 With all the gyms closing down, a lot of you guys are stuck trying to figure out a home workout, myself included. Now, I've always been pretty vocal that calisthenics routines aren't that effective for hypertrophy, muscle building, because it's difficult to take your muscles to failure with a high-weight exercise. When you do a pull-up, how do you ensure that your forearms, your biceps, and back go to failure? You don't. One typically fails before the others do, at least for most people. So with free weights, machines, cables, you're able to choose a weight that allows you to establish the mind-muscle connection easier. Take each individual muscle to failure. That being said, once you are able to build up a muscular base, say six months to a year of training, it becomes easier and easier to take the muscles to failure. As you can imagine, the larger the muscle is, the more muscle fiber tissue there is, it's easier to flex that muscle. So if you're already strong and muscular, calisthenics is a viable option. It's why you see a lot of these calisthenics guys initially having imbalanced physique until they hit an advanced level. Usually like big chest, arms, or shoulders with an underdeveloped back. But when they work out for years and years and years, everything eventually evens out. This also has to do with exercise choice as opposed to training modality. If all you do is pull-ups and push-ups as opposed to messing around with other stuff on the bars, that's where you see the muscular imbalances. And there's definitely a lack of, you know, asymmetrical exercises. You can't do unilateral movements as easily with this. Normally in the gym, I do full body every single day. Chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, calves, everything. I focus on each muscle group individually when I have time. If I'm time-restricted, I'll start alternating exercises. So I'll do a barbell bench press, then a barbell row. If I'm really, really tight on time, I'll even superset contrasting muscle groups. So I'll do, you know, pull-ups and push-ups, bicep curl and tricep extension. Really condense everything together. The workout today is designed to maximize hypertrophy as high volume as possible. Take as many muscles to failure as frequently as possible with as little time invested as we need to. That being said, this is going to be anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes depending on your muscular strength and endurance. The problem with calisthenics training is that you need to rest a lot longer as you cannot lower the weight. Traditionally, people rest like two to three minutes between sets. In my normal gym routine, I'm only resting 20, 30 seconds, but today it might be a little longer than that because of the higher weight, the higher strength requirement. You know, with only pull-ups and body weight exercises, I cannot lessen the load as easily. And keep in mind, guys, I've never watched a calisthenics workout video. You know, I've never really done calisthenics in my life. This is just something I came up with the other day, you know, to get the job done. The job being to take your muscle to failure, as I said, as frequently as possible with enough sets to stimulate growth. The layout is going to be supersetting everything together to keep it really, really simple. Of course, you can change the loading however you'd like to. So as we lose our strength throughout this, you know, we'll start resting longer. We'll throw in some more sets. You know, we'll try to lean and do a couple interesting things. Depending on your equipment access, you know, what bars you have, you might not be able to do a lot of these exercises, but worst case scenario, you know, you just have a pull-up bar and you can do push-ups. There just won't be as many variations. So the layout today is going to be back. Then we're going to superset a lower intensity back exercise. Then we're going to do dips, superset it with a lower intensity chest exercise. Then we're going to do a bit of like a face pull for some shoulders and traps. Then we're going to jump into a mid-delta push. Then we're going to do tricep extensions and bicep curls, literally full upper body. And then when we're resting between that superset of sets, we're going to do some calf raises. If you guys work out your leg, by all means, you can include some single leg squats, some squats, you know, some glute extensions, various leg exercises, but this is an upper body builder routine. Before we jump into this, let me just show you guys what bars we have access to today. So, you know, I can do pull-ups here on this on a thick grip with like my thumbs up. I can do vertical pull-ups as well. I could even do, you know, pull-ups here, wider grip. We're going to be doing some various like rowing and pushing exercises with these parallel bars. You know, we'll do some stuff like this. We'll do some stuff like this. We could even get up on here and do some dips on these bars. We have the straight pull-up bar here as well, even though it's a little low to the ground. That gives us options to do stuff like this, which I'll show you guys. And then we have some more bar setups over here. This is going to be good for some pushing stuff as well as some bicep and tricep stuff. So, you know, this is a really great calisthenics setup I have here at this local playground gym. But keep in mind, we're going to do stuff on everything. As I said, worst case scenario, just less variation. So we're going to go through one round of the highest intensity set. And we're going to start with pull-ups on the regular bar. So when I do this set, I'm really going to focus on squeezing my back muscles. And it's hard to squeeze your entire back. So for the first few reps, you know, I'll squeeze my lats. For the next few reps, I'll squeeze my middle