CHAPTER EIGHT
NAKED WARRIOR Q&A
• Are bodyweight exercises superior to exercises with weights?
• Can I get very strong using only bodyweight exercises?
• Should I mix different strength-training tools in my training?
• How can I incorporate bodyweight exercises with kettlebell and barbell training?
• Can the high-tension techniques and GTG system be applied to weights?
• Can the high-tension techniques and GTG system be applied to strength endurance training?
• I can’t help overtraining. What should I do?
• Can I follow the Naked Warrior program on an ongoing basis?
• Can I add more exercises to the Naked Warrior program?
• Will my development be unbalanced from doing only two exercises?
• How should I apply the Naked Warrior techniques to my sport-specific conditioning?
• Where can I learn more about bodyweight-only strength training?
• Low reps and no failure? This training is too easy!
• Will I forget it all the strength techniques in some sort of emergency?
• Isn’t dedicating most of the book to technique too much?
• Power to you, Naked Warrior!
Are bodyweight exercises superior to exercises with weights?
Neither is superior. Various types of resistance have advantages and disadvantages. Here is how the most common ones stack up against each other.
Bodyweight
The calisthenics’ advantage is their accessibility, first and foremost. I could give you a non-scientific pitch about the naturalness of calisthenics or a pseudo-scientific one about open and closed kinetic chains, but I won’t. The primary advantage of bodyweight strength exercises is the fact that you can practice them anywhere and anytime.
Cals enforce a functional bodyweight and a healthy body composition. You could eat yourself into a heart attack yet excel in the bench press. That won’t happen with one-arm pushups. You can’t have a high ratio of strength to bodyweight if you are a fat blob (or a muscle-bound blob, for that matter).
The biggest disadvantage of bodyweight exercising is that this approach doesn’t enable you to perform full-body pulling movements, such as the deadlift, the snatch, or the clean. Such moves are fundamental to training in most sports. While you could develop the muscles of the posterior chain with back bridges, back extensions, and reverse hypers, training the muscles and training the movement are “two big differences,” as they say in the Russian hard town of Odessa.
The authoritative Russian Boxing Yearbook recommends doing explosive snatches with a weight equal to the boxer’s bodyweight. Frank Shamrock said it all: “What the clean does is it builds explosiveness from your toes up and that’s really where we’re starting from in MMA [mixed martial arts]. Everything starts from the toes and extends to the point of the hands. It’s more of a continuity thing; if you can get your body to go rip and blow that energy up, you can focus that energy in other places. Your body will remember that and be strong through that motion. It’s very similar to punching.”
Barbells
A barbell enables you to lift very heavy, which is just plain fun. There is nothing like the rush of locking out a bar-bending deadlift.
Apart from the testosterone bull, a true advantage of the barbell is the precisely calibrated resistance. You can easily specify something like “82.5% 1RM.” Why is that important? Because it enables you to do a power cycle: a multiweek program that specifies exact training poundages and culminates with a strength PR. Such a cycle is very easy to implement and highly effective.
Cycling will not work with other traditional types of resistance the way it will work with barbells. Dumbbells, even if they progress in 5-lb. increments, don’t allow such precision (an increase from 20 to 25 pounds is a 25 percent jump!), and kettlebells were purposefully designed to make major jumps in weight. Finally, bodyweight drills don’t let you change your leverage with barbell-like precision, either.
Dumbbells
A dumbbell adds a stabilization challenge and works you more equally on both sides than a barbell. The disadvantage of using dumbbells is that you need a ton of them, which consumes cash and space. Adjustable plate-loaded dumbbells are an option. Make sure you get them from a reputable company, such as ironmind.com. You don’t want them to fall apart and crack your skull!
Dumbbells are not practical for some valuable exercises. For instance, a strong trainee will have a hard time getting a quality leg workout with dumbbells. They don’t get nearly heavy enough for deadlifts, they cannot be racked for front squats, and they cannot be comfortably held for pistols.
Kettlebells
I have yet to meet a hard man who has lifted a Russian kettlebell and not come away convinced that it’s the ultimate in strength and conditioning. Dr. Dennis Koslowski, DC, RKC, Olympic silver medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling, flat out stated, “Kettlebells are like weightlifting times ten...If I could’ve met Pavel in the early ’80s, I might’ve won two gold medals. I’m serious.”
The kettlebell’s design, namely a thick handle removed from a compact center of mass, is responsible for its many unique benefits. A thick and smooth handle, combined with the ballistic nature of many exercises, forges an iron grip and wrist. Last but not least on the kettlebell forearm killer list are bottom up cleans and similar drills. Offset center of gravity maximizes shoulder strength, health, and flexibility.
