The Yin Yang symbol (pictured below) is prominent throughout modern culture, but not everyone understands exactly where it comes from and what it represents. It originates from one of the oldest religions/forms of spirituality known as Taoism. It represents the balance within all aspects of life (the white representing light and the black representing dark) and the harmony they are perpetually in. It also represents, through the coloured dots, that there is always the juxtaposing element found within the other (there will always be some lightness within the dark and vice versa). This leads me nicely on to the aim of this post, to explain the balance and relationship between the two types of exercises: pushing and pulling and how it is important to find a balance between the two, both in our training as a whole but also within individual training sessions as well.
Without delving too deeply into the sport science aspects of it (mainly because I'm not qualified and lack the deeper knowledge - other than undertaking my own personal research) if you spend an entire session on one type of movement like push or even found within some of these 'bro splits' where they spend too much time focusing on specific muscles or body parts (aka 80% biceps, 10% back, 10% chest & 0% legs - as a 'hopefully' exaggerated example). This can result in very unbalanced body development and potentially poor posture and other movement related issues, including looking like a flamingo due to underdeveloped legs and an overinflated upper body. Without balance, training will quickly become more harmful or debilitating than it is empowering and beneficial.
With all that in mind, the point of this post is to explain my approach to the push/pull system and how I do my best to keep my training balanced (although it will never be perfect) and the method behind my madness. I'll be going through:
What I mean by push and pull in regards to training.
Briefly touching on the different planes of movement
How to incorporate and track your own push and pull system to maintain balance.
1. Push and Pull - What is it good for?
We'll start off with what is meant by the terms push and pull in regards to training and Calisthenics before we move into the why and how. Push means any exercises that utilise the pushing muscles (e.g. push ups, bench press) whereas Pull means any exercises that utilise the pulling muscles (e.g. pull ups, lat pull downs, body rows). So when I'm calculating my push and pull rep totals per session (e.g. if you did 3 sets of 10 push ups and 3 sets of 10 bench presses you'd have a push total of 60 reps for that session). This way you can track the total number of push and pull reps for each session and keep track of whether those totals are increasing, maintaining or decreasing and see why that may be, as well as making sure your training sessions are as balanced as possible between the two types.
2. The Range in Calisthenics Stays Mainly in the Planes
Now while that title was a stretch (pun intended) there's some depth to it. Within all forms of exercise there are multiple planes of movement which I'll briefly explain below:
Sagittal - vertical plane that divides the body into left and right. These movements fall into the categories of Flexion and Extension e.g. kicking a football, walking, jumping, squatting etc.
Frontal - goes from side to side and divides the body into front and back. These movements fall into the categories of Abduction and Adduction e.g. star jumps/jumping jacks, raising/lowering your arms and legs sideways, cartwheels etc.
Transverse - runs through the centre of the body horizontally separating into it into upper and lower halves. These movements fall into Rotation types e.g. twisting during a throwing motion, pivoting during basketball, hip rotation during a golf swing.
The reason it's important to be aware of the different planes of movement is because a lot of weight-based training in particular tends to focus on the most commonly used sagittal plane. The problem with this is, you only become strong in the planes you train in. Meaning if you do nothing but train in the sagittal plane, you'll only become strong in those types of movements. You can get some frontal plane movements in by incorporating some cossack squats, lateral raises, star jumps/jumping jacks etc. Likewise, you can get some transverse plane movements in by incorporating some rotating lunges, Russian twist sit ups, cross jabs in Boxing etc. But regardless of what specific movements you include in your training, the most important thing is to make sure you're training in all three planes of movement to assure your training is as balanced as possible.
When discussing movement its even possible to categorise them into horizontal and vertical push and pull movements. An example of horizontal push would be push ups, whereas vertical push would be dips. Whereas an example of horizontal pull would body rows whereas vertical pull would be pull ups. I created a code to further classify the exercises in my routines (which you can see an example of in the image further down the post in the form of complicated looking codes such as VPL standing for Vertical Pull and HP standing for Horizontal Push) but this is not necessary to track your training, especially if you're a relative beginner, I just nerd out over this sort of stuff!
