 I'm sat here today and it is looking a bit grim outside winter in the Northern Hemisphere is coming Jaco. So we need to make a plan for training outdoors. Listen, players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jaco. Now you know that we are big advocates of training outside. And one of the greatest things about calisthenics is the freedom to basically train wherever you want. And my kind of preference is to train in some of the more enjoyable locations around the world, whether that be at the beach, in the forest, starting to sound weird, but you get what I mean. But I'm sat here today and it is looking a bit grim outside winter in the Northern Hemisphere is coming Jaco. So we need to make a plan for training outdoors. Well, not training outdoors, training indoors when outdoors is less preferable. A wet weather plan, we would like to call it. And it's probably looking at there were some people listen to the podcast, obviously more over the word and you're just like basking in glorious sunshine in Australia or whatever. And it's like, this is basically like us going screw you or we're jealous of you, you know, we're jealous of you. And yes, the reality is for many, many people now, particularly those that Tim said in the Northern Hemisphere, we are going to have to train inside and that might disrupt things. And we want to look at giving you some help, some tips and some advice as to carrying on getting the most out of your training during those cold winter months where we might not be outside. One of the options to might be strap a pair on sunshine and get outside and training the training the cold. But yet the reality of making sure that rather than it being like a merry Jaco Christmas, we put on the poundage over Christmas and then you feel a bit of a wish when you come back into January, can we be effective with our training and still enjoy it even though our environment is probably going to change? So I'm going to pick up on your first point because it is part of the sort of narrative in my mind of going, should I just strap a pair on and get outside throughout the winter, come rain or shine, get the train done. This is the lifestyle and the attitude that you've committed to Tim stop kind of steering away from it when it gets a little bit unpleasant. Is there something in my mindset that I need to shift around that or is it that you've got a house and you've got some kid inside. So why are you training outdoors when it's cold and wet? What do you think about that? Yes, there's a potential to combine some sort of not necessarily resilience training cold water therapy with just like cold the cold therapy to get just to get used to it. There is some, you know, I potentially throw this back to you from a from a sports science perspective of like the how good an idea is it to train when you are completely cold in terms of like tissue temperature and like how how that is going to affect what you're doing and therefore you're going to benefit from being inside. The other thing I thought of as well was the fact that some people have been listening to this and going don't know what you pair like. I've got a gym membership still. So I'm absolutely absolutely fine. I'm probably going to go in the sauna after as well. Thanks very much. Well, I know people that maintain their gym memberships that do callous things purely just for the winter periods. Owen's a bit like this. Like he'll have a gym membership because he wants to train indoors in the winter, which kind of makes sense. I've got a thing about this is kind of crossfit box and there's no heating. And I'm actually in a bit of a thing at the moment to be honest and thinking about this is kind of a bit of a side point, but thinking about what my home gym setup like it looks like because I'm had thought about going back to the gym recently just to change the environment. We've spent a lot of time at home in the last 18 months and just to kind of go and surround myself with some people who are training whilst I'm training and just see how that goes. But having a browse around, I'm really struggling to find a gym that is in a acceptable distance from my house that I really want to go and train in that I'm going to see as a inspiring and motivational environment. So I've kind of gone full circle and gone, well, I don't want to get in the car for half an hour to drive and people might go say half an hour to him, but it's not because it's an hour of travel plus an hour in the gym and whatever else you might do when you spend there. That takes up a significant amount of time out of my day. So I'm kind of at the moment going through this narrative of all of this conversation myself of yes, it is a bit difficult to train at home and to break from a workspace into a training space and be in the same four walls the whole time, but I just actually need to have a word myself and get it done. So that's kind of, I guess the point of that is a kind of, I'm just having to redo some work on myself in terms of my overall attitude to training at home and that's harder because it's very easy in the summer to kind of go, I'm going to set the rig up in the garden and go and train in the sunshine. That's kind of feels real nice. Whereas now it's sort of like, I do want something different from my training going into the winter, but I need to actually, because I can't find a solution to that in terms of going to a gym and need to do some work in the house and I've just got to make a mindset shift about that. And it's actually like, that's the thing, I've just get it done, like find and I'm probably going to change my home training environment a little bit just to kind of freshen things up a little bit. But it is an interesting thing about how do we kind of keep things fresh at home, particularly when we can't train outdoors. And I think a lot of people listen to this, they've got home gyms in their garage or whatever they do calisthenics at home already, but they've got a designated training space. So I guess the other conversation to throw into this is around what's it like when it's kind of dark first thing