 Welcome back to the School Classes for another Q&A. It's been a while. It's been a little bit while. They've been going out on the podcast every week so I think hopefully you feel, if you're listening, you feel that it's been regular. What's cool about these is when we first started the Q&As, Jack and me and Joe, the questions have been flooding in with how he said. Actually, why we've not done the Q&A is because we're trying so hard to keep on top of YouTube comments and Instagram questions on Facebook, but it's awesome guys, keep them coming in. Any trading questions that you've got, anything related to calisthenics, anything we can help with, that's what we want to do. So keep sharing those thoughts and asking questions. Wherever you're hearing this, whether you're watching it on YouTube or it's on social, whether just comment there or you can email us directly. Today's Q&A theme is, so we're trying to theme them now a little bit, so it's around learning new skills. But before we get stuck into it, I've got an icebreaker for us. I'm getting excited. Just because I've started using a new emoji, and I wanted to know what's your favourite emoji at the moment. O.B.G. Or shall I tell you what mine is? Go on. So mine's that if people have been, I'm often now put it as a three. It used to be like the... It was a disco man. The disco man, he still gets it. So it used to be disco man, a more okay sign with your hand, and then a thumbs up. Now it's like the emoji theme of the cowboy half. Yeah, I had noticed it. So he's my favourite with the disco, purple disco guy, and then either a thumbs up or a... I mean it's interesting that you have favourite emojis. I don't think I have a clear thread. I quite like the fist pump, and the muscles, obviously. Okay. And you're going to use for a first... I'll tell you what's my favourite. You can say what you're never getting there. Today we filmed a video of my testing a shoulder press, barbell shoulder press, in relation to what I can do from a body weight handstand push-up. And somebody put down that they thought that here I would be able to do 95 kilos. So I replied with that emoji where the guy's brain is literally exploding. It was the first time I felt that was appropriate to use it. Yeah. Your emoji use is quite varied, actually. Yes. So anyway. What a high brow start to this. Ice break is just to loosen things up until we get into the real stuff. So the first question, a couple of questions coming in asking about learning new skills. So I thought it would be nice just to frame it first and just give people a bit of understanding around what was the first things or skills that you actually learnt or I like that we actually learnt. So what was the first thing that started it or started it all off you? Then what was the first thing that you actually nailed? Yeah. I think it's interesting. The reason I'm looking pensive, I think is the right word, is because I'm just kind of thoughtful, deep, complex. Education or this, isn't it? Or high brow, which is your favourite emoji. I think I never started that with the intention of learning a skill. I think that came as a realisation of what I was doing in the process. I knew that I wanted to move in a new way, but I don't know that I specifically attribute that to a skill acquisition process and more about I want to be strong enough to be able to do a handstand and then realise when I embarked on that journey that actually there was a big skill component that I needed to learn. I needed to teach myself to move in a different way. So it was handstand for me because of my shoulder history. It was about if I can handstand, that's going to give me some confidence that I've got a stable shoulder. At the same time, I started playing around with a backleaver because I just didn't know where I was to start. Literally my calisthenics journey started with a lot of probably how other people's house done is I googled something. That looks cool. I'm going to try and work it out. I could skin the cat already and then I realised actually I couldn't connect the strength together and just kind of fumbled around within that until something clicked. But I think as I've gone through now being able to do some of that stuff with the handstands and backleavers and other things, I get hungry for the skill acquisition process. I talked about it in a blog that we're going out about called plays the highest form of research and I like the idea of learning new things, teaching myself to move in new ways and the challenge of trying to do something failing but then as you go through time refining that motor pattern so that you can actually then do it and you're like, OK, I've accomplished something new. As it's 37-year-old, I'm not sure how many chances and opportunities we get to do that unless we're intentional about it. It's cool when it clicks, even if it's not like I can actually now do the full thing, but just when you first get that first glimmer of like, OK, like from a movement patterning, we would talk at a point of view, we'd go, actually I know what I can't do it but I now know what I'm trying to do and I can feel it, I can just feel that now I'm actually just not strong in that new position. I think it's a very different feeling to say, you do like a park run, so the feeling that you get when you do a park run and you've been running since you were three years old, like you've just run faster. So you've done something, but it's more of a saying you've just become better conditions be able to achieve that task. Whereas it's almost like going back to the basics my body doesn't know how to move in this way, so I'm just going to go and try and do something and like I say, when it clicks, that's cool. It's exciting that you've all of a sudden even locked this new thing that you can do and you've taught yourself something completely different. I remember watching that first Frank Modrana I can't remember the title of the first Frank Modrana video and being like, like talking about new ways to move or ways to train, but yeah, being very much like how strong for your body weight that looked and what it could actually do with his body looked great as well, but it was all about what could he do with his body that really just got me into thinking let's have a bit of a play at that and just love that idea of striving to be able