 Welcome to School of Calisthenics TV with Tim and Jaco. We've got some great stuff coming up on this episode. We're going to talk calisthenics for sports performance. We are celebrating one of your graduations. And it wouldn't be right to leave you without a little movement challenge to have a go at. So we're going to bring a little bit of play time into School of Calisthenics TV as well. And then we'll wrap things up. We're just letting you know all of the exciting things we've got planned for the rest of this year. Welcome to the first episode of School of Calisthenics TV, a slightly different format, giving Jaco an opportunity to lounge and chat. See, it's getting comfortable. We're in for a nice little ride here in this new format of content we've got. We want this to be as interactive as possible with you guys. So if you have any requests, the things you want us to cover, you have any questions, put them in the comments below. And we will be able to add those to future episodes. So it's fair to say we're going to do a bit of an evolution. We're hoping to get guests on in the future. We get an opportunity to dive in some bit of training, science, whiteboard sessions. We may even have a monitor if we can stretch to that. But yeah, absolutely. I hope you guys are going to enjoy it as a slightly different take on what you may have seen in the past from School of Calisthenics. But we're looking forward to bringing a little bit of new, exciting content to the table. So the first feature we've got for you on the very first episode is our deep dive, where we get to take a literally deep dive into a bigger topic of conversation. Timbo, what have we got for us in this first episode? Well, something that's been on the agenda a little bit for us recently over the last year or so, particularly since we started doing some work with the UK Strength and Conditioner Association has been the use of calisthenics within sports performance. So we've done some work with a number of different organisations now, and we just thought we'd sort of have a bit of a reflection on how people are using it, the feedback from coaches, physiotherapists, strength and conditioning practitioners, about where they sort of see it fitting in. Because there's obviously a lot of people who are going to be playing sport, looking at calisthenics, and then started to think about, is it going to be applicable or useful in that training environment? And obviously our background is in sports performance, as practitioners and athletes. I refer to you as that one, Jack, I was... And everything as a rugby player, as an athlete, I just think it's a rugby player. Like you're a professional, paid person. They just don't give that, we're just not that athletic. I just rocked up on a saturday afternoon and tried not to get hurt. It's exactly what I did. But we thought we'd have a bit of a look at and chat around that. So let me throw the first question over. General sort of like reflections and terms of when we first started thinking about using calisthenics as sports performance, probably fair to say is we didn't know how it was going to land. No. I think we'd experienced from our own training of how we were able to start to use or seeing how calisthenics was made really beneficial for the upper body and integration into the core and sort of the rest of the kinetic chamber. It was very much like core shoulder based. And so with athletes like some of the Paralympic Swimmers we were working with, it made sense to challenge them a little bit using body weight training calisthenics for that sort of upper body core control. And then it just sort of, people would just, I guess, we didn't set out to make that happen. I think people were using, we're talking to a number of different coaches that we had touch points with that had used it a little bit like us, a little bit with themselves, having to see some of the content and then started using it with athletes and really seeing the benefits and sort of having that thought experiment, that idea of like, okay, but it makes more sense to use this scenario, this exercise over my normal bench press or overhead press for these reasons, testing it out and then seeing it through and getting great results. And so it's sort of just snowballed from there, I guess. I think there's one thing that surprised me a little bit is how many different people have got in touch and said, I can be using it for Brazilian jiu-jitsu or I'm using it to really help my triathlon training. And there's a lots of people who've sort of just implemented it within the training and gone, actually, it's a really effective way of improving style and canoe or whatever it might be. Particularly we've done some work with rugby and we've done some stuff with the Football Association recently and obviously the UK's Training and Conditioning Association, it's quite a broad mixture of sports, but I think that the transfer over and why it works so well is with all of these sports, and when I did my first training, some of my initial sort of qualifications were around just understanding human movement and understanding that the human movement system is effectively like one big piece of muscle, whether we like to kind of chop it down into smaller bits, but it's one big system, all integrated, complex, lots of stuff going on. And what Calisthenics does is respects that complexity and sport is a complex environment as well. So when we're talking about rugby as a good example, the chaos on the rugby field, having a system which has got a really strong peck from a bench press in an environment which is kind of changing all the