The ultimate guide to reaching your inner Thunder Monkey potential through calisthenics and intermittent fasting
By: Kasey Stern The Vegetable Police on YouTube
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Table Of Contents Contents Disclaimer...................................................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 1: Why work out? .......................................................................................................................... 10 CONFIDENCE .............................................................................................................................................. 12 DETOXIFICATION AND HEALING ................................................................................................................... 12 BLOOD SUGAR CONTROL ............................................................................................................................ 13 SELF WORTH ............................................................................................................................................. 13 WHAT MOTIVATES ME? ............................................................................................................................. 14 Chapter 2: What should I eat to recover?................................................................................................... 14 REAL FOOD ................................................................................................................................................ 14 OUR NEEDS ............................................................................................................................................... 15 MICRONUTRIENTS AND INFLAMMATION ....................................................................................................... 16 MUSCLE GLYCOGEN .................................................................................................................................... 16 INTERMITTENT FASTING .............................................................................................................................. 16 CALORIE RESTRICTION ................................................................................................................................ 18 HIGH FAT VS HIGH CARB ............................................................................................................................. 18 HORMONES ............................................................................................................................................... 19 BEST TIME TO WORK OUT ? ........................................................................................................................ 20 FINAL THOUGHTS ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 3: The last 6 exercises you’ll ever need......................................................................................... 20
THE 6 EXERCISES ........................................................................................................................................ 21 PUT YOUR HEALTH FIRST ............................................................................................................................ 21 CAN YOU BUILD MUSCLE WITHOUT WEIGHTS ? ............................................................................................ 22 Chapter 4: The Tier System ......................................................................................................................... 22 HOW THIS WORKS ..................................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 5: The Titles ................................................................................................................................... 24 DONKEY BITCH ........................................................................................................................................... 24 2|Page
POWER SQUIRREL ....................................................................................................................................... 25 MOUNTAIN HAWK ..................................................................................................................................... 25 THUNDER MONKEY .................................................................................................................................... 26 EVERYONE ’S JOURNEY IS DIFFERENT ............................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 6: Keep track of your progress ...................................................................................................... 28 SET GOALS ................................................................................................................................................ 28 NOT GETTING STRONGER ? .......................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 7: The Routines ............................................................................................................................. 30 CYBER NERD .............................................................................................................................................. 31 WEEKDAY WARRIOR ................................................................................................................................... 31 ALIEN ........................................................................................................................................................ 31 WHERE TO BEGIN? .................................................................................................................................... 33 LISTEN TO YOUR BODY ................................................................................................................................ 33 TAKE AN ENTIRE WEEK OFF SOMETIMES ...................................................................................................... 34 Chapter 8: Train to failure or not? .............................................................................................................. 34 WHEN NOT TO TRAIN TO FAILURE ? ............................................................................................................. 35 Chapter 9: The Warm Ups ........................................................................................................................... 37 STAY ACTIVE .............................................................................................................................................. 37 Chapter 10: Before We Get Started ............................................................................................................ 38 POWER VS STRENGTH ................................................................................................................................. 38 DEVELOPING DISCIPLINE ............................................................................................................................. 39 LIFE HACK CONFIRMED ............................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 11: Pull Ups.................................................................................................................................... 39 1.
STANDING PULL UPS .......................................................................................................................... 40
2.
AUSTRALIAN PULL UPS ....................................................................................................................... 42
3.
1 ARM STANDING P ULL UPS ............................................................................................................... 43
4.
L UPS ................................................................................................................................................ 44
5.
BABY PULL UPS ................................................................................................................................. 45
6.
P ULL UPS .......................................................................................................................................... 47
7.
A RCHER NEGATIVES ........................................................................................................................... 49
8.
1 ARM AUSTRALIAN PULL UPS ........................................................................................................... 51
9.
T OWEL UPS ....................................................................................................................................... 52
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10.
SPIDER MONKEY PULL UPS ............................................................................................................. 53
11.
THUNDER MONKEY PULL UPS ......................................................................................................... 55
NOW WHAT? .......................................................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 12: Bridges ..................................................................................................................................... 56 1.
SHOULDER BRIDGES ........................................................................................................................... 57
2.
BAMBOO BRIDGES ............................................................................................................................. 58
3.
BURNT BRIDGES ................................................................................................................................ 59
4.
BRAIN BRIDGES ................................................................................................................................. 60
5.
HALFLING BRIDGES ............................................................................................................................ 61
6.
BRIDGES ............................................................................................................................................ 62
7.
DESCENDING BRIDGES ........................................................................................................................ 64
8.
A SCENDING BRIDGES ......................................................................................................................... 66
9.
FREE FALL SAFETY BRIDGES ................................................................................................................ 68
10.
FREE FALL BRIDGES ........................................................................................................................ 70
11.
LUMBERBACK BRIDGES ................................................................................................................... 72
NOW WHAT ? ............................................................................................................................................ 74 Chapter 13: Handstand Push Ups ............................................................................................................... 74 1.
EINSTEIN HEADSTANDS ...................................................................................................................... 75
2.
FLAMINGO STANDS ............................................................................................................................ 76
3.
HANDSTANDS .................................................................................................................................... 77
4.
Baby H ANDSTAND PUSH UPS ............................................................................................................ 79
5.
HANDSTAND PUSH UPS ...................................................................................................................... 81
6.
ILLUMINATI INITIATE HANDSTAND PUSH UPS ...................................................................................... 82
7.
ILLUMINATI HANDSTAND P USH UPS .................................................................................................... 84
8.
L EBRON HANDSTAND PUSH UPS ......................................................................................................... 85
9.
BABY HERCULES HANDSTAND P USH UPS ............................................................................................. 87
10.
STARGAZER HANDSTAND PUSH UPS ................................................................................................ 89
11.
HERCULES HANDSTAND PUSH UPS .................................................................................................. 91
NOW WHAT ? ............................................................................................................................................ 93 Chapter 14: Leg Raises ................................................................................................................................ 93 1.
SITTING KNEE RAISES ......................................................................................................................... 94
2.
RESTING KNEE RAISES ........................................................................................................................ 95
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3.
RESTING D ONKEY LEG RAISES ............................................................................................................. 96
4.
RESTING C RICKET LEG RAISES ............................................................................................................. 97
5.
RESTING BABY GOAT LEG RAISES ........................................................................................................ 99
6.
RESTING GOAT LEG RAISES ............................................................................................................... 100
7.
SUSPENDED KNEE RAISES ................................................................................................................. 101
8.
SUSPENDED DONKEY L EG RAISES ...................................................................................................... 102
9.
SUSPENDED CRICKET LEG RAISES ...................................................................................................... 103
10.
SUSPENDED BABY GOAT LEG RAISES ............................................................................................. 104
11.
KARATE MASTER LEG RAISES ........................................................................................................ 105
NOW WHAT ? .......................................................................................................................................... 106 Chapter 15: Squats .................................................................................................................................... 107 WHY NOT SKIP LEG DAY ? ......................................................................................................................... 107 1.
A IR SQUATS .................................................................................................................................... 108
2.
P LATFORM SQUATS.......................................................................................................................... 110
3.
T ABLE SQUATS ................................................................................................................................. 111
4.
BODYBUILDER SQUATS ..................................................................................................................... 112
5.
SQUATS ........................................................................................................................................... 113
6.
NARROW SQUATS ............................................................................................................................ 114
7.
BABY FLAMINGO SQUATS ................................................................................................................. 115
8.
BB GUN SQUATS ............................................................................................................................. 116
9.
BOUNCY P ISTOL SQUATS .................................................................................................................. 117
10.
FLAMINGO SQUATS ...................................................................................................................... 119
11.
PISTOL SQUATS ........................................................................................................................... 120
NOW WHAT ? .......................................................................................................................................... 121 Chapter 16: Push Ups ................................................................................................................................ 122 DO PROPER PUSH UPS .............................................................................................................................. 123 1.
STANDING PUSH UPS ....................................................................................................................... 124
2.
INCLINE P USH UPS ........................................................................................................................... 125
3.
KNEELING PUSH UPS ........................................................................................................................ 126
4.
BABY PUSH UPS .............................................................................................................................. 127
5.
P USH UPS ....................................................................................................................................... 128
6.
1 ARM STANDING P USH UPS ............................................................................................................ 129
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8.
L EBRON PUSH UPS ........................................................................................................................... 131
9.
BABY 1 ARM PUSH UPS ................................................................................................................... 132
10.
ANCHOR PUSH UPS ...................................................................................................................... 134
11.