in the morning until maybe nine o'clock in the worst winter, it gets dark again at four o'clock. It is more difficult to get out of bed and train in the dark and cold. I did a full block of that last winter. And it's not, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. You kind of start to relish the fact that you are up at five o'clock and for some, you get by, you kind of, you get up in the morning at five o'clock and train and you kind of give yourself a badge of honor. There's like, there's a deep internal sense of reward that you need to tell everybody about because that's what we do. There's loads in there, sorry, download. That looks like, because no one else has trained in this time. I think to go pick up on a couple of things that will be and try to make this some practical advice and some ideas, people, the pick up on one point you made of like, if we can, are we able to carve out a different space to dedicate to that? And this doesn't to the training. This doesn't mean that you have to like build a home gym and like build an extra layer on your garage or anything like that. Like the idea of just having different parts that the same way we're like, it's not good for you to sort of like do work where you sleep because like you want the brain to associate those different things. And it's like, if you can, can you create a different environment for when you're training compared if you're working from home physically where it is? And if that's not even the case, can you just move some stuff around to make it just like feel or seem and make a different, like a definite like change of like, okay, this is now like training time. And that might be that like part of that might be what equipment you've got, you get out and it's not normally on display, you know, you hide it away somewhere and then it gets, so you've got this like physical change of the environment, which will help mentally with, okay, this is what this is what we're doing now and give the brain the chance to associate like, okay, this is different like tasks we're doing. I'm not working with we're doing some training. Yeah. There's a really good point you make on that because I know coaches and I've been there in the past when I was doing a lot of face to face coaching, standard powers in the gym, switching from going in a coaching environment to the to the squad or the athlete leaving to then like changing my t-shirt and trying to train in this train in the same environment. It's actually quite hard. Like I know some people who were literally who work in a gym or go and train in a different gym because it's just a different environment. Different association. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And then probably one of the big things I want to pick up on for people is to go like, there's sort of like twofold or two things going on. There's like, what can you do inside compared to what you were doing if you was training outside? So you might have been like going to the park to train but you don't really want to do that when it's like snowing or freezing weather or maybe you choose to do that but you put plenty of layers on whatever. But like if my example would be I will do a lot of my training like in my garden, like I love being on the grass but that's when it's nice and at least dry. Like if it's raining, like I'm not going to be rolling around or doing my hands like in the wet grass but I might occasionally join, generally not. And then what does that, what does that mean? Of course, Jack, I could be the annual lying in the snow in your pants photo. Of course, that would be standard. That's recovery, that's what I'm saying. Like having like bars set up outside, like haven't got that inside. So there's some differences of like what I'm going to be able to do. So like I'm not going to be doing muscle ups, for example, inside when it's raining or terrible outside. That's just not something that my training is going to be. So if, and then if I still haven't decided to work on this, how can I, what am I doing in my training to still manage the sort of like the basic bare bones, fundamental elements of that? Like am I still getting some pull-ups and some dipping work done at some relatively decent strength levels? And I can shift my focus from potentially like, so my example for me would be when in the winter being less specific and work on more sort of general base stuff and build up that bigger base is going to be easier for me to facilitate doing with the space and the equipment that I've got. The other one that's really interesting with like with handstands is taking your handstand into a different environment. So I've always found having stuff close to me, like off-putting when I'm trying to do handstand work, also like what you'll feel your hands on the floor, like being on carpet or on wooden floor, depending on what your floor is, you might not be used to it, it might be a bit strange at first, but that variety, that variation can can help with a little bit of that like learning praises or robustness for a handstand that we've talked, we talked about that in great detail in the handstand course that we've got. But challenging my handstand in terms of like doing it in some different rooms in my house would be one example that would be like really off-putting for me to actually try and do. So that's then using my training environment that's actually would be annoying if I look at it that way, like, oh, that stops me from doing what I'm good at normally, as long as I do it safely, but to go and like use it in a way to actually like improve my training as well. So that's a couple of things that hopefully give people a bit of insight and some some ideas of going like match up what you have got available to what you're going to set your intentions for your training for that winter block, rather than just being like, ah, I can't do my human flag because I haven't got any human where to do my human flag inside. Like that's not actually going to help you be effective with what you're training is going to be doing that winter block. Yeah, I think the point