The Ladder Of Progression

No, King Crimson isn’t at the top. This simply means that if you want to do something incredibly hard – a seriously tough gymnastic position like an iron cross or a planche, for instance – you need to start with something you can do, and build on it. Rather than using the barbell and putting more weight on, you tweak the movement every time you get better to make it more effective and more challenging.

An example might be to go from split squats to full bilateral squats to supported pistols to full pistols: at every stage the movement remains ‘squatlike’ but gets more challenging.

You’re just tweaking the move, remember.

The big advantage of this is its portability. It’s hard to get a training session in a hotel gym with nothing but a Swiss ball and a crossstrainer in it – just doing pushups doesn’t trigger much strength or hypertrophy past a certain point, while choosing a super-challenging move means you’re not going to be doing much of it. Build a workout on the go around mechanical drop sets and you can get the best of both worlds.

How would we implement something like this?

Obviously the place to start would be workout design, but for now, let’s assume that you’re doing a fairly standard push/pull/squat setup.

Push

Handstand (for time)-headstand (for time)-Hindu Pushups (for reps) – pushups (for reps) – straight-arm plank (for time) – elbow plank (for time)

A handstand for our purposes means standing on your hands with your arms straight, while a headstand is a tripod or yoga-style headstand. If you’re immensely strong and you laugh in the face of handstands for time, feel free to knock out handstand pushups for reps. If you’re not and you’re uncertain of your ability to do handstands, either omit them or do the yoga ‘downward dog’ pose on tiptoes, throwing more weight onto your arms.

Pull

Pullups (for reps) – Inverse rows (for reps) – Piked pullups (for reps) – piked inverse rows

A ‘pike’ is where you bend at the hips til you’re at about 90° there. That means you’ll be moving less weight because your legs will be taking some of the strain. At every stage, remember, you’re looking for a similar, but easier, form of the movement.

Squat

Pistols (for reps) – box pistols (for reps) – step-ups (for reps) – squats (for reps) - lunges (for reps)

See Also: Serious Gains With Serious Squats

Instead, they represent a way to get some real training done in hotel gyms, at home with minimal equipment or even in hotel rooms or friends’ houses if you’re staying over.

If you like something you saw here and you want more details, or if you think I’m wrong about something, or you have something to add, get hold of me in the comments section below and we’ll talk about it.