 So today's podcast Timbo is and everyone listening is potentially one of the most important things we should be focusing on in our training if not the most important and that is the basics and mastering the basics and sort of to quote yourself leaving your ego at the door. It's something that I have some personal experience of not doing as I can talk in that respect. But yeah, we're going to delve into a little bit of why it is important and probably the most important and then how we can sort of integrate that into our mindset than affect our training. I'm going to keep this intro basic, Jaco. Let's get straight into it. We have got, if you don't know, we've got some programs on our online platform which are entirely designed for people trying to get into calisthenics. It's an area that we are massively passionate about. If you look at things in calisthenics, you kind of go, oh, muscle ups and hand sensing human flags looks really complicated. When we first start the school of calisthenics is all about trying to make it more accessible for people to get on board, to get the benefits and the enjoyment out of progressive body weight training. So with that in mind, we've got some really good resources, our body weight basics training program, beginners push up and dip program, our handstand program is designed for beginners. There is so much stuff you can get into if you are on the start of your calisthenics journey. Yeah, let's be honest, Timbo. Body weight basics program, it's got basics written in the title, baby. Like it says exactly what it says in the tin, like Marmite. Is that right? No, Romseil. Romseil. Oh no, where's Marmite? Marmite and Romseil, they're pretty much similar, aren't they? Yeah, same. Probably tastes the same. Yes, so should we get into it, this week's conversation? Yes, well I just wanted to point out that the body weight basics program, a lot of people have obviously been using that as part of their training regime. It's been that popular one that we are going to be producing a course that's going to be six weeks long. We're going to be able to work through some live sessions over the period of six weeks. Like we've done the mobility course that's currently running, there's going to be one specifically for body weight basics to work through week by week with a coach live, watch those sessions back, have all of the resources but rather than just working through it at your own pace, you're going to get some coach-led sessions within that. So that is coming in the future. We haven't got the exact release date for that now, but just keep an eye out for that if you are interested. You understand you need to do small work on your basics since you want some help with the basics and join us for that one when it's announced. That stricture is so important, right? In terms of just having the accountability of a session, you've got the coach to ask questions to, you can get live regressions and progressions. You don't have to kind of do the unpicking of the training program yourself. You can just follow along. There's loads of reasons to get involved in that one. It could be a really nice kickstart to give you that real platform to delve into some other stuff in calisthenics. So don't miss that out. Don't miss that when it comes out. That's the order of the words I wanted to say. All right, let's get in to this week's podcast. Roll that jingle. Listen, players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jackal. Now, this is always an interesting subject because when there'd be a lot of people out there that would have heard the word in the title basics and thought that's not for me, boys. I'll listen back in next week. The reality is, I hate to tell you, this is exactly for you and it's for everybody because the basics are not always basic. Sometimes our interpretation of that can be relative to our progression or our level of training history. I still do a huge amount of basics in my training program and I'll define what I mean by that. And there's probably two definitions really. Basics for me are fundamental movements. So that will be horizontal, vertical, push and pull patterns. So push-ups, horizontal rows, pull-ups, handstand progression or pike push-up progression, as I should say, would be the vertical pressing patterns. And you just start to scale those as you spend more time in calisthenics. So you can make them more difficult by, let's say, the horizontal pull position. You can start with your feet on the floor with the body at a nice tall angle, makes it relatively easy. You can then start to move your feet forward, elevate them on a box, put a weight best on. That for me is all basics. They're just referring to the fundamental movement. But the basics in calisthenics, and this is one of the best things about it, are super accessible to anybody who wants to get started. There is always a way that we can dial back a body weight movement within those patterns that I just mentioned, to make it accessible for somebody who has done zero calisthenics before. Yeah. And I think that there's that connotation of, you say, that word basics, then actually in our head, sometimes like just translating that as like, oh, that just means easy stuff. And if I'm just in stuff that's easy, I'm not sort of progressing. And that connotation is like correct to a degree, but it depends on how we're it's we're misinterpreting basics and what easier. So if I'm doing a an easy exercise, it doesn't mean it has to