do with lack of ankle mobility and inflexibility of the Achilles’ tendon.
• Stretch your calves out until you can squat without assistance.
• Full squats are the classic bodyweight leg exercise, used productively the world over for many thousands of years.
• Close squats have all the benefits of full squats, but with an amplified effect on the quadriceps.
• Uneven squats are the first big step towards mastering unilateral squats.
• The one-leg squat is the king of all squatting movements—in fact, it is the ultimate lower body exercise, period.
• Once you master the one-leg squat, take a little time to build up your reps. This is good advice that should be followed for all the Master Steps. The ability to perform multiple strict reps guarantees muscular fitness and control.
• Big figures look impressive, but in reality they are often associated with injury. All serious powerlifters are constantly plagued by knee and back problems.
• Don’t be misled by the idea that strength is everything. For a prison athlete, function is everything.
• Lunges are a classic squat substitute.
• Squatting develops muscular size and strength. But to be able to unleash this strength quickly, it’s helpful to incorporate some plyometric work into your leg training once in a while.
• Perhaps the most focused form of plyometric training is jumping. Jumping is natural, safe, and can be done virtually anywhere.
• Whether on stairs or a hill, carrying your bodyweight quickly upwards is incredibly demanding on your energy systems.
• The best—and safest—exercise to build a powerful upper back is the humble pullup.
• Master the pullup, and your lats will expand like crazy; the muscles around your shoulder blades will take on the appearance of coiled snakes, and your traps will get thicker and harder than iron girders.
• If you really want to unleash your full biceps strength and size potential, forget the curls. Get doing pullups.
• Doing pullups until your chin passes the bar is best.
• Despite what some bodybuilding pundits tell you about the motion, you should never relax into a full stretch in the bottom position of the pullup. Doing so will take the stress off your muscles and place them on the ligaments which hold your joints together. This is not what you want.
• The shoulders are ball-and-socket joints. This kind of joint is incredibly versatile in terms of motion, but that versatility comes at a price—increased vulnerability.
• Pullup movements should be performed using muscle strength rather than momentum.
• The human body is remarkably adaptive, and if you pay attention you’ll find you can do pullups almost anywhere—from a rafter, a tree branch, a rugged heating pipe, even the edge of a roof or balcony
• The human body evolved to pull itself up well—a man who cannot do pullups cannot be considered to be truly strong.
• I’m a big believer that every student of bodyweight training should have at least one explosive movement in their arsenal for each bodypart.
• A dynamite midsection that actually makes the whole body stronger.
• The crunch is totally impotent to add any real athletic function, muscle or strength.
• The idea that you need to perform multiple exercises to properly train your abdomen is another modern myth.
• The abdominal muscles are attached to the sternum at one end, and the pelvis at the other end. These muscles contract along their entire length evenly—you can’t contract one end more than the other, no matter how you move.
• In the old days of training—before the nineteen-seventies—two exercises used to vie for the title of “ultimate” midsection exercise. These exercises were sit-ups and leg raises.
• Sit-ups and leg raises work the midsection in similar ways, but from opposite directions; in sit-ups, the abdomen contracts to lift the torso; in leg raises, the abdomen contracts to lift the lower limbs.
• just because an exercise is simple, it doesn’t follow that it’s easy.
• Sometimes, bad backs associated with leg raises are actually caused by strength imbalances—the abdomen is stronger than the lower back. To eliminate this imbalance, include exercises in your program that work the spinal muscles. Squats will do this, as will bridging.
• Muscle definition is the result of leanness—absence of fat. Fat loss occurs proportionately over the entire body. You can’t lose fat from one area just by working it excessively, so don’t waste your time.
• All high-rep twists will do is irritate your spine.
• Leg raises are much easier to do if you swing—use a little explosive momentum at the bottom of the movement. This is not what you want. If you can’t do your techniques “clean” go back to earlier steps until you become powerful enough to use the correct form.
• the next day, from sternum down to pelvis. The real drawback to sit-ups is that you adapt to them quite quickly, so to increase strength people are usually forced to add weight.
• If I had to name the most important strength-building exercise in the world, it would be the bridge. Nothing else even comes close.
• The most important organ of the human body isn’t a muscle. It isn’t even the heart or lungs. It’s the brain. The brain controls these secondary organs, just as it controls virtually every other structure and process in the human body.
