Here at Form Is Everything we are about basic calisthenics exercises and programs for building strength and muscle with minimal injury risk and for any age and experience level. Rather than progressing towards skills or more and more difficult versions of the exercises, we build strength by improving technique, adding manageable volume, and increasing frequency of movement. We avoid injury by avoiding risky exercises, by carefully monitoring and addressing fatigue, and by constantly varying hand and foot position to avoid repetitive stress. We measure progress by weekly productive volume of sets performed with good technique and with effort that approaches but does not reach or exceed technical failure on each set. Fatigue is managed by varying proximity to failure over the week’s effort.

With this approach, progress comes mainly in the form of added sets and repetitions performed with good technique. The strength and muscle-building sweet spot is ten to twenty weekly hard sets of each of the three movement patterns of push, pull, and squat, and the programming allows the trainee to spread these sets evenly throughout the week. An advanced level is achieved when the trainee can perform two to three hard sets of each of these movement patterns per day every day of the week while still managing fatigue and making slow but measured progress. This approach has many advantages, including low time commitment per workout (about 20 minutes), and keeping one’s whole body fresh and energized every day rather than exhausted and fatigued. Focusing on technique also builds flexibility and mobility improvement into the mix. It also provides a nearly infinite amount of variety in exercise variations and effort levels.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a beginner of any age can progress to this advanced level in approximately one year.

Provided that you are healthy enough to begin a strength training program, I will assume that you have no experience and are starting from scratch.

Month 1
For month one you will perform three exercises: push-ups, rows, and squats. For the first two weeks you will dial in your technique using the Grease the Groove method. This method allows you to practice a movement multiple times throughout the day without fatiguing yourself so you can master the technique and build strength. First, choose the push-up that is appropriate for your strength level, as illustrated in this video:

Then, practice push-ups by doing as many sets as you are comfortable with throughout the day with no more than half your maximum repetitions per set. For example, if you are doing incline push-ups, and your max is six, do two or three per practice session. Feel free to scatter these sessions throughout the day.

Follow the same guidelines for rows:

And squats:

Months 2 and 3
You will do 3 sets of push-ups, three sets of rows, and three sets of squats per workout. Use the best form you can, and take each set one to two reps shy of mechanical failure (which is when you would not be able to perform another rep). So that’s nine total sets each workout, three each for push, pull and squat. For month 2, do this workout twice a week, and record your reps. Each week try to exceed the rep totals for the prior week.

For month three, perform the same workout but do it three times a week instead of two, with at least one day off between workouts. Again, try to exceed your rep totals week to week.

Months 4-6
You will do three new exercises: dips, pull-ups and/or chin-ups and lunges. These exercises are more difficult than the three you have been doing up until now as the load is greater for each. Take a week to work on your form for each exercise using the Grease the Groove technique.

Some examples of dips:

Examples of pull-ups and chin-ups:

And lunges:

For the remainder of months 4-6 you will follow the same template as in months 1-3. Once you have mastered the form, do two workouts of three sets of each exercise per week for the remainder of month 4. For months 5 and 6, move up to three workouts per week of dips, pull-ups and lunges. Again, record your rep counts and try to exceed the totals week to week.

Months 7-9
In month 7 you will begin to mix the workouts and you will begin to work out on consecutive days. For these months you will do the first workout on day one, the second workout on day two, rest on day three, the first workout on day four, and the second workout on day five, rest days six and seven. For example, Monday is 3 sets each of push-ups, rows and squats. Tuesday is three sets each of dips, pull-ups and lunges. Repeat this for Thursday and Friday. As always record your reps and work on adding a few from week to week.

Months 10-12
Here is where you will put it all together. You will do each separate workout every other day of the week. So Monday is push-ups, rows and squats, Tuesday is dips, pull-ups and lunges, Wednesday same as Monday, Thursday same as Tuesday, etc. It’s as simple as that. Feel free to mix and match. You can switch your push-up and dip days, for example.

Some tips for success
If you feel lingering fatigue and stop making progress, dial back your intensity but not your frequency. That is, continue to do the workouts on schedule (rather than adding rest days), but take it easy on the sets, like 4-5 reps shy of failure. For variety and joint health, you can vary your hand or feet positions. Always keep your focus on form and revisit your form every month. Once a month, take a video of yourself performing each of the six exercise and check your form. Make the necessary corrections. Also, from time to time go back and look at early workout rep counts. You will be surprised at how far you have come. Also, I haven’t talked about rest. I do not believe you should worry about timing rest between sets. Rest as long as it takes so that your performance from set to set of the same exercise is about equal for that day.

In the first phase of the program, you did six total hard sets per movement pattern per week. You moved up to 9 and then 12. This is the lower end of the sweet spot for building strength and muscle, and what you are doing with this approach is distributing your hard sets throughout the week rather than concentrating them on one or two days. This distribution allows you to insure that each set is top quality and not rushed or cheated. By the final phase of the program, you are at 21 hard sets per movement pattern per week, which is the upper end of the sweet spot for muscle and strength building. Congratulations!

Here are the undisputed truths that we face as we get older: we need more than ever to move frequently but actually move less frequently due to sedentary jobs, long commutes, fatigue, aches and pains, and demands on our time. We need strength training to improve health and counteract loss of muscle mass but often don’t know what to do and don’t want to join a gym and use intimidating equipment. We need to lose excess body fat and avoid adding it but eating healthy and avoiding frequent snacking and unhealthy foods is difficult and confusing. Our mobility and flexibility decrease as we age and such decreases can lead to injury, but we don’t have the time or knowledge to make simple improvements in those areas. The list goes on, but the bottom line is that the need for these things continues to increase as we age, and our ability to actually do them decreases due to a number of factors that seem to multiply with each passing year.

If you take a look at the available information on these topics, you will be quickly overwhelmed: Crossfit, keto diet, yoga, intermittent fasting, animal flow, powerlifting, plant based diet, pilates, weight training, If It Fits Your Macros, MoveNat, paleo, pescetarianism, isometrics, treadmills, OMAD… Oh My! Just do those things, ok? Ok.

For the most part trends in health and fitness tend to use apparent novelty as a way to attract people, build tribes, and sell things. But embedded in a lot of these trends are kernels of wisdom and value with historical and scientific backing. But it’s very difficult to sift through the trends and to ignore the hype and extract the real value. Fortunately at the age of 56 I’ve been able to cut through the distracting noise and boil down an approach that simplifies the ideas and puts them into a manageable set of daily guidelines. I call it The Rule of Twos. Here it is in a nutshell: two flexibility/mobility moves a day, two strength micro-workouts a day with two exercises in each workout and two sets in each exercise, two meals of real food a day and no snacks, two easy movement sessions a day (one after each meal), and two drinks a day (optional). As a happy coincidence, I also drink two cups of black coffee a day, but this one is not as important (which would not be the case if I put calories in my coffee.)