THUNDER MONKEY PUSH UPS ...................................................................................................... 135
OH WE’RE NOT FINISHED ......................................................................................................................... 136 NOW WHAT ? .......................................................................................................................................... 138 Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................................................... 138 Helpful Resources: .................................................................................................................................... 140
Disclaimer I’m not a doctor, or a certified certified personal trainer. I’m just like you, a regular person who decided work out t hat’s all you need. I got into calisthenics, one day. I was 90% 90% flubber and bone, but I had 10% hope and that’s because I believe it’s the most natural and safest way to exercise. I’m a health nut and while I wanted to get strong, I didn’t want to do so at the expense of my health and longevity. Weight lifters often complain about back and joint pain, and that’s what this pro gram is designed to eliminate. What fun is
having massive amounts of strength if your joints ache and you can’t even show off to your cat without him laughing at you as you hunch over in pain? The Monkey Strength program is the culmination of all the information I’ve gathered over the year s about strength and health, and I’ve created what I believe to be the safest most enjoyable way possible to gain muscle while staying injury free well into your 300 th year. Having said that, that, please do consult consult your doctor or medical professional professional before starting starting this program. For all I know you had surgery to lengthen your spine to impress your friends, and doing the bridge exercises in this book could literally had multiple knee surgeries, ease into the snap your spine in half. Be careful and go go slow. If you’ve had squats and stop if you experience experience pain. pain. Work with what what you have and use common common sense. If you only
have one arm, don’t do one arm push ups with your phantom arm. arm. No one likes a show off. This book is for educational purposes only, and the author is not responsible for any of the shockingly terrible things that might happen to you during this workout program. You start the Monkey Strength program under your own risk risk and are solely responsible for your own health. health. Ask your trusted medical medical professional if it’s a good idea to start this program, and take his/her advice seriously.
In reality, this is the safest way to work out that I know of no matter what your current level of athleticism is, but do be cautious and talk to your doctor before starting this program, because they are so smart and know everything. 6|Page
Acknowledgements book Convict Conditioning. Conditioning. You should definitely definitely go buy and I’d like to thank Paul Wade who wrote the book read that book, it’s a masterpiece. masterpiece. It’s the bodyweight bible bible in my opinion. opinion. Monkey Strength Strength was
inspired in part by Paul’s work, and was designed to improve upon it, thus rendering his life’s work obsolete and bankrupting his family for generations to come. I’m joking of course; I highly recommend
you read Convict Conditioning, Convict Conditioning 2, and his FAQ series to learn more about the science behind calisthenics. calisthenics. They are my favourite workout workout books.
Monkey Strength is a healthy mix of what I ’ve learned over the years from various proven calisthenics programs like Convict Conditioning, The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline, as well as several other body weight training books, programs online, YouTube videos and my own real life experience. That’s what human beings should be doing, improving on each other’s work and advancing our collective knowledge through our own experience. If you head on over to my Vegetable Police YouTube channel, channel, click on any video and check the convict conditioning book. I’ll make a cool 7 cents description box; you will find an affiliate link for the convict and it won’t cost you any extra. Thanks!
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I’d like to thank my girlfriend Cynthia, for loving me even when I was a 112 pound skinny fruitarian boy,
and I could barely keep myself from falling falling over when she hugged hugged me. Love you Hun Buns.
I’d also like to thank my Mom for raising me as a single parent, parent, and doing a fantastic job. Her support
while I was sick with ulcerative colitis was absolutely pivotal in my recovery and I owe her my life. Love you Mom!
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Lastly I want to thank all of my wonderful YouTube YouTube fans. You motivate me every every day to continue making fun and informative videos. You give me just enough love when I’m down, and just enough hate to keep
me striving for improvement. I’m so grateful for you all ! If for some reason you are not subscribed to me on YouTube, first of all how dare you? Second, you put this book down right right now and go subscribe to the Vegetable Police Police on YouTube! I have over a thousand videos on how to get healthy, fit and and strong, and create the life you deserve with your powerful monkey mind. Let’s do this!
Introduction So, you want to be a Thunder Monkey? What’s a Thunder Monkey you ask? A Thunder Monkey is not only impossibly strong and uniquely flexible, but they radiate health, confidence confidence and vitality. They possess inhuman strength, strength, yet they remain lea lean n and sexy year round and never get too bulky. They could tear your limbs off if they wanted to, but they exude an inner confidence so powerful they don’t feel the need to prove their superiority superiority to you. So they let you live. A Thunder Monkey has no pain in its body. They are extremely agile and have strong flexible joints that not only don’t ache when it rains, but can support ridiculous ridiculous loads of weight. Thunder Monkeys laugh at arthritis, a foe they have defeated in embarrassing fashion. You will be doing full 1 legged squats with your grandma on your back before you know it. Lastly, a Thunder Monkey is robust, virile and healthy. Their movements energize instead of depleting them. Their actions actions build and boost hormone hormone production instead instead of draining them. A Thunder Monkey Monkey exercises to lengthen its lifespan and enhance its life-force unlike cross fit and other extreme endurance endurance exercises which wear you down over time. Most exercise programs literally break you down and age 9|Page
you faster. Monkey Strength is a program that will youthen you. It will protect and strengthen the integrity of every cell in your your body. It will slow down and possibly even reverse reverse the aging process, process, so don’t blame me if you end up in a time loop floating in a place of nothingness before you were born. After each workout, you will feel a great sense of accomplishment. accomplishment . Much like a video game, you will progress through stages of increasing difficulty, level up, gain new titles and develop new skills; only they will actually be transferable to real life. Stairs will become easier to climb, groceries groceries will feel lighter, and you’ll get more daring daring during sex. We’re talking upside down monkey love here. You will feel energized after your sessions, and the sensation of beating your personal best from your last workout will exhilarate and motivate you to advance through the entire series. There is no feeling quite next one. I’m so excited for you! like conquering a dimension in Monkey Strength an d moving onto the next Thunder Monkeyhood awaits you my friend.
Chapter 1: Why work out? Look, I get it. Lying on your couch eating jiffy jiffy snacker pack pops dipped in snapper jack sauce while watching movies is a lot easier than lifting your blubber filled body up into the air. It’s safe in our comfort zone, so why the heck should we change? There are many great reasons to work out, and I’m sure you’re aware of some of them, but let me put it simply. You will never reach your maximum
potential in any area of your life without incorporating incorporating some sort of daily movement into your regime.
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This was me before I started working working out. I was 112 pounds pounds of mango filled weakling. Not only did I your mind grows more confident confident look weak and sickly, I felt weak in the mind as well. It’s amazing how your when your physical body improves.
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This was me 7 months after starting the Monkey Strength program from scratch. I was doing calisthenics already at that point, but November 2017 is when I decided to start from the baby steps, and build my body up the right way. I feel so strong, like I could easily take that fridge fridge beside me and throw it up through the ceiling, in case my neighbour from above needed a fridge. That’s Monkey
Strength.
CONFIDENCE Improved strength strength leads to improved confidence. When you start developing your physical body, and you become more toned, toned, strong and capable; it increases increases your self belief in other areas of your life. Do you need bigger muscles muscles to accomplish all your goals in life? Maybe not, but now you can kick your goals in the face. Power in the body increases power in the mind. You will feel it, it, trust me.
DETOXIFICATION AND HEALING Moving the body is the only way to pump your lymphatic system and rid the body of deep seeded toxins. Your lymphatic lymphatic system system is your body’s sewer system, and it doesn’t have a pump like the blood does. You have to move your body to move your lymph. Your lymph will never empty if you are sitting down all day sedentary. So even if you have no plans on gaining muscle, you just just want to heal your body 12 | P a g e
of some chronic disease; you should still exercise because you will only delay the healing if you sit still. not with this this program. It’s You can definitely over exercise and weaken your glandular system, but not designed to go easy on the body and provide plenty of rest to recover from each workout. It’s the least
stressful way to gain muscle and feel your best!
BLOOD SUGAR CONTROL The more muscle you have, the the faster you can clear your blood of sugar. Elevated blood sugar ages the the body rapidly. Your body is largely largely made up of protein protein and fat. Sugar can damage your body’s proteins through a process called glycation. The longer your blood sugar stays elevated, the more time sugar has this more in the diet to damage your proteins and wrinkle your face like a donkey. We’ll get into this section, but for now just know that having a decent amount of muscle mass gives you a place to store more sugar safely in the muscle cells, away from structural proteins proteins like your face. This will allow you to
eat high carb meals with less blood sugar issues. Don’t feel pressured to carb up after your workouts though. These slow strength based movements don’t actually require a lot of glucose, and you’ll be just
as strong if not stronger on a high fat diet very low in carbohydrates.