you make around doing basics is really is really important. Like that's what I did last year, a full block during the winter months like December, January, February when it's kind of the peak of winter in the UK. And I just set myself a program and a number of people have asked about this actually of just going like, how do you find that consistency within that kind of just that's particular strength orientated block. And I just wrote out a session. I was training like five days a week, probably, and I had everything listed out, but it wasn't complicated. It was basics. I had three main exercises to do each day. It was a push pull and a lower body exercise of some variety. And I just kind of scaled the volume. So I wasn't trying to get through a huge amount of different variations of movement. And I was getting up at like five, I think training at five, 36 o'clock, something like that. But I just, I just had that all written out. So every morning I got up and I was like, this is what I've got to do today. And it might have been pull-ups, dips and some like Nordics or something like that, or a single leg squat variation, something, something progressive around that. And then when you get, when you're doing that, when it is a bit dark and you're a bit sleepy, having to coming down and just going, I haven't really got to think about anything. I'm just going to like, I could stay in a sort of like a little bit slumber zone and just kind of get this stuff done, put some music on and whatever. And I really enjoyed that time, but the consistency and not having the, the pressure of kind of come up with a workout on the, on the spot was really useful. And you're right, that build, taking that opportunity where training at home and it's a bit dark and whatever, just to do the grunt work, the basic strength progressive overload stuff, which is going to set you up for what you want to do when we can get back outside. And I don't, this is probably like, I don't want this to sound like a doom and gloom of sort of training at home and a negative side or almost even just go in, like the somewhat less of this and just going to suck it up lads. Like it's just training, but let's just kind of also appreciate that kind of pressure through life, ebb and flow. And we've been at home a lot over the last 18 months. And the summer last year in 2020, and then also this year, it's just a breath, like it is definitely that kind of brings in lightings and mood. We all know that in my house, we are sunshine enjoying people current South African. She hates the winter. And we generally struggle when it is dark, we would get the red light, get the red light on in the morning. So yeah, I just think it's like being kind to yourself during those phases. And if you are, and this is the thing, like somebody who's going to a gym where you go to a class at five o'clock in the six o'clock in the morning, and you've got 10 other people's energy to feed off, then that's a very, very different situation and scenario to getting up and then going downstairs or into your garage to try and grind out a session by yourself. And I'm actually sort of reflecting on this at the moment and going, what does that say about you? Like, what are you, what are you, and this is kind of to my point before about the conversation I'm having with myself is like, do you really want this? Like, is this something you really want to do in terms of the training and what and what you're kind of working towards? Because it's very easy to sort of when you haven't got a group of people or a community or a training partner or something to kind of just, can you find that internal motivation within yourself to actually push yourself to do the training? And this is like after years and years and years of being in this kind of training to still find that by yourself, self-motivated, self-driven. I actually think there's a little bit of a diamond trusted in there that I haven't yet really kind of uncovered for myself. How do you find intensity when it is just you by yourself? Can you, can you go to that place and do the hard work? I think it's interesting. Yeah, that is interesting because it's like, when you've, like, I know for, and there must be, there must be plenty of like, someone must have done some decent research on this that like, when you train as a, in a group and you're encouraging each other, like, you push yourself harder. There's like, there's no doubt that like, when, if I think back to playing rugby and training the gym with a load of other rugby lads, like, you, it's, and to some degree, probably to some detriment at times, because you really go flying and you try to put, you know, you're going to do, here's a good story for you. Loughborough University, power-based gym where the, where, where the, where kings of strength are made. I wasn't, so I was like, blissfully weak when I went to, when I was 18, I couldn't like, I could barely bench press the bar with no weight on it anyway. I, there was, there was some athletes doing, like, testing and they, I remember a load of people with like, started just crowding around the bench press and everyone's like, what's going on? And they, they, they done them in pairs and they, they set themselves, the whoever lost the least amount or closest, furthest away from their PB or whatever, had to, and this was like, two pairs of two lads, they had to kiss in front of everybody. And everybody, and literally the whole gym is going around going, everyone PB is lowering the bar down. And everyone's just going, like, everyone PB is massively like, just shows you like, what's, what's sort of like this cycle, what's going on and all that sort of stuff. And like, you know, the absolute opposite of that is like, getting up, or whenever it is that you're going to train, look at it as miserable outside. And he's just like, he's just like, what am I going to do today? And you know, say you haven't planned out what you're going to do, you're not following one of the online programs in the virtual classrooms, you haven't got it all laid out for you, you know, that's something you