time, having trained the system in a more integrated and holistic way is probably going to prep you for better to better perform in that environment. And I think that's one of the major things about Calisthenics, it's not the golden bullet. Like we've said that in a number of presentations that we've done is that it's part of the puzzle. There is definitely a need in most sports to have a really strong lower body, powerful, explosive, plyometrics, back squat, deadlift, whatever you want to do. That's 100% part of the puzzle. What we're probably saying with Calisthenics is that this is part of upgrading the athletic profile to be able to enhance physical literacy and improve performance, which is actually gonna go, you know, if you're on deadlift more weight or you wanna shoulder press more weight, there's some movements within Calisthenics which may well help that if that's part of the training program. So like we've talked about this before, if you wanna shoulder press more weight, just learn to handstand because I'm pretty confident that the neuromuscular connection and control around us, the shoulder and into the rest of the body is gonna improve your ability to shift more weight overhead, more joint stability, more force output. So it's using it for the right purpose, I think. But when you zoom out and you go, well sport is total body movement. Like we were chatting with the FA recently in Caroline with the physios there was saying that we need to really understand the importance of single leg stability because sprinting is a single leg exercise. When we start to bring us on the progressions in low body calisthenics, they're really good for just building mobility and stability in that pattern which you then gonna transfer through onto the park or the playing pitch. And just, I think that's it. That for me is a big one, I think. Yeah, and it's using it as, like you said, using it as a tool of where does it fit appropriately for you so that if that example is saying someone needs to improve their overhead press and they have some handstand work as part of it, but ultimately understanding that that's gonna form part of improving that base layer that if you are gonna want to get really good at over pressing, you're still gonna then have overhead pressing in your program just because the specific adaptations are imposed. And as I said, Prince, we're going, well if you're still gonna wanna do that then, it's not the answer of just one thing. But for some people that don't take part in sport and you do, you're just like training for fun, it's like you wanna go all in on calisthenics, like that's cool as well. It's probably where we're quite at in our own training. But then if you're looking at working in some of the sports that you're doing, whether you're in elite sport or whether it's just like you're playing whatever sport you do for fun, then it might be able to form parts of your warm-ups or parts of some bits of your weeks of your training. So we're just finding it nice to go. There's so much that you can do with it and then you can pick and choose which bits is gonna be relevant to you, your sports, your goals or the people that you're working with. And even from a starting point, if someone's listening to this and thinking, all right, well how do I even start to integrate calisthenics? I play rugby, football, hockey, cricket, whatever. How do I start to integrate some of this stuff? I already have a gym program. We can just, though, rather than doing a lap pull-down, you might do start working a bit more on pull-ups. And I think that you can integrate some of the progressions around chest pressing or that sort of stuff. And again, I'm just gonna do some of these more push-up variations and progressions, which we talk about push-ups, but when you understand about the calisthenics, you've got way more sort of opportunity to scale it with intensity. You can still make push-ups super, super difficult. Like a really good example is we do a bit of work with some wheelchair racers. We've used planche progressions with those guys because it's probably about as close to the pushing position we're gonna get. Dips, barbell, bench press, rows have sort of been staple parts of their program in the past. But if I can get them into a planche pressing type position with the hips in the elevated position, that's exactly where they're gonna be in the chair. So my transfer from training effect is high, but I'm also getting integration from the shoulder and the hip. And we know the shoulder's gonna perform well if it sits on top of a stable pelvis or a stable hip and we can transfer forces between that system. And the great thing about that in calisthenics and it's transfer into sports is you can't cheat it. If you can't create the right position, you can't stabilize the joint, you can't get into a good body position, then you can't do the movement. Whereas I'll show you many, many people who can somehow find a way of getting an extra two and a half kilos on a bar, five kilos in a bar, compromising position and still completing the rep or the set, but equality of movement is pretty much fallen apart. And when we zoom out and we go, what does like people who are excelling their sport at whatever level, I played like an really average level of rugby, but the people that performed well at that level were people who moved well, they were just athletic and they could just do more stuff. Those guys that struggled just didn't have a particularly good athletic base to lean on. So if we want movements to be effortless and beautiful, then it needs to be integrated and that's what calisthenics