it might be less complex or less like high end strength work, but it's still like a basic movement that I don't have to make that easy. If I make sure that like the load that I'm using or the position I've got my body in for that might makes it still challenging for me. It's rather than like, if we're constantly doing stuff that we've talked about this many times that constantly doing stuff that's like too hard or too complex, like it's just potentially too much demand and too much stress and therefore then less adaptation on to the to the system. And it makes me think back to we've talked about, I think we actually had a podcast. We've talked about a few times. Well, I think we had a tie to a podcast being like something about there's no such thing as a magic bullet or that idea of like searching for the magic bullet, which we often think is like potentially something a bit like bit we haven't discovered yet. And a little bit more it's going to be complicated potentially, rather than actually if there is a magic bullet, it's probably absolutely mastering the basics. I remember being when we were it might have been the UK CA conference that we presented about someone out there. I can't remember if it was that year or not, but there was someone presenting. I'm going to forget his name, but like a big, a big wig and a big dude like big strong doing a big, big wig in the S&C world. And apologies, I can't remember his name, but his I think it's the title of his talk was basics, basics, basics and more basics. And he was talking about from a strength perspective, like doing super like doing things like farmers carries of being like, that's a basic movement, human movement pattern of like holding something and walking. Now it wasn't necessary. He didn't make it necessarily easy because it had been holding the it was a big dude like it had been holding something very, very heavy. But the movement itself was considered to be like a basic movement pattern. And I think that that really that was a number of years ago and probably really did a really great job of just like hammering that home. And if if anyone's like not that sure about well, I don't know boys like sort of I'm pretty cool at the basics. I just need to like crack on and do some harder stuff. There's there's no one in the world of training that doesn't have an element of just getting better periods of time, they get better just mastering and mastering those basics. Well, it's all relative, isn't it? Let's take it into like a wider training conversation and go. Let's say a bench press might be a basic exercise, like it's that you're lying on a bench and you're pushing a bar of you above your chest. That's not a basic exercise if you're doing a one rep repetition max. It's it's hard out intensity. The same thing will be for someone doing a power clean. If you do a lot of power clean is that becomes a relatively basic exercise because that's the complex movement like a power clean becomes basic when your central nervous system in your body, your kinetic chain is able to deliver that execute that movement pattern and then becomes something that you know. A hand stand for me is a basic exercise because I've done so much. So it's just it goes back to we've talked about your physical literacy or your catalogue of movements that your body knows broadens out and then those patterns become relatively basic. But what it was determined as to your point, Jaco, around is it basic and that's always going to be relative to the level of intensity that you're training. When we're talking about this in calisthenics, I think when we refer to the word basics or the basic exercises, we are thinking about these just real fundamental movement patterns and not chasing more and more complex skills. So for me doing a hand stand would be a relatively basic exercise and I know that's not the same for everybody but it depends on your do it like you know when you start it wasn't the best so it is it ebbs and flows as we develop. Yeah and both doing something like a more complex movement like a 90 degree handstand pushup that takes a lot of skill acquisition and a lot of time and specific strength but what's going to get me better at that movement is just doing more vertical pushing like in a basic pattern that could be as simple as feet elevated pipe pushups and getting some volume in there or I might go and do something which is going to give me a little bit more intensity becomes more difficult so that I'm building more maximal strength rather than more volume base adaptation by doing four sets of ten or whatever it might be I might be doing five sets of three repetitions to build a different type of strength but what you're going to find with is whatever wherever you're at whether you are learning your first pull-up or you are doing a front lever or something the basic strength is going to be what underpins everything that you do and and that's when we're probably like to think about a basic movement as skill acquisition is not basic if you're learning something new it's not a basic movement because your body doesn't know it a basic movement is something that you know well you can do and that's that's where it really fits into this strength development type of conversation where we are just building a bigger bigger base all the time which allows you to go and play at a better level and my last point before I'll pass it back over to you Jack it's just around this is if you've got like if you're