• The second most important organ of the human body is the spinal cord, because the spinal cord is the main means by which the brain communicates with the rest of the body.
• The spinal cord is a slim but incredibly complex tube of nerves, passing from the lower brainstem down the back of the body. No matter how powerful or healthy the brain is, if the spinal cord is damaged, it cannot communicate with the body and is effectively useless.
• The safety of the spinal cord is dependent upon the integrity of the spinal column. This in turn largely depends upon the health of the network of ligaments and muscles which support it. Once the spinal column is formed, the best way you can protect your spinal cord and keep it healthy is to maintain strong spinal erectors.
• The more athletic movements you make, the more risk to your spine. The stronger your spinal muscles are, the more punishment your spine can take and bounce back smiling.
• The stronger your spinal muscles, the better you will be at practically any athletic motion you can name.
• Bridging is a simple technique—you just arch your back off the floor by pushing up with your limbs—but if you bridge regularly you can eliminate the host of back problems associated with abuse of the human body.
• Human beings are at a spinal disadvantage to begin with; standing on two feet was the worst move our species ever made.
• The discs in your back are made of cartilage, and like all cartilage, they have very little blood flow. Instead, they receive their nutrition from liquid in the joints, called synovial fluid.
• Bridging is the ultimate exercise for the spinal muscles.
• Bridging bulletproofs the spinal column in preparation for heavy, explosive, or unexpected movements, allowing you to train harder, heavier, and faster.
• Wrestlers—as with many things—have been way ahead of the pack with their understanding of the importance of a strong back. As a result, bridging is a part of the basic training curriculum for all wrestlers, at all levels.
• Tragically, shoulder pain and strength training methods seem destined to go together like ham and eggs.
• Unfortunately, although the word is well-used, many trainees aren’t really aware of what the rotator cuff is, or what it does. For a start, the rotator cuff is not a muscle. It is a group of muscles which stabilize the humerus, the arm bone, in the shoulder socket.
• By the time weight-lifters have reached an advanced level, virtually all of them live with shoulder pain.
• Pain is not something we have to learn to live with as a result of our training.
• Perhaps the best way to understand how the human body is naturally meant to move is to look at how humans instinctively move.
• The most efficient way to warm up is with two to four progressively harder higher rep sets of the movement you are going to be performing for your work sets.
• Hard training is important, but patience is important too.
• There is a damn good reason why you should proceed slowly and methodically through any training program. The reason has to do with generating training momentum.
• Putting it as simply as possible, the harder you train, the better your results. Because of this, a lot of trainees assume that the quickest way to get big and strong is to work as hard as they possibly can. Unfortunately—particularly for the average natural athlete—training super-hard has its drawbacks.
• Once your joints and muscles are ready for it, you should always train hard.
• Working hard is the key to achieving your goals.
• Training to total “failure” is a bad idea in calisthenics—you should always leave a little energy in your limbs so you can control your body. Training to failure, especially on inverse exercises (like handstand pushups), or when you are hanging above the ground (as in leg raises and pullups) is totally unsafe.
• If you have an injury or the beginnings of an injury, you can often still train—in fact in most cases you should still train. But you need to do so in a way that brings more blood to the injured area and heals it.
• The more advanced the exercises become, the more they depend upon a good level of proportionate strength. Muscular bodyweight is no barrier to success. Body fat is. If you are having trouble moving up in your exercises, focus on losing flab over a few months.
• When you finish your training—or a soon as possible afterwards—write down what you did. Before the next session, briefly review your notes, so you’ll know what you need to match or beat this time.
• Writing your workouts down allows you to analyze the efficacy of your conditioning methods, in both the short and long term.
• Writing about your exercise sessions is an act of education in self-coaching. It forces you to think about the structure of your own workouts, teaching you a great deal about exercise theory in general.
• Training must be progressive, and keeping track of workouts in black-and-white definitely helps the athlete maintain a progressive edge.
• Muscles adapt quicker than joints.
• Be aggressive, yes. But master it—learn to channel it. You need to cultivate a focused, controlled aggression.
• The Big Six Movements:
• Push-ups
• Squats
• Leg Lifts
• Bridging
• Hand-stand Push-ups
• Pull-ups