might want to consider. But you go, you haven't planned it out and you're like, what am I going to do today? And then just like feel, and that all that sort of, you know, like you said, like, what's, it's an interesting one because you go, you go, do you go and find a way to be part of something and just take that out of the equation? Or do you embrace it and go, right, I know that when I'm with others and with groups, like, I get a lot out of that, but I also want the ability to when it's just me, just on my own, like, can I still bring it at that point and using that as a potential, that's a nice little challenge, challenge over winter. Yeah, I think you're going to go, one like one sort of like final thing for me on this as a bit of a practical thing for people that you mentioned or just touching on going those basics, but match up with rather than by putting your safety got some specific goals in mind, maybe it's a strength based goal, maybe it's a movement or mobility based goal, you go rather than just like thinking like, I'm just not going to like touch on that at all. Whereas go, what are the basic fundamental movement and strength to take the framework from school? That's what the basic movement and strength components or elements of the goal I'm trying to achieve. What's the like foundation and basics of those? And then make sure that they're being hit in your training knowing that even I'm doing these like more basic things that are easier for me to facilitate in my home environment. What is that doing knowing that that's doing something for those longer term goals? And you know, one thing that's really simple for people would be like all the movement stuff. We've just as this goes out, we're we've done maybe one or two weeks of a six week mobility online program, but there'll be another one like you can't sign up to it now, but there'll be there'll be more of them in the future. But everything in there doesn't need any equipment at all, just needs you and your body and like how many people know that a they need to move better be more mobile be more flexible have better mobility through the body, but also know that like it's actually restriction on my shoulder, my spine, my hip that's stopping me from achieving some of the strength goals that I want because I'm just too tight to get in some of these good positions. You know, my shoulders and spine is the effect of my handstand or whatever it is. And so, you know, that's a great opportunity when you haven't got if you haven't got any equipment, you haven't got like a lot of space like you can do all of this in the fucking shoebox, pretty much. So some encouragement for me to think about what are those goals I'm going to am I working towards find out the basics, get those nailed and then where are the movement restrictions that you've got and use some of the simple movement ability stuff that we've got for you inside of it to be able to work on those quite comfortably on your own at home. It's a different type of challenge and intensity in that it's not like a bring it challenge it could be that like they're on the days that you just not really up for like going really hard at something it's like right let's let's start greasing some of these joints and let's start ticking off some of those boxes. Yeah, one thing I know about when training is when you're training mojo is a little bit sort of depleted is that you've got to you've got to you've got to program the sessions that you want to do. So we're always big fans of kind of going you got to often do the work that you don't really want to do because that's probably where your weaknesses are. We're trying to do that where generally like things are more difficult or you're finding your motivation to train maybe a little bit compromised. Like so for me the winter will be a hypertrophy block. I'm just going to go and train volume in basic push pull patterns lower body stuff and just crank out but I'm going to spice it up with things like drop sets and super setting things I mean it's nothing complicated about super set but the drop sets are fun. I love cluster training high intensity cluster training is probably one of my favorites for you to train. So you're going to pick a eight repetition max for example and I'm going to go and do a five three and then a one or something like that. So I'm actually getting nine repetitions at eight rep max like that for me is a hugely potent stimulus but it just mixes things up a little bit but when I'm not feeling great what am I going to value so and this is just a reflection on myself this will be it might be for somebody else as Jaco mentioned it's mobility it could be like just putting them really big metabolic engines you're going to go out and run or you're going to get on a bike or whatever but for me like I'm going to join the winter one of the things that I know motivate me is like feeling good in myself feeling good in my own skin and looking in the mirror going like okay even though it's Christmas and winter where we tend to kind of hunker down and we don't move quite as much because we're not outdoors and like I'm still going to feel pretty good about myself and that will be my motivation to get the sessions done and the consistency within that and and so to your point I'm going to look it's all the way back to beginning Jaco when you mentioned about the sport science side of being training outdoors and being cold yeah if we obviously we're going to have to do appropriate warm-ups but I have seen NFL games in the snow and I have played rugby in the snow and it is the worst worst thing as a winger there's two things that I don't want to do I don't want to be hit by some big bloke and I don't want to like be in the absolute freezing cold standing out on the wing not getting the ball gosh I remember days in west Yorkshire when I was at university we rocked up on a Saturday morning probably with a hangover and it had snowed and I'm stood by the referee going that pitch looks unplayable sir it's not there's about there's about probably two centimetres of snow but I'm like I'm a winger I'm not very