Mobility and Flexibility
Joints ache, knees are stiff, the lower back hurts. Getting up off the floor is no longer a trivial matter. I don’t have time for or interest in taking a yoga class or learning the moves or hiring a trainer. What should I do? How many minutes a day? I have it boiled down to two moves that I practice as often as I can: the dead hang and the low squat and hold.

The Dead Hang – Use an overhead pull-up bar or tree limb. You can even use the top of a door. Grasp the bar and then hang with as much as your body-weight as you are comfortable with. Hold as long as you can. This move stretches your entire upper body and spinal muscles, opens your shoulders, and improves your grip strength, an important factor in longevity.

The Low Squat and Hold – The deep squat is almighty. If I had to pick only one exercise to practice, this would be it. If necessary, stabilize yourself by holding an object such as the back of the couch or a door frame. Squat down as low as you can go without pain. Try to keep your back straight. To stretch your ankles, pull yourself forward a bit. Try to work towards not using something to stabilize yourself. Hold as long as you can. You may also shift your weight a bit from side-to-side and or front-to-back in order to increase the stretch.

Strength Training
This one’s a doozy. By now everyone knows that muscle mass declines with age and it’s a major factor in un-wellness. But if you’re not experienced with strength training and want to start, what immediately comes to mind? Gym memberships, heavy weights, intimidating and confusing machines, barbells, and having absolutely no idea what to do, how to do it, and how often. And spandex. Oh, the spandex!

I believe body-weight calisthenics performed in regular clothing is superior, particularly for older people. It requires no gyms and very little equipment, there is almost no barrier to entry, and moving one’s body through space not only helps build strength, but it naturally improves mobility and flexibility. I also believe that shorter, more frequent and refreshing workouts are better than long, grueling ones. Enter The Rule of Twos: two small micro-workouts a day (10-15 minutes each), two exercises per workout, two sets per exercise. The exercises cover the push movement pattern, the pull movement pattern, and leg and core strength. Doing two smaller workouts per day rather than one larger one helps with time and fatigue management and promotes frequent movement.

Push: choose one the many hundreds of different push-up variations and execute two sets with good form, taking the set to the point where you almost could not do another repetition. Elbows should be tucked and not flared, core and glutes tight. Rest as long as you need a do one more set. Try to match your performance in the first set.

Pull: this one is the most technically challenging as it requires a bit of equipment and some knowledge of the different pulling moves. If you are able to do at least one pull-up, then use a resistance band to assist you so that you can get at least eight repetitions per set. If pull-ups are too difficult you will need to do rows, which will require a bar, two chairs with straight backs, or a suspension trainer such as gymnastics rings set to about waist height.

Squat: the squat is the easiest exercise to perform for high reps but also the most technically demanding because of the flexibility and mobility required of the hips, knees and ankles. Start by assisting yourself and go down as far as you can without pain. Try to work up to two unassisted high rep sets. Your conditioning will improve along with your strength.

Core: the core is engaged in the other three movements discussed here and is vital for good performance and strength. Choose your favorite core exercise, such as sit-ups, knee raises, planks, flutter kicks, or ab wheel rollouts to name a few. Perform two sets of as many reps as you can.

Nutrition
This one’s an even bigger doozy. There is so much passion and polarity around eating. The important considerations are what to eat, how often, and how much. I have found after much tinkering that I do not last long trying to watch the clock for when to eat, restricting food groups or macro-nutrient categories (such as carbs) or measuring and logging food and calories. I believe it is best to eat real food as close to its natural state as possible, to eat a wide variety of such foods, and to eat as little and as infrequently as possible without causing yourself too much discomfort and strain and still getting the proper nutrition to support your activity.

In terms of food choices, I try to stick to the rule that if my great-grandmother would recognize it as food, it’s probably ok. I’ve tried compressed eating windows but become obsessed with the clock. So what works for me is two meals of real food a day and no snacking. I don’t worry about the timing (but it usually ends up with meal 1 around 11:00 to noon and meal 2 around 5:00 to 6:00). Eat until you are full and then don’t eat again until the next meal, even if you are hungry.

Here are some examples of actual meals that I prepared and consumed.

Frequent Movement – absolutely fundamental to health as we age, pick your favorite low-intensity activity such as walking or casual biking, and do it after each of your two meals. I don’t care how far or for how long. Count steps if you must but you don’t have to. Just make sure you do it, preferably outside, after each meal.

Alcohol: (Optional) I include this here for a couple of reasons. The main reason would be that beer represents my only liquid source of calories and the only indulgence I allow myself. I am fortunate not to care too much for sweets or other empty calories, and eating real food comes naturally to me. But I do enjoy beer. And I COULD drink like I did in college. I COULD. But if I DID, all of the above would fly out the window. So if you enjoy a drink, keep it to two a day (or less) for men, one for women.

This plan is very easy for me to follow and does incorporate the best of a lot of valuable health advice around today without pushing the limits of your tolerance too far. Try the Rule of Twos and let me know how it goes. Comment here or send email to steve@formiseverything.com.

I use basic calisthenics exercises to build strength and muscle and preserve and improve mobility, flexibility and joint health. The workout discussed here, and shown in the video linked below, is a complete intermediate workout for those who are interested in building strength and muscle with basic exercises rather than progressing towards skills, and for those interested in preserving or improving joint health. Here is the rationale for the terms:

Intermediate – this workout is intermediate because you are required to lift your entire body weight for all three movements. We are doing gymnastics ring dips, gymnastics ring pull-ups and hover lunge. Both upper body movements require you to lift your entire body weight. The lower body movement requires you to lift almost your entire body weight with each leg. It is a safe, athletic movement and is natural and, given that you work one leg at a time, provides an opportunity for you to address any strength imbalances you might have.

For People Over 40 – Actually it’s for anyone who wants to get stronger and build muscle while not damaging the joints, but particularly for those over 40 for whom straight bar and floor exercises may add just a little too much stress to the shoulders, elbows, wrists and knees. Suspension trainers such as gymnastics rings allow subtle movement of the hands while performing the exercise, and this reduces stress on the joints compared to a fixed movement pattern against a rigid bar or surface where the position of the hands cannot change during the movement.