to do things. I've talked before about struggling, never having an issue with motivation whilst I was playing rugby, but when I had to retire then training became quite difficult which I'd never thought would happen or never but then the hunger to try and almost I feel like chasing something that's too, you take it too far but trying to learn and be able to teach your body to then do this new thing whether it's skill or strength or generally it's a combination of both but even if it's like the strength side of that for me rather than trying to just lift weights to do something, makes such a big difference. Speaking to people that like sports or they like games or there's some activity that has a result and an end point of a win, loss or draw, whatever it might be those sorts of people and you would have been the same as it turns out in that situation that you're training for an outcome there's something in which you have a tangible result at the end of what you've ever done whether it's a park run, a game of rugby or a squash game, my father-in-law is like that he enjoys a game, he doesn't like going to the gym he can't get motivated around it and I think unless the gym or training then becomes something has a similar hook where there's actually I'm working towards X so it might be that people get into the gym and then they find powerlifting and the appetite comes because they want to put more weight on a bar and see what they can lift, cool, that's good because that's a capacity type thing yes there's skill in lifting but once you can deadlift you can deadlift you've just then got the different strength adaptations to try and do that better whereas I think it's different with the calisthenics on your behalf but like tics boxes for you and me is that there's always something new there's a tangible thing to challenge and it's you against your current functional state not that that's static but you're competing against yourself to be able to try and push yourself to do something else which is, I think it's just a different way but it creates some I would say addiction but it's attractive to want to be able to see what else can I do and be inspired by other people doing stuff and actually they make it look so easy can I actually get to that point where that looks easy for me as well and something I've never liked doing is giving up so like once I'm trying it's like I'm going to try and do X and you start going down that journey like I don't want to even no matter how hard some of the stuff is that you're trying to do don't actually want to give up on it anyway and I think for me like my interest is as a sports scientist in strengthening conditions when I discovered the gym I started training a lot so my first started training I don't know if we've talked about this much before actually we first started training when I was in Australia a friend of mine called Nick came over to visit from American he grew up in American sports and like he knew the gym and he got a great opportunity he was like let's go to the gym and we literally did like bro split training for about a year like and just yeah with my first exposure I think I was 62 kilos I remember weighing myself on the first day I was small, I got a small frame I was like 62 or 64 but it was definitely in the 60s it was a 60 bolt it was a 60 bolt so we went through this process just like okay we're just going to do hypertrophy we've got to be doing what we're doing it's just chest three times a week and then whatever else you could fit in but when I came back to the UK and I started getting more involved in strengthening conditioning my appetite for training was all focused around actually using this as research now like I enjoy training because I'm learning all the time it's never really been for me to go to the gym because it's lifting weights there's always something else involved but off topic on skill but still just understanding what the motivations are and what gets you excited about training and why do you push forward to go and do whatever it is that you find enjoyable and understanding that about yourself is useful and I just as I was saying out loud then I thought it was useful like why I actually didn't realise that that's what my motivation was I just thought I love training what's your favourite bit of 62kg? I'm sure I was 62 when I first my first like professional game rugby I was 72kg and I did a backwards roll and I tried to tackle some but it just bowled me over fun times anyway from the community from the community, from you guys out there and thank you for all these questions and we're just trying to sift through the ones that are going to give the most value for everybody so this is from Instagram and his name is Andy Romano which Andy simple, Romano exotic something like that he's got the free beginners guide a couple of months ago good man, it's free on the website if you can do that and he's been using it well he's done well in his frog stands as you can see in his profile picture I like him, I can't check me out so well done for that and so obviously he's got the bug for it but he, on this theme of learning new skills he wants to learn new things like the back lever you talked about was your first thing that we sort of nailed as well as things like handstands as he's been going to the gym and he's worried or he's not he's got some trouble around understanding does he need to do weights to supplement the strength gains that he seems to understand that he knows he needs skill and strength but does he need he's asking does he need to supplement his calisthenics with weight training he says he's been doing a bit of research but there's nothing clear out there for him he's a bit confused about that and I think that I'm sure you can clear that up for him to open a can of worms on this subject keep it, yeah we can in short, no so I'm going to try and layer this up a little bit weight training potentially has a benefit for calisthenics in that you are increasing the muscles ability to produce force so you could do that pull down because that might you could rationalise the benefit for your muscle or pull ups or whatever it might be the difference being that in sports we'll talk about something we use the phrase transfer of training effects what that means is in the gym how easy is it for me to transfer the physical