Author Archives: FormIsEverything

The plan: choose a push-up, and pull-up and a leg movement. Start with three sets of enough paused reps to be difficult but not close to failure. Make sure the rep quality is A+. Vary hand and feet position slightly from day-to-day and alternate squats and walking lunges. Stay with the same set and repContinue reading “Paused Rep Calisthenics Volume Training”

For as long as I can remember and up until the moment in the fall of 2022 that I began supporting a loved one through an eating disorder, I did not have breakfast or consume any calories before noon. I did not consume any sugar at all. No desserts, sodas, candy. I did not eatContinue reading “New Year’s Resolution 2023: Food Is Food. Period.”

The spring and summer of 2022 were largely about fat loss for me. After I finished the cut, which involved reduced meal frequency and sticking mainly to real food (one large and one small meal per day separated by 3 to 4 hours), I changed direction. To be honest, I finished the cut because itContinue reading “The Muscle Building Power of High Volume Density Calisthenics Training”

In April of 2022 things had gotten out of hand. Or rather, they’d been out of hand for some time, years, really. I’d had enough. I’m a personal trainer. Should I look like this? I weighed 199 lb. (90kg) with plenty of muscle mass from consistent calisthenics but no muscle definition and way too muchContinue reading “I Lost 20 Pounds in 10 Weeks and Have Kept It Off for 6 More. Here Is Exactly How.”

Most people who practice bodyweight squats, or “air” squats, do so briefly. They quickly “move on” to something more “advanced,” after impatiently having asked “how do I make bodyweight squats more difficult?” The expected answers to this question usually involve something like adding weights or working one leg at a time. But to the sameContinue reading “Bodyweight Squats Will Set You Free”

Recently I listened to an episode of the TED Radio Hour featuring Steven Johnson, whose TED Talk started from the premise that you publish a newspaper only every 100 years and it only has a single headline. So your headline must be about the most important thing that happened over the last 100 years, inContinue reading “Longevity and Health-Span”

If you’re young and serious about calisthenics, you’ve got fresh joints and a few decades ahead of you. It’s ok to take the slow road and work (wisely) on the money moves, such as handstand push-ups, the human flag, one-arm chin-ups and the back lever, after you’ve built a base level of strength and muscleContinue reading “Top 5 Most Important Rules for Building Strength and Muscle with Bodyweight Calisthenics After 50”

We need to talk about your New Year’s resolutions. The reason is that this time of year is when most people have abandoned theirs.  The extremely poor success rate of New Year’s resolutions is largely due to the fact that we choose unrealistic and/or non-specific ones, such as “I will quit eating sugar”, “I willContinue reading “Motivation for the New Year and the Problem With Resolutions”

The two best upper body calisthenics exercises for overall strength and muscle building are the pull-up and the dip. They’re best because of the range of motion allowed and the strength required to lift the weight of the entire body. Being vertical push and pull exercises (although some people do not consider the dip aContinue reading “Not Ready for Dips and Pull-Ups? Shooting for Higher Reps Per Set? Try the Jackknife Variation.”

I recently let myself off the hook, and it was probably one of the best decisions I have made for my health. I was coming off my umpteenth “failure” at trying to seriously tighten my eating window. A tight eating window is another term for “intermittent fasting”, which means some flavor of not eating forContinue reading “Do I Really Need to Do Intermittent Fasting?”