Warning – Suspension trainer exercises are very difficult because of the additional stability requirement. This is particularly true of pushing movements. If you have not used suspension trainers, you should build up to these exercises with easier versions first. You might start with static stability practice and build up to push-ups and rows. When you are ready to try the dip, you can start with negatives and/or use your legs to assist yourself.

The Program – Do three sets of each exercise with as much rest as you need between sets for you to roughly repeat your performance from set to set. Do as many reps per set as you can, stopping 1-2 reps short of failure. Do this workout three times a week and record your progress. Shoot for adding 3-5 total reps per week.

An accessory to the fashion trend called The Paleo Diet is The Barefoot Shoe. Just as every upstanding Neanderthal watched his or her carbs, sprinted once a week, and made bone broth, so did the health-conscious cave-woman, man and child wear the latest barefoot shoes from Vibram. I discovered this when I became interested in The Paleo Diet about 14 years ago. It made sense. Just as modern food is ill-suited to our genes, so is modern footwear ill-fitting to our feet. Modern agriculture made it too easy to get and ingest lots of manipulated food that would be unrecognizable to our hirsute ancestors, and modern footwear technology made it too easy to walk around on roads, sidewalks, and floors rather than running barefoot for our lives through the mud as we should be doing. And so, because we have lost touch with our ancestors of several hundred generations ago, we are sick, weak, fat, dumb, bunyoned, and tender-footed.

Just as our bodies are supposed to ingest only animals, pre-agricultural plants, nuts, seeds, fruits, and dirt, our feet are supposed to tread unshod upon every earthly surface; soles are to feel, toes are to splay, heels are to toughen, arches are to bow. Makes sense. Just as we’ve lost the value behind running for our lives lest we become dinner, the taste of a dirty tiny foraged tuber, and the regenerative power of skipping nine meals in a row due to poor hunting conditions, so have we lost the value of an impressive space between great and second toe, ankles of steel, and soles of leather.

I bought my first pair of Vivobarefoot shoes, The Gobi, in 2009. I believed feet should be free, but I also believed that shoes should not look incredibly dorkie. I felt the Vivobarefoot vibe was ok, unlike lots of other barefoot shoes cropping up and looking like someone from the 1950s’ idea of what someone from the future might wear.

I eventually found some barefoot shoes that I think look good and fairly normal.

The point of the paleo diet is that we are eating real food and not junk food, which our bodies expect and on which our genetics have been based for hundreds of generations. This makes sense. The point with barefoot shoes is that, unlike with standard footwear, your toes have room to spread, your heel is not constantly elevated, and the sole of your foot is allowed to flex, feel and move. These features allow your feet to reconnect with the world and work the way your feet are supposed to work. This also makes sense.

But here’s the other thing: you can’t really take it too far. To some extent, you have to live in the present world. The paleo diet works, but it works mainly because of the extent to which you are able to adhere to it and consume real food rather than junk. Any diet works if it has you staying away from junk; it’s the adherence that’s the problem. The paleo diet worked for me, but it also had me avoiding legumes (beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils) and grains like the plague, because those are Neolithic foods. But if I don’t have a specific condition related to these foods, must I avoid them? Could it be harmful to be too concerned about restricting what I eat to adhere to a philosophy?

I have worn barefoot shoes exclusively for about eight years now. I don’t recall the transition too well other than to say that walking on hard surfaces was unpleasant but after I got used to the new feel, I really liked it and it felt like my feet were finally “getting into shape” after not exercising for a long time. After I was fully used to them I recall putting on “normal” shoes a few times and my feet feeling like they were in prison. But I must admit that even after wearing barefoot shoes exclusively for years, my feet would still feel “battered” from time to time when walking on hard surfaces.

Over the years of wearing barefoot shoes I recall a few times getting a very painful tendonitis on the top of my left foot. I was never able to connect these bouts with any specific activity or injury, and they usually went away after a few days of rest and ice. I hadn’t thought much more about it until recently.

I’ve never been much of a walker. That is to say, I don’t like walking for distance or for exercise. Most of my walking is purposeful and for the sake of transportation. But a few months ago I started walking for a half hour every morning with my daughter, as she was fulfilling her requirements for summer P.E. class and wanted company. We eventually worked up to an hour a day. Most of our walking was on paved bike trails. After a couple of weeks of this, I started to feel a dull pain on the top of my left foot. I continued to walk with her, as the pain was not bad and did not increase with more walking. One morning I woke up and the pain was intense and my foot was red and swollen. I stopped walking (I wouldn’t have been able to anyway) and started the ice and rest. It went away after a couple of days as it had done before.

I resumed walking with my daughter after the pain went away and after a few more days of walking, the condition returned. I went through the cycle again and then finally saw a podiatrist. X-rays revealed no fractures and she said it was likely tendon and/or ligament strain. She gave me a stabilizing shoe and told me to rest until the pain and redness went away.

It is now about four weeks later and I have been unable to break the cycle. When the foot returns to something close to normal, any kind of walking that is beyond a 5000 or so step day puts me back into extreme pain, swelling and redness. At its worst I really can’t walk on the foot at all. I have to hop from the bed to the bathroom.

I’ve been seeing a sports physical therapist three times a week. In addition to the exercises and (very painful) manipulation, she advised a shoe with “support”. She meant a shoe with a thick sole that does not bend much. I dug through my old shoes and found a pair of running shoes with far more sole than I’m used to but still far less than the physical therapist had in mind. Wearing these shoes helped quite a bit with the pain but when my foot was at its worst, I still was not able to walk far without intense pain and pronounced limping.

Recently and rather out of desperation, I drove to the mall and hobbled to the nearest store that sells shoes. It happened to be LL Bean. I grabbed a pair of work boots with a very thick and stiff sole. I put them on and walked around the store. Although they felt like cinder blocks on my feet, I was able to walk without limping and with only a small amount of pain. I kept the shoes on my feet, paid for them, strolled out to my car like an uninjured person, and made my way home.

I’m wearing the cinder blocks exclusively now until the pain goes away and stays away, even after high steppin’ days.

So what is the moral of this story? That barefoot shoes were a big mistake, they’re a ruse, and I never should have made the switch? No, I don’t think so. I think the point is valid that our feet were meant to breathe and move and feel and that modern footwear largely prevents this. But modern life is also largely paved, and that’s hard to avoid, particularly when taking a long walk. And it appears to be the case, for me anyway, that a steady diet of pavement and hardwood is just too much for my ambitious caveman wannabe feet to handle.

Barefoot shoes are great, but not all the time, and definitely not on long walks on hard surfaces. For me, anyway. Just as a diverse diet is good for the microbiome, I’m thinking maybe diversity might be a good thing for feet as well. Maybe it would be best for my feet to learn to deal with all sorts of combinations of footwear, padding, support and terrain.