is going to help you to do, whatever then format you then going to start to implement it into from a sport specific perspective. I think my final point on that is just picking up on your, talking about progressions and variations. And actually, if I think back to what my training used to be like when I played professional rugby, like I had very good coaches and everything. We did lots of good work in the gym, but if I think of what bits would I use now from calisthenics, it would be the notion, the idea to be a little bit more creative and less rigid. I would be so rigid with our hand position, with our feet position for squats, for bench press, for pull-ups or what. We wouldn't really think about like challenging ourselves outside of just whatever was our norm or whatever we thought was like the perfect technique. And so I think with calisthenics, by its very nature, because the progressive overload doesn't come from just putting a little bit more weight, a little bit more weight, a little bit more weight. It comes from changing a body angle, changing a lever length. It does, by you, just exploring, being a little bit more creative, which I think I've certainly found as a training that's enjoyable, it's fun, I like trying to be creative like that. But then also as a coach, it's good to use to be a little bit more creative. It's not boring, because it's not just, there's a different way to provide that progressive overload. But you've got the continuum, haven't you? Because when we look at the guys who are swimming, we'll see people doing pull-ups with 40 kilos round the waist, and the shape is horrendous. Back's bent out of shape, range of movement's not amazing, but they're putting a big tick in their back because they've done a 40 kilo pull-up. Where in the water, when we transfer them into a streamline position and control in body shape, I really want the shoulder and the hip to be nicely aligned so I can catch and I can move effortlessly through the water. So we'll often, I've done it with swimmers before where they don't pull-ups, and like, right, strip it all back. I want that super strict line. I really want you to think about connection from shoulder to hip, so that we're moving like around, almost like we're on rails. Quite rigid, I'm quite specific about that because that's where the transfer is going to come in. And they'll go from being able to do like, let's say the argument, so they can do pull-ups with 20 kilos on. They'll go back to body weight and they'll be able to do like maybe eight or 10 or even less. And it's a really humbling part of that, but when we're looking at sports performance from a strength perspective and strength training, strength and conditioning standpoint, it's about transfer or training effects. Like, is what we're doing physically in the gym actually going to make us better? It's like their famous quote from the rowing coach of like, does it make the boat go faster? And if it doesn't, then I'm not interested because that's the outcome. And that's a very performance-based mindset. If you're in recreational sport, then if you enjoy it and you enjoy training, the stakes are far less. But I think that's always like, if you've got that mindset of I'm training because I want to play well at the weekend or I want to perform well, what can you do in the week which is going to give you more ticks in boxes and to then actually help you to improve the performance on whatever sport it is you're doing. And whether that's doing some more push-up variations because your sport requires good postural control and good core activation or you're trying to improve shoulder stability because you play a quite chaotic contact sport, that's where there's some of the stuff around that you can have a look at. And just to say that, if you're looking, if you are coming from a point of wanting to know where calisthenics can improve shoulder performance, there's a presentation you can watch that we did at the UKS training conditioning association which is on YouTube, you can watch the whole thing. So if you just type in school of calisthenics, UKS, yeah, you'll find that. And there's a bit of context in that around, up there apparently I'm being told. It's a bit of context around how the shoulder can benefit from closed kinetic chain training which is effectively hand fixed on the floor bar or a gymnastics ring. Yeah. So it's like understanding what you want from your training because I just want to pick up on that swimming example of being able to produce more and more force, like maximum for like how much weight can you pull in your pull-up? Yeah, I think the research project I did for my UKS, it was something like five newtons of force that you would apply through the water with your hands. So it's like 16 kilos, roughly. So it's not, what's the point in having more of that strength? You can't apply it to the moving water. But then if you take something like rugby where you're talking about being able to take high impact and being able to have those robustness around the shoulder to be able to absorb impacts in lots of different positions and scenarios, then having lots of strength in there and being reactive like how in a muscle-up we have to change from one position to another under maximal force and sort of strain. And that's where some of the more, let's call them the sexy movements in Calisthenics can be important. And that's what we did when we went to Scotland with rugby. Yeah. I think that my sort of closing thought on this is gonna, we used this quote recently, but if you've got more movement options, you can move in more ways. And that sounds