SELF WORTH Exercising self discipline gives you a great sense of accomplishment. It truly is an amazing feeling when one you’ve been you get to move on to a new dimension in the Monkey Strength program. Especially one stuck on for weeks if not months. months. It took me 15 weeks to finally beat the 2 minute handstand. I was
absolutely elated when when I heard the 2 minute buzzer buzzer go off and I was still up in the air. If you follow this program diligently, you will not only develop your body way beyond what you ever thought was possible, but your new found discipline will transfer into other areas of your life. Don’t be surprised if you start looking at your life with a new set of eyes and re-examining everything. everything. You might realize you hate your job and you want to start following your dreams, or declutter declutter your house and become a minimalist. You might even meet your monkey soul mate. It’s just one of the many potential side effects of developing Monkey Monkey Strength. You will become a better better version of yourself. Someone who is willing to make changes and face their fears and those are the most inspiring people of all. Most people are afraid to try, and fail. As long as you are putting in a half assed effort in life, people people won’t expect much of you. People get comfortable in their mediocrity. But do you really want to look back at your life when you’re 174 and think; darn I wish I had accomplished more? Don’t let your fear of
failure prevent you from doing doing what you love. Trying and failing over and over over again until you succeed is part of the magic of being a human being. We are here to better ourselves and the world, so as you work on improving your physical body (which is much easier than working on your mind), your mind and emotions will want the upgrade as well. So when you start doing the Monkey Strength exercises, your increased confidence confidence and vitality will spur on a whole host of desires to improve in other areas of your
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life, and then who knows where your monkey ass will end up.
WHAT MOTIVATES ME? I work out to improve my health. I feel so much better physically and mentally now than I did before when I lived a sedentary lifestyle. lifesty le. I have more more energy, clearer skin, and no pain in my body. I used to to suffer from arthritis in my knees, had lower back pain, and my left shoulder used to ache from a snowboarding accident accident I had when I was younger. I feel better than I ever have in my life, and that’s what it’s all about for me. I get compliments all the time about how much bigger and stronger I look,
but I don’t work out for aesthetic gains. The muscles are just an amazing side effect of me accomplishing accomplish ing my strength goals. I just aim to beat my personal bests from the previous week, and if you focus on that, your Thunder Monkey body will reveal itself over time.
Chapter 2: What should I eat to recover? What good is the ultimate workout program without a solid nutritional plan to rebuild your Thunder Monkey self after your exertions? I just want to throw some nutritional theories at you, instead of giving you exact guidelines guidelines to follow. We are all so different, there is never never going to be one diet that fits everyone. You may thrive on a high carb vegan diet, while while another person may need need a purely carnivorous diet to feel their best. So I’ll give you some tips that should help improve your diet no matter what you eat. I want you getting stronger, but not at the expense of your health. Health comes first!
REAL FOOD Stick to eating real real food. No processed junk, junk, and no refined sugars sugars or oils. Eat whole foods in in their natural state as much as possible, whether whether those are plants or animal foods. foods. Organic and local whenever possible. Raw fruits in their whole state fully ripened, raw lightly cooked or juiced vegetables. vegetables. Ok juice isn’t whole , but life is about breaking the rules sometimes, and celery juice can help rebuild your stomach acid so don’t be a w hole foods nazi!
Just be careful with some plant plant foods if you have food sensitivities. If you find yourself exhausted, exhausted, itchy or depressed after eating, you might be reacting to something something you ate. There are so many toxins and anti nutrients to look for so research low fodmap foods, and pay attention to oxalates, histamines, salicylates, salicyla tes, lectins and other potential triggers. Start a food diary and write down what you eat and how you feel, and you should be able to figure out your food sensitivities sensitivities on your own. Start an elimination diet to find out which foods trigger you, and avoid those foods for now while you heal your gut.
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If you eat nuts and seeds, soak them overnight in water, rinse them off the next day, and blend them up with some probiotics to ferment them for 4 hours. Search YouTube for a video called “Never eat nuts and seeds without doing this” to find out how. Nuts are very hard to digest in their natural state, so doing this predigests predigests them for you. you. Now you won’t fart every 18 seconds. If you eat grains and beans, soak them overnight as well, and then rinse them well before you cook them. That’s how you get rid of
the anti nutrients and gain access to the nutrition of these hard to digest foods. Pressure cooking is probably the best way to cook, because you destroy a lot of the lectins while preserving the most amount of nutrients due to the short cooking times. Always try to cook with water instead of dry heat i.e. baking or frying; fewer carcinogens are produced much less healthy than a boiled boiled one. That doesn’t this way. A baked potato potato that has been browned is much mean you should never have fun in life and roast some potatoes; I’m just giving you the optimal option
here. Baking and frying potatoes should be considered considered a treat rather than the default way you prepare nature’s little starch bombs of love. If you eat animal products, products, eat the whole animal. Don’t just eat muscle meat, it’s not not balanced. You
need to be making bone broth to achieve a proper balance of amino acids, and eat all the various organs as they are far more nutritious than muscle meats. That is how traditional tradition al cultures ate animal products, nothing went to waste, and they respected dearly the sacrifice that animal had to make to feed their ed and pasture raised animals. animals. There’s nothing worse than factory farmed tribe. Try to source grass grass f ed
animals, they live tortured lives and they are unhealthy sick animals that will make you sick if you consume them. I’m not a huge fan of dairy, but if you you must, try raw grass fed mi lk, it’s much easier to
digest. It’s also one of the most allergenic foods known to m an, so I would just leave it out unless you won’t react to know you tolerate it well. The exception would be grass fed ghee. Most people probably won’t
that, but still, be ca reful. You’re not a baby cow.
OUR NEEDS You need to feed your body after each workout with enough amino acids to repair the muscle fibers that you just destroyed, and you need enough healthy fats to rebuild and uphold your cellular integrity. Carbohydrates are kind of unnecessary for this program, but if you feel great eating a high carb diet, by all means continue eating that way. Just make sure you are getting enough protein to where you are advancing advancin g each week and getting stronger. Play around with these numbers, but anywhere from 1.2 – 2 grams of protein per kg of body weight weight should be plenty enough to gain muscle. muscle. Too much protein can age you, and will stiffen your body up like a panicked goat. Always try to eat the absolute absolute minimal amount of protein possible to gain muscle, and don’t go beyond t hat. Also make sure you are getting enough of the essential fats to maintain strong and flexible cellular membranes. Anywhere from from 1-4 grams of omega 3 per day is what you should shoot for. It’s most important not to consume too much omega 6, as both these fats compete for the same enzymes in order to be utilized utilized by the body. Eat too much omega 6 and you won’t absorb enough omega 3, then 15 | P a g e
higher than 4:1. That’s 4 grams you might become inflamed. Aim to keep your omega 6 to 3 ratio at no higher
of omega 6 for every 1 gram of omega 3. Ideally your ratio is closer to to 1:1. That means flax seeds, seeds, chia or algae oil supplements with DHA and EPA for vegans, and fatty fish intake for the carnies and omnivores. If you track your your food intake on cronometer cronometer (google it) you’ll be able to see how much omega 6 you are ingesting, then t hen add in enough omega 3’s to balance it out.
MICRONUTRIENTS AND INFLAMMATION Getting enough of all the micronutrients, vitamins and minerals your body needs to thrive is pretty important. Get either a hair analysis or intracellular blood test to find out if you are deficient in anything, and then eat foods rich in those nutrients. Also, always focus on strengthening your digestion digestion so you can actually digest and absorb your foods properly. Focus on cooling the inflammation caused by exercise with anti inflammatory foods. Plenty of omega 3 rich foods and spices like turmeric turmeric and ginger if you tolerate tolerate them. If you think you can build a Thunder Monkey body on hot dogs with a side of cake and muffin sandwiches, sandwiches, you are sadly mistaken. This program is as much about health health as it is about muscular strength. Respect your body and fuel yourself yourself with the best foods possible to maintain peak performance and supple skin into your later years.
MUSCLE GLYCOGEN When I started working out, I was eating a high carb vegan diet, and I was making plenty of initial strength gains. gains. The noob gains as they they call them. I wasn’t feeling my best overall though. though. I had a lot of blood sugar spikes, acne and digestive digestive upset. When I switched over to a high fat diet to to remedy these symptoms, I noticed a big increase in my strength. It actually surprised me, because I thought we needed to carb up and keep our muscle glycogen glycogen full to get the best results in our workouts. workouts. While that might be true for some explosive high intensity exercises, the slow and methodical strength based movements of the Monkey Strength program are fuelled perfectly by fat. So while you don’t need a lot of carbs for these exercises, if you feel best on a high carb diet, by all means keep doing it. If you aren’t progressing up the stages after awhile, you might just need a bit more protein and fat.