wanting to do something around body composition in a podcast quite recently we talked about the big and bendy program which I think might it might get released on the dark way. I've written that down on the to-do list. I know you have and somebody messaged in I've sent me a message on Instagram and said I'm all up for the big and bendy program. Big and bendy? Let's get it right it was balkan bendy. Balkan bendy. I was going to say balk and bend I don't know do you like the why on bendy or not I feel like balkan bend is like. No I don't know I like bendy. I've actually been thinking about it of how that could potentially be we're digressing we're digressing but if you wanted to go down that route of you're looking about body composition and we need volume in a program and you know you're not really going to change significant amounts of over or put a big shift in your body composition if you are chasing a skill acquisition all the time because you've got to be so specific with that work. So just think about everything that you're doing can can be underpinned by movements that you are comfortable with that you're confident with that you can scale with volume and then hopefully intensity. So even if you can't do a pull-up and that's your number one goal doing more body weight rows it's a pattern that you know it's a basic pattern relative to the pull-up so rather than spending all of your time trying to do pull-up variations which you can do with bands and eccentric that sort of there's part of that but the bottom end of your training program should always be movements that you can just bang out a ton of volume and just really get that strength of the bank because it's going to feed everything else that you're trying to do. Yeah you talk about doing your first pull-up. There was Angie's, it's got you know when someone's name's got loads of those little hyphens over like the E's and the A's and things. Oh yeah, means accents, omelettes, those sorts of things. Yeah I don't know about that. It means you're like basically probably not English and like I'd love to have some things on my... Anyway she was one of the members that's been following the Body Weight Basics program and she's done her first pull-up this week and we need to have asked whether we can share the video or not but her smile at the end of that like she comes down to the camera and is like so buzzing for that first pull-up which I always love to love to see and I think that one thing I was like how good that makes us feel mentally when we've done some of those things. Now that for her there was a very first one so is a pull-up a basic fundamental movement but like is it basic for us at that point is almost what we're sort of talking about but once we start to get some of these fundamentals and basically we start to build up that base then you talk about this pull-up that's when we get the chance or we've earned the right to play a little bit of a higher level and I think the mental side of it is what you described there I think is really important that understanding that just because I'm doing... I'll put it this way around mentally a lot of us will find it motivating we've talked about this a number of times and we've had the same experience as I have it's motivating which helps us be consistent when we know we're working towards something that gets us excited. Now a good example for this would be there's a few people this week just replying to some messages around to members that are following the ring muscle program where there's a couple of people like had the same sort of issue around the transition and they were asking around like where they should focus their attention during training and they were struggling with the tricky transition and then their mind was focused on this on potentially that is like I need to do some more like bandage transitions and what else can I do to help with that transition and you know we talk about this at workshops and we said it probably a number of times that if it's a specific for a ring muscle for example this like the basic strength is going to make the difficult transition easier so working on your pull-up strength and being able to pause at the top is going to help you enter that transition and then being stronger and being deeper in our dip and being able to pause the bottom of that dip and be comfortable there is going to make you finishing the end point of that transition easier so I was very much like let's work on those two basics the pull-up strength and dip strength and depth and the height of the pull-up and the depth of the of the dip and like worried less about that transition like maybe just a few little bits of banded work to work through but we don't need to focus on the complex to get the complex and I think mentally if you just say to someone okay just get better at pull-ups and just get better at dips it can be a bit like bam it's just does that doesn't necessarily excite me so much whereas it's presented to ourselves in a way of like i'm going to work on my pull-up i'm going to work on my dips i'm going to work on those basics because it's going to help me do that ring muscle or that other thing that excites me so I think the mental side of this is really important and just putting that spin on it in your own head is going to help you really embrace those basics and really want to master those basics and I tell you what when you've when you've done us period of time on them and you've got a smile as big as