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Hey, I'm currently using the Handstand program twice a week while I continue to lift. I've actually seen better gains from the Handstand progressions than my lifting, and was thinking about starting Foundation 1, but don't feel like investing in a power rack or any extra equipment at the moment. How far can I get in Foundation 1 without purchasing any extra equipment beyond a dowel, an adjustable beach, a mat, and some weights?

Hi guys. Working on my front uprise!...help and tips on how I can master this!!?? Video is my progress so far. this HTML class. Value is http://youtu.be/aQ2qUCdljpo

Hi community, I'll introduce myself because I'm looking for some specifig advice . Im from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm 24 and been training movement for some years. I have hipermobility in my shoulders and cervical problems since I was very young. Now, happily, thanks to hard work and been kind of an autodidact-research-nerd, I got stable and pretty strong shoulders but a little imbalance in the one that has sufered a complete dislocation (right one). My back is strong too. So gymnastics are a big challenge for me...but I have no rush. I enjoy been a newbie in everything I do. Now I'm geting the free standing handstand slowly, I can also hold a straddle BL and a tucked FL, and discovered that I couldn't do a ring muscle up because of my poor technique training, with no coaching...but I'm getting there too. I've got good overall body control because since I started moving seriously I did a lot of things and learned from different disciplines and people, and I aim to be a well-rounded mover. Since I focused a lot on movement the past years, I need to improve my strenght. I'm in a place where I've learned to control my body and incorporated a lot of theory to be able to progress alone. So the point is, been my own coach is probably not the best choice but the only I can actually afford. Here in Argentina buying anything in dolar price is a pain in the ass and I can't really afford the onlie coaching programs as I'd really like to do. In mid-terms I'd like to be able to hold a freestanding HS for 20-30secs, doing a clean B&F Lever, keep progressing in general body control, and for example, install a ring setup at home and knowing what to do with it (muscle ups in short term) What's your advice? Is there any free program (or some pretty cheap one to start with) that I can follow? I never used weights, do you recomend getting into a weighted program (at least 1 or 2 times a week) to gain more strenght? Or I should stick to bodyweight training as I been doing? Thanks a lot if you read/answer, time is priceless . Good training you all.

Howdy y'all, I've been lurking around here for a week or so, and thought I'd post an intro. Some background on me. I live in Texas, enjoy physical activity, and over the last 2 1/2 years I've done some barbell lifting (starting strength, Rippetoe) and more recently programs by Ross Enamait (Never Gymless & Infinite Intensity). Ross warmed me up to the idea of bodyweight lifts, so I've been working on pushups, pullups, and various core exercises for the last 3 months. I did gracie jiu-jitsu in college, and would like to pick that up again once funds allow. I have enjoyed heavy barbell lifting, but had to get a triple hernia repair (2 inguinal, 1 belly button) December 2012. The inguinal hernias were rather large. Since then I can't lift nearly as much weight as I used to without getting pain in my incision sites. The surgeon told me that the lifting wouldn't hurt the surgery, but I'd like to avoid lifts that cause ongoing pain. I also got into a car accident spring 2013, so my neck is still having issues from that (one of the vertabrae popped over to the side). I can't do neck bridges, heavy back squats, or similair exercises without getting bad neck pain anymore. Side note, I'm 6'1" and am currently holding 170lbs (by eating 3k cals a day). The natural weight I hold is 130lbs (if I don't lift and just eat what I feel like eating). Barbell lifting and heavy eating (4k cals a day) got me to a fat 190lbs; I switched to "Ross Training" (November 2013), lowered cals to 3k/day, and now I'm at 170lbs and not fat (but not lean either). I would like to get rid of the remaining fat on my gut. It's annoying because my upper ab muscles are slightly visible, but I've still got pudge on the lower ab region. Last year I just focused on eating a ton of food, but now I need to figure out a better diet so that I can maintain or slightly increase my weight without putting on fat. Lately I've been eating 3k cals a day and getting ~45% of cals from fat, ~30% carbs, ~25% protein. I try to eat most of my carbs on strength exercise days, and eat a lot less carbs on non-strength days. This approach seems to let me maintain my bodyweight without adding on anymore fat. I would like to get stronger with bodyweight exercises, and progress to be able to do things like L-sits, planche, handstand pushups, etc. Right now, I can only do 4x7 chinups (not strict, but not kipping), 4x20 pushups, and can only do dips on a bench. I can do 1-leg squats if my legs have a couple days to rest from the previous workout (balance is the issue). Triceps are a weakpoint for me. I'm basically starting from scratch when it comes to bodyweight exercises. It looks like F1 and H1 are my starting points. I don't have the money to spend on that right now, so I need to find some stuff lying around the house to sell. In the meantime, do y'all have any advice on exercises to focus on now before I start F1 and H1?