3. "A Good System Shortens the Road to the Goal" - Orison Swett Marden
If there's one thing I've learnt in my years of training it's that just putting in work and expecting results is falling short of naïve. Only if you know what your end goal is and the steps you need to take to reach that goal, with on-going refinement and amending, will you be able to achieve real, tangible, visible results. Which is all any of us want right?
This is all very personalised and completely depends on your current, specific fitness goals. All I can do is talk you through mine and how I developed my own training system which has (at the time of writing this) gotten me three quarters of the way towards my current end goal in around three months: a Ring Muscle Up (pictured below).
When I began Calisthenics with earnest I already had a good few years of weight and bodyweight-based training under my belt, which meant I came into my training with a decent level of base strength to build upon. The main thing I had been lacking is pulling power. Other than some weighted rows I had no other alternatives and in all honesty didn't even do my first real, strict pull up until I bought my gym rings! Due to this I have a large focus on training my pulling strength in order to balance it with my pushing power.
This takes the form of one indoor full body session with a high emphasis on legs, hiking and two rings training sessions a week focusing mainly on hangs, grip strength, pull ups and rows to generate the highest number and intensity of pulling reps possible (with no leg training as it's fairly limited, but not impossible, on rings). So technically my current training is imbalanced towards pulling, but this is because I was originally imbalanced towards pushing due to that being the majority of my training during my 20's.
So, to keep this as succinct as possible, lets assume you've either found a training plan online or have created your own. Now it's time to identify your push and pull movements and begin to track the volume to assure your training is as balanced as possible. The way to do this is simply to first identify which of your exercises are pull based and push based.
Using my training plans as an example, during my 'Ring Session One' my pulling movements would be: Muscle Up Negatives, False Grip Pull Ups, False Grip Body Rows and False Grip Pull Up Negatives. Whereas my pushing movements would be: Bulgarian Dips and Archer Push Ups. As you can see, the session is clearly prioritising pulling movements, as it's much more difficult to incorporate them into strictly bodyweight sessions. Of which mine is a combination of pushing and leg based exercises.
Once you have split your training plan into pushing and pulling exercises, the next step is to work out the total number of reps for each of the exercises. For example, in my 'Ring One' session my pulling totals look something like this:
- Muscle Up Negatives (3/2 = 6)
- False Grip Pull Ups (3/4 = 12)
- False Grip Body Rows (3/10 = 30)
- False Grip Pull Up Negatives (3/8s = 5)
Pull Total = 53 reps.
Whereas my pushing totals look something like this:
- Bulgarian Dips (3/6 = 18)
- Archer Push Ups (3/6 = 18)
Push Total of 36 reps.
Which as you can see, despite being a pull based training session, it's still fairly balanced overall.
But an important point to make here is to not get too bogged down in chasing large rep totals and thinking that "bigger is better". You also have to take into consideration the intensity of your training. Look at it this way, which is going to gas you out quicker, 10 regular pull ups or 4 thumb to chest false grip pull ups? So in this example, you're working much closer to your 1 rep max with the false grip pull ups than the regular ones so the RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) is higher on the false grip ones.
There is a belief that you should be working within a rep range of 40-80 per session working each muscle group 2-3 times per week. While the latter part is a good target to aim for, don't feel you aren't making any progress if you're currently working below the 40-80 rep range due to either lacking the strength to perform a higher number or because you've increased the intensity and therefore seen a somewhat large drop in total reps. This is something I'm currently experiencing as during my 4th cycle (month) of training I have switched to some more difficult progressions of movements e.g. from regular to False grip pull ups, Bulgarian dips and Archer push ups.
Apologies if this has become a bit of a more technical post than I originally intended but I've done my best to keep it as simple as possible. Ultimately, the main crux of this post is to understand which of the exercises in your training programme fall into the category of pushing and pulling movements and tracking the number of reps for each per work out. To not only track progress, but also assure that your training has some form of Yin & Yang (balance) between the two.