really simple, but what Calisthenics is gonna do for you from a sports performance perspective is it's gonna improve your physical literacy. It's gonna teach you to be strong in positions that we might not normally train in the gym in a normal bench press, bench row, dumbbell row, deadlift squat pattern, which is often very sagittal playing. It's gonna move us outside and it's gonna give you more movement options, enhance your catalogue of movements that your central nervous system has got access to. And then when you're confronted in a chaotic environment, and we refer to this as contextual variability of going, can you, have you got a movement system which can respond to the environment as the environment changes? The more diverse our physical literacy and athletic profile, the better we are equipped to respond to changes in the environment that we're playing in. And that means performance improves. So it's like, can you step, change, turn direction? Can you jump? Do you know where you are in space? It's all that sort of stuff which you just go, it's not about just like, how strong am I? You've got this whole physical other component to think about. And that's where calisthenics is gonna give you a little bit of an edge. And if you can move in more ways than your opponent and you're giving you technical requirements or build and build up at the same time, then you have a real opportunity for competitive advantage. Shifting gears now. We're gonna go into the redefining your impossible section team. And this is where we get to have a look at what you guys are doing and the amazing things all of you in the community are doing with your training. So it's time to celebrate a little bit of success. And this month, we've got an incredible human flag from the legend that is Rob Falzone. Jaco, how would you like to pronounce that second name? Falzone, eh? A little bit of Italian. He's not Italian, though. He's not. He told us very correctly that it was Falzone. Rob has got a military background, some powerlifting experience as well, got a good training background, but moved onto trying some calisthenics when he got an injury and meant that he couldn't kind of do anything with lower body base. I think it was a broken foot or toe that he was struggling with. So embarked on the human flag journey, got a gym set up at home. Join the virtual classroom and follow the human flag program. Have a look at this one and see what you think. I don't know whether I'm, what's more, whether I'm more impressed or more, a little bit jealous. Intimidated. That bad boy for, he got up there and then there was a little bit of an adjustment and then you're like thinking, wait, that's it? And then it was like, are I longer? I don't, oh, that's really long. It's probably longer than I can hold it. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump in in a second and show you a couple of things that Rob did really well. So you've got some practical takeaways that you can learn from his human flag performance. But before we do that, if you wanna be featured as one of the celebrated members of the community, doing awesome things and redefining your impossible, send us a video, landscape format, preferably shot in HD of some higher quality. I don't like, sends a really ropey landscape project probably for send us some quality because then we can feature it, everyone can see what's gonna go on. And also if you've got any techniques or particular movements that you're working on that you want some specific advice with, we are gonna do a technique breakdown analysis as part of it. So if you are, if it's handstand problems, you've got something in your back lever, your muscle up's just not firing properly, sends a video, you don't have to do it perfectly, just show us where you're at. And Jack and I are gonna put our heads together and come up with some coaching points so you're gonna get some completely free and specific advice to help you to really find your possible. Yeah, with Rob there, you see that he's waited till he can do the end thing, the full human flag. There's actually the most amount of value comes to you and everyone else watching out there when we were able to give you feedback and help along the way rather than just purely celebrating what you've managed to do at the end. We wanna help you guys with your training, whatever it is you're doing, whatever is that impossible is that you're working towards. And we can only do that if you give us, if we're able to give you feedback along the way and along the journey. And so that's what this is about. There's details in the description below about where to send those videos. Also in the comments, you can let us know some of the things that you're working on. If you've got any questions, you can connect with us there. But now, let's- Let's show you what we did to know that human flag. Breaking down some of the technique points then for the human flag that Rob did particularly well is focused around this bottom arm, the pushing arm of the human flag and it being a real anchor. So we just wanna highlight a couple of points on this just to help those of you that are working on redefining your impossible of the human flag. So too often people just come into a stop position where they're really slumped in this bottom shoulder. You see how Tim's chest is facing more towards me rather than opening up and turning chest towards you guys and actually then opening that bottom shoulder up. So it becomes a little bit of an issue sometimes for people around them ability or flexibility to get into that position but also and most importantly to be able to