attributes that I've developed as a result of a strength and conditioning program into sports performance which could be rugby, swimming, athletics if the gym and SNC work isn't giving us a transfer of training effect the athlete's not improving therefore the gym programme is not providing the level of support that he needs unless it's creating things like robustness and decreasing risk of injury because a pull up is quite different to a lat pull down because there's a lot more stabilisation required through the integration of the kinetic chain or our movement system you've got to start to think about multiple joints I'm no longer just sat with my hips supported on a bench then just using my lats entirely when I'm hanging from a bar I've got to try and link those two things together do we get as good a transfer over from pull up from lat pull down into pull ups it's a question, I don't know it's one of those things that you're going to go through my recommendation would be the closer to the specific task that you can get the more likely you can increase this transfer of training effect so from an athletic perspective if we're going to try and create the work that we do with swimming we're trying to do work with a swimmer which replicates what it's like to be in the water which is going to maximise our transfer of training effect if we were just going to go to lat pull down and then we get the guys to go into the water where they're having to create multiple joints ability like I talked about before pull ups in the gym and swimming in the water because it's the similar type of movement so that's a long way around of saying that the specificity of movement is that if you can start to train more like what you want to do you're going to get better outcome but because calisthenics means strength and beauty strength is a part of calisthenics and if you understand how to progress appropriately you're building strength all the time it can be fairly specific strength but we also throw into the mix what we always talk about depends on what you want well I think that you touch on all those points I agree with touching on that point of lat pull down for pull ups I remember being in the gym before talking about pull ups when I was playing rugby we were like if you want to get good at pull ups you just knew we didn't know why but it was like you got to do more pull ups it was like we done lat pull down but even though it was pretty much the same movement there was just something missing and that happens in calisthenics where if you've got a weakness in a chain you can identify that weakness and making that weakness better like in isolation then putting it back into the full thing is like a good rational thought but what we tend to see with our own training is that if you're say you're until a doubt feels weak when you're going pressing out for your frog stand for example so do you go and isolate that with a weighted exercise or are you better sort of semi sort of isolating it in a body weight exercise but still you're having to work that multiple joint stability and activation together that's I think the you can kill two birds with one stone by doing the body weight thing and I think what we're talking about as it comes back to your point at the start is the skill acquisition phase if you can get anterior deltas stronger by doing a front delt raise using a dumbbell but you're still then going to have to reintegrate that strength in the movement pattern which is skill acquisition and motor learning is the ability of the brain to start to create muscle synchronisation activation in a coordinated pattern which is going to fight the right muscles at the right time each of those muscles probably like a bat lever is a great example we talked about it today most people or a lot of people who've got some form of decent training background are probably strong enough to do a bat lever they're just not used to actually connecting the dots together you have to create that connection and that's why we use progressions to be able to do that you could go actually I've got to isometrically contract the lat I'm just going to go and do some isometric lat contraction however you want to make that look like but it's still not connecting through the thoraculum fascia into the glute, into the posterior chain through the hamstrings and then creating that rigid pillar through the body which is going to hold that bat lever position so I think yes strength is important do you need to use weights to do it I think it's possible, is it the shortest way home probably not I will probably stick to calisthenics in the last four and a half years of a point where I've turned to weight training in its traditional kind of sense of what I mean like dumbbells and barbells to facilitate or improve a calisthenics movement I've kept it within a calisthenics realm and partly that because I enjoy that process of calisthenics and skill acquisition and an understanding that I need to get all that working together which I don't think I get from weight training and just on that my last point before I let you wrap that one up is just around doing the least amount of work to get the most amount of change we've talked a lot about busy lives and there's a lot of competition for time if I'm doing if I want to do a planche then I might as well do a progression or regression of a planche rather than spending time doing anciodell because while I'm doing that progression and regression I'm integrating that into the whole chain so it's going to take me quicker to where I want to be so yeah, anything to add to wrap it like you can do weights if you want to that hits the nail on the head for me rather than isolating something and then trying to integrate it back in can you actually get that strength that you've identified is the weakness but do it in a way that is working towards the thing you're trying to work on there's a second part of Anna's question which I'm going to touch on quickly was about it was probably not getting a muscle mass development, it was getting through weight training and is that important again if you want to be a bodybuilder there's more effective ways in calisthenics to get to build muscle so different from you can use bodyweight training we did a Q&A on this a while back about actually manipulating the training environment