Sometimes on rest days I do nothing but rest. Other times when I feel like I need a little active rest, I will do some hiking, playing, riding, etc. Sometimes I like to do light bodyweight and kettlebell complexes to get me feeling right and ready for the next hard day of training. Here is a sample complex for stability throughout the body to get you feeling good.
Stability is important for so many reasons. Many people try to do a powerful ballistic exercise with lots of velocity before they built a solid foundation of strength and stability. That is not a good idea. If you are doing things like kipping the hell out of your pullups, dips or muscleups, but you cannot do a strict variation of the exercise, you are asking for a lot of trouble and unnecessarily risking injury in the process. You should be able to do things slowly and controlled before you add velocity to an exercise. What good is knocking out your first muscleup if you end up straining your anterior deltoid in the process? Take the time to build the structural integrity needed to perform high power movements by first spending an appropriate amount of time building strength. Basic powerlifting and bodyweight training accomplishes this well.
So, in the above video, the power level is low, but the tension is high. Buy changing the exercises slightly, I can create much more tension in the given muscles without adding any extra load and stress on the muscles and joints, allowing me to get some work in but still recover in the process, because the load I am using is much lower than I can do regularly.
I start the series with hand to hand clean and presses, or cannonball clean and presses as I call them, not sure the correct terminology, whatever. But by pressing it from the bell and not the handle, you have to maintain a much higher degree of stability and maintain greater tension in your shoulder girdle and throughout your core.
Next, I hit some goblet squats to mobilize my hips, the weight is light, I keep my torso as upright as possible and my hips deep in between my legs.
Then I go into a braced one arm plank pushup where i place my hand on my abs briefly between reps and my pushing hand is elevated on the kettlebell. You do a few reps of these and stabilize the top position, trying not to lean or twist the torso, but maintain a flat back and brace the gut hard, you will get a great ab workout.
I finish with a few reps of high tension pullups where I am trying to maintain a hollow position with my torso, keeping my toes pointed and not flailing at all. It looks like I did a poor job in the video. If you do a few reps of a basic hollow rock, then try to maintain the same braced position in your gut when doing pullups, you will experience what I mean here.
A few rounds of these types of exercises will leave you revitalized and hopefully wanting some more. I usually feel like crushing a more intense exercise or full session after this, but I leave it at that and go home. I know I will have a greater training session tomorrow when I do this. If you leave a little in the tank and stay invigorated instead of totally smashed up and drained, you will have better consistency in your training and get better results in the long run. You must have a little balance between smashing and refining in your training. It can't all be 100 mph. Sometimes you need to back it down and work on feeling good.
I know some coaches like Ivan Abadjiev would disagree and say go to max everyday. But most of us are not Olympic material, we just want to perform better, feel better, and get healthier. Only the strongest willed people can go to max everyday and if your life does not depend on it, I do not expect anyone to do it regularly. If you have to "go hard or die" in your real life, then there are no options for you. But for most of us this is not reality. We talk about it a lot, there is a big difference between optimal and maximal. Just because you can survive in the military on 3-4 hours of sleep, does not mean it allows optimal performance. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Going hard regularly has its place for mental toughness, but going hard occasionally in conjunction with balanced training that helps you feel good, is a great way to stay focused and consistent with your training.
I know some coaches like Ivan Abadjiev would disagree and say go to max everyday. But most of us are not Olympic material, we just want to perform better, feel better, and get healthier. Only the strongest willed people can go to max everyday and if your life does not depend on it, I do not expect anyone to do it regularly. If you have to "go hard or die" in your real life, then there are no options for you. But for most of us this is not reality. We talk about it a lot, there is a big difference between optimal and maximal. Just because you can survive in the military on 3-4 hours of sleep, does not mean it allows optimal performance. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Going hard regularly has its place for mental toughness, but going hard occasionally in conjunction with balanced training that helps you feel good, is a great way to stay focused and consistent with your training.
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