Rejecting The Naked Warrior | Critical MAS
In this post, I will review a book I bought almost 8 years ago. At the time I thought this book was excellent. Not anymore.
The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline is a book that focuses on body weight exercises. It promises secret knowledge to help you get super strong without using weights.
When I got the book in January 2004, I was already injured from doing the Russian Bear protocol from Pavel’s other book Power to the People. My wrist could not handle the massive number of sets. Because my wrist hurt all the time, it was impossible to safely workout in my home gym. I had worked up to nearly a 300 pound squat, which I could have continued doing, but racking the plates wasn’t letting my wrist recover. I had full confidence that Pavel’s Naked Warrior book would teach me how to build leg strength without having to rack weights.
Pistol Squat w 40 lb. Kettlebell by alkavadlo
Looks pretty bad ass, doesn’t it? The math of this exercise also makes perfect sense.
If one does a body weight squat with both feet on the ground, they can instantly double their resistance by using a single leg. Actually, more than double the resistance, because the working leg has to lift the full weight of the other leg off the ground. But it still doesn’t work out to a lot of weight for athletes that have years of squat experience. Pavel introduces the Pistol, which places the airborne leg forward, which makes the exercise far more difficult. And as you see in the video above, once that gets too easy, carry some additional weight during the repetition.
My ankle hurt and so did my knee. Instead of making my legs super strong, I wasted months trying to balance a solid repetition without falling over. The Pistol sucks for us tall folk. From the article Breaking Down the One Legged Squat by Ben Bruno:
If a standard push-up is too easy then using one arm will make it much tougher. The downside is you’ve taken an exercise with very little risk of injury and replaced it with a highly technical demonstration of strength that can really put a strain on your shoulder. I could do regular and elevated push-ups with ease, but struggled to do a single one-armed push-up.
In the end, I never gained any super strength using the Pistol or the 1-armed push-up, because they were both too technical to perform. At least for my 6 foot 3 inch body.
I met Pavel in early 2004
Doing ridiculous amounts of reps will make you very good at doing a ridiculous amount of reps, but is the least efficient method for targeting fast twitch muscle fibers. Minimizing momentum and keeping tension on the targeted muscle is far more important than knocking out additional reps. Don’t believe me?
Do two push-ups and two body weight squats. For the first rep of both exercises do it at a normal 1 second up, 1 second down tempo. For the second rep, slow it down to 3 seconds up and 3 seconds down. Humbled? The weight was identical and yet the 2nd rep was far more difficult. High repetition training may be useful if you are trying to develop a skill, but highly inefficient when it comes to building strength.
The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline is a book that focuses on body weight exercises. It promises secret knowledge to help you get super strong without using weights.
When I got the book in January 2004, I was already injured from doing the Russian Bear protocol from Pavel’s other book Power to the People. My wrist could not handle the massive number of sets. Because my wrist hurt all the time, it was impossible to safely workout in my home gym. I had worked up to nearly a 300 pound squat, which I could have continued doing, but racking the plates wasn’t letting my wrist recover. I had full confidence that Pavel’s Naked Warrior book would teach me how to build leg strength without having to rack weights.
Enter The Pistol
How does one get super strong legs without squatting? Pavel describes in great detail The Pistol. It is a single leg squat, where the opposite leg is held in a straight position to the front. The video below shows an athlete doing a Pistol Squat holding a kettlebell for extra resistance.Pistol Squat w 40 lb. Kettlebell by alkavadlo
Looks pretty bad ass, doesn’t it? The math of this exercise also makes perfect sense.
If one does a body weight squat with both feet on the ground, they can instantly double their resistance by using a single leg. Actually, more than double the resistance, because the working leg has to lift the full weight of the other leg off the ground. But it still doesn’t work out to a lot of weight for athletes that have years of squat experience. Pavel introduces the Pistol, which places the airborne leg forward, which makes the exercise far more difficult. And as you see in the video above, once that gets too easy, carry some additional weight during the repetition.
The Problem With the Pistol
Even though I could squat 1.5x my body weight for 5 reps, I was never able to do a single Pistol. I spent months working on the technique. Using chairs for support, I tried vigilantly to master one solid repetition. The most I ever was able to pull off were the occasional jerky sloppy momentum filled reps. Nothing fluid like in the video above.My ankle hurt and so did my knee. Instead of making my legs super strong, I wasted months trying to balance a solid repetition without falling over. The Pistol sucks for us tall folk. From the article Breaking Down the One Legged Squat by Ben Bruno:
Taller athletes may also find it uncomfortable to do full pistols because their legs are too long and it causes cramping in the hip flexor of the inactive leg. I personally use both methods, but for anyone with knee issues or for taller athletes, I would just stick to a parallel one leg squat to a box.Is there a safer more effective way to build leg strength without weights that doesn’t involve demonstrating a highly technical move that can take months of practice to learn? Absolutely. I’ll save that for the end of the article. Now onto push-ups.
One-Armed Pushups
Push-ups are easy. Push-ups are so easy they bore the average weight lifter. Pavel addresses this in detail in The Naked Warrior.If a standard push-up is too easy then using one arm will make it much tougher. The downside is you’ve taken an exercise with very little risk of injury and replaced it with a highly technical demonstration of strength that can really put a strain on your shoulder. I could do regular and elevated push-ups with ease, but struggled to do a single one-armed push-up.