If you want to make the transition to barefoot shoes, by all means go for it, but take it slow, and tread lightly.

Continuing from my last article on how to progress body-weight calisthenics strength and muscle building outside of conventional means like increasing reps, increasing volume, and moving to more difficult exercises, I’m taking a look at the Mind-Muscle connection and how we might be able to progress by focusing on it. The Mind-Muscle connection always seemed like a squishy topic to me but the more I read and consume content on building strength and muscle, the more convinced I am that it’s a real thing and can be a critical factor in making progress, particularly once you’ve gotten to a point where conventional progress is slow or stalled. After all, you can’t expect to be adding clean reps to your pull-ups forever. And if you try, at best you will suffer breakdowns in form and technique and at worst you will suffer injury and frustration.

The Mind Muscle connection is fascinating because it may allow us to progress without ever actually adding more numbers. I guess a good way to approach this introduction would be to ask “what the heck can us old people do to get stronger and better and not more injured?” Improving the Mind-Muscle connection might be the answer to that question.

What Is the Mind-Muscle Connection?
According to Men’s Health, “Research shows that focusing intently on the target muscle as you contract it can lead to greater increases in size. Known as “attentional focus” (or more commonly, the “mind-muscle connection”), the simple act of consciously feeling a muscle work through a full range of motion can enhance muscle fiber recruitment and activation. And the more fully and effectively you engage your muscles, the more they’ll grow.” In other words, instead of paying attention to getting the weight up or getting the chin over the bar, pay attention to the muscles that are working to perform that task.

How Do You Improve the Mind-Muscle Connection?
Check out Kyle Boggeman’s video on movement quality for some really good information. Get used to seeing your rep count take a dive. This is a good thing. The more intently you are focusing on the movement, the better your form will be, and the more stimulation your muscles will be receiving, and the fewer reps you will be able to do. Check your ego at the door and “train with your future self in mind”.

I have tried to focus on the Mind-Muscle connection in the video linked below. Here’s what I did: I chose a simplified version of a single exercise in each of the three movement patterns – push, pull and squat. By “simplified” I mean that I modified the movement to remove challenging aspects that do not directly stimulate the target musculature. I used suspension trainers (or you could use gymnastics rings) so I could adjust the height easily. For dips, I kept my knees bent and feet on the ground. That removed quite a bit of body weight and allowed me to focus solely on the pulling muscles. I kept it fairly slow on the positive and slow on the negative, and did not pause or lock out so I could keep constant tension on the muscles. For pull-ups, I did a modified jackknife pull-up with my feet flat on the ground, the legs again limp and not aiding the movement, and pulled slowly through a full range of motion with constant tension. For squats, I grasped a bar to take the pressure off the lower back and ankles, stopped the movement before standing all the way up (to keep the tension on the quads) and imagined driving my heels into the ground and moving the ground away from me instead of standing up.

Traditional notions of “progress” in strength training are ubiquitous but you need to know that they have an expiration date. In weight training, progress means adding more weight, sets, reps or training days. In calisthenics, substitute harder exercises for more weight. For example, as a beginner, you may start with knee push-ups for two sets of eight repetitions. A few weeks later you are doing regular push-ups for three sets of ten. Then it’s on to diamonds, feet-elevated push-ups, dips, etc. Once you can get a good set of ten pull-ups with good form, it’s on to twelve, fifteen, twenty (rarely). But does this continue indefinitely? No, of course not. It is not conceivable that by the same means you would eventually get to a set of 100 pull-ups with good form.

Good programming begets progress. For beginners, three workouts a week, three sets an exercise, add a rep or two per week. Follow the program, record your progress, eat and sleep to support your training, and you will progress. Until you don’t, at least on the same scale. Factors like age and years spent training put you into a new scale for measuring progress. If you continue to push it in the same manner as you did as a beginner and intermediate, eventually you will break down and sustain injury because you will be forcing more reps (and sacrificing form) where there are no more reps to be had. And injury is the athlete’s biggest enemy.

Instead of progressive programming, think in terms of concepts. Years spent in honest training, improving mind-muscle connection, good health, and lack of injury become your marker of progress. Refining an exercise, improving your form, extending your range of motion, and increasing your frequency of exercise… these are your programs. If you work hard so that your sets are taken a few reps shy of muscular failure, and you manage your fatigue so that you are able to perform again without loss or injury, and you perform the exercises as often as you can with good form, you are guaranteed to have made progress, even if you did not do any more reps than you did the prior workout or the prior week.

Imagine going from fifteen fast pull-ups without lockout and with chin barely above the bar, dropping quickly on the negative — to ten perfectly executed reps performed slowly on the positive and even more slowly on the negative, shoulders back, chin completely above the bar, full lockout at the bottom. That’s fewer reps, but you’ve made progress. Now imagine three sets of these pull-ups three or more times a week.

There is always improvement to be made even if you don’t get more reps, and maybe even BECAUSE you don’t get more reps. And you know what? A few years from now if you continue with this concept-based method of improving exercise performance, you are guaranteed to be in a better place, even though you are older, than you were when you started. How’s that for a longevity boost?

I love the micro-workout approach to strength training. There are a lot of ways to approach micro-workouts. For me, they are a way to break up a single workout into several parts and spread those parts throughout the day. For example, a typical full-body workout for me would be three sets of push-ups, three sets of pull-ups and three sets of squats. Done together and with honest effort (each set taken a few reps short of failure), this would be a fairly exhausting routine that would take about 30-40 minutes or more. With the micro-workout approach, I typically would do the push-ups in the morning, the pull-ups in the early afternoon, and the squats in the later afternoon or evening. Each segment takes only 10 minutes or so (and this is one of the many benefits of micro-workouts), and so I squeeze them in when I have time and don’t have to plan my workout for a time of the day where I can spend 40 minutes. Additionally, I don’t have to be intimidated by the volume when I know I’m only doing a third of it at a time.

The Problem with Micro-Workouts
The problem with micro-workouts relates directly to the benefits of micro-workouts. If you’re doing them so your workouts are quicker, more approachable, and less taxing, then you may be inadvertently shortchanging yourself. The idea that you can just “get it over with quickly” could be the problem and might mean that you are not putting in an honest effort on each segment and each set.

Additionally, honest productive workouts have a kind of a flow, where you warm up slowly and then start conservatively so as not to waste all your energy, and then build up to the more intense work. This can take time. Everyone is familiar with the feeling of really being “in the zone”, where you’re warmed up and the sets are going well and you feel strong and with each set you want to do more. The feeling that you might be on the verge of a PR or breakthrough can be very intoxicating. At the very least, it reminds us of why we are doing this. It can take time to get to this place and by definition micro-workouts might be over before you have a chance to get there.