INTERMITTENT F ASTING AST ING One thing I can tell you for sure is that it’s far more important and beneficial for strength gains to focus on when and how often you eat, rather than what you eat. Although both are important, intermittent fasting is a secret life hack that will boost your strength and improve your recovery time noticeably. I myself eat one meal a day. I always work out in a fasted state, and then I enjoy a meal of kings after my workout. I like to eat my one meal around noon or earlier, so working working out just before that is best for 16 | P a g e
me. By that point my body has been fasting for 20 hours or more, and my muscle building hormones are through the roof. Let me explain why this is the ideal way to eat for muscle gain, longevity, and health. The more you eat, the faster faster you age, the sicker you get, the quicker quicker you die. There are several ways to slow the aging process. Intermittent Intermittent fasting is one of them. Basically, all I want you to do is shorten your eating window window for the day. Most people eat in a very large window window of time. Typically breakfast breakfast around 7am, lunch at noon, dinner dinner at 6pm and snacks in between. This keeps the body in a constant state of digestion, and gives gives you no time to clean house and repair your body. Measure the time from from your first bite of food for the day until your last, and try to make that time as short as possible. If you started breakfast at 6am and finished your last bite of dinner at 8pm, your eating window was 14 hours long. This is way too high! Try to get it down to to 6 hours initially. initially. You can accomplish accomplish this by simply skipping breakfast breakfa st and just eating 2 larger meals at lunch and dinner. When you are ready ready for optimal health and longevity, longevity, try to get your eating window window down to 1 or 2 hours. I typically eat for 1 hour a day from 11am to noon, and spend the other 23 hours a day fasting. That’s 23 hours every single day I’m giving my body to rest, recuperate and regenerate itself. You may need to work your way up to this, but just know that the longer you can spend fasting, the slower you will age and the healthier you will be. I’m also considering doing a 48 hour fast every week on my rest day. For us OMAD eaters, that’s just skipping skipping 1 meal, it’s easy. The healing results of fasting are insane. Things you didn’t even know know were bothering you will clear up. Throw in a 48 hour fast at
least once a month.
This is an example of a high carb vegan one meal a day feast. Rice and beans, veggies, veggies, some chia seeds with black garlic and spices and Celtic sea salt for flavouring. Simple, yet delicious.
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C ALORIE ALOR IE RESTRICTION Calorie restriction restrictio n is another way to slow the aging process. A lot of people are eating themselves to death. There’s nothing healthy about stuffing your face with 3 or 4 thousand calories calories a day if you only
need 2000. You will build your ideal physique, and look younger than you ever have by eating sensibly and listening to your body. Discerning the difference between true hunger and cravings due to boredom is the key to finding your ideal weight. Never try to satisfy your emotional needs with food. I know you want to gain strength, strength, b ut that doesn’t mean you should be trying to bulk up and gain massive amounts of size by stuffing your face with cheeseburgers. cheeseburgers. This will only hinder your progress in Monkey Strength. You will only be able to progress to the Thunder Thunder Monkey dimension if you are lean and clean. There’s no way you are doing a 1 arm pull up if you are 80 pounds overweight. This isn’t a bodybuilding regime where where all you care about is size; this is a program designed to build optimal health and achieve an astonishing strength to size ratio. You will possess very deceptive strength strength for your size. You’ll likely be stronger than most people twice your size. Strength is not all about size. You will build a very strong, sexy and functional body on this program that will be admired and praised, and you don’t
need to stuff your face to get it. So by intermittent fasting daily, anywhere from 18-23 hours a day, this will naturally limit your calorie intake to the perfect amount and improve your body composition without without you even trying. When you get to feast uninhibited every day for one giant meal, there is no feeling of restriction. It feels like thanksgiving every every day. This is the best way to eat in my opinion, regardless regardless of what you actually eat. This definitely isn’t a calorie restricted program. I don’t want you to under eat; I want you to eat enough to be fully satisfied. I’m not asking you to restrict your calories to a specific specific number; I’m asking you to
restrict your eating window, and to listen to your body. Satisfy your hunger, not your emotions, emotions, and you will reach your ideal ideal body composition. composition. Pay attention to how you look and feel. If you are getting getting skinny and unable to make gains on this program, you may not be eating enough calories, or enough fat and protein. If you are getting fat and flabby, you may may be overdoing the calories calories and carbs, and this will make the higher dimensions of Monkey Strength impossible impossible to defeat. You don’t have to eat beyond satiation to achieve an amazing physique. physique. I’m not a fan of bulking and
overeating. All that will do is make your pull ups harder harder and put extra strain on your tendons, tendons, so just eat sensibly until you are satisfied, fast for as long as you yo u can each day, and consider throwing in some longer 2 or 3 day water fasts every once and awhile to clean house.
HIGH F AT VS HIGH C ARB Personally, I find the one meal a day program program to be much easier to follow on a high fat diet. Carbs trigger cravings and when you switch to a high fat diet, that hunger goes away making fasting a lot easier. If you are used to burning sugar for fuel, you’ll need a constant supply or you start getting hangry! Frickin hangry. As soon as your liver glycogen runs out (which is only about 400 calories) your 18 | P a g e
body panics and sends hunger signals to your brain so you’ll go get more sugar. A sugar burner’s sad helpless body doesn’t realize that it has all the fuel it would ever need in its own ow n body fat stores, so it furiously asks you to get more sugar even though you don’t need more fuel. You don’t lack fuel; you just
suck at using the fuel you have. Everyone has experienced that urgent hunger feeling where you start to lose your cool. You don’t have to feel that ever again! We high fat dieters easily tap into into our own body fat for fuel and never experience that urgent hunger. We have 10’s of thousands of calories at our disposal. No panic panic mode mode ever. We can go hours, hours, if not days and weeks without experiencing true hunger depending on how much body fat we have. I’m very lean, and still I am literally never hungry. Even when I do get hungry, it’s never that angry must m ust eat something now type of feeling. There is no desperate desire for food, because my body knows where to find food (my belly) so it doesn’t send me panic button messages for donuts. That’s another trick to staying lean, since fat burners literally burn their own body fat for fuel; it never
has a chance to accumulate. It’s not like sugar burners can’t stay lean, they just usually experience lots of hunger in the process of leaning out. It requires much more discipline. You ’ll actually find that it’s hard to even gain weight on a high fat diet. You’ll be so satiated; it’s actually hard to eat enough food to keep your weight on. If you have weight to lose, this is a great life hack to get it off quickly and safely. If you’re trying to gain muscle, just eat to satiation and listen to your body as we ll as paying attention to
your progress in the program. If you’re not beating your reps, you probably need more calories, or just more protein and fat. Find your sweet spot to where where you not only feel good, but you are gaining strength without putting on too much fat. This isn’t Hippo Strength. Added fat will not help you.
HORMONES With intermittent fasting, not only are you slowing down the aging process, not only are you healing the inflammation caused by exercise exercise at a much faster rate than if you ate multiple meals a day, but you are also boosting muscle building hormones massively! This is the secret to why fasting is so effective for gaining muscle. It seems counter intuitive, but after about 18 hours fasted, your growth hormone is increased by up to to 2000%! Your testosterone testosterone is also increased increased markedly. When you work out in this hormone boosted, fasted state; you not only feel ungodly amounts of strength flowing through your monkey blood allowing you to work out harder, but you also recover much quicker. It might take you a few weeks to adapt to using your own body body fat for fuel in a fasted state. Your body is probably used to being fed a steady source of sugar all day for energy, and when you remove that, your body will think it has no fuel like we discussed earlier. earlier. Most people rely on pre workout workout boosts high in sugar to get through a workout, but when you keep fasting daily your body will eventually adapt, and soon it will readily tap into your body fat stores for fuel while you’re fasting . Once you adapt to this this way of eating, you will have all the energy you need to work out and go about your daily life without the need for food during the day. Then you get to to feast until your heart’s content, and that will send your
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body the signal that everything is ok and you are indeed not starving. It will relax, realizing there is no food shortage, and it will get used to the schedule of one daily meal.
BEST TIME TO WORK OUT ? Something I just learned is that the body has a peak performance hour, and it’s roughly 4 hours after after I wake up, because that fits my schedule best you wake up. I’m usually working out about 3 hours after and that’s when I want to work out. You don’t have to be too rigid with it, just try to get as close as
possible to that 4 hour mark after waking up to work out for optimal performance. If that doesn’t work for you, forget I even brought it up. You workout whenever is best for you, whether that’s immediately after waking up, or in the evening. Everyone’s life is different, but never forget that you are the creator of your life, and you can change it if you don’t like it. If you don’t have the time to work out when you
want because of your job, get a new one. What else are you here for other than to create the life you desire?
FINAL THOUGHTS Eat the foods that work for your body, in the right amounts, at the right time, and you will not only slow the aging process down, build a lean strong healthy physique, and live longer; but you may even develop a super human body of mystery that aliens will want to study so lock your doors at night. Although the aliens will likely be able to pick your lock, thankfully when they try to kidnap you and bring you to their ship, you’ll be able to throw them t hem around like a sack of potatoes and continue about your wo rkout.
Chapter 3: The last 6 exercises you’ll ever need There are 6 series of exercises in Monkey Strength, and together they cover every necessary human movement needed to build the perfect functional physique. These 6 exercises together will hit every muscle group each week, and develop an even and balanced musculature so strong and attractive that people will wonder if you are some sort of new breed of upgraded cyborg/human hybrid designed to seduce and destroy other human human beings for sport. You may lose some friends, since since they will look like sacks of jello wrapped in saran wrap standing next to you, so for their sake, wear some baggy clothes to not draw too much attention to your magnificence.