I'm going to pronounce the name wrong but and G's then you're going to be invested in those basics and it's those basics that are going to give you that longevity it's going to give you that like robustness and it's just going to give you that sort of feel good factor for your body that you're fully in control of the movement strength them you do it with us you're going to have a bit of fun as we play as part of as part of those programs so yeah it's all encompassing when you when you put that I feel like it can be on because we put that spin on it yeah I wanted to just kind of like start to wrap up my kind of sentiments around this subject on giving people some suggestions of how they can implement this into a training program so if you are in the sort of the camp that Jack has just talked about where you're thinking about okay I'm going off this specific goal it's a muscle or it's a human flag or whatever it is if you follow in our training programs you'll find that our basics work for those kind of programs is in the capacities trend section so you'll have gone through the movement preparation section the movement patterning which is your skill acquisition and then there'll be some specific strength in the applies trend section and then there'll be probably two or three exercises in a capacity strength part of the exercise of the training program those are typically just going to be dips pull-ups press-ups variations of those sorts of things now if you're training towards something like a muscle up it's really easy to kind of just dedicate loads of your session time towards that don't get stuck and sometimes you might need to send for this a handstand is a nightmare for this one but sometimes what you might need to do is set yourself a clock and go i'm going to do this for 10 15 minutes i've got an hour to train but i'm going to leave myself 25 minutes just to get basic strength work done because i promise you you'll see you'll reap the benefits from that often if you're trying to do something which is difficult outside of your current ability the more you try and kind of push that the more fatigue you're going to get and the less reward or benefits you're going to gain within that session you're often better just giving yourself a dose of that 15 minutes or 10 minutes whatever the next movement might demand and then go in i'm just going to go build strength on top of this rather than trying to kind of chase that i'm just going to get it next time i'll get over the bar next time or i'll balance it the next time on my handstand that route is it doesn't yield a huge amount of return so at that point you can cut it off and go right it's strength development time and i promise you you're going to feel the benefits with that both in the short term for the objective you're working towards and then also longer term as you go on to go and learn the next progression that you're not even really thinking about yet but there is one of what you want to go and do next and you can set yourself up for better success now uh by getting building that bigger base of strength the other camp of people is probably where i'm at and i'll put myself in the same group of people that are doing body weight basics where i just want to kind of do basics all the time i'm not really chasing any specific goals at the moment it might be that my basics program looks a little bit different to somebody who comes in fresh onto body weight basics but the principle is the same it's a lower body push pull upper body push pull hybrid program with some core training that's what i do five days a week if that's what i can get in training wise that will be my program um it's not complicated and i'm probably also mixing in a little bit of strength and play stuff within that as well so um the ring kind of variations i might start rather than doing normal push-ups i might be using the rings to do some archer push-ups or that sort of thing but again back to my earlier point these are patterns that i know well they're they're relatively comfortable for me i can load them with some complexity by changing the number of repetitions i'm doing the amount of time i hold in a position where i put a weight best on if i combine it with something else what the rest period is in between sets do i do them slower so the tempo is harder um or makes it more difficult all of that sort of stuff is just creating a progressive overload or the stimulus that jack mentioned before and just building a bigger depth of my basics so if you're listening to this and you're sort of like yeah but i find the basics quite boring and not like that's challenging just go back and do one thing go and play around with tempo take your 10 sets 10 dips that you can do for four five sets because they're easy at body weight and go and do 10 dips with a four second eccentric so you're going to lower down for four seconds and then try and do four sets of those do the same things with your pull-ups or go and try something like an archer pull-up and all of a sudden you'll realize that your basics aren't that aren't that good and you go right okay i'm going to go and build this bigger foundation of strength but i'm just going to go and tweak it so you've got some new movements to play with or some new variables which you're going to introduce which are going to create a brand new stimulus that is going to kick start your strength development within that phase which is then also then going to start to go and add some