2 Comments

First and foremost, thanks for this great post and explanation of how push ups are beneficial for making gains, and why they can lead to plateaus for those of us who are seasoned in strength training. I'm sharing this with a friend who is looking to bulk, but is solely into calisthenics at this point...

I've been adding some weights (i.e. weighted vest and bands) to my push ups, as well as varying them up to ensure that I'm really working the triceps. I also have been doing 2 pump burpees and navy seals to increase my rep of push ups per workout.

One of my favorite workouts is slightly similar to the one you've designed. I do 10 devils presses, 10 2 pump burpees and 10 2 count bodybuilder burpees x10.

Expand full comment

Yeah bodyweight stuff is tough to get by alone, you can, but you likely won’t get “huge”. Which if that’s not the goal then totally fine but people have high expectations oftentimes. Great breakdown for what you do! You could even do something like that and if you wanted more of a hypertrophy stimulus then at the end add things like banded pushups, tempo pushups, or harder variations (close grip, diamond grip, planche grip). Volume will just need to be high since intensity will be low. Intensity really is just a way to dial the knob up on mechanical tension which is the primary stimulus for hypertrophy.

Expand full comment