TWO Workouts

People want to know what can be achieved by training just two times a week. So I thought I would collect my body and lifting stats into a single post. Strength levels Here are some numbers for some lifts for those who are interested. Take note that I’m counting only strict reps with pauses at the bottom and no swinging or kipping. In the bottom and top position all the reps reach the same position. I’ve been mostly training with straight sets only close to failure or to failure on the last few sets. Training with 6-10sets per week for each main muscle group. So I have not been using a lot of special techniques such as rest pause, reverse pyramid training, drop sets etc. to accomplish these results. Just straight sets, consistent work and progressive overload by increasing the load when I hit the top of a selected rep range. These are not highly impressive numbers but good results considering the amount of training and my age.  A decent condition for a man of my age. I reached ...

Travelling can be a headache for us fitness folks. Since just like with nutrition it is a bit difficult to find a way to hit your macros, it is difficult to hit your workouts when you are not at home.  You can train almost every other bodypart without any equipment by bodyweight except back and biceps. Sometimes you just don’t have a place to do any form of pulling. The hotel room you are in has no furniture you can use for pulling exercises, the weather sucks or it's already too late (scary) to go outside. That sucks since pullups, chinup and rows are great for building your back and biceps. Everything else can be easily covered without equipment but back and biceps are a tough one. Stretched calf raises, single leg squats, hamstring heel curls, lying leg raises, crunches, wall supported back extensions, bridges, push-ups, pike push-ups, tricep push-ups...the list goes on and on for exercises that require no equipment. But none of them work your back or biceps well enough. There a...

Training the calves off a step is great since you get a full range of motion and a good stretch at the bottom. In case you don't have a step you can do calf raises on the floor. The downside is that most of the range of motion is missing. Now in order to compensate for the lower range of motion you can do a forward lean calf raise which will increase the range of motion. Lean to a wall and stretch the calves on the bottom position. Now press up and straighten the ankle and hold the top position for at least 1 second. Descend back down to the stretched position. A calf block or a step is a great tool. But I feel that I can get a better stretch and range of motion with the leaning calf raises. Calf training progression without a step Progression for calf raises is a bit different if we don’t use a step. But basically you just replace all the elevated calf raises with the stretched calf raise. 1.Floor two leg calf raise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZdaBOrwCOg Stand next to a wall ...

Chest dips are fun! But with the dips we are facing the same issues as with the pullup. You are lifting about 93% of your bodyweight which makes it too hard for beginners. You will need sufficient tricep and chest strength to be able to perform these. Normal dip progressions have you do band assisted dips, negatives or tricep bench dips. These work but they all have their downsides. Negatives are not generally good because of the increased injury risk. I would not recommend negatives for beginners since they have not been able to learn the movement pattern. Doing the movement pattern in both directions with good form and lighter load is always a safer option. Tricep bench dip is not a very good option since the positioning of the hands is behind the body and might cause shoulder pain for some. Also it does not develop the chest strength required for the chest dip. And last not everyone has a selection of bands they can attach to their dip setup. Dips are fun. But try not to fall! How t...

Strong hamstrings will help to balance your lower body. If your legs are quad dominant and your hamstrings are weak you are likely to face some issues such as knee pain and hamstring strains at some point in your life. Two most common bodyweight hamstring exercises recommended are the hamstring bridge and if you are strong enough the nordics hamstring curl. Both are great options but they have their limitations. With the regular hamstring bridges you don't get much range of motion and you are missing the full flexion of the hamstring muscles. People are instructed to lay on their back while doing these which reduces the range of motion and reduces the load on the hamstrings. The nordic hamstring curl is an advanced exercise that you rarely see anyone do with perfect form. Mostly you see negatives, modified nordic curls or assisted curls with bands. Not everyone has a place to do these since they require a special setup: a pullup bar placed on the floor level, loaded barbell, straps...

Since dips are a great and fun exercise for chest and triceps I made a list that collects places where you can perform dips at home. When looking for a place to do your dips you should look for the following requirements. Height of the dip platform should be from 70cm to 90cm (28” to 35”) in order to do dips with bent knees depending on your height. Surface has to be stable. You don't want the dip stand to fall over or slide sideways. In order to be able to perform dips without the need to tuck your body excessively, a suitable height of the dip platform should be at least 80 cm depending on your height. This is the distance measured from your knees to about 10cm (4 inches) below your chest line. For a 170cm person this distance is about 70cm and for 190cm this measure is about 90cm. This way you are able to perform dips with proper range of motion with legs slightly bent. If you can find a higher platform you are in luck since you don’t have to bend your legs that much. Also when ...

Chinups and pullups are great exercises to build your back but for most beginners they are way too difficult. This is because you are lifting most of your bodyweight which is quite a lot if you are new to strength training. Most of the progressions models out there have you do pull ups with resistance bands, negative repetitions etc. But there are some major issues with these approaches.  The problem with negative repetitions is that you don’t get to train the pulling part (concentric part) of the pullup and it's hard to accumulate enough training volume to make progress. Think about it this way: Would you bench press negatives with weight above your 1 rep max? Most certainly not since you would be literally crushed by this exercise. So i don’t see the point of risking your joint health by doing negative repetition. If you are starting out and you damage your bicep or joints doing negatives you won’t be able to train at all. So in my opinion the negative repetitions are not a good ...

Push-ups are a great tool to gain strength and size to the chest if you do the right exercises in the proper rep range. But when talking about push-up workouts you mostly see high rep work done with submaximal load leading to disappointing results. It almost seems that no one actually understands the basic loading parameters of the push-ups. What you should do instead is to work in a moderate rep range 6-12 progressing to more challenging exercises when you reach the top of that rep range. And keep the number of working sets somewhere between 8-12 sets per week. This ensures progressive overload, proper training stimulus and strength gains over time. Here I’m going to introduce a push-up progression model based on the actual load of the push-ups and calculated 1 rep max. For those who have not read the push-ups compared to bench press post check it out here: https://twoworkouts.blogspot.com/2020/09/push-ups-compared-to-bench-press-with.html There is a calculator included that lets you ...