more um some more depth for you and and these are the ways that you build one bigger base of strength for more complex calisthenics movements or like me i just kind of like the basics at the moment i like going into a session where i haven't got to think of complex skill acquisition i'm playing around with lots of different things it meets my objectives from a volume perspective of body composition to change body comp we just need to get more volume in across a week at a certain intensity and you're going to get way more adaptation and results in that area around the basics in calisthenics than you are from chasing super specific movements um so because you can do more of it effectively it's just easier to do more horizontal pushing and then then is to kind of get in high high acquisition high acquisition skill acquisition movements so have a think about how you might be to break some of this stuff down but whatever camp you're in whether you're training for specific movement get basics in whether it's within a human flag session or it's a separate session so it's a different part of the week or if you are just kind of joining bodyweight basics or looking to just kind of do real kind of what we might call as more simple training with with patterns that we know start playing around with some of those variables I mentioned and you're going to all of a sudden realize that basics are not that basics and there's lots and lots of road left ahead of you to continue to progress down yeah and uh I just wanted I just wanted to pick up on one thing that was like uh where you made a good point around like handstands could be an example where depending on what you're doing in your training you can spend that much time messing about trying to get this I'm going to get it next time I'm going to get next time you actually um even if I go back to that um ring muscle example like spend too much time on the the transition going I'm going to get next time I'm going to get next time and actually you don't do the strength work that's going to get you there um one example would be um and I know I'll see whether you've been there on this too but people listening like I'm sure some people I can't be the only one that's done this but you like you think you're really like oh something just felt really good you get get the camera out because this next one's going down like I got this next one then you get your camera then when you've got your camera out you've made this like commitment to yourself we like I'm going to get it and then basically you don't get it but you like still feel good then but you've like you've so half videoing you know well that's a good fail maybe I'll keep that fail for later once I've got it and then you like chasing in this this session becomes this thing of like trying to get the thing that you thought you did or maybe you did one but you didn't record it so if it wasn't on Instagram it doesn't happen it didn't happen so we'd always like getting something we will encourage people to do is to video what they're doing this session so they can see what they're doing get some feedback from it but it's like anything can be a bit of a double edged sword and I think that there'll be some people some people probably be laughing along going to yeah I've been there and I know I've wasted 15 minutes of my training session trying to get the right trying to get a video so use the video as and when is necessary but just another example where you may fall into a little bit of a trap where ultimately you're just not getting strong you're just getting good with the camera yeah you make a great point and the callous sense can be so distracting with that but one of the biggest things that you're going to need to do with basics training is density you're just going to pack work into a session so just like I find that my watch is super useful for that in terms of like I said I've got a a garment so you can set it to strength training and then it gives me a rest periods and you just try and be strict to those so it's a 60 or 90 90 second rest and then you back in don't try and like don't let yourself get distracted and if you're in the gym with other people that can be quite challenging as well but just be really focused on what on what you're trying to do and just pack in work into that 45 minutes in basics you don't need an hour and a half I promise you that to get a good workout you can get plenty of work done in 30 to 45 minutes to create enough stimulus and if you bag in those sessions on a daily basis or and then consistently over a number of weeks you're going to start to really see the benefits just keep tracing that intensity to make sure it stays difficult remember if you can if you're finishing a set with this kind of work where we're talking like let's take Holodontal roses an example if you're leaving four or five maybe two even two reps in the bank of a 10 reps set so you can do 10 but you could on 12 13 or 14 repetitions that intensity you need to make it more difficult because your body can do what you're asking it to do so there's therefore no stimulus for it to adapt so keep trying to nudge that arm and keep a trading diary these things we sometimes it's much much easier to quantify them if you know from one week to the next I did last week I did three sets of eight so this week I'm either going to try and do three sets of nine which is progressive overload we've done more than what we've done before or I'm going to go and