Furthermore, it might be as mentally challenging to contemplate having to do three workouts day rather than one, no matter how short they are. I usually save my squats for later in the day. But squats happen to be the exercise where I am really trying to build up to high reps. This is daunting and exhausting, and much more difficult to face when it’s later in the day, I’m already pretty tired, and I just want to eat dinner and relax. The point here is to give yourself the opportunity to put in an honest effort, and sometimes micro-workouts may not be the best way to do this.

Case in point: Ladders. As a refreshing change and a way to try and add to my maximum reps, I’ve been doing a lot of ladders lately. With ladders, you take a single exercise and perform a single rep, rest as long as needed, then do two reps, rest, then three reps and so on until you reach the set where you would not be able to perform another rep with good form. At that point you can quit, or work your way back down the ladder to one. This a very good way to add to your max. reps in an exercise.

Yesterday I did pull-up ladders. In the pull-up piece of a micro-workout, I would normally do a small warmup and then do three sets, taking each set out to one or two reps shy of failure. For me this is usually something like 9, 8, 7 if I’m strict with the form. That’s a total of 24 reps, and I’m seldom eager to push the first set because I know I have two more to go. Consequently I generally don’t make much progress. In the pull-up ladder workout that I did yesterday, I made it to 10. So that’s 1, 2, 3, 4…. 8, 9, 10. That’s a total of 55 reps (over twice as many as in the micro-workout), and what’s more, the more intense sets, by definition, are performed at the end of the workout. Sets of 10 or even 9 would have been very difficult in my 3-set micro-workout approach, but here I was able to get that set of 10 after 45 reps. There was a flow that happened and each set built on the previous one, which in turn fueled my motivation and desire to improve.

Furthermore, with ladders you are really in the moment and are very focused and motivated to keep going. With micro-workouts sometimes I find that I just want to get it over with. This doesn’t lend itself to honest effort or progress. But with ladders, not only do you really want to get another set, which you know if you do will be better than all the others, but you also really want to take it one set further in the next workout. Eleven, here I come!

The down-side of course is that a ladder workout takes more time and you’re likely not going to do much else in terms of strength training that day. But what you DID do was certainly more solid and productive than a rushed 3-set workout.

Micro-workouts are fantastic if you are limited in time and have the self-discipline to make those 10 minute segments as productive as you possibly can. They are also paradigm-busters and show you that working out can be accomplished in many different ways than the standard hour-and-a-half at the gym. But they may not be the best strategy for all of your workouts all of the time, particularly if you are feeling stuck, unmotivated or more focused on the time expenditure aspect of the workout than the effort and effectiveness. If you feel that you may be here, give ladders a try.

This is Part 2 of my interview with San Diego Fitness trainer and high frequency basic calisthenics advocate Kyle Boggeman. You can read Part 1 here.

Steve: In my own experience, one of the biggest challenges with frequent training is how to reconcile fatigue with the concept of making “progress”. In fact, you have told me before that the notion of progress changes as the trainee becomes more advanced. Can you talk a little bit about this?

Kyle: Absolutely. I think the strength and conditioning industry has become a bit too focused on a very narrow idea of “progression”, and this has trickled down into the average person’s conceptualization of the training process. This can lead to all sorts of bad habits, both in terms of training technique, and in terms of long term motivation. 

I think the best place to start is with actually looking at the idea of progressive overload. Some coaches preach that we need to constantly outdo our previous performances in order to actually make progress, and that only by doing more and more, can we continue to improve. I’m not convinced this is the best way to think about the training process. Personally, I like to think of this in reverse; progress, or our ability to do more, is a byproduct of hard training. When we train, we have to cross a “dose” threshold to stimulate an adaptive response, and this allows us to do more over time. It’s not the fact that we did more that stimulated the progress, it’s the fact that our previous workout met the required threshold which facilitated an adaptation. 

Obviously things change over our training career. When we start out, the threshold required to stimulate an adaptation is pretty low, and the resulting adaptations are robust. This is why beginners can make rapid progress, and will often make their fastest gains in their first year or two of hard and smart training. After this, progress slows down. When you accumulate a few years of good training, it becomes very difficult to double your reps on an exercise, for example. At this point, there are a few common mistakes. Since most people have anchored their idea of “progress” to numbers, and they are no longer able to increase numbers at a rate that is motivating, they adopt completely new exercises, new training protocols, or change their training so dramatically that they essentially start from a beginner level again. This gives them a new, but false, sense of progression, since most these new “gains” are an artifact of simply getting better at something novel, and not actually true gains. As soon as the quick adaptions occur, progress will once again slow. On the other hand, some individuals will attempt to force progress, and will often fool themselves into thinking they are making progress when they are in fact adopting progressively worse technique. Both paths usually end up in frustration, injury, destroyed motivation, and a circular/repetitive pattern that ultimately ends up going nowhere.

From the beginning, I always advocate treating form as a training variable that should get more attention than the reps or weight. Reps, movement progressions, and weight come along for the ride, for a while, but eventually slow after the intermediate level. Once you get to this stage, you can still make gains, albeit slower. However, some things actually get easier to progress, like technical improvements, and in fact, you are in the best position to make the most impactful insights and gain the deepest understanding of the subtle intricacies of an exercise. This is because at this point, you will have tens of thousands of good repetitions under your belt, and the motor pattern has literally become ingrained into your nervous system. This level of familiarity brings with it a higher level of body awareness, and now you have the ability and control to productively explore variations to refine the movements, focus on mind/muscle connection, and lead to getting the absolute most out of each rep.

Steve: Is it possible to progress an exercise in ways other than doing more reps or more volume or a harder version?  Can one progress an exercise (and consequently get stronger and build muscle) just by improving form and technique?  If so, what would be a good strategy to work on this?  Do you think it would be possible to make progress without counting reps or sets?

Kyle: Yes. Form improvement is one of the most overlooked aspects of training, and ultimately where I think most of the effort should be placed, especially for more advanced people. Starting out, your rate of progress will allow for fairly rapid increases in repetitions and muscular size. After a point, this slows down. By the time you have been training for a while, I think the best strategy is to introduce more variation into training while emphasizing the focus on the process of technical mastery. Beginners often lack the body awareness, strength, and the motor pattern proficiency to make deep and significant improvements in technique, and the only way to develop these things is by doing tons of reps over years with the intention of improving your form. At the early stages of training, technical improvements are very basic and often limited to things like improving range of motion, reducing momentum, etc. By the time someone reaches the intermediate or advanced stages, thousands and thousands of reps will have been performed. During this process, greater body awareness has been automatically developed, and the motor pattern is significantly stronger, and since there is a surplus of strength, manipulating and modifying technique become easier. At this point, really dialing in on maximizing movement quality across multiple variations with things like paused reps, controlled tempo, with a focus on mind/muscle connection is the way to go. 

