@dontdosadness After years of performing the RR I’m sad to see it go :,( but excited to start something a little different.
I’m also excited to see a bit more volume in reps added to the leg exercises. I never felt like my legs were worked enough with the RR so I always added more, not knowing if it was the right move or not.
@dawn16 Don't worry it'll still be accessible, it just won't be the main routine of the sub that is recommended to everyone. It will be in an 'old routines' section!
@dontdosadness Hi Nick big fan here. My very first introduction to fitness was the RR and I saw people criticizing it because of its lack of focus on the lower back muscles. Is that true? If so do you have some exercises with an easy progression involving those muscles? I'm not sure if I have underdeveloped lower back muscles, my only core exercise in my workout program is the ab wheel rollout
@sophiamary Of all the things wrong with the RR, that's an exceptionally minor critique, to the degree that it was barely on my radar.
Training the lower back will always be EXTREMELY limited without the assistance of external load. Pretty much the only reliable option is the reverse hyperextension which is a useful exercise for a couple weeks to months at a max unless you start to add weight.
If you really need to focus on your lumbar spinal erectors, you are going to want to lift weights.
Having said that, directly training the lumbar spinal erectors is really not that important or useful UNLESS you are in the business of lifting heavy things all the time, at which point as I said you should be lifting weights as your main training modality.
@dontdosadness I don't know if this has been asked yet, or I might've missed something but I incorporate the skills workout with the RR. Should I do that with the BWSF workout?
@cybermommy2011 Since the 2017 update of the RR, it's been recommended that skill work be separated from the main training into a 'skill day', which can be found here:
@wally1941r welcome! we're happy to have you and I hope you enjoy the 14 day event (or just the program overall, if you are starting early) and hope that it helps you get into a new set of good habits for the year
Great work! I would love to make your routines importable into YAWPlan, a mostly free exercise planner app I'm building, and publish them on freeworkouts.net.
I will not copy-paste, and will link back to you for all the form explanations etc.
Just been gearing up to start the RR (did one day just prior to Christmas), so the timing is great.
Question: I skimmed the Convict Conditioning routine and progressions while searching for a bodyweight routine (before I found this sub); one of the six exercises in that system is a bridge. I have some experience with bodyweight training in the past, but haven't done bridge training since gymnastics 25 years ago. Do they have a good place in a bodyweight routine? Will they have a home in the BWSF?
@monkiesmama Bridges as in Thoracic Bridges are a super niche demonstration of high levels of thoracic and hip extension rather than a way to effectively develop either of those, or strength. Their place in convict conditioning is a little baffling to me as they don't really have any utility in a general purpose strength routine.
If you have specific interest in being able to do thoracic bridges, then train for them, but even in that case, simply doing thoracic bridges is not the way you do it. If you simply want to train strength, miss them.
@dawn16 A level 3 pre-pike has the shoulders starting over the hands like a normal pushup, but the hips are positioned like a pike, and you then push into a full overhead position.
A pike pushup starts in the full overhead position, and ends in a full overhead position.
It may seem like a trivial difference, but learning to push 'up' (overhead) rather than forward is tricky enough to learn and sufficiently harder that they deserve separate progressions. It is a common pitfall many experience in trying to learn HSPUs because if you push forward from the bottom of a handstand pushup, then you'll lose balance.
From a muscles perspective, a Level 3 Pike is like a high incline bench, but a pike pushup is like an overhead press... -ish.
@dontdosadness That’s really helpful, I get the difference now - actually at the gym rn trying out the new routine so your comment was perfectly timed!