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THE 6 EXERCISES Pull Ups Bridges Handstand Push Ups Leg Raises Squats Push Ups
There are 11 variations of each of the 6 exercises. We call them the 11 11 dimensions, and they get progressively harder as you move away from high rep low resistance endurance building exercises, into much more demanding 1 limbed strength based movements. No matter how strong you think you are, begin your training in the 1 st dimension of each exercise. They may seem embarrassingly embarrassingl y simple, but if you don’t start at the baby steps for each exercise, you w on’t build the crucial tendon strength necessary to accomplish the much harder 1 limbed movements in the higher dimensions. I can’t stress this enough. You may possess the strength strength right now to be able to do a 1 arm push up, but you don’t have the tendon strength to do it safely without developing painful joint problems in the future. This program will bullet proof your joints and build insane amounts of strength slowly and safely. You’ll be throwing elephants across the room by the time you reach the Thunder Monkey Dimension, and you won’t have any shoulder pain from doing it . But if you jump right into the harder movements without building up your tendons first and conditioning your joints properly, you are asking for fo r serious long term arthritic grandpa type trouble.
PUT Y OUR OUR HEALTH FIRST Monkey Strength is designed designed with your joint health health in mind. This is the safest way to build muscle muscle that I know of . Bodybuilders lifting lifting heavy weights often complain about back, knee and shoulder pain. I don’t slowly for increased think we were designed to lift such heavy things. It’s possible to condition yourself slowly
weight, but in my opinion, opinion, calisthenics is by far the safer route route to take for gaining muscle. I had longevity in mind when creating this program. You should be able to do these exercises when you’re
212 years old wearing your flannel flannel golf shirt and tight brown brown pants hiked up to your rib cage. This program is all about strengthening strengthening and preserving your precious monkey temple for the long haul. 21 | P a g e
C AN Y OU OU BUILD MUSCLE WITHOUT WEIGHTS? If you ever hear someone tell you that you can’t build muscle with just calisthenics, just giggle to
yourself silently and slowly slowly back your way out of the room. These critics probably haven’t learned about how one can push past the endurance building stage of calisthenics without weights. weights. Sure, if you just focus on regular push ups and pull ups, ups, eventually you will plateau. It won’t be long before you can do 50 reps of these e xercises, but increasing your reps higher and higher isn’t going to build any new
strength. Once you go past 12-15 reps or so, you are no longer building strength, you’re just building more and more endurance. The critics of bo body weight only exercises probably don’t understand that the key to building strength with calisthenics is to progress towards the 1 limbed movements. This will increase the weight you are lifting, and increase your strength strength substantially. It just takes awhile to train your body enough to handle that weight. weight. So be patient young monkey. With weight lifting, you can always just add another 5 pounds to your lift and gradually get stronger, whereas in calisthenics the jump from a 2 legged squat to 1 legged is huge and seemingly impossible impossible for most. But that’s what this program is all about. There are ways to make the transition transition easier, and you
will learn about them them shortly. So next time a bodybuilder bodybuilde r tells you that you can’t build muscle with calisthenics, ask them them if they can do a 1 arm pull up or a pistol squat. Chances are their body will will snap in agility half like a fabergé egg. Their strength isn’t quite as functional as yours will be, and they lack the agility and flexibility one requires to become a true master of their body. These 1 limbed exercises are extremely difficult to achieve with proper form, but if you stick with the progressions progressio ns laid out in this book, you will get there! These are highly respectable movements so treat them as such, and very slowly build your way up to them. them. Never test yourself yourself by jumping into a higher dimension before before completing completing the last one. You are asking for trouble. Be nice to your joints and they will last a lifetime. This isn’t a race! You have the rest of your life to continue getting stronger, and the
last thing you want is to get injured and be unable to train for weeks or months at a time because you got overzealous. overzealous. Slow and steady wins wins the race.
Chapter 4: The Tier System I’ve designed a fun tier system to keep you motivated. motivated. You will start off as a lowly Donkey Bitch and
battle your way through through the 11 dimensions until until you become a Thunder Monkey! It will be one of the most rewarding journeys you will ever take. I will guide you through the baby steps, and build you up the right way to strengthen you slowly and prevent injury.
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This is the Monkey Strength Chart attached to your download and is a great way to keep track of your progress visually. visual ly. It has each of the 6 exercises along the bottom, and the 11 dimensions of difficulty ranging from the 1 st dimension as a Donkey Bitch, to the 11 th dimension; home of the Thunder Monkey. Each dimension has 2 stages, the apprentice stage and the warlord stage. When you complete the apprentice stage of an exercise, fill the box in yellow. When you complete the warlord stage fill it in green and move onto the next dimension. The goal is to fill the entire chart up in green like the jungle your monkey ass was born in.
HOW THIS WORKS Each exercise has 2 target rep goals. For example, the first push up exercise is the standing push up. Your first goal is to beat the apprentice stage of 2 sets of 30 reps. Once you’ve managed that feat of awesomeness, you can fill in your fancy little chart because you are now a Donkey Bitch Apprentice of the 1st Dimension! Your eventual goal is to get 3 sets of 50 reps to become a Donkey Bitch Warlord of the 1st Dimension! But slow down monkey, you likely won’t conquer this realm your first try.
1. Standing Push Up: Apprentice: 2 sets of 30 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 50 reps
When starting an exercise for the first time, be my guest and try to complete the warlord stage your first try. It’s unlikely, especially in the higher dimensions but aim for the the stars my friend! friend! Do as many reps as
you can, write down how many you did, and try to beat it the next week. Don’t be discouraged if you couldn’t even beat the apprentice stage your first time though , it’s designed to be hard! Becoming an apprentice of any dimension takes a serious commitment and is a prestigious accomplishment. 23 | P a g e
Apprentices in Monkey Strength are battle worn heroes of the night. They are strong, agile and have perfected their form. Once you reach this level of expertise, it’s time to conquer this dimension once and for all! Once you become a warlord of your current dimension, you can move onto the next one, which in this case would be the 2 nd dimension: incline push ups. But please do stay in the previous dimension dimensio n until you can comfortably conquer conquer it. If you just barely made it to the 3rd set of 50 shaking like a kitten that just saw an army army of ghost dogs, can you really consider consider yourself yourself a warlord warlord of that dimension? dimension? Stay a few extra weeks and make sure you are comfortably beating that final rep target to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. You should be in full control, and have some reps left in the tank. Only then will will you truly be considered a warlord of that dimension and can move on safely to the next one.
Chapter 5: The Titles No Thunder Monkey ever started out as a Thunder Monkey God ruling over their respective kingdoms; they started from the bottom bottom and worked their way way up to the top. The Thunder Monkey dimension dimension is dimension, and you don’t cheat the boss stage in Monkey Strength. If you stay disciplined through each dimension, yourself with sloppy reps, you will reach it eventually. Try not to put a time limit on it, just focus on beating your reps from last week, and before you know it you’ll be hanging off vines of lightning as you gaze down at the mere mortals of the earth realm.
DONKEY BITCH During the first 4 dimensions of each of the 6 exercise categories, you will be known as a lowly Donkey Bitch. Donkey Bitches are smelly, slow and unremarkable unremarkable in bed. To their credit however, however, they are respectable workers. workers. They can carry heavy loads, and what they lack in speed and precision, they make up for in heart and determination. determination. Don’t let their slow methodical movements deceive you; the half handstand push up is the finishing move in the Donkey Bitch dimension, so balk not at a Donkey Bitch, they are capable battle worn warriors of courage and cunning. Do practise your inner donkey patience in these early dimensions, and milk these beginner exercises for everything you can. These are high rep, low resistance exercises exercises designed to build up your tendon and joint strength strength in preparation preparation for the the harder movements movements to come. Do the movements movements slowly slowly and in full control paying attention attention to your form, and perfecting perfecting it. The exercises exercises may seem easy, but if you rush through the Donkey Bitch Dimensions, Dimensions, you will be in for a shock when you get to the 5 th dimension and you can’t even do 1 rep. When you have truly conquered the 4th dimension (your final Donkey Bitch dimension) and you have milked it for every last bit of donkey milk possible, and the exercise is now easy for you; you have indeed 24 | P a g e
earned your ranking of Donkey Bitch Warlord of the 4 th Dimension! It’s now time for you to morph into a Power Squirrel!
POWER SQUIRREL Dimensions 5-7 make up the Power Squirrel Squirrel dimensions. These are very hard movements, so progression progressio n will be slower than it was in the Donkey Donkey Bitch dimension dimensions. s. Time moves slower in this realm, so expect this and don’t get discouraged. discouraged. You are building building true strength now. Where you might have
been leaping by 5-10 reps each week in the Donkey Bitch dimensions, you might only beat your personal bests by 2 or 3 reps each week now. As a Power Squirrel, you should be proud of your new rank! Sure, a Power Squirrel may not sound very tough, but trust m e, there is no creature in the garden more fierce. Sure, it’s a sissy garden where there’s hardly ever any trouble, but you rule this garden! Power squirrels are unassumingly unassumingl y strong. You oh, it’s just a squirrel. What could a squirrel possibly may first look at a one and think oh, possibly do to me? First of
all, squirrels can fend off cobras. They are formidable formidable beasts, and should you ever come across across a Power Squirrel in real life, treat them with respect, and pray to sweet flat earth baby Santa that they are in a good mood that day. At this point you are already seeing considerable changes in your body and health. Power Squirrels are already walking down walls backwards, and are getting close to doing 1 arm handstand push ups. You’ve built up a steady foundation with strong tendons and are starting to build up some impressive
strength. You now have the dexterity of a squirrel in mating season, and you can finally impress your cat with some of the movements movements you can do. Now you are ready to test yourself! yourself! When you’ve paid your dues in the Power Squirrel dimensions, and have finally become a Power Squirrel Warlord of the 7 th Dimension, you morph into a Mountain Hawk!