Improvement in rep quality can increase mind/muscle connection, and it turns out the old school bodybuilders were right about this; mind muscle connect can, in fact, increase muscular activation and lead to greater muscular gains. The path to achieving this simply relies on prioritizing good technique from the beginning, and then accumulating a ton of good reps that will eventually allow you to maximize your technique and utilize the mind/muscle connection for more efficient training. I think this process is best displayed by arched back pull ups. Beginners often perform pull ups with the hips flexed, shoulders elevated and protracted, and the neck extended and reaching. They do not have the strength to keep the hips and back extended while keeping the chest up, and the shoulder blades squeezed back and down. This arched-back position opens the door for a ton of muscular growth across the entire back, but it takes excellent mind/muscle connection and a solid strength base to even start approaching, so it isn’t accessible to beginners. This is exactly how form can be progressed over your training career to allow for continued gains even for those who have been productively training for years. **

** Note from Steve – above emphasis is mine; this is an incredibly important point.

Steve:  Sometimes I feel boxed in by the notion that I have to follow objective rules like tracking progress, tracking volume, choosing the proper order of exercises, etc.  Sometimes I just want to do whatever I feel like.  It can be liberating.  But am I wasting my time when I decide, for example, that today I just want to do as many push-ups as I can?  Is this hindering my progress?

Kyle: Not at all. I take a different view on this than most coaches. I believe in a principle- based approach to training, and as long as your training is consistently based on effective principles, it will be effective. As long as you are pursuing perfect form, training hard, accumulating enough weekly volume, moving through a full range of motion, avoiding exercises that are injurious, and training consistently for a long time, you will inevitably make progress over the long term. Changing up the expression and implementation of these principles every now and again is inconsequential. After all, one man’s program hopping is another man’s periodization. The thing that really matters is that 5 years from now, you have 5 more years of good training under your belt. 

Steve:  It’s a common belief among calisthenics people that one can build strength and muscle in the upper body with body-weight only, but for legs you must use weights.  Do you think this is true?  You seem to do a lot of very high rep sets of body-weight squats, even a set of over 500 as I recall!  Does this approach have a muscle building effect or is this mainly giving you conditioning?

Kyle: Most people can develop a good amount of leg size and strength from calisthenics alone, but I’m not convinced that it is the optimal training method for reaching your genetic potential for leg size. If you want to stand on the Olympia stage, barbells, dumbbells, and even machines, are likely necessary. However, most of us are not actually pursuing this level of size, as it doesn’t meet our athletic, health, or our aesthetic goals. If you want a pair of incredibly fatigue resistant, generally strong and athletic legs that also look great, calisthenics is definitely a viable approach. 

I approach high rep sets with the intention of building conditioning, work capacity, and fatigue resistance. From our mechanistic understanding of muscle growth, these high rep sets are generally not regarded to be as effective in terms of their ability to stimulate growth past a certain point (everything stimulates growth to a point, even walking), simply because they don’t approach muscular failure and therefore don’t recruit and train all of the available muscle fibers. However, I don’t think we should ignore the anecdotes that suggest that they might actually have the potential to produce meaningful hypertrophy. I have read several interviews with bodybuilders using very high rep sets and reporting excellent growth. I’ve also read historical accounts of Indian wrestlers, written by Western physical culturists, who note the incredible quad development of these athletes, who happen to be known for doing thousands of reps of body weight squats per day. In this same vein, I’ve also seen a client’s legs improve dramatically from taking up road cycling, despite being well trained in weighted squats and deadlifts. It’s possible that these anecdotes are misattributing the hypertrophy to the high rep training, but assuming they are accurate, it could be that A) Perhaps some people have a genetic predisposition for hypertrophy from this type of training B) something else is going on, like motor unit cycling, which allows a higher amount of total fibers to experience sufficient tension to stimulate growth, C) maybe the growth is largely due to increases in non-contractile components of muscle D) something else entirely. Personally, it is hard for me to attribute my leg growth to any single training protocol, simply because I tend to do a ton with my legs. 

Steve:  Any advice for those of us in our 40’s, 50’s and above (or anyone else) for avoiding chronic pain and injury?

Kyle: For those of us who are a little older, I think the principles are the same, but adherence to those principles becomes more critical. Your best bet for training as you get older is to manage fatigue properly by not training too close to failure too often, making sure technique is perfect, keeping weekly volume at a recoverable level (which will be lower), and selecting exercises that you tolerate well. The goal is to keep training for as long as possible, and as you get older, this requires you to be more conservative.

Steve:  In terms of diet, I find the notion of tracking calories or restricting a macro-nutrient or food group more stressful than the 15 pounds of belly fat that I need to lose.  And yet, diet has a whole lot to do with physique goals and performance, particularly as we get older.  But on the flip side, feeling like you constantly have to be restricting yourself is no way to live.  Do you have any basic diet and nutrition guidelines, particularly in terms of fat loss, that would be approachable and wouldn’t have us weighing food and strictly timing our meals or entering them into My Fitness Pal?

Kyle: Let me first say that nutritional requirements vary significantly between individuals, as determined by genetics, activity levels, disease risk, body composition,  athletic goals, metabolic health, stage of life, and preferences. Nutrition is incredibly complicated, so I prefer to look at nutrition through broad principles, much in the asme way I look at training. I think for most people looking to optimize health and body composition, they should start with some basics, such as eating real, unprocessed, nutrient dense foods, consuming enough protein to support and preserve lean mass and body composition goals, develop some sort of intentional habit to build mindfulness around calorie consumption. Strategies like avoiding habitual snacking or utilizing time restricted feeding can bring more attention to what we actually eat, and sometimes this is all we need to do to keep our energy intake in check. However, the needs of each individual are different, so from these broad principles, each person will need to individualize their nutrition to meet their health and fitness needs. 

Steve:  Lastly, how do we find you?  Social media, web site, email address?