back, then maybe even my upper back. Really just trying to keep my biceps and forearms out as much as possible. So I like a neutral grip on this. Really squeezing the back. When I go up, squeeze, squeeze. And then when I go down, nice and slow, really keep the tension on that back for the negative. And when I start using my arms too much, you know, around 10, 12 reps, we're going to go to this. So if you don't have these two bars, what you could do is, you know, you could do some kind of like slightly assisted pull-ups. So I'll kind of keep my feet on the ground a little bit and take some of the resistance away. And I'll just pull up and that's kind of hard to do. But you can squeeze your back a little bit, get a little more failure in there. But since I have these bars, what I can do is I can lean back and do like an assisted row pretty easily. So here I'm just going to really pull with my elbows and squeeze the lats. Really squeeze the back, get that extra. If you want this to be a little easier, you know, finish off the set up a little bit and maybe even finishing up, almost standing up straight. You know, the lower down you go, the higher the resistance is going to be. So that was our back. Now we're going to do the face pulls for the upper back and the traps. So I'm just going to lean a little bit back and do this. Really squeeze. And if you do this right and you have an established base of muscle mass, like my traps and my rear delts are completely burning. And of course, if you have another bar like this, this is also great. So I can do that as well on my tiptoes, just leaning back a little bit. And we all mean something like this is just as effective as the gym because you wouldn't use a heavyweight anyway. Now we're going to do some dips. So most of you guys probably just have a straight bar. So if you have a straight bar, what I would do is I would get up on the bar and I would just do some put presses like this. So you could do presses like this for chest. In general, I like dips a little more because this stresses your shoulders a lot. What I like the most is the vertical grip dip. Down nice and slow, just really stretch out the chest. Up, really squeeze the chest, squeeze the tries and delts. And just take it to failure. Now I'll move to something a little bit easier. So go over here on this, put my legs up and then just down and squeeze. And then last set, lowest resistance. Now you could do some push-ups if you want. But since we have these bars, I'm just going to do some of this. Just really squeeze the chest, stretch, squeeze the chest. Guys, as with any exercise, if you feel it in the muscle, if you're taking that muscle to failure, that's all that matters. Going from point A to point B, doing X amount of reps, X amount of weight, doesn't matter if you don't feel it and you're not stimulating that muscle and you're not taking it to failure. So now for shoulders, we're just going to do a really simple press and I'm going to do this on the fence over here because I don't have a bar that's good for this. Since our rear delts are getting hit with back and our front delts are getting hit with chest, the focus here is just the medial delt. What I'm going to do is just really press and squeeze that mid-delt. And keep in mind, guys, all of the muscles on your arms, on your delts, these are very small muscles. Most guys go in the gym, they do lateral raises with 20, 30, 40 pounds. A muscle this small is not meant to lift that much weight. Even just two, three, four or five pound dumbbells, you can get a really good shoulder work out of it. So now we're going to do the bicep and the tricep supersets. For triceps, I like doing the extensions on this like this. If this is too easy, try to go down a little more. If it's too difficult, you can stand up a little more too. As with every exercise, really go down, stretch out that muscle, flex it, squeeze it at the top. If you're not getting the contraction, either go lighter or go heavier, try both. And I like to superset those with just some tricep presses. A general rep range, you want to do 15 to 20 reps for each muscle throughout the exercise period. So if you do 10 extensions, try to do 10 presses. If you do 12 pull-ups, try to do 8 of the assisted rows. And now the biceps. Here you're kind of doing a variation on a pull-up and then a bicep curl. So initially, we want to do a bicep curl, but this is kind of heavy for biceps. So I'll stand up and I'll try to lower the resistance as much as possible. But as it gets too heavy, I'll start doing almost a pull-up. Like a row, but just trying to squeeze my biceps. So that's the whole upper body circuit. Between circuits, when I'm resting, I'll do maybe 30, 40 seconds of calf raises. Maybe 20, 30, 40, 50 reps, depending on how I feel. If you don't have the bar, you could do these on the floor too. The bar's a little more difficult to get a better stretch, but do this on a step too. Do this on one of the steps of your home. Nice stretch, squeeze. And this is if you're working out legs, you would do legs here too. You could do some lunges, whatever, different variations on lunges. You could do glute stuff. You could do squats. You know, you can build up your upper body pretty effectively with this, but legs, it's a lot more difficult without weight. So I'm actually going to grab some honey water I have in my car. So over the past few months, I've been getting in nutrients during my workout. Initially, I was using raw milk, you know, raw goat milk, raw sheet milk, but the fat was a little hard on my digestion. Although if you guys tolerate milk really well, I think that milk, kefir, those raw dairy beverages are the best option. You're getting bioavailable amino acids. You know, you're getting sugar, the lactose to feed your gut bacteria, it gives you energy during the