MOUNTAIN H AWK Dimensions 8-10 you become a mighty Mountain Hawk! I’m afraid to even look you in the eye right now. Mountain Hawks can crush bones in their mighty grip, so be careful shaking shaking people’s hands and
show some restraint. restraint. Mountain Hawks are very powerful. powerful. They are accomplishing accomplishing such feats feats as half 1 arm pull ups, and full 1 legged flamingo squats. Progressing through the Mountain Hawk dimensions takes courage. It’s a journey most humans wouldn’t wouldn’t dare meet head on. This is where the mind starts
to come into play. Anyone can do push ups for endless reps reps and work their endurance, but it takes takes a special kind of hero to push through and develop the discipline to master the 1 limbed movements. movements. Mountain Hawks are the most feared feared aerial predator known known to man. As a Mountain Hawk, you are strong, swift and lethal. You are defying gravity at this point, and you are moving towards mastering the
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1 limbed movements. You are developing the grip strength that could hold a zebra zebra down for tickling sessions. A Mountain Hawk is proud, but humble. humble. They know they are deadly, but they conduct conduct themselves themselves in such a way as to inspire others, not put them down. They are capable of serious feats of strength, and they are proud of their lean muscular physique and tendons of steel; but they are aware of their position in the food chain. They are aware that even though though they are godly beings of the night, night, they are not king of this realm we call Earth. They are well respected, respected, and while a Mountain Hawk makes a fine leader and is an inspiration to all those who behold its glory, they are humbled in the presence of the wondrous and mythical Thunder Monkey. Once you become a Mountain Hawk Warlord of the 10th Dimension, you undergo your final transformation transformation and become a Thunder Monkey!
THUNDER MONKEY The 11th dimension is the boss stage. Complete it and you will be known known around these parts as a Thunder Monkey. Monkey. The highest highest honour in all all the land. A Thunder Monkey Monkey is ruler ruler of this realm. realm. They are in complete control of their molten statuesque statuesque bodies of magnificence. Not only do they look like they are carved out of a mysterious metal from a neighbouring alien planet, but they have the muscle density of neutronium. Google that. Thunder Monkeys are impossibly strong. They are in full control of their body, and can lift their entire limb. People will feel your aura as you step into a room. You can cure people’s body weight with each limb. illnesses just by looking at them. That or they will internally combust under your gaze. Capable of
impossible feats of strength, they are admired and revered for their super human abilities, but they walk the earth with a humble confidence. confidence. They don’t look down on those who are weaker; they see the
Thunder Monkey potential in all the Donkey Bitches out there. Thunder Monkeys are kind hearted souls, and they inspire others to better themselves. The feats of athleticism and control that Thunder Monkeys display often look otherworldly. otherworldly. People will turn their heads and wonder if there is a glitch in the matrix, m atrix, because what you’re doing doesn’t seem
possible to them. You not only defy gravity, you define human potential potential and possibility, possibility, and you do so with a quiet but undeniable undeniable confidence. As a Thunder Monkey, you know that you could take take any human being twice your your size and fold them in half while you eat a sandwich with with your other hand. But you would never do that. Having true power, is knowing when not to use it. It would be unfair to ask a mere mortal human to go up against a Thunder Monkey in battle, so use your strength to inspire and motivate others and don’t fold them in half. A Thunder Monkey aims to inspire inspire others by example, and always always encourages the Donkey Bitch, Power Squirrel Squirrel and Mountain Hawk to better themselves. themselves. A Thunder Monkey never looks down on others who are in the same process of self development as they are, no matter what stage 26 | P a g e
they are at. They are proud of their disciples, and are overjoyed for other people’s success as much as
their own.
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EVERYONE S JOURNEY IS DIFFERENT We are all very different genetically. genetically. Maybe you have really strong legs legs but a weak back, and you will find yourself progressing progressin g fast through the squats, but slower with the pull ups. This is absolutely normal and expected, don’t get discouraged. Just go at your own pace. I was a Thunder Thunder Monkey Warlord of the the
11th Dimension in squats and leg raises, while still being a lowly Donkey Bitch Apprentice of the 4 th Dimension in handstands. There is nothing wrong with that; each category will evolve at its own pace. In fact, getting stronger in one exercise will usually benefit the other exercises as well. For example, the stronger you are at the handstands, handstands, the better your push push ups will be as well. All the exercises exercises work in unison to strengthen the body as a whole, so just progress through each exercise at your own pace, and only ever focus on beating your reps from the previous week. Did I mention “I’m a Donkey Bitch” t-shirts are available? availabl e? Visit www.vegetablepolice.threadless.com
Thunder Monkey t-shirts are also available, but don’t you dare put on that Thunder Monkey shirt as a Donkey Bitch! The Thunder Monkey gods will will know of your impostery!
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Chapter 6: Keep track of your progress I want to really hammer this this into your monkey mind. From day 1, write dow down n every rep you ever do! That way you’ll have a goal to beat next week. When you beat your reps from the previous week, it will proof that you are getting stronger. stronger. You’ll motivate you to continue working out , because you’ll have proof
definitely notice a difference in your body, and that will be enough motivation for most to continue. Just try not to spend too much time staring at your glorious naked body in the mirror, admiring the burning sculpture of perfection staring back at you. Your neighbours will think you’re weird. weird. Why do you do it with the curtains open? So while it’s very motivating to visually see the changes taking place in your body, your major focus
should always be to just beat last week’s reps. This is what drives me to work out. out. This is the have a goal foundation of Monkey Strength. Track each workout, write down every rep, and then you’ll have
in mind to crush next week. That’s all you have to do. Your body will become more and more glorious to look at as you progress through the dimensions dimensions. It’s a wonderful side effect, but not the end goal. You should be dreaming of doing a 1 arm pull up one day, not focusing on how big your biceps are in comparison compariso n to your triceps. You will build perfect symmetry with the Monkey Strength exercises. There should be no desire to obsess about your body, and no need to single out any particular muscle muscle group to increase its size for the “perfect look”. You are already perfect, perfect, and if you stick to this program, you will
build an impressive and perfectly balanced functional killing machine of a body.
SET GOALS Life without goals is just aimless wandering. Laser focusing on goals to accomplish is how you become successful successf ul in life. For example, take two people of similar strength, and put them in a push up contest against each other. other. Whoever does does the most push ups wins. I can almost guarantee guarantee you that the person who goes last will win. Not because they were stronger, stronger, but because they they had a goal in mind to reach. They just saw their opponent do 40 push ups, they will pull out that extra effort to get 41 even as their muscles burn. The first person was just going going until they felt like stopping. stopping. There was no mystical driving driving force to overcome, so at the first signs signs of struggle, they quit. quit. If they had known that they only needed needed 3 more reps to win, don’t you think they could have mustered up the extra effort? effort? We always have a little little more
in the tank than we think. think. A second gear to to tap into. Someone with a passionate goal is nearly unstoppable. There is almost nothing you can’t achieve when you really put your mind to it. When the mind has a goal to latch onto, it will push through the inevitable struggles struggles to get there. If you know you did 2 sets of 9 pull ups last week, you know you can at least match it. You’ve done it before. And when that 9 th rep hits, and you are struggling, that
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motivation to beat your record will propel you up over the bar for the 10 th rep. Without a goal goal in mind, mind, you will give up when it gets hard. It’s such a great feeling to know you are stronger than your donkey ass was last week. There will be
times of course where you don’t beat your personal personal best, so don’t get discouraged. discouraged. I’ve had several downslides where I got weaker each week for several weeks in a row, and then exploded and beat my personal best the following week. Strength comes in waves, but in general general you should be seeing steady progression each week. If you’re not, there are some things things you should troubleshoot. troubleshoot.