Kyle: You can find me on Youtube at my Youtube channel Kboges, my website kboges.com, or on IG @kboges86

Back when I started training calisthenics I was very excited about the potential for building strength and muscle with basic movements such as push-ups, pull-ups and squats. That excitement has not waned ten years later and has served as the basis for my humble little book on the subject. Although calisthenics skills such as the human flag, handstand push-up and back lever are extremely impressive, I was never really compelled to pursue them. I’ve always been leery of injury and more interested in building muscle and conditioning as I age with basic exercises. That’s why I was quite excited to come across Kyle Boggeman’s YouTube channel, as he is using his extensive education and experience training clients to really produce a knowledge-base around building strength, muscle, conditioning and flexibility with basic calisthenics movements and training parameters such as fatigue management, frequency of exercise, and proximity to failure. Below is Part 1 of a two-part interview with Kyle, where he shares the wisdom behind his unique and effective way of training calisthenics.

Steve: Can you tell us a bit about who you are and your experience and background in the fitness industry?

Kyle: I’ve been a trainer in San Diego for a decade now. I originally got into fitness through martial arts training when my first teacher introduced me to basic calisthenics. I was probably 12 years old at that time, and I absolutely fell in love with physical culture and the whole concept of self development. I have been training ever since, and have dabbled in several different training modalities over the years. No matter what I have tried, basic calisthenics have always served as my foundation. 

As far as my professional experience goes, I owned and operated a gym in San Diego where I worked mostly with combat athletes, military personnel, and law enforcement. I racked up thousands and thousands of coaching hours working with several hundred clients over that time. It was a hard job in a competitive market, but the amount of experience I gained coaching was the best education I could have asked for. As far as my academic background, I have a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Kinesiology. Both have been equally helpful in my career. Philosophy trains you to think critically, and to look at things from a different perspective. It also ingrains skepticism and encourages a systematic approach to analyzing concepts and ideas, both of which are incredibly useful for interpreting scientific literature and sifting through the mounds of terrible misinformation that exists within the fitness industry. On the other hand, my education in kinesiology greatly enhanced my understanding of  exercise science and statistics. I’m also certified by the NSCA as a CSCS, a TSAC-F and a CPT.

Steve: I think most people, myself included, think that if they get into calisthenics they need to start learning skills like handstands, human flag, and front lever as soon as possible.  I wonder what your thoughts are on this and why we never really see you doing skills.

Kyle: It is certainly understandable. Calisthenics skills are extremely impressive to see, and when you first try them, they feel impossible. They attract a lot of people to calisthenics and serve as a very concrete goal for many. This has definitely shaped the current calisthenics training paradigm. You add to this the fact that basic calisthenics are often dismissed by most people in the community and are seen as a stepping stone to something greater, and it becomes clear why the current love affair with skills exists. 

I’m a firm believer in building a foundation first. Prioritizing competency with the basics, and improving your body composition are the best uses of training time for beginners. In terms of exercise selection, skill training is not an efficient way to improve basic health and fitness because it is not efficient method for improving body composition. I know this sounds blasphemous but, I will lay out a logical argument for why this is the case. First, in terms of building muscle mass, exercises that train a muscle through a greater range of motion are superior to exercises that use less range of motion, or no range of motion at all. We also know that the relationship between weekly volume and muscle growth is a dose dependent one, insofar as the more volume you can do and recover from, the more muscle you can build. With this in mind, exercise selection needs to be optimized to allow for higher weekly training volumes. To accomplish this, we need exercises that are easy on the joints, and are safe to take to, or close to, failure. We also want exercises that are limited by the target musculature, not balance, stabilization, joint integrity, limb proportions, or skill. Finally, we want exercises that don’t carry an elevated or unique injury risk. If an exercise fails to check all of these boxes, it is not a good choice for a high volume program. Obviously, many skill progressions fail to check these boxes and are isometric in nature, making them poor choices for high training volumes, and poor choices for muscle building in general. This isn’t to say that they cannot build muscle at all, or that some people cannot perform skill training frequently, just that it is not an efficient path for the vast majority of people looking to build muscle and get into shape while staying free from injury. 

Even in your ultimate goal is to perform skills, keep in mind that skills are a display of athletic qualities that are, in a large part, dependent on good body composition. The levers, the planche, the human flag, single arm skills etc. all become significantly easier to develop when the athlete has excellent body composition, or in other words, is very lean, muscular and well conditioned. Once you have gotten lean and muscular, targeted and intentional low volume skill training can quickly develop the particular joint strength, balance, and neuromuscular coordination required by the skill. Improving body composition is the hardware upgrade and raises your potential for strength and athleticism, and skill training is the software upgrade that allows you to get the most out of the hardware that you have built with the basics. 

When I was younger, I definitely messed around with skill training. As I got older, I became more concerned with the injury risks associated with my approach to training, and my focus shifted to general health and fitness. As I approached my thirties, a few things became abundantly clear- I was not indestructible, and nothing ruined my gains like getting injured. Because of this, I began to focus more on improving my body composition and general fitness by using exercises and programming strategies that carried a lower injury risk. I realized that the basics and higher training frequencies allowed me to accumulate and recover from more training volume, ultimately allowing for better gains in terms of general fitness, health, and body composition. As my understanding of exercise science deepened, I concluded that skill training was not congruent with my goals, and ultimately would not be the most productive use of my time. 

Steve: You have talked quite a bit on your Youtube channel about mastering basic movements.  I think you mean a lot more with this than just being able to do a lot of reps of a basic exercise.  When it comes to something like the pull-up, the push-up or the squat, what do you mean by mastering the movements?

Kyle: Mastery is more of a process than a destination. It’s about going “into” the movement and trying to feel all of the subtle things going on during the process of performing a rep. It’s the pursuit of the perfect rep, learning to really feel the muscles contract, and learning to feel and correct the tiny compensations that you otherwise wouldn’t even notice. When you bring this level of intention and mindfulness to something basic like push up or a pull up, it opens up a whole different perspective and allows you to see the depth, complexity, and potential that truly exists within them. Ultimately, it allows you to extract more out of the basics than you otherwise could from mindless and sloppy repetitions. 

Steve: There is a lot of dogma in the muscle- and strength-building world around rep ranges and time between sets and “rest days”.  Many people believe that an “optimal rep range” for building muscle is 6-12 and lower reps are for strength and higher reps are for endurance, etc.  You have indicated many times that you think none of these things are necessarily true.  What do you think are the most important factors in building strength and muscle?