Hello all! I've been reading a lot of the stuff on the forums here, and greatly enjoyed what I gleaned from everyone's wisdom on here. I finally decided to become a member the other day. I figured I could learn a lot more and maybe help someone out. A quick (not really quick, haha) back ground about my fitness journey: I have been playing soccer since I was in 1st grade, but after I finished my high school soccer I decided I was going to end my soccer career due to not being very great at it and receiving plenty of injuries due to poor warm ups and poor programing. I started doing track and field in high school. I really enjoyed track and field: the atmosphere of everyone trying to improve and help others improve (even my competitors helped me with various things), and the focus on fitness, not just skill (like what we did in soccer). I was always know as the calisthenics guy in track... I rocked the fitness tests with pull ups, push ups, and burpees. I was the fasted sprinter on my team my sophomore, junior and seinor year... which wasn't all that impressive, because my best 100m was a 12.02. I started getting into strength training my junior year. I didn't know anything and ended up injuring myself (sprained shoulder+jumper's knee). My strength training exposed my weakness: I had collapsed arches from soccer injuries, weak hamstrings from shallow squats and a previously pulled hamstring, some shoulder injuries, and wrist tendinitis. It was pretty ugly for being a junior in high school. I worked around and through the injuries. In my seinor year of high school I had done a ton of research on re/pre-hab. I also read a ton about strength training (Starting Strength and tons of articles and forums). I kind of became a coach of my track team because I actually knew more about sprinting/strengthening and rehabbing than my coaches (kind of sad). I got into benching, pressing, dead lifts, squats and pull ups. Sadly, my previously injured shoulder and imbalanced programing caused me to have a bit of impingement in my shoulder. I rehabbed it a bit, but benching never seem quite right with my shoulder (until recently). Now, my freshman year in college I finally took care of most of my injuries. Hamstrings are getting stronger, shoulder rarely hurts (only hurts when I'm poorly warmed up and do some kind of bad form press), knee pain is rare, but my feet are still flat. I can squat 260 for reps, dead lift 330 for 1, bench 185, press 100 for a couple reps (I know, it's wimpy) at a body weight of 160-165. Because upper body weight training never felt great on my shoulders, I looked into calisthenics a bit more. I brought Overcoming Gravity by Steven Low. I really enjoyed it, and considered buying foundation 1, but I figured they were every similar books and I don't have a ton ton of money to spend on fun reading. I tried handstand stuff, but got really sore wrists. Everything else seems pretty awesome. I am really excited to get into Gymnastic Strength Training™, because I could see myself doing this for years... and honestly, it's a ton more fun than lifting weights (except dead lifts, haha). I plan on having squats, dead lifts and sprints as my main lower body exercises, Gymnastic stuff and barbell over head press (until I'm better at handstand presses) for upper body strength training, My long term goals are: Front lever/front lever pull ups. Straddle planche push up. Free handstand push ups. Manna. One arm chin up. 405 pound squat. 500 pound dead lift. ...and maybe eventually an iron cross. My shorter term goals are: 8 Ring dips+45 pounds. 8 pull ups+45 pounds. 5 Tuck planche push up. 8-10 second Back lever. 10 strict muscle ups. 5 second Single leg front lever 10 Advanced L-sit/l-sit on rings. 1-3 handstand push ups (and 135 press for 8-10) 315 squat 405 dead lift. A half decent free standing handstand. Currently I'm at: 6 ring dips (getting easier) 10 pull ups + 15 pounds (not too challenging) Planche: No idea! 2 not-super strict muscle ups. 16 second tuck front lever. 18 second tuck back lever. 250 squat for reps (increasing weight every week still) 315 dead lift for 3 (gonna deload after I hit 325 for 3) Hand stand: 1-3 seconds. Current plan: Tuesday: Squat 3x5 Barbell press 3x8 3 sets of front lever+row 3 sets for 8-12 reps Cool down Pike stretch+compression Straddle stretch+compression Hip flexor stretches Over various stretches Thursday: Squat: 3x8-12 Ring or weighted parallel bar dips 3x8 Romanian dead lifts 3x8-12 3 sets of back lever and weighted pull ups Saturday: (Gym is closed) Box press 3x5-8 Front lever 3 sets+weighted inveted rows Back lever 3 sets Ring dips 3 sets (working up to 3x8, then working on RTO dips) Conditioning: I work a manual job 30-35 hours a week. Pretty good conditioning, but I might add some sprints I the spring. As for muscle ups, I might add them in my warm up... haven't thought about it because I did my first non-kipping one today! As for handstands: I'm not sure what to do. I tried working on them for 5-15 minutes a day on the floor. My wrists hated it. Maybe low parallel bars? L-sit/manna work: any ideas how to program this in? Maybe combine it with hanging leg raises? Yeah, so any ideas or tips would be appreciated! I'm a newbie!