The position of the handle also allows dynamic passing of the kettlebell from hand to hand for a great variety of powerful juggling-type exercises, which are strongly endorsed by the Russian Federation State Committee on Physical Culture. These drills develop dynamic strength and injury-proof the body in many planes, unlike conventional linear exercises.
Another benefit of kettlebell training is that there is no need to have adjustable or numerous weights. It has evolved to provide progressive overload through other means. To use the squat as an example, you can back squat holding a kettlebell by its “horns” between your shoulder blades (which cannot be done with a dumbbell), then work up to holding it on your chest (front squats are impossible with dumbbells and can be brutal on the wrists with barbells), proceed to the Hack squats with the kettlebell held in the small of your back (again, cannot be done with a dumbbell), and then to a one-legged squat with the kettlebell held in the front by the “horns.” Finally, an extremely strong comrade can do one-legged front squats with a kettlebell racked.
Thus, a single kettlebell provides an uncompromising means of developing leg strength—without the need for expensive and space-consuming barbells and squat racks. Thus, kettlebells have been called “the low-tech/high-concept strength solution for spec ops.”
Being a kettlebell lifter, instructor, and businessman, I could go on forever. But you should have the idea by now: The Russian kettlebell is “a workout with balls.”
I’m not going to review all the types of resistance equipment on the market. You get the idea.
One parting thought: Your sport’s specificity might dictate your primary choice of type of resistance. For instance, a gymnast must emphasize bodyweight training, and a powerlifter must lift a barbell.
Why is there such an intense argument in the martial arts community as to whether bodyweight exercises are superior to exercises with weights?
Because the issue of what provides the resistance is confused with the workout design: sets, reps, rest periods, tempo, etc.
Under the terms of this pointless argument powerlifting and high rep triceps kickbacks with a Barbie dumbbell fall under the same misleading category of “weight training.” The label “bodyweight training” is just as misleading, considering that one-legged squats with a one-second pause on the bottom and Hindu squats have totally different effects on your body. Apples and oranges. The pistols’ effect is a lot closer to that of barbell squats—heavy, low rep barbell squats, to be exact—than to that of high-rep Hindu squats.
The point is, don’t get hung up on what provides the resistance. Focus on the attribute you are trying to develop. And a fighter, unlike a weightlifter or a distance runner, needs a mix of different types of strength and endurance.
If you see a powerlifter who sucks wind on the mat or in the ring, it doesn’t mean that barbells or heavy training are inappropriate for a fighter. They are simply one piece of the S&C puzzle (and he has neglected the other pieces, be it one or more subtypes of strength, endurance, skill, etc. Yakov Zobnin from Siberia, the heavyweight world champion in Kyokushinkai, “the World’s Strongest Karate,” squats almost 500 pounds deep enough to get white lights in any powerlifting meet, in spite of his basketball height. But he also maxes out at 25 strict pullups and practices explosive pushups, etc.
The bottom line. The argument about whether iron or bodyweight rules is a waste of bad breath. What you need to do is identify the different types of strength required in your style and then develop them with the types of resistance available to you. Practice low-rep, high-tension, max-strength training as outlined in The Naked Warrior or Power to the People! Do explosive drills. And don’t forget your endurance. In case you didn’t know, The Russian Kettlebell Challenge covers the complete martial arts strength and conditioning package. Just add skills and kick butt!
Can I get very strong using only bodyweight exercises?
It depends on what you mean by ‘strong’. If your goal is to become a pullup master or to achieve a planche, then yes, it can be done with bodyweight-only exercises (although using extra resistance would speed up the process). If your goal is to compete in weightlifting, then the answer is no. For martial arts, try a mix of cals with kettlebell drills.
Should I mix different strength-training tools in my training?
Ethan Reeve, RKC, the head strength and conditioning coach at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, makes great use of bodyweight, kettlebells, barbells, and many other strength tools with his athletes. So yes, you can mix different strength-training tools in your training.
The real question is, do you have Coach Reeve’s knowledge and experience? No, you don’t. And even if you did, you wouldn’t likely have regular access to a training facility that has all those things. That reframes the issue entirely, doesn’t it?
The fewer parts your training has, the less likely it is to break down. Think like Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47. It’s a simple, straightforward piece of equipment, but it gets the job done (and then some).
There’s a reason so many hard men, like Jeff Martone and Mike Mahler stick to kettlebells and select power cals. If you are training to fight, whether in the ring or at war, they are all you need.
How can I incorporate bodyweight exercises with kettlebell and barbell training?