Kyle: Optimal rep ranges and the concepts of rest days are two common prescriptions given without context. Research in exercise science has come a long way in the last 20 years and we now know both of these “rules” are not rules at all, but rather incomplete understandings at best. Currently, the literature is quite clear that the muscle building rep range is enormous, and that training frequency (and by extension rest days) are just a function of volume distribution. We don’t actually “need” rest days, because the amount of fatigue we generate from a workout is not fixed. How much fatigue we generate depends on our exercise selection, training volume, proximity to failure, as well as our own fitness, work capacity, and training status. If I’m in shape and used to doing a lot of pull ups, do I really need to take a day off after I do two hard sets?  The answer is no, simply because that level of stress doesn’t require a full day of rest to resolve the fatigue it generates. So, by properly structuring a training program, you can distribute training volume in such a way that no single workout ever drives you into a recovery deficit that takes extended time to pull yourself out of. Also, by knowing what it takes to stimulate muscle growth, you can train in a way that provides a sufficient level of that stimulus in a manner that is sustainable day to day. 

I think the most important factors are consistency and effort. Nothing you can do in a single session in terms of manipulating training variables compares in importance to consistency and effort over time. Equally important is good exercise selection. This can be make-or-break insofar as good exercise selection maximizes your return on your time investment, and more importantly, reduces injury risk. Nothing derails muscle gains like injury. Good exercise selection is also necessary to maximize the growth response, so if you want good gains long term, pick your exercises wisely. Finally, in terms of program variables, total weekly volume, as measured by high effort sets, is a powerful predictor of muscle gains, but it needs to be matched with your ability to recover.

Steve: You train the same movement patterns pretty much every day.  Another common belief is that you must take “days off” from training the same muscle group.  How are you able to train the same movement patterns every day, and is it actually better than taking days off?

Kyle: High frequency training relies on good fatigue management. When this is in place, it works incredibly well. There are a few common pitfalls that are common to this approach, and these are doing too much weekly volume, training too close to failure, and not cycling through exercise variations. While a higher training frequency can allow you to accumulate more weekly volume with less perceived effort, the fatigue can still accumulate past your point of daily recovery. A lot of people make the mistake of doing their same 3 day per week workout 7 times per week and come to the conclusion that daily training doesn’t work. What they needed to do instead was distribute their 3 day per week workout over 7 days, then slowly add volume over time.

In this same vein, excessive training to failure will typically lead to excess fatigue in all but the youngest and most genetically gifted among us. With this in mind, I usually recommend training a few reps shy of failure for most sets to reduce fatigue, along with perfecting form to minimize joint and connective tissue stress. The reality is some days you just don’t have it, so taking light and easy days when you need them is another key component of making this system work.

The final piece of the puzzle is rotating through exercise variations. Now, starting out, I prefer to keep exercise selection minimal to encourage rapid development of fundamental motor patterns. After a while though, when training stress increases and people begin to display better technique, introducing variations of movements works really well to manage fatigue as well as stimulate new gains in muscle mass. Variations in grip width, hand orientation, torso positioning, tempo, and even intention, all change how stress is distributed across the tissues. While all the same muscles might be working, the emphasis will be different, allowing for various levels of recruitment and recovery throughout the week. However, if an exercise is too different, you may not be able to perform it efficiently, since the motor pattern is not well developed, and this will ultimately limit your ability use the exercise to deliver a robust growth response. Ultimately, I think it is wise to have a limited number of motor patterns, but a higher amount of variation within that motor pattern. 

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Web: https://www.kboges.com/
Email: kboggeman@gmail.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Kbogea/videos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kboges86/

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview coming soon.

Here is a preview of the questions Kyle will be addressing in Part 2:

In my own experience, one of the biggest challenges with frequent training is how to reconcile fatigue with the concept of making “progress”. In fact, you have told me before that the notion of progress changes as the trainee becomes more advanced. Can you talk a little bit about this?

Is it possible to progress an exercise in ways other than doing more reps or more volume or a harder version?  Can one progress an exercise (and consequently get stronger and build muscle) just by improving form and technique?  If so, what would be a good strategy to work on this?  Do you think it would be possible to make progress without counting reps or sets?

Sometimes I feel boxed in by the notion that I have to follow objective rules like tracking progress, tracking volume, choosing the proper order of exercises, etc.  Sometimes I just want to do whatever I feel like.  It can be liberating.  But am I wasting my time when I decide, for example, that today I just want to do as many push-ups as I can?  Is this hindering my progress?

It’s a common belief among calisthenics people that one can build strength and muscle in the upper body with body-weight only, but for legs you must use weights.  Do you think this is true?  You seem to do a lot of very high rep sets of body-weight squats, even a set of over 500 as I recall!  Does this approach have a muscle building effect or is this mainly giving you conditioning?

Any advice for those of us in our 40’s, 50’s and above (or anyone else) for avoiding chronic pain and injury?

In terms of diet, I find the notion of tracking calories or restricting a macro-nutrient or food group more stressful than the 15 pounds of belly fat that I need to lose.  And yet, diet has a whole lot to do with physique goals and performance, particularly as we get older.  But on the flip side, feeling like you constantly have to be restricting yourself is no way to live.  Do you have any basic diet and nutrition guidelines, particularly in terms of fat loss, that would be approachable and wouldn’t have us weighing food and strictly timing our meals or entering them into My Fitness Pal?

Not long ago I was contacted by Born Tough, makers of fitness apparel, gear, gym bags and accessories. They said they had found my site from a link on Fit Dad Fitness, and wanted to know if would test some of their new training apparel and provide an honest review. To be truthful, I thought this was spam. I have never heard of Fit Dad Fitness or Born Tough. But as it turns out, my site was linked on Fitness Dad Fitness, on a post on flexibility, mobility and injury prevention as we age. So I agreed to review the Momentum Military Jogger from Born Tough.

Now that many of us are working from home and are now masters of the home workout, these joggers are perfect for any day and every day. I received them not long after I agreed to review them, no strings attached. Well, that’s not entirely true. There is a draw string around the waist. But Born Tough was generous enough to give me the joggers for free in return for an honest review.

These are now my favorite workout bottoms, and I am *NOT* just saying that. The fit is like nothing I own. Streamlined without being tight, loose enough to allow complete freedom of movement. And I really like the fact that workout-wear makers are providing colors other than black, gray and white. These military green joggers are quite stylish.

The material is durable and flexible and the quality of the joggers is very high. And my favorite thing of all has to be the pockets. They have something between a regular pocket and a cargo pants pocket. It’s on the side and horizontal but not large and billowy like a cargo pants pocket. I have a few pairs of cargo workout pants and find that my phone and keys flop around when I keep them in the side pockets. In the Born Tough joggers, this is not a problem at all. They are snug and are secure because of the very high quality zipper.

Another very surprising feature of these joggers is the price. They are currently going for $29, less than a third the price of comparable workout clothing on the market.

Check them out here:

Born tough , BT Momentum track suit jogger Military Green , Workout Joggers  and their sister website Elite Sports.