One of the biggest reasons people fail to achieve their workout goals is they need to work harder. Yes, you need to work hard to achieve results. However, while hard work is essential to progress, too much can quickly compromise your long-term potential.

You only have so much time and energy each day. You may often have fewer resources than you would like due to work, family, and other interests, so you have to work with what you have. And that’s where the age-old advice of “living within your means” is sound advice for a healthy lifestyle.

I know spending as much time and energy as possible to “optimize” your results can be tempting. I used to believe I needed to spend every second and ounce of energy in the gym, or else I was leaving potential results on the table. That approach was why I was always tired, injured, and burned out.

Leaving a little in the tank at the end of each day does the same thing for your health as saving a little each month rather than spending your entire paycheck. It builds a buffer that allows you to weather life's stressors better.

Hello, my name is Matt Schifferle, and I have come to you today to confess my sins.

Things started innocently enough. I wanted to build a stronger core and have some definition for summer. But before I knew it, my core routine was an entire workout, taking over my whole training program. I always had a sore lower back and was constantly facing burnout.

Thankfully, I’m now in recovery with a simple approach to core training that’s far more efficient and effective. My mission is to help others learn from my mistakes and avoid these four sins of core training.

Sin #1 Avoiding direct core training.

“I don’t need to train my abs because they work with everything I do already.”

Yep, that was back when I thought the deadlift was sufficient for training the abs. I also claimed I didn’t need to train legs because I was a bike racer.

“I hate doing push-ups”.

It’s one of the most common laments I hear when working with new clients. As efficient and effective as the mighty push-up can be, it’s also one of the most avoided exercises in the calisthenics toolbox.

Maybe you had a bad experience with them back in gym class, or perhaps they were used as punishment for running late to practice. Whatever your history with them, these tips will help you make friends with one of the most beneficial bodyweight exercises ever.

#1 Use progressive or regressive techniques to match your fitness level.

Most people attempt to do push-ups the same way via the classic military-style “drop-and-give-me-twenty” version of the exercise. There’s nothing wrong with the classic push-up technique, but it’s not the proper technique for most people. Progressive calisthenics is all about adjusting your technique to accommodate your fitness level.

Father time is life's greatest teacher, but he sometimes seems to play favorites with younger generations regarding physical fitness. However, age doesn’t have to be your ultimate advisory if you want to build or maintain youthful vitality. You just need to follow a few key principles to train smarter rather than harder.

#1 Have a training objective with each workout.

Leave the no-pain-no-gain mentality to the young and foolish. When you’re younger, you can chase after blood-sweat-and-tears workouts all day and bounce back smiling, but not so much as you get older.

But fret not my friend, because effective training doesn’t depend on how much abuse your body can withstand. It depends on how well you train rather than how hard you push yourself.

Calisthenics is a pretty simple discipline; you’re moving your body through space and against the resistance of gravity. You’ve been doing just that since you were able to walk. But what is basic in concept can also be deep and complicated in practice especially if you get trapped in the countless calisthenics internet rabbit holes.

To make your training more practical, I’ve created this list of the most important Dos and Don’t everyone should understand about calisthenics training.

Don’t do endless push-ups & sit-ups. Bodyweight training often lends itself to “rep-chasing,” where you endlessly pursue more volume. Adding some extra sets and reps is fine when starting out, but before too long you’re slogging through one exhaustive workout after another with diminishing returns.

How many reps do you have to do for a workout or exercise to be effective? This is a relatively common question I receive as a calisthenics coach. Questions like these are great, but they do very little to help you build the muscle you want. There are better ways to assess the effectiveness of your workout program than trying to figure out how much work you should do.

This is because all static answers will provide little value in helping you understand how to go about reaching your goals. No matter what answer you come up with, it will steer you wrong sooner or later. It doesn’t matter if I tell you to do 50, 100, or even 1,000 push-ups daily. Any set number I recommend will probably be the wrong one for you sooner or later. Assessing the effectiveness of your training on how much work you do is like having your car's GPS tell you to drive straight ahead, and that's the only instructions your gps ever tells you. Driving straight ahead may be the correct route at the moment, but sooner or later you’ll need to follow some additional instructions ot get where you want to go.