Again, don’t think in terms of type of resistance. Think about the type of strength you want to work on.
For instance, clapping pushups, low-rep kettlebell snatches and throws, and barbell power cleans are all explosive-strength-type moves and should be done together. One-arm pushups, deadlifts, and bottom-up kettlebell clean-and-presses are all max-strength moves. Finally, repetition pushups, kettlebell snatches, and 20-rep barbell squats are strength-endurance moves.
Group your drills accordingly. The rule of thumb is to progress from explosive to max-strength drills to high reps, be it within one workout or across an entire week’s training.
Can the high-tension techniques and GTG system be applied to weights?
You bet! High-tension techniques work in all sorts of high-force applications.
Ditto for the GTG, if you have access to weights throughout the day. Unless you are a gym employee, a welfare case, or a trust-fund baby, that’s unlikely. You could bring your kettlebell to work, though, and add snatches to the pistol-plus-one-arm-pushup mix.
Can the high-tension techniques and GTG system be applied to strength endurance training?
Yes. Use approximately half of your max reps when “greasing” your endurance groove, and save the HTT for the last reps of your test.
I can’t help overtraining. What should I do?
GTG every other day. Another option is to train for a few days in a row and then take a day off when fatigue starts setting in.
Can I follow the Naked Warrior program on an ongoing basis?
Yes, but you had better add a big pull, such as the barbell deadlift, the clean, or the kettlebell snatch. None of these has to be done daily in the GTG format. You can train it independently with a more conventional workout, say, twice a week for 5x5.
Can I add more exercises to the Naked Warrior program?
It’s best not to GTG with more than two unrelated exercises, but you may add other exercises that don’t overlap much with the pistol and the one-arm pushup. For instance, deadlifts or pullups are good and bench presses are not. Handstand pushups are marginal; they “smoke” many of the muscles heavily involved in the one-arm pushup but in a very different plane. You might try them and see what happens.
To keep it simple, do your other strength exercises, with bodyweight or with iron, two to three times a week for 5x5. Just realize that the more you add to your daily training, the more likely you are to overtrain.
Will my development be unbalanced from doing only two exercises?
Not likely if you follow the instructions. Properly performed, the pistol and the one-arm pushup will challenge most of your major muscle groups. Even your lats will get a workout, if you apply the corkscrew maneuver. Your abs will work hard, too, pressurizing your abdomen and stabilizing you during one-arm pushups.
The areas that will be lacking are the calves, the lower back, the traps, and the forearms. All of these areas (minus the calves) can be addressed with barbell deadlifts or kettlebell snatches. For the calves, jumping rope will do the trick.
Is there a way to work the lats with a pulling exercise when no weights or pullup bars are accessible?
Yes. Let me pass along two excellent anywhere, anytime drills that I learned from two world champion martial artists.
Door Pullups
The “door pullup” is an invention of professional kickboxing legend Bill Wallace, MS. All you need is a door that’s sturdy enough to hold your weight and a ceiling that’s tall enough to clear your head. If you were dumb enough to stay at a cheap motel and ripped off the door and crashed, it is your problem, not “Superfoot’s”.
Open the door and hang onto it, your hands shoulder width apart and your knees bent to clear the floor. You may want to throw a towel over the door. Cramp your glutes to bring your hips closer to the door and pull yourself up.
You will find that your lats get a powerful overload because your elbows are pressed into the door and your elbow flexors have minimal leverage. The friction between your knees and the door will make your lats work even harder. The negative will be easy, but you cannot have it all.
You can also do this drill on a wall or a fence.
Kickboxing legend Bill “Superfoot” Wallace makes use of his door for a pullup. Photo courtesy superfoot.com
How should I apply the Naked Warrior techniques to my sport-specific conditioning?
The answer to this question lies outside the scope of this book. Let your coach or at least your common sense be your guide.
Where can I learn more about bodyweight-only strength training?
My publisher’s website, dragondoor.com, boasts many excellent articles on a wide range of topics: bodyweight strength training, kettlebell training, strength training and powerlifting, conditioning, tactical and martial arts, and martial arts and close-quarter combat skills. It’s free to access any of the articles; all you have to do is click on “Articles” and then subscribe to my Power by Pavel newsletter (which is also free). My newsletter has more free training information than promotion.
Following is an example of training advice from my newsletter:
Com. John Du Cane, RKC, author of The Five Animal Frolics, has shown me the “wall squat”, a variation of the bodyweight squat popular with Chinese Chi Kung practitioners. In addition to its health benefits, the drill will teach you how to lock your lower back in as tight as an expert powerlifter. And it will loosen it up big time in the process.