put force down in that position. Tim's actively pushing away with the shoulder rather than slumping. So even just cause he rotates into there he could still slump in and have that ear by that shoulder. Now he needs to be driving away in that nice shape. If we can't think about the framework that we're using, can I say it's movement and strength. If Tim can't create the right movement, the right shape in terms of creating this nice triangle of the arms and then having his body out to the side. If he can't create that force there, or that shape is not going to be able to apply force down. So in that shape there he's just starting to dab his toes off the ground and that's sort of your first step. Can you with a little triangle of strength pushing with bottom arm pulling the top can you just dab the toes off the ground? Ultimately what Rob did nicely was he got up into that position and what I want Tim to do is just do the tuck shape. So if he comes up in just to a tuck and making this connection between this hip and this top arm pulling shoulder, he's pulling, pushing, making a connection to that top hip and spending some time there where you've got the hip in completely the same line, so parallel to the floor is where the bread and butter, the base work of your human flag needs to be. We don't need to spend time chasing with the feet out all the time. That's just going to slow down your progress and what happens is you don't really often have the hip high enough it starts to be a little bit lonely. Don't really make that same connection once you've sorted out that bottom arm. That's quite advanced for the human flag. That's for someone like Rob that was like very close to get into there. Well, he was at the end, but the last phase of that training, if you want to work on how to build it up right from the start, we've got our things like our stability ball flag, our angle flags, all of those are in the human flag program inside the virtual classroom if you're wanting to know how to build up to that stage because getting to a tuck is pretty difficult, but once you're there, you'll have broken the back of a human flag. It's time for a movement challenge and this week we're looking at Tim is coming at it with a bit of a strength based element and they're going to put me through my paces a little bit, aren't you Timbo? I'm going to try. Because you've got a bit of a something not happy with. Is that what I'm asking? We talk about acute variables in training. Rep sets intensity, rest period and one that most people do really badly is tempo. No one can control tempo. We want adaptation, but they're not doing it properly. So we're going to teach you a little bit about We put ourselves in that, don't we? No. We're going to teach you a little bit about tempo and how you can maximize suit adaptations. Now tempo is super important for hypertrophy. If you're trying to build muscle mass, it's also really important if you want to build endurance and stability. So if you like doing longer sets, you're going to need to get your tempo nailed down. And this I challenge anybody to do and not feel unless you've been training tempo for ages like it's absolutely brutal. So give it a go, but this is like a real level. And if you start to play around a bit more of a tempo working training, you are going to see some significant gains. So it's real simple. It's a push-up challenge and we're going to combine it with a cluster. And that's when we start to break down a set into smaller chunks. So Jaco's job is going to get into push-up. We're going to set him on a clock. I'm going to start that. His job is going to be a push-up and he's got to do a four-second eccentric. So taking four seconds to lower down, he's going to hold for two at the bottom and then drive back up. Four, three, two, one, hold. One, two, back up. He's going to go for four reps and then he's going to have a 10-second rest. He drives back out. That's three, push through one more. So he's going to control this. And then after this one, when he gets back to the top, he's just going to check his time on the clock, see how long he's got. That says 30 seconds. So he's now going to roll through. He's got a 10-second rest period. So four reps. Three, two, one, go. Again, four seconds on the eccentric, two-second hold and then press back up. Your job is to repeat that circuit. So four reps with a 10-second rest as many times as possible. See how far you can get and see how much your shoulders and your chest are going to thank you for actually paying attention to what science has been telling us should be the way that we train for a very long time. You can thank us later. Jack is going to keep going. I think he's going to have like five. Oh, is that it? That was another two sets. All right. I've got another 10 seconds rest. Have a go. Post me in the comments how you get on. Let us know how many sets you get to do. Three, two, if you hit 10, you're doing pretty nicely. That's 40 push-ups in probably four and a half minutes or so. We look forward to seeing you have a go and post it up on social. If you want to share those with us, we'd love to see what you guys are up to and how well you can smash through your tempo. We'll see you soon. So, before we leave you for this episode, we're going to tell you a little bit about what's going on in the School of Calisthenics over the coming months. And let me tell you, Jacko, it's a packed schedule. It is busy. One of the things that's really important to us is creating opportunities for our community of incredible people who are engaged and part of the School of Calisthenics to come together and