Calisthenics is a relatively simple discipline. It doesn’t require a lot of equipment, and you can effectively work your entire body with only a handful of exercises. It’s the perfect form of training for those who want a simple and efficient way to condition themselves for health and fitness.

Unfortunately, some calisthenics practitioners take simplification too far. A common example of this is building a workout program around only two basic exercises like push-ups and pull-ups.

One of the biggest myths in calisthenics is that the path to building muscle is to always strive to do repetitions. That you’re sure to build more muscle and strength if you can somehow manage to always do more push-ups or pull-ups. More reps don’t always equate to more gains.

Before you think I've gone crazier than usual, hear me out. When your attention gets put toward the goal of chasing metrics, you may follow a path you don't want if your goal is to build bigger and stronger muscles. Doing a lot of pull-ups is impressive, but it’s not always the best path to building strength.

If your goal is to make your muscles bigger and stronger then you’ll want to make sure we're doing a progressively more challenging technique. You want to challenge the work capacity of the muscle itself in your workouts.

It's time to tackle one of the biggest lower body challenges in the world of calisthenics. This is the challenge of keeping your glutes and your hips engaged when in a deep squat or lunge position.

A lot of your lower body potential, to build both strength and muscle while keeping your joints safe depends on how well you use these muscles and keep them engaged throughout an entire range of motion. This is especially the case when doing deep bodyweight leg exercises.

Calisthenics can be a very potent discipline for building muscle mass. The inherent simplicity and efficiency of bodyweight training makes it easier to stick with a consistent program. Basic progressive techniques also make it easy to push your muscles to a very high intensity. However, one potential downside many falsely assign to calisthenics is the lack of isolation exercises. It’s true that most calisthenic training involves basic compound exercises, like push-ups and squats, but single-joint exercises like bicep curls and chest flys are also easy to include in your training. All you need is a simple set of suspension straps and the following three training strategies.

Ah, bodyweight training. It’s so simple and efficient that it’s hard to imagine there are ways toscrew it up. What could go wrong with just moving through space? As it turns out, there are plenty of opportunities to turn this classic discipline of beauty and strength into an ugly modern nightmare. I’ve made all of these mistakes (and more) over my calisthenics training career, but I’ve also learned from them and made amends as well.

Pistol squat is one of the most advanced lower body exercises out there. It requires lots of strength, great mobility and proper technique as well as lots of patients combined with hard work while training for it! If you have never done pistol squats in past, you may be really overwhelmed trying to figure out how to do it for the first time. You can in fact be very strong and be able to perform relatively heavy back or front squats, yet still struggle with pistols. But don’t worry - I got you! In this article I will outline most effective pistol squat regressions that have helped many of my online clients master this unique exercise. Let’s take a look all of the steps!

Bodyweight training is the oldest type of training known to humanity. It was here before dumbbells, kettlebells or even barbells. In fact, calisthenics have been around for just as long as the human race has been. Ancient Greek warriors didn’t have shiny lat pulldown machines..they were doing pull ups! And even though free weights were invented around ~2000 B.C., bodyweight training was still the most popular method of training ever since mainly due to its simplicity and effectiveness.

I decided to write an article outlining some important facts you need to know about muscular soreness, and the ways it affects your health, performance, recovery, and more! Let's start with a simple definition: Muscular soreness is the pain and stiffness felt in muscles several hours to days after unaccustomed or strenuous activities. Now let's talk about various myths and facts related to it...

Finding the best solution for your fat loss goal can be very overwhelming. Some suggest certain diets, while others offer “fat burning exercises” or even special supplements to “stimulate fat loss”. Lots of information, many options and still very confusing (and NOT very trustworthy or safe in most cases). Well, I hope that after reading this article you will no longer be confused about this topic!

As a personal trainer, I know that not getting enough sleep or having poor sleep quality is an important issue that can be holding you back from improving your physical performance like getting stronger, faster, gaining muscle and even losing body fat. You can have the best training program and nutrition plan one could ask for, but unfortunately all of that won’t take you far if you are one of those people who constantly experiences fatigue from the lack of good sleep.

Any time I get asked about my diet, people tend to be really surprised to hear that I’m vegan. That means I don’t eat meat, seafood, eggs, dairy, or any other animal products. “But then where do you get your protein?” tends to be following question, and then I go on trying to explain that plants have all the protein we need to be strong, muscular, and healthy.