but if you're worried about that that's one thing I started off with when I was going to calisthenics I said I'm going to give myself three months and I know enough about training that if I lose a load of weight I don't know what my body looks like I know how to get it back and I did three months and then never went back because I was actually quite happy with the way that I turned out looking and I'm not as big as I was then but a flipping can do some real stuff now so when we had Ross I mean he touched on this point if you've neurologically or from a a maximal strength perspective eats out as much as you can force you can produce from a neural activation perspective to get more force to be able to do more stuff you need to go and make that muscle bigger bigger muscles produce more force and then that's again where we start to go well do I do that from a bodybuilding perspective and using bars and dumbbells or do I need to do that from a calisthenics perspective because ultimately I want that bigger muscle part of a bigger movement pattern and you're still getting opportunity to manipulate calisthenics training to create some muscle hypertrophy but still within a pattern which is going to circulate on so for example muscle ups and pull ups I'm doing some work eccentric like dropping down I'm still getting my neural system it's still connecting the midsection it's still thinking about keeping the shoulder in a good position so when I come back to training speed because I want to tie my muscle up I'm just reapplying that bigger muscle and now I've got to train speed and I've got this neural learning side of things to look at as well lots of stuff in there to think about it's a fairly big question let's carry on to that forever right I've got the second question for today and I know what Jaco's first question will be to this is it from somebody called animate yourself right is that his real name we know each other well I think I'm going to say you where from did you say YouTube so he says what is your favourite skills and is it in order or do you like all the skills equally I love that I've got a question for him can he animate us could he do us a picture I don't know maybe that's not his thing but if that's what his name is I think you would quite like the caricature someone wants to draw some pictures they're like animated caricatures of us not rude I've got a rude question actually we can maybe finish with it say sorry I just got favourite skills order of preference calisthenics wise or is it like can we go on my ears is that your favourite skills we need to change favourite skills I don't know it's probably it's probably hand standing and it's like something hand stand related I think that is because I would probably say the same hand stand has got so much capacity and depth for change whereas when you can do a back lever you can do a back lever you want to do a single arm back lever then you just go get rid of it because he's strong in there and you can start your legs up, you can lower down if you're that sort of person you can change your hand position your feet to walk up and down or if that's you you can do that sort of stuff but it's in and around the same thing and all of those things come as a result of just like you say you've got to get stronger there's no real skill activation once you've developed a movement pattern you've got that connection whereas with hand standing you're constantly challenging the balance the proprioception what I find amazing about the hand stand is hands on the floor are different to hands on parallel and then completely different to straight arm they don't feel like there's a great deal of crossover all that the straight bar hand stand even though I can go comfortably off the floor is hard because you you're having to now activate and find your balance in a completely different pattern even just turning your hands out a little bit and you just lose that like front portion but I would definitely say I think hand stands for me because I have a lot of fun with the hand stand you can tiger bend you can forearm stand and maybe it's inversion rather than hand stands that I'm interested in but you've done loads of work on elbow levers which again is linking these transitional things together you can hold that static position in a hand stand but then what happens and how do you create the activations and the control to load elbow lever and not hit your feet on the floor all that sort of stuff there's a couple of things that I guess just thinking out loud about it while I like it it's fun like for sure there's like no real you know if you want to do if you were talking about like hypertrophy like if you want to do however you've got to do 6-12 reps and you've got to have 90 seconds rest and you've got to do a lot of work but if you want to get better at hand balance it's like well you just sort of have to do some and then obviously you can do everything better but there's not like you have to do 5 seconds like this and then there isn't there's that more like scope for just like literally having fun with it and just sort of no one can tell you that it's I don't think you can necessarily say it's wrong if you know what I mean it just feels a lot more a lot more open a bit freedom and you can just do it and because you can just do it anywhere I think it's quite an individual thing and it has to be quite mindful with it like if you compare it to a deadlift in many ways it's a deadlift and it's very similar for people everyone's trying to achieve the same thing and it's a fairly once you've got the movement pattern and you can create the right shape it's a fairly simple process whereas if you and I started to learn to handstand on the same day from point one we would probably as we did have very different strengths so I'm now on my journey with my handstand about like what do I need to work on where do I need to spend time where yours would be quite different to that you don't get such radical changes when you're talking about more standard and it's not disrespectful it's just what I would see more in a gym there's far less variability far less freedom within the movement for it to be an individualised process and that's what I like about the mindset of we talk in handstands particularly about being present in your practice I'm just going to process