In the end, I never gained any super strength using the Pistol or the 1-armed push-up, because they were both too technical to perform. At least for my 6 foot 3 inch body.
I met Pavel in early 2004
Bring on the High Reps? Not So Fast!
Not only have I rejected Pavel’s Naked Warrior single limb exercises, but I also fully reject the high repetition body weight exercises. Doing 50 or 100 or 300 body weight (aka Hindu) squats will certainly make you sore, but I believe the focus on repetitions as a metric of success is misplaced. My goal is to build muscle by fatiguing my muscle fibers as safely and efficiently as possible and then allowing time for recovery.Doing ridiculous amounts of reps will make you very good at doing a ridiculous amount of reps, but is the least efficient method for targeting fast twitch muscle fibers. Minimizing momentum and keeping tension on the targeted muscle is far more important than knocking out additional reps. Don’t believe me?
Do two push-ups and two body weight squats. For the first rep of both exercises do it at a normal 1 second up, 1 second down tempo. For the second rep, slow it down to 3 seconds up and 3 seconds down. Humbled? The weight was identical and yet the 2nd rep was far more difficult. High repetition training may be useful if you are trying to develop a skill, but highly inefficient when it comes to building strength.
The Intelligent Body Weight Exercise Approach
When I went about designing my current body weight exercise program, I had 3 goals in mind.- Exercise Selection: The exercises needed to be non-technical, basic movements that would target the major muscle groups. The exercises would also need to be safe enough to take to full failure. In other words, no 1-legged pistols from an elevated squat box.
- Full Muscle Fiber Activation and Fatigue: Most body weight exercises end when or before positive failure is reached. That isn’t enough. I want to use movements that let me safely achieve negative failure as well.
- Minimal Time Commitment: I strongly believe in the principles of High Intensity Training. As the duration of the workout increases, the intensity has to decrease. You may pat yourself on the back for going to the gym 3 times a week for an hour. The fact is you needed to reduce intensity to make that happen. My goal is to reduce duration and increase intensity. I’m down to a single 10 minute workout every 5-7 days. It is brutally intense and it takes me 2-3 days to recover from fully. Instead of racing back to my next workout to beat my body up more, I allow sufficient time for recovery.
Sandro
-ashe
(1) Per Convict Conditioning, treat the pistol not as a skill but as a strength movement. Thus, I performed pistols once a week.
(2) Your video features Al Kavadlo. I watched his pistol tutorial and stopped worrying about extending my free leg. I stood on various platforms, allowed my free leg to dangle, and simply worked on improving depth, which came rather rapidly. From there I simply decreased the height of the platform over time. This allowed the free leg to extend over time.
I know that HIT advocates seem to prefer that Time-Under-Tension be amassed in a contiguous set. But my surmise is that it doesn’t really matter how you get your 30, 45 or 60 seconds in as long as the intensity is appropriate.
Enjoy keeping up with your thoughts! And it’s that much more enjoyable knowing that we agree on things like volume, intensity, etc.
I read TNW, and three weeks later i was doing pistols (i’m also 6 ft 3 ” tall). 2 weeks later, and i’m doing weighted pistols now.
Of course it requires not only strenght but also technique, but just as the squat or deadlift, everything needs a good technique, even pull-ups and dips.
With bodyweight exercises, you can train many times a day, as long as you build to that frequency. If you start doing it many times, with a variation that is just too hard for you, you’ll eventually finish with tendonitis, al least.
Just be patient and careful.
Good luck everyone
http://criticalmas.com/2012/06/lower-risk-alternatives-to-the-barbell-back-squat/
The first comment also has an excellent idea for building leg strength safely without relying on developing specific techniques.
I appreciated your comments on Pavel.
I was able to do 2-3 pistol squats, in sloppy form though, BUT with full range of motion, right after reading ‘The naked warrior’
I blame this on my life-long stair walking. (i lived on the fourth floor for all of my 38 year long life with no elevator)
This, for me is the perfect example of GTG
Having said this though, after a few months of practicing them, and getting up the point where i can do 10 on each leg, the second set 8 and the third set 6, i must say i am still struggling with the proper form, especially maintaining proper balance throughout the full motion.
It is a highly technical exercise indeed, but very effective & imho very worthy of keeping in your training schedule, whether it’d be CC-style strenght training once a week, or just for practicing the whole body-tension principle.
Anyway, Greeting from Belgium & KEEP WORKING OUT Y’ALL
“Not only have I rejected Pavel’s Naked Warrior single limb exercises, but I also fully reject the high repetition body weight exercises. ”
In this post I give props to Pavel for being low-rep.
http://criticalmas.com/2011/03/power-people-10-years/
I realized from the get-go that I needed to overcome my fear of ‘what happens at the bottom’, thus careful negatives, initially yielding to the carpet, were the best place for me to start, not that I’d recommend that procedure to everyone.
Now, to be candid, pistols are still not and may never be a ‘go-to’ leg exercise for me. I prefer goblets, jump squats and a little sprinting, here and there for hypertrophy.