hang out. And we have got something coming up this year, double back to back, Adopio, Jacko. That's how we like it. Which we're going to tell you about. In June, so on the 13th and 14th of June, I'm going to go in reverse order. On the 14th of June, something that's been really popular and we really appreciate everyone that does listen to the podcast has been the School of Calisthenics podcast. And we thought for the third year we've done these live events where we bring everyone together. It's a free event, so everybody is welcome here in Nottingham. This year we're going to go for the podcast live where we're bringing in some of the best podcast guests that you guys have loved the most and bring them together to perform part of this event where not only are we going to do calisthenics and a little taste of sessions of calisthenics and have some little competitions like we did last year. We're also having these guests giving us a little bit of insight into some of the expertise and areas that they work in. So we've got Dr. Sally Bell from the podcast company talking about health and nutrition. We've got Brian Keen, the fitness expert. We've got the handstand expert, Jonathan Last. We've got Guy from the National Circus coming to teach us about that. And then also we've got the guys from We Move plus a whole load more. So for all the details for that is on the website. This is what's going to happen, you know? Normally we have to work quite hard at these events. Now I've got all these people. Oh, those are literally going to be me, Peter Collarda. I was asking a couple of questions again. So yeah, what do you want? So they're all going to do on their specialist areas. They're going to do a taste of sessions for you as well. So you get to come and experience not just what's going on at the calisthenics but everything that's plugging in and around there. So if you're into health, fitness, wellness and calisthenics, come along to that free event in Nottingham. I've committed to this. That's on Sunday, the 14th of June. And you don't have to sign up. You just turn up where the details are on the website. I've committed to this position. I feel like I can't move now. So if you really want to get on board and then make a whole weekend of it, the day before on the 13th of June, in Belvoir, Beaver Castle, which is close to Nottingham, is where the Midlands Tough Mudder is. Now we did this at 25. We got together as a team last year. And one of my goals is for us to have a bigger team this year. So we're going to be doing that on the day before. So you can come do the Tough Mudder with us as part of our team. We've got a set 11 a.m. start time for that. All set up the details. And we do need you to sign up for that. Details for that, again, are on the website. That's the day before on the 13th of June. Podcast live on the 14th of June. Best weekend of the summer happening here in Nottingham. And don't be intimidated by the Tough Mudder. We're going to have massive range of abilities. Last year, it would be the same this year. It's not that difficult. And we will be doing it as a team. So you're not going to get left behind. No person left behind in the Tough Mudder course by the school of calisthenics. And we finish as a team. We did. And Jack got electrocuted, which was a highlight of my day. But if you don't want to do that bit of electrocution bit, don't know, put it off. Anyway, last couple of bits, loads of workshops all over the country, which you can come and get involved in. And not just this country in the UK. Outside of this country. Also international. We're going to Norway. And we're doing a retreat in Sri Lanka, which is going to be the most intimate experience that we offer, not in a weird way, but in a way where you get one-to-one individualized program by myself and Jack. That is going to be in Sri Lanka in December. It's selling fast and it's going to be epic. You need to go and have a look at the place that we're going to. On the beach, unspoiled, calisthenics, outdoor CrossFit box, unbelievable. As we record this now, there's 12 spaces available. Seven have already been sold. So there's only five left. So get on board with that if you are interested. And finally, if you want any online training programs, anything else that is specifically helping you towards your calisthenics goal, you can find those in our virtual classroom online, virtual classroom, find it on the website, go there, find everything that you need. Probably I would say the most comprehensive calisthenics educational and training resource available on the internet. And I'm saying that because I wrote it and I put a lot into it. So please go and check it out. We have a bit of a map. There we are. There's a free beginners program and there's a free pull-up program on there. So you can get to test it out for free in terms of that. And then you also get a seven-day trial with it. So if you want to just test out all of the different programs, you can get one of the memberships and try it out for a week for free. So that is the end of the first episode of the School of Calisthenics TV. I enjoyed it. Brilliant. If you've got any suggestions on content that you want us to cover, questions if you're going to send us your videos that we can do some video analysis on or guests that you would like us to see. Obviously, within reason, we can't get anybody. We can try. We can try. But things you want us to cover post them up. Tell us what you think about this new style of content of interaction with Japanite. And we are very excited to see you in the next episode of School of Calisthenics TV. Class dismissed.