what's going on what did I do wrong the only thing in weight training that I've experienced which is like that is Olympic lifting where again you're executing a highly complex skill and particularly like an example of power clean or a snatch that's happening at speed whereas a handstand is almost the opposite side of it loads of variability lots of mindfulness in how you've gone about achieving a movement but at the opposite end of the speed spectrum it's much more controlled and slow movement so I would think that is there anything that you don't put that skill-wise? Well I just wanted to shout out to the human flag obviously that was like that was the thing that I before I probably even heard of calisthenics as a thing that didn't come across it I'd seen a human flag and thought that was flipping cool I remember the first time I saw it and just being like I didn't think it was really like I was looking like how have you done that I turned a camera and it was like is he hanging? I know the buildings look straight and you're like going but how did I feel like now if we've been everyone it's because we have immersed ourselves in the calisthenic space so any skills you don't like practicing now anything that I don't like practicing are just things that are hard yeah I think there's still some stuff around like trying to do stuff which is challenging both from a skill perspective and a strength perspective and the realisation at those times where I'm not strong enough or skilled enough to be able to do what I'm trying to do that can sometimes be demoralising yeah and I think that stick with calisthenics is like you get some wins and you put a few things in the locker and you go I can't do some cool stuff now but there's always an opportunity to find yourself at the bottom of the mountain and again go flipping like I feel like a beginner and I think that's probably one thing which has kept me so engaged with it and I can see long term staying engaged with it in that there's always something which is going to make me feel like I'm challenged which is again different to what I've experienced in years gone by from a weight training perspective is it's the same thing I'm just going to put more weight on a bar I'm going to lift it more rep so I'm going to change the speed at which I'm going to lift it it doesn't have the variety and I don't think it challenged me in that sense because I was never driven by I just want to be the strongest guy in the gym because I started out at 60 kilos how are you going to be the strongest guy in the gym you can do like under 65 kilos strongman competition or something there's some photos of me in Australia before I started training and I look at myself and get cracking look at that 9 year old he's 20 years old he's a dignose out for transformations though here's a transformation called puberty he didn't start until I was about 19 that's why I've got a baby phase because I didn't start puberty so I was late on younger than Dave it's not true so yeah I think what is my favourite in all terms of preference I just like I like the opportunity that lies in front of me I just learn different stuff that is that which I like most rather than being that manifested in any particular thing I like that for my final thing I like that you get strong doing it I like feeling strong I like learning I like that whole learning something new and being able to do something cool feeling strong and feeling good my last point on your human flag that I think is really interesting is when we went to see the rig from Bulldog it was cold warehouse we literally got out of the car and we were driven for an hour and this rig was there and I just looked at the handle and I went I see if it's stable I just do a human flag and I was not warmed up not mobilised but that's the testament to the skill acquisition process your body doesn't know how to move in that way it can activate the right muscles from cold seat on the car to doing a 20 minute warm up and going and that's what I like one of those things I can just do a handstand to because it was a time when I literally had never put my hands and tried to balance before and if you're on holiday and want to take a cool photo somewhere then you have to have that in the locker because you might someone might request a flag of a handstand on a rock on the tree I was doing downhill mountain biking in Thailand Catherine loved it, Catherine knew I reckon that I could do a flag on that tree a helmet on on the tree and an American woman going I think she may have even sworn that impressive guilty as charged I said I don't know what that is I think that is a natural conclusion do you want the naughty questions a bit of bluefoot dads at the end if you've managed to listen to all that rambling you're into something it's been we've moved fairly quickly but anyway Ines de la Hoya at a YouTube question says can you demonstrate in a nude so we can see how the muscles work and she adds any particular muscle interested in it she says that'll be so helpful, thanks so a genuine question genuine in that it was I copied it from YouTube I'm going to say no but I have seen someone before I forgot his name athlete athletex he's a physio to be in essence he's got a good YouTube channel and he's flipping ripped as well he's older than both of us so he'll do he's done something before where he's ripped enough that you can literally see and then he'll draw on the outline of his deltoid or whatever and then do something to actually see it working it wasn't actually that I think the question potentially sounds a lot worse than maybe it is but I know that we're probably not going to do that I feel we could do something similar to that if we got a fake tan yeah probably too one and too pasty for such clarity of definition that has brought us to a rather odd conclusion move on quickly from that we're going to say no for now but we appreciate it if we get short on content and one day you'll see you'll have known that we've run out of good ideas to talk about if you have any other questions please do ask them wherever you tend to find us most easily and we'll get them answered in a future podcast thank you for watching and listening see you next week and I have to we've had a bit of a mess today he was cutting my grass go on and tear it up see you next week glass dismissed