do four sets of eight or I might even go four sets of six if I can't do that but somehow we're looking to nudge that volume and intensity across a number of weeks to really build that depth yeah um it's just it made me think of the of the the bot when you said density I just immediately thought of the Balkan Balkan bendy program and like how you how you match how you match periods of of strength work with bendy work yeah to be to be it's currently it's it's I'd be lying if I said I wasn't doing some experimental work in my own training around the program soon to be it seems to be really it's a difficult one because you end up getting like you don't want to be too bendy for bought work like well you don't want to be too bendy when you like then going to go and try and create a significant amount of fatigue in the muscle so it's like when it's when and where and how it fits in but not there's nothing cooler but there is but it's fairly cool when you see you know like a proper mega mega bodybuilder but then when they do they're like they're posed where they like slightly they're doing like a cossack swap but they're like basically in the splits because they're because they're that that flexible and everyone goes I thought if you're really musty it couldn't be flexible like damn yeah yeah I think he was on he's basically on the Balkan bendy program and has been for a long time right we're going to sign off this week so I hope that's been useful encourage you to go and play around with the basics there's a lot of enjoyment to be having that if you think it's boring as I said go and play around with some new variables or go and have a look at our strength and play tutorials library and just get a few don't go for the super complicated stuff go for a few things that just look like us a different type of push-up or pull-up that I've not done before I'm going to try and stop that into my program and you're going to start to really you get some of that buzz that you get when you're doing skill acquisition based calisthenics for the bigger movements but I know for a fact if my pull-ups are okay my archer pull-ups are not like archer pull-ups is a different level and I might be able to go if I'm doing 10 pull-ups to be able to get him like maybe four five or six like arches it's just a completely different different demand really in many ways and that freshens things up for me I like it Tim mentioned there the the strength and play programs that we have inside the virtual classroom there is currently for the month of October a special discount on the as you've got membership it's already part of your membership so you're all good but if you haven't got membership yet and you're interested in having a little bit more play in your training there's strength play tutorials and the conditioning workouts as a special bundle it would normally be a 100 quid but it's a 33% discount so there's a third offset at 67 quid for those the link will be in the show notes to check that out if you want to spice up your training basics and have a little bit of strength and play in your life and in your training then do check that one out as I say if you already remember whether you will stand a membership or VIP is already part of your membership baby so you can just dive right in it's worth noting that one it's not the strength and play tutorials let me just give you a little bit more information about it within that there's like movement exercises play-based movement exercise so there's mobility as part of that there's loads of strength stuff in there and there's some stuff which is we call play where it's just a lot of fun things so there's push and pull variations of some core stuff there's loads of things to get you to challenge you to move into lower body stuff in there as well yeah you want to get strong is like is a tons of stuff in there as pistol squats and tutorial in there like five six exercises that will get you towards that there's like is packed it might be it is what is a goldmine within a goldmine of the online training programs um what more could you want there you go check it out if you haven't done already team and so that's it that's our conversation on basics um let's know how you get on and we look forward to to see in your progress and explore experimentation yeah so if you uh if you've listened now we're listening to the podcast or whether this is your very first one but if you haven't given us a review yet we'd really appreciate a review on itunes spotify or whatever it is that you listen to the to the podcast it really does help the podcast grow and reach more people and if you yeah if you've got any feedback for us or any potential topics or guests you'd like to see us try to weasel our way into then uh do email us or send us a message on social uh instagram is probably the best place for that or emails are david at schoolcast.com or tim at schoolcast.com we look forward to hearing from you and if you've got a friend or a loved one that you think they don't spend enough time on the basics this is a podcast for them send it to them with our love and introduce them to the podcast it's actually a metaphor for life do the basics better there's not many areas that you're not going to get better if you do the basics even like i don't know cook in cook it clean in that list will go on for a while but anyway enjoy that and until we speak to you again keep exploring your physical potential with movement strength and play class dismissed