Throwdown Thursday – The Bodyweight Gauntlet

When it comes to overall training, you can NEVER be good enough.

You can never be strong enough…

You can never be conditioned enough…

Nor can you ever be skilled enough…

I’m not trying to be Mr. Negative here rather pointing out the fact that you can ALWAYS get better.

In training, it’s all about progressing and getting better each and everyday.This never stops!The day you think it stops or that you’re good enough is the day you take a few steps back.

This is especially true when it comes to bodyweight training.

Way too many people take bodyweight training for granted as it’s easy to overlook as I too once overlooked the power of bodyweight training.

When i was younger I figured if I was already strong enough to lift a barbell with added weight to it I was good to go right???

WRONG.

Bodyweight training should always be a large component of your training program.

Like I mentioned above, you can NEVER get good enough with you own bodyweight.There’s NO limit to how much you can achieve with bodyweight training and all of the movements associated within it.

Your basic strength, conditioning levels, and even overall power can all continuously be steadily improved overtime.

It’s the people that think their “good enough” to neglect bodyweight training that really miss the boat and ultimately fail.

For athletes, bodyweight training in my opinion is the most essential piece to the puzzle when it comes to training for performance.This is the base of all of your strengths.Just like a great house is built upon a solid base, one’s athletic abilities and performance levels are all rooted back to how well they can control their bodies.

I hope from reading this you understand how important bodyweight training really is.

So with that being said, I want to present to you this week’s Thursday Throwdown!

This week’s throwdown is called, “The Bodyweight Gauntlet” and from here on out, I will use this as a measuring stick to see where my overall strength and endurance levels are with my own bodyweight.I’ll be testing my athletes and clients with this workout as well.

This will be a great measuring stick!

The 4 essential movements I will use for this gauntlet will be:

1)Push Ups – any variation

2)Strict Pull Ups – all grips and variations

3)Squats – ass to grass only!

4)Burpees  – chest to floor with a jump at the top

With these 4 movements, the way this gauntlet or “test” will work is you’ll get 3 mins at each station to complete as many reps as possible.You’ll get 60 secs between stations to rest and prepare for the next movement.

You can perform the gauntlet in any order of your choosing.I suggest you go with you biggest weakness first so you can attack that fresh.

Below, is a table I have created that has the different “standards” for scores.

This will give you a good look at where you fall in terms of your basic strength and strength-endurance levels with the main bodyweight movements…

Are you an ELITE BEAST or just Skilled Soldier???

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My numbers went as follows:

Pull Ups = 54

Squats = 132

Push Ups = 97

Burpees = 45

Overall, I’m NOT satisfied with my score. These need to be improved!

For the pull ups, I wanted to get at least 60. I’ve done a 3 min pull up test before and I got 57.

For the squats, I know I could have done more as I can dig in a bit more and just hammer them out for more reps.

For the push ups, I took way too many breaks on these.

I could have gotten 100 if I didn’t rest as much.

The burpees were the toughest as my arms were finished and my legs were still burning.At this point, it’s a mental game to just keep pushing through it and getting reps.

With this test, you could say there is a strategy to it all.I would highly recommend to avoid burning yourself out.  Instead of going to failure right out of the gate, get good solid reps and try to stay fresh.Just hammer out good solid reps in clusters.

A nice little discovery with this gauntlet is that you get to find out what your recovery ability is.When ever you bang out high reps of anything, you’ll have to deal with lactate acid build up.  This hinders your performance and gives you that burning sensation deep within your muscles.The more you train around it, the better your ability to recover faster and hit more reps will become overtime.

Another factor that plays a HUGE role is your level of efficiency with each of the movements.The better you are at performing them with good form, the better your score will be.  You won’t be fighting through poor form to get reps which will save you energy.

So now, I want to see where YOU are on the board.

I can’t wait to find out!

Post up your RESULTS in the comments!

Live Aggressive and Get Strong!

PS – For a FULL SYSTEM on how to improve your strength, power, and overall conditioning with bodyweight, I would highly recommend you take a look at the  The Bodyweight BEAST System

You go through this system and I guarantee your scores will improve!