workout. I would opt for that. Today, I just have some honey in water. Sometimes I'll squeeze a little bit of lemon juice in it, put a little bit of salt in there. And, you know, throughout the workout, I try to get in, you know, 80 to 100 grams of carbs just to keep my energy up throughout and especially, you know, doing this calisthenic stuff for 30, 40 minutes at a high intensity. I definitely need more of this. It really does help me get through the workout. So, I'll usually have a little bit of honey before, I'll have this during, and then after, you know, I'll go home, I'll have my steak, I'll get my protein. So, we're going to do one more round with a slightly different variation and this will happen towards the end of your workout when you're really tired and you're trying to squeeze out as many reps as possible. So, on here we'll just do some vertical grip. You know, when you change the grip, you work a different part of your back. So, here I'm working the inner back a little more. So, really squeezing the rhomboids. When I get to failure with that, I'll switch grips. I'll try to get a few more reps that way. And then sometimes I'll even go to like a bar like this and see if I can get just a few more reps. Usually it's only like one or two. And then again, we'll go to this. Really finish taking the back to failure. Again, pulling with the elbows. Go up a little bit. Really squeeze the lats. And do the upper back, the traps, the face pull. So, I'll come over here. Really squeeze the traps. Squeeze the rear delts. Squeeze the rotator cuff. That's a little heavy. So, I'll switch back to this one. And with this, the main thing you want to do is keep your body away from the bar on the way down. So, you do the negative. Because if you don't, you're not squeezing the chest on the way down. This, I feel mostly in my upper chest. So, after I do 10 reps of that, what I'll do is be on the ground. I'll do some push-ups. I'll try to really squeeze my lower chest. And then we'll do the mid delts again over here. Try some biceps again. And if you don't have this, get on the floor. Do some diamond push-ups. If that's too heavy, on your knees, do some more. Really squeeze those triceps. And then even get up. You could even do this on a wall. Just push. Really squeeze those triceps. And then, if you don't have anything for biceps, you could try to do slightly assisted chin-ups. But honestly, even just really squeezing and flexing the muscle, after you do that set of pull-ups, you get some more blood in there. Got things flowing. It's definitely better than nothing. And if you guys have someone else to work out with, you could do that prison-style towel workout. Or they hold the towel. You squeeze and flex your biceps. You do triceps. If you have some bands, whatever equipment you have access to, even a pair of 5, 10, 15-pound dumbbells, is going to add so much variance to this workout, especially even just some light dumbbell rows, upright rows, curls, triceps, so much stuff you can do if you have just a little bit of equipment. With all of these exercises, you really want to experiment and see what feels the best. Even something as simple as face pulls. You could do them like this. You could do them like this. Your hands close to do it like this. Really see what feels the best for your traps, for your rear delts, for your rotator cuff. Mess around. See what feels good. In regards to specific volume, I'll do this circuit anywhere from 10 to 15 times. And towards the end of the workout, what will end up happening is, I'll only be getting two to three reps on the pull-ups and the dips and the rep range will be a lot lower. Maybe not quite two or three, but four to five. I'll do a full round of the circuit and then I won't rest at all. I'll go into the circuit again and I'll do maybe two or three supersets of the circuit with the rest time in between. Really, as soon as you're pooped, you're completely out of energy, all the muscle glycogen is depleted. That's when you're like, okay, that's it. If you really want to come back later in the day and do another workout, that's okay, and your body can only do so much in one day. For those of you guys thinking, Frank, you're so icky. Oh my God, there's germs everywhere into children's playgrounds. Why don't you guys go take a bath in a tub full of bleach? The main takeaway for you guys is to be creative. As Big Lenny says, don't be a cookie cutter. You know, mess around with your training tempo, your rest times, your exercises, whatever is taking that muscle to failure as effectively as possible. And you want to be goal oriented too. You know, if your goal is to do as many pull ups as possible, your routine is going to look incredibly different. If you're a power lifter, if you're a bodybuilder, your strength training, your training for your sports and stuff, you might go do some sprints on the track. It depends on what your goals are. If you want to be good at something, you have to practice doing it. If you want to be a bodybuilder, you have to be good at stimulating your muscle and breaking down muscle fibers. If you want to be, you know, a calisthenics master, you got to do a lot of calisthenics. So hopefully this helps you guys get through the next few weeks while gyms are closed. If you guys could please like the video, you know, of course, subscribe. Hit that bell icon if you haven't. If you guys do want to support me further, of course, you can check out frank-final.com for my book, The Ancestral Indigenous Diet, Frankie's Naturals, Frankie's Syringe Meat, organsupplements.com. All that good stuff is down below. If you guys want to learn how to, you know, boost your testosterone, naturally increase your hormones, definitely check out my video from Tuesday of this week. Thanks again for joining me, guys. Enjoy the rest of your day.