NOT GETTING STRONGER? If you managed to do 2 sets of 10 push ups last week, and can only do 2 sets of 9 this week, you likely messed up somewhere. Maybe your diet is 90% pizza? Or maybe maybe you haven’t’ been sleeping well? Or you had sex 7 times the night before and all your chakras are off in another realm recharging while you drag around your lifeless body in the earth realm? In the early stages, you should be beating your personal bests every week, they aren’t very demanding exercises. When you start getting getting into Power Squirrel Squirrel territory, it’s forgivable to have some downslides. These are tremendously difficult exercises, exercises, and your nutrition and lifestyle have to be on point to keep progressing. That’s why it’s an absolute must that you write down every rep rep you ever do! But slow down young
monkey! Remember, stay at the current exercise for at least 1 or 2 weeks after you beat the warlord stage, especially if you “barely” beat it. If you struggled through your last rep like you just dug your way out of an avalanche naked in chains, you haven’t really mastered the exercise. exercise. Keep doing it until until you feel like your form is perfect and you are not failing on the last last rep. When you know you could squeeze out a few more reps and not die, that’s when you know you are ready to move up into the next
dimension.
Sample chart below of my own progress in the Brain Bridges.
4. Brain Bridges Apprentice (15/15) (15/15) Complete Warlord (25/25) (17/18) (20/21) (21/21) (24/25) (25/25) (25/25) ( 25/25) Complete It took me 7 weeks we eks to conquer this dimension
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Moving onto the next dimension is the most exciting part of monkey strength! strength! You not only have that tremendous sense of accomplishment accomplishment coursing through your veins, but you also get to test your new found strength in a new and more difficult exercise. But do show some discipline and don’t be too eager to move onto the next dimension without truly mastering mastering the previous one. Ask yourself, is my form perfect? Am I doing the movements slow and in control? Am I cheating? Are you kipping your legs up during pull ups to gain momentum? momentum? You are only cheating cheating yourself if you do this, and you will be in for a world of hurt when you get to the higher dimensions and find out that they are way beyond your current level of strength. So truly master these exercises and they will pay their dividends in the higher dimensions.
Chapter 7: The Routines These are your workout schedules. schedules. Here I will lay out a blueprint of which exercises exercises to do on which days, but slow down little monkey... I know you’d love to do all 6 exercises right away, but this really depends on your current level of athleticism. There are 3 routines I recommend you follow. Start with the first one because they get progressively harder.
Cyber Nerd Weekday Warrior Alien The Cyber Nerd program is for people who have been sedentary for many years, and are maybe even coming off an illness of some sort. They barely even go for walks, and their their only exercise is typing angry angry comments on the Vegetable Police YouTube channel . The heaviest thing they’ve ever lifted in in their life was their fourth plate of food at the all you can eat buffet they they attend every week. Cyber Nerds only do 4 of the 6 exercises, because they are fragile beings that can barely stand up to a strong breeze. They aren’t ready for bridges or handstands yet. We can’t trust them to be upside down with no supervision.
The Weekday Warrior program is for those go getters who are ready to get serious about their training. Sure, they take the weekends off to make doilies with their grandma, but come Monday they are back to kicking ass! They do all 6 exercises, exercises, but their their life is still very very easy. They take so many many rest days they might as well be living on a tropical island with monkey butlers. The Alien program is for those looking to break free from their weak human genetics given to them at birth. In a process called epigenetic manipulation, manipulation, they become hybrid space beings beings capable of otherworldly feats of strength. They look human on the outside, but the seemingly impossible things they can do will have you questioning if they are really from this world.
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CYBER NERD The Cyber Nerd program has you working out 2 days per week, with 5 rest days. Cyber Nerds train push ups & leg raises on Mondays, Mondays, and pull ups & squats squats on Fridays. They don’t do bridges or handstands yet, these exercises are a little too advanced for their fragile bodies. We don’t want you Cyber Nerds falling on your head while upside down. Build up your strength with
the 4 basic movements, and then as you start to feel stronger, attempt to conquer the 1 st dimension of bridges and handstands, but but only when you feel ready. Your body will send you the signal that you are ready for a harder challenge. challenge.
Monday- Push Ups & Leg Raises Friday- Pull Ups & Squats
ARRI OR WEEKDAY W ARRIOR Weekday Warriors go hard during during the week. They do push ups & leg raises on Mondays, pull ups & squats on Wednesdays, and handstands & bridges on Fridays. That’s 3 exercise days, and 4 rest days per week. This is a great program to build strength once you are ready for all 6 exercises. You will feel the benefits quickly on this program. program. You never work out 2 days in a row, and you take 2 days off on the weekends so you have plenty of rest time to recover. This is a great program for anyone who is fighting fatigue fatigue or any kind of lingering health issue where you need lots of rest time. You will get all the detoxifying and strengthening strengthen ing benefits of exercise, but you will also get plenty of rest to recover and rebuild your organs and glands. It’s not draining at all to your energy; it literally rejuvenates your system.
Monday- Push Ups & Leg Raises Wednesday- Pull Ups & Squats Friday- Handstands & Bridges
ALIEN Aliens are here to conquer. They see regular human beings working out, and they giggle to themselves in amusement at the embarrassing efforts they witness. They are here for a purpose; to laser focus on each exercise and perfect it. They maximize their genetic potential by working out 6 days a week, but they concentrate their efforts on just 1 of the 6 exercise each day. Also, since aliens have superior green
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blood, they do 3 sets instead of 2. This allows them to master master and perfect their form, form, and advance through the dimensions faster. The weekday warrior, while very courageous can never focus on building each muscle group with the same tenacity of an alien. For example: On Fridays, when it comes time for a weekend warrior to do bridges and handstands, they have to split their energy and focus between the two exercises. Maybe they get 15 reps of handstand push ups on their first set, but then when it comes time to bridge, since they are already a little fatigued from the handstands, they can never truly give their full potential to the bridge. When you are first starting out, this isn’t a problem. You will still be making regular progress, and the early dimensions of exercises aren’t all that demanding. Even though the bridges and handstands use
similar muscle groups like the shoulders and triceps, the movements are n’t hard enough to negatively affect each other. You should have plenty of energy to complete both exercises on the same day. But when you start getting into Power Squirrel and Mountain Hawk territory , you can’t be splitting your efforts between 2 exercises and expect the same results as an alien who is laser focused on one. For aliens you have a choice. Either do 3 sets in your current current dimension, or mix things things up a notch and do 2 sets, plus 1 set in the previous dimension. dimension. Doing 3 sets of the same exercise exercise can be tiring ment mentally ally especially in the higher dimensions, but if you’re up for it, knock yourself out. I find it not not only soothing soothing to the mind to do an exercise that’s slightly easier for your 3rd set, but it will also help build muscle
endurance, and ease you into your cool down. *Most exercises drop down from 3 sets to 2 around the Power Squirrel dimensions. This is because they are moving more into strength based movements as opposed to endurance based ones. If an exercise requires you to do 3 sets to become a W arlord, arlord, you do it! Even if you’re you’re just a Weekday Warrior. Warrior. For Aliens though, even in the higher dimensions dimensions when you see that only 2 sets are required required to become a warlord, you need 3 to become an Alien Warlord. Warlord. Although like we talked about earlier, earlier, your 3rd set can be an exercise in the dimension below your current one.
Monday- Pull Ups Tuesday- Bridges Wednesday- Handstands Thursday- Leg Raises Friday- Squats Saturday- Push Ups
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WHERE TO BEGIN? Start with the cyber nerd program, and build your way up slowly with the 4 exercises. Conquer a few dimensions, and as you gain strength and become comfortable with your routine, listen for your body’s call for an increased workload. If you find that you have lots of energy leftover, leftover, and your body is letting you know that you can handle more, dip your toes in the weekend warrior lake and attempt the handstands and bridges on Fridays. Fridays. If you can complete your sets and you aren’t exhausted by the extra work, then you are probably ready for the weekend warrior program. If not, revert back to being a cyber nerd who lives in your mom’s basement and try not to get chocolate on your pants.
When you have been comfortably doing the weekday warrior program for awhile, and you have gained a decent amount of strength strength and conquered several dimensions, I want you to really listen to your body for the call to work out harder before you inject yourself with alien dna and forfeit your earthly citizenship. citizenship . I followed the weekday warrior approach for months and months, and then one day, I felt the call. 4 rest days a week week was too much. I had more energy, energy, and I knew I could challenge myself myself to area 51 to get alien dna spliced into my genome. further. That’s when I went to The alien routine is definitely my favourite. I love doing just the the one exercise exercise per day. The workouts are intense but they they are over quick. You can be done in less less than 20 minutes minutes some days. This is a great way to get all the benefits of strength based training every day, without taxing your system too hard.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY Just because you’re an Alien, doesn’t mean you are immune to difficulties. On this program, it is very important to listen listen to your body. body. If you ever feel like like you need an extra extra day of rest, take it. it. If you work out Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Wednesday, and all of a sudden your groin hurts, take a day off. Take a week off if you need it. Don’t force yourself to work through injuries ever. If you follow this this program the way I laid it out, you should never get injured. injured. The movements movements are so gentle and increase so very very slowly in difficulty that tha t you are never shocking your body with more than it can handle. You will be fully prepared for each new dimension if you conquer the the last one properly. In the unlikely event that you do get get injured however, just rest up and heal. Continue on when you are ready. Myself, I prefer to work out 6 days in a row on the alien routine, routine, and then take 2 days off. My current workout plan is on an 8 day rotation. This works out best for me. I don’t mind having having an 8 day week, but if that triggers your ocd and has you crouching in a corner writing letters letters to Santa Claus, then just take the 1 day off per week so you can have your precious push day on Mondays always. You Nancy pants. I find those 2 rest days vital however, however, for the body and the mind. If you have pain somewhere in your body, rest and recover. I can’t stress this enough. Monkey Strength is all about building and preserving the body for the long haul , this isn’t a push through the pain no matter what style of program. Longevity and maintaining maintaining superior joint health is one of our main 33 | P a g e
hero and knock out reps if you’re injured. I don’t objectives here, so don’t forget that. Don’t try to be a hero
want you fighting through sharp stabbing pains ever. I’m not talking about muscle fatigue pain here. You better push through that monkey! I’m talking about the “you know something isn’t right” kind of pain. Thankfully, since since the worko workouts are spaced so far apart and you’re only doing push ups for example once a week, you should be fully recovered with zero pain by your next week’s attempt, and your
chances of getting injured are almost impossible.