Stand a couple of inches away from a wall facing it, your arms hanging free as if you are about to deadlift. Keep your feet parallel and close to each other. Squat as low as you can, try to work into a full squat. You must stand as close to the wall as possible; your forehead should be almost brushing it. Something cool will happen in your lower back when your hips are almost parallel to the deck; you cannot miss it.
Comrades who are very strong: challenge yourselves with wall pistols. Stand by a corner so the knee of your working leg and your head are blocked by the wall yet your airborne leg is free to go straight around the corner.
Low reps and no failure? This training is too easy!
Don’t complain that high-tension training doesn’t build character. It wasn’t meant to. Its laser-sharp focus is strength.
But if you’re looking for lesson in character building, when you are done with your strength practice, go test your mettle with a few high-rep sets of kettlebell snatches. “This is the hardest thing I have done in my life,” said one Recon Marine after making his acquaintance with the Russian kettlebell. Try it, if you think you are so tough. You will wish you were dead.
Will I forget all the strength techniques in some sort of emergency?
“Under stress, we revert to our training”. This is an axiom in the military and law enforcement communities. If you have been practicing the right moves a lot, when your adrenalin kicks in, you will do the right thing on autopilot. Or the wrong thing, depending on what you have been practicing.
Tim Larkin, RKC, formerly Special Warfare Intelligence Officer for the Naval admiral in charge of all SEAL Teams and currently a hand-to-hand combat instructor to spec ops units and civilians (see tftgroup.com for details of Tim’s outstanding courses), likes to tell a story about a cleanliness-obsessed police range master who hated having loose brass lying around his spotless firing range. He insisted that the officers put the spent cartridges from their revolvers into their pockets while they were practicing. Then two cops got killed in a shootout. And guess what? They were found with their hands clutching empty shells in their pockets. Had they dropped the brass, they could have stayed alive.
“Under stress we revert to training,” says close quarter combat expert Tim Larkin, RKC. Photo courtesy tftgroup.com
By the same token, proper combat reloads, if practiced, also “just happen” in life-and-death situations. If you perform any action consciously enough times, it will become automatic.
Likewise, high-tension techniques can be hard wired into your spinal cord through diligent practice. Practice enough, and your abs will automatically tighten up when they are needed. This principle, along with all the others in The Naked Warrior, has worked for generations of martial artists.
Isn’t dedicating most of the book to technique too much?
Strength is technique. When someone told Bulgarian weightlifting coach Angel Spassov that his training was “not normal,” he quipped, “Who wants to be normal? We choose to be extraordinary.”
The same goes for the Naked Warrior program. Typical books on strength training shrug off the issue of strength technique by telling you to “emphasize the negative, don’t jerk, don’t arch, inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up.” While these pointers might be easy to remember, following them will bring you only typical—read “marginal at best”—results. Using the martial arts analogy, it’s like explaining the one-inch punch technique by saying, “Punch from an inch away.” Good luck!
Maximum power generation is a science and an art. With the exception of a few talented superathletes, who “just do it,” the top performers have reached the top by relentlessly honing their technique. Bench press world champion George Halbert said that it took him 13 years to understand what the triceps really do in the bench press!
If you aren’t willing to apply this level of attention and patience to your strength training, then learn to be content with being weak. Pick out one of the many sissified programs floating around or sign up for a “muscle-conditioning” class at your local health spa and get “fit”—whatever that means. Tell them sissies hello.
A Parting Shot…There Are No Excuses!
Suren Bogdasarov, a Soviet army officer and coach of legendary weightlifting champion Yuri Vlasov, was promoting strength training in the armed forces in the late 1970s/early 1980s. At one unit, he heard someone complain that they did not have the proper equipment.
“I took two chairs,” reminisces the great coach, “and set them down a shoulder width apart with the backs facing in. Then I started doing dips on the chairs’ backs…After 8–10 dips, I did abdominal work. I lifted straight legs to my shoulder level, then lowered them while maintaining the L-seat. Then I climbed up on a chair with one foot and started doing one-legged squats. I stepped off the chair and did jumping good mornings, it is a forward bend followed by a back bend and finished with a jump. After all this I showed them a few more bodyweight exercises.”
Bogdasarov, a man addicted to iron, will never quit lifting barbells and kettlebells. But he is even more hooked on strength and will not settle for doing nothing when his beloved heavy metal isn’t around. As this Naked Warrior said when he finished his presentation, “One must use any means in his disposal and not wait for manna from heaven.”
Power to you! Anywhere. Anytime. With or without hardware.