Hello there!I'm writing this topic in order to ask if my new routine (after one year of almost no exercise) will bring me to my goals, so I'd be grateful if you could share your opinions about it.My goals are the freestanding handstand,straddle L,single legs squat and overall flexibility. Everyday before workout I do leg strenght training Squats 10x3 Hamstring rises 10x3 Calf rises 20x3 (I do these as a superset) Straddle L (bent legs) 15sec x4 After the workout I do this flexibility routine - http://agt.degreesofclarity.com/stretching/ Day 1 Ido's shoulder ROM and stabilization routine Pull-ups 5x3 Dips 5x3 Wrist PU 10x3 Shoulder dislocates Day 2 Ido's shoulder ROM and stabilization routine FL(tuck) pull-ups 5x3 Planche(tuck)push-ups 5x3 Wrist PU 10x3 Wall slides (on the floor, my flexibility is bad and I cant move my arms upwards so I just hold them in the starting position) 10sec x2 Day 3 Ido's shoulder ROM and stabilization routine Curls 5x3 Wall Handstand 15sec x4 Wrist PU 10x3 Shoulder dislocates Day 4 rest Then I start again from day 1.I know something is missing and that's why I'd like opinions if possible.Thanks!

Hi there ! This is my first post here, please dont hate on me. Ive alaways been a big fan of Male gymnasts and very impressed about their capabilities. So one day i decided to drop modern weight lifting and to do some gymnastics. But the sad thing is that the place where i live has no rings - I do my training at the gym ( using parralel bar and a pullup bar ) What im doing is : Warm-up ( where the primary target are the joints) Some static exercises for : Front lever, Back lever, planche, L-sit, Handstand work ( i checked some progression videos ) Bodyweight exercises like: Pullups inverted pullups bar dips bench dips pushups Wall HSPU hanging leg raises V - crunches bridges BW squats etc. i have made 3 different workouts mixing the exercises there but i do full body workout ( which means that my workout contains pulling, pushing, legs, core) Working out 3 days a week. ( my workout is aprox 2-3h ) Does this seem like a decent plan to you guys ? Im doing all of the static exercises after my warmup and then proceed to the Bodyweight ones, is that ok ? Any opinions or advices ? Oh, and btw im using Joshua Naterman's pull-up program which i found out in this forum. Thank you!

Hey, the last three weeks I worked out 4 times a week with a steady state training cycle. For every FBEs session I worked on my FSPs. My schedule looks like this. FPEs: 10 sets of advanced frog stand, tucked l-sit, freestanding handstand (with wall) and straddle L on PB. Every set I start with frog stand, then l-sit, handstand, straddle l and I hold every position for 4 breaths wich is around 8s. After that I take a rest 45s and then I do the next set. I continue with that until I reach the 10th set. After that I take a two minute break. Then I do 5 sets of different FBEs with a maximum of 5 reps. For Day 1 it looks like this: 5 x 3 tuck front lever rows, 5 x 5 head bridges, 5 x 5 close fingertip pushups Day 2: 5x5 dead hang pullups, 5x5 pistols, 5x4 Dips Day 3: is the same like day 1 Day 4 is the same like day 2 Since my last workout I have pain in my right wrist. I know that I have done to much work. I want to know what to do now. Rest at first, okay. Should I quit my work on ore two of the FSPs or change my straddle L and L sit work to FL ans BL work?