T AKE AN ENTIRE WEEK OFF SOMETIMES If you ever feel just super exhausted exhausted and run down, take an entire week week off. You will literally not lose any strength in that short time. time. You actually might find find that you beat your personal bests upon your return. Rest is as important as working out when it comes to building strength, so let me encourage you to take a full week off a couple times a year. Just take the whole week week off and forget about getting stronger. Go hike up some mountains, ride your bike around, or play some badminton with your grandma. Use your monkey monkey body to have some fun in life. While accomplishing accomplishing goals is an integral part of life and extremely satisfying, it’s just as important to have some down time where you just relax and recharge. Balance my friend. Watch some movies, movies, read some books, start a creative project of some sort. Or do absolutely absolutely nothing. nothing. Taking an entire week off regenerates the system. Any lingering joint pain you might have had will heal up, and any muscle soreness you had will completely completely disappear. disappear. Taking a week off every now and then will have you feeling fresher than a baby alligator swimming for the first time since breaking out of its egg house. Rest is as important as working working out, if not more so. Whenever I feel called called to do a water fast, or dry fast, I just do it. I take the day off from working out, and get back at it the next day or whenever I feel like breaking my fast. Nothing has to be written written in stone, this is a flexible program program that you can fit into any lifestyle. Your health is the most important thing, so if you are ever feeling burnt out, back off and rest more. Now don’t use this leniency as an excuse not to train hard. When it’s time to work out, I want you to don’t really go for it! If you have no injuries, and you feel energized, energized, Hulk Smash! In fact, even if you don’
feel energized, energized, you should always attempt your workout workout for the day. At least start it, even even if you are tired. There have been many days where I haven’t felt that energized until I started working out. Once I got going, I pretty much always surprised myself with personal personal bests. The energy is there waiting inside of you. Some of us are just just too sedentary, sedentary, and our system becomes stagnant stagnant so we feel tired. tired. Once you get moving, you will be surprised at how much energy you actually have.
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I train to failure. But I do so with control. Remember, you are working out each exercise just once a week. You want to give it your all. You have an entire week to recover. That being said never put yourself in danger to where you don’t have enough strength left over t o get yourself back into a safe being overly cautious for you. These are not dangerous exercises, just be smart. Even position. I’m just being
in the most challenging positions of Monkey Strength, you’ll never have too far to fall should you lose your balance, and you’ll never be carrying hundreds of pounds of weight that could come crashing down r isks. This program is as safe as it on you like you would as a bodybuilder. But go slow, and don’t take risks. gets, and we don’t do any of the weird high flying skill based movements that some calisthenics
practitioners practitioners like to show off with. This program is about strength, health health and longevity, and safety is my primary focus for you. You will develop a great relationship with your body, and you will become very in tune with what your limits are. I’ve never felt in danger to failure or danger of falling or injuring injuring myself going to failure. So I say go to close to it, just be careful. And by definition, failure is when you attempt a rep, and you can’t complete it because your muscles failed. failed. In my opinion, you should stop 1 rep before that that happens for ultimate ultimate safety. You’ll know intuitively when that is. I personally like knowing that I went until I couldn’t go anymore, and I always feel fully recovered by the next week, so I train to absolute failure in most exercises.
WHEN NOT TO TRAIN TO F AILURE AIL URE ? There are certain exercises where you need to be a little more cautious. For example, the 1 arm handstand push up. If you go to absolute failure on this exercise, exercise, you better better have an escape escape plan. You will eventually develop an almighty third eye self awareness protection system, and you’ll be able to sense where your body is at all times, and what all the potential scenarios and solutions are should you ever lose your balance. You’ll just react without having having to think about about it. Just as an example, I have suffered many many rib injuries in my life. I got my first one many years ago at a window cleaning job. job. I was leaning over the edge of a 20 story building building trying to attach a 40 pound bucket of water and a Bosun’s chair to a rope.
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All that weight was entirely supported by my chest and ribs as I was leaning over the edge of the roof, and I felt something pop. It was a month of excruciating excruciating pain before fully recovering recovering, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
For some reason (possibly due to my crazy fruit based diet at the time which may have weakened my body) that injury kept reoccurring. reoccurring. It happened a couple times falling on the ground, and once falling off my bike. I’m now somewhat paranoid of even laying with my stomach down on the floor, so when I am doing
push ups, and I know I’m about to fail , I always fall hips first to take the brunt of the impact. It’s not painful at all; my body just intuitively kicks in and gives me the safest possible option to land without injury in several years now that I’ve built up a Thunder hurting my ribs. Thankfully I haven’t had a rib injury
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Monkey rib cage. I could let a car crash crash into my ribs and and the only worry I’d have is how much money I’d owe for the damages to the car. So just be careful, be aware of your position at all times and plan out in advance what your exit strategy is in the rare case that you might lose your balance and fall. I’ve never once felt in danger of o f falling or hurting myself myself in any of these exercises. exercises. I’ve fallen back on my butt several t imes attempting the pistol squat, but you are like 3 inches off the ground at that point and there is literally zero chance of injuring yourself unless you lined your floor with tacks. It’s really only the handstand push ups (since you are upside down) and the free fall bridges (since you are slowly falling backwards towards the ground as part of the exercise) that should be approached with a bit more caution. If you know you can’t do another rep safely, just back off and leave it in the tank.
Chapter 9: The Warm Ups Always warm up the body before before starting your main sets. If you have a warm up routine you enjoy, go for it. If not, I find the simplest way to warm up for Monkey Strength exercises are to just do a few reps of a lower dimension exercise. Obviously if you just starting in the 1st dimension, you’ll have no easier exercise to warm up with, but they are so easy in general they are basically considered consider ed a warm up. Just move the body around bit before you start. start. Swing your arms around, around, run on the spot, do jumping jacks etc. Do whatever you like to do to get blood pumping pumping to your limbs in preparation preparation for the super human feats of strength you are about to display to the world. Your main goal is just to get some blood flowing through through your limbs before you go all out with your main sets. You’ll be able to do way more reps when you ’re warmed up compared to starting cold. It’s also much safer since your body is now prepared for intense movements movements with increased blood flow protecting and lubricating lubricating your joints. You could jog to the park to find monkey bars as a warm up, or ride your bike to a nice spot in nature to work out.
STAY ACTIVE Your whole life should be a warm up. Try to keep moving throughout the day and never stay sedentary for too long. The longer you sit, the more more stagnant your blood and lymph fluids fluids become. That’s a good recipe for sucking at life and catching every disease from every stray raccoon you pet. Also, the longer you sit down, the more you will compress your spine and resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame. You’ll be 4 feet tall by the time you’re 140 years old. Pay attention to your posture during the day. Are you reading this book with a hunched over back and neck? Correct it right now! Try to keep a straight back at all times, slouching is not only extremely unhealthy, it’s also rather unattractive. Today’s younger generation spend so much time looking at their smartphones, smartphones, they all
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inspiring to look look at. That’s why I’m a huge fan of standing desks; seem to have hunchbacks. It’s not very inspiring
they allow you to keep your back straight while while you work on the computer. Consider getting getting one or even a treadmill desk. Appreciate your magnificent body, and take good care of it. Move often throughout the day, take the stairs instead of the elevator, bike to get your groceries and then really go for it with the monkey workouts. This is the best way way to exercise for longevity in my opinion. Slow steady steady movements throughout the day, and short bursts of intense strength based exercises exercises to build a healthy strong physique and ensure your bones won’t break next time you high five your friend.
Chapter 10: 10 : Before We We Get Started S tarted These exercises should be performed slowly and in perfect control. 1 second up, 1 second hold, 2 seconds down. Master your form, form, and don’t cheat yourself. You want disciplined slow reps with perfect
form to build real Monkey Strength. If you start kipping your legs up during pull ups to get that last rep, you are only cheating yourself. You are using momentum, not building strength. Some of the later stages are very difficult to perform slowly, so it