 I've been training as a bodybuilder for 22 years, you know competing 16 times in UK, US and Italy and just recently I started incorporating calisthenics and some of the calisthenic progressions into my training schedule every week. Yeah, I love some of the videos, they were very informational, very educational and I like the aspects about the movement, the body movement rather than just thinking about trying to get as big as possible, a type of body building mentality that to be honest I never had because I always had like the natural bodybuilding philosophy of trying to build a aesthetic body that is also functional but if I would have to say you know the things that interested me the most about school of calisthenics was the interest in learning how to move the body in a more functional way. It was actually after the first workshop here in Marbella that I realized that I was very strong on specific range of movements, in particular kind of the compound movements in bench press, squats and deadlifts, but very very weak at the extreme of the range of movement, so maximum contraction and maximum extension of some of the joints. So decided to incorporate some of the calisthenics progressions, especially you know kind of muscle-ups, pull-ups, also learning how to do a better scapular retraction and shoulder depression in order to feel more my lats as well as a bodybuilder, so simulated more hypertrophy and so I started last year after the first workshop and now it's been more than one year and you know I start every day, every session of my workout with you know some calisthenics progressions because it's also something that I'm learning at the moment so it's very important to just be like completely fresh when you start learning something and then I move into some more kind of a typical bodybuilding movement just to you know increase the volume of my workouts. It's an hybrid, yeah it's an hybrid approach where you know it depends also on the day, sometimes I feel like I want to practice more on the handstand or I feel like I'm explosive enough to be ready to try more muscle-ups or maybe I just focus an entire day doing that and also we you know with Flavia we just started gymnastics so we go to gymnastics twice a week and we try to have a more kind of a holistic approach to training and I feel much better now to be honest I mean my joints, my mobility has improved dramatically I feel better also in terms of like my posture because most of the day I'm basically sitting down working on a computer and now you know because every time that I go to the gym I don't just lift like heavy weight but I do functional movement then I feel like I feel better even if I have to sit down for a long time during the day. Oh yeah at the beginning yeah she was definitely the person that got me interested into you know calisthenics I thought that you know body weight exercises were easy but then I realized that we're like very tough and you know it's like I'm going through a very humble progression because I've been squatting 200 kilos bench pressing 150 kilos so now not be able to do even like one set of 10 reps of one single leg squat is very depressing but I'm going through this journey I feel much better as I said I mean my posture has improved I feel stronger and definitely I'm also looking at the future so I have this concept of you know sustainable athlete so being able to perform also you know a more mature age so I'm definitely going into that direction I'm very happy that I found school of calisthenics to help me out to go to that training for handstand so you know being able to you know maintain the strong position with the scapular retraction and shoulder external rotation to maintain the position while I was upside down I got definitely you know my upper back much stronger and I can exert more force now and also I definitely saw more you know improvement in terms of hypertrophy on my upper trap and upper back so it's great you know it's exactly what I wanted my bench press has gone up as well yep because now you know I feel like yeah I'm able to maintain that position with the shoulder down and the scapular reduction so I I mean a better functional position also to bench press more I improve my push ups as well again I thought that you know doing push up was easy then I started overloading them and now I do push ups also with 40 kilos on my upper back and it's great you know I I didn't expect to be able to do that mobility mobility has improved a lot especially on my shoulder my hips so I've been training a lot on that something that I definitely neglected when I was training just for bodybuilding because again it was just like a quick warm-up and then straight to the bench press straight to the squat track but now I'm spending more time on mobilization and doing dynamic stretching you know I feel that you know the handstand is improved although I should probably practice it more but the overall body I feel like is more connected while while I was doing just bodybuilding everything was compartmentalized in every single you know muscle department so like one day was arms so biceps and triceps another day was just like lower body now I trained full body also in bodybuilding because I feel that is actually great for my my hypertrophy goals and my for my strength goals to train my entire body by mixing up again calisthenics and bodybuilding exercises I think that the material that you can find also in the Virta classroom or the material that is available also on on Instagram has helped me a lot to you know redefine also my training regimen so because I'm still planning to compete as a bodybuilder I will start and continue to train as a bodybuilder but who knows maybe next time I go on stage I will you know start my opposing routine on a handstand or on someone of a calisthenic move you know that's actually my goal so I'm gonna be training again for another couple of years not taking any type of contest prep so that I can improve my calisthenics strength and movements and then going back on stage and definitely gonna do that opposing routine and no absolutely I'm not gonna lose muscle size actually you're gonna improve strength and of course there's a direct relationship between you know strength and muscle hypertrophy so you're gonna improve your muscle bellies and also in terms of definition is all about diet so just make sure that your calorie intake matches your calorie expenditure are you gonna be shredded as if you're doing bodybuilding actually is also more fun because the more you practice the more you do progressions on calisthenics movements the more you have fun compared to a monotonous bodybuilding training style so you end up doing more volume and as you know I mean volume is the variable in training that is actually directly related to hypertrophy so you can actually get bigger you know doing calisthenics I mean it's incredible that after 22 years of training as a bodybuilder I'm having some progresses in hypertrophy so as a natural bodybuilder when someone was saying that after five years you reached your you know muscle potential while I'm still improving because probably I was not training at the maximum potential before because I was just training on very tiny short range of movements and developing strength on the entire range of movements is a totally different ball game and I'm very happy now to be able to do that as well