big I've not carrying a lot of body fat no one's going to pass me the ball today I'm literally going to be here for 80 minutes at some point I'm going to tackle somebody which means I'm going to have to roll around on the floor get soaking wet and then stand around for a bit longer and so you can do it like you can train in the snow providing you're appropriately warmed up but what I know is going to be the most potent thing for your training is to what is the session that you're actually going to do so you I could sit here inside now going do you know what I'm going to test myself I'm definitely going to train when it's cold I'm going to go outside I'm going to put my hand on the bar it's going to be freezing and my hands are going to get cold I'm going to flip and love that it's going to be a brilliant notebook there'll be there'll definitely be times where I don't want to do that session and I don't do it so how do I structure training to to be something that I really want to do and then within that when we kind of got the habit of training maybe then we can kind of slot in a couple of things that are maybe a little bit less enticing so whatever that is for you you're kind of filling the blank of whatever you don't want to do but you know you need to in preparation for what you're trying to work towards yeah no perfect love it um wanting to wrap things up timber with uh one thing I sort of said it was like joking but it's actually a genuine thing like during the winter the red light comes massively into play when you start on this morning for half an hour breakfast the whole house baby i've got a sick one for a baby she loves it i don't know if it's good for her eyes or not but she likes it there is a sense of getting with them it mimics the um some rise sunset like you i use it morning and night like in the and go harder in the winter like massively helps and the guys at red light rising it's all like uh scientifically proven research back stuff it's it's uh and quality um products you can check out their website red light rising um dot code at uk or dot com i remember but red light search red light rising bit five percent code uh from them the lovely guys that is soc five fifty five percent of any their red light products i mean i'm a scientist right so even if you are a skeptic in your garden or just that research blah blah pick it apart i promise you at six or seven o'clock in the morning when it's dark outside you flick that thing on you are like oh that's nice yeah and and that in itself for me is it's value is it's gold i've been researching it since the sixties there you go nasser they're proper sciences they know and they've been closer to the sun than anyone else exactly if you go to the moon is that close to the sun potentially that could be further away couldn't it depends where the moon is when you get there i suppose or where the earth i don't know i'm going to get i'm going to lose myself and i'm almost i'm in danger i'm going to make myself look less intelligent at the moment when you see the moon and the sun at the same time yeah freaks me out is it day or night yeah or somewhere in between all right that's one good thing about having a four-year-old actually he loves to baseball because he brings him home from school i'm learning a lot with Jupiter last week yeah and he's great last week he came with a hundred facts about science i learned about combustion engines and all sorts never too old to learn jacko that's proper science team that's proper that's right that's a we could do a whole we could do a whole podcast series on that get jack on not complaining because it's winter your hands might get cold when you put when you're holding to your bullet bar right let's wrap it up yeah i mean hope that's been useful there's some nuggets in there just there and we'd i'd love to know actually like send us a some question send us some dms or emails or whatever just let us know like how you're gonna switch you into trading maybe it'll be useful to commit to a a plan and i definitely if you're going to take one thing away from this have a plan structure something if you are going to be training at home and you're a bit sort of like it's hard when it gets into the winter don't just succumb to um to just bumbling your way through the next three or four months have a plan if you want to get jacked with me then like let's do it i'm going to come into spring looking amazing that's the plan yeah he needs to put a high trophy sort of programmed together for all of us over the winter and we can follow it together he wants like a winter a winter bulk body weight bulk still trying to work at the exact content though it doesn't really work for me i kind of just yeah people look at me and go what are you doing bulking well try i think you were looking large and in charge last time i went to the retreat of i was like to go kind of a jacko kind of you give us that that's a body weight bulk program that you've been talking about stop keeping it for yourself oh it's all about the lunges mate i think it's the right we're going to get off the other side of people we're going to put that in but if you're interested in a body weight bulk from tim all that program would look like let us know because i am one of those people who are interested in what that is um and then yeah as tim knows like let us know what you're what you're doing and what your plans are for that because actually you might even give us some inspiration ideas as well and that goes full circle on that and jacko i'll tell you what your first step of your of your body weight bulk program is stop doing all that bendy stuff it's very good for your gains mate to feel it now but there be talking about feeling good when i can move my body i feel good yeah yeah when i'm stiff i feel terrible so that's why maybe get bendy get bendy and big get bendy and big and bendy big and bendy it's a hybrid hybrid of your bulk and hybridary for your mobility perfect perfect all right we're going to go until next time keep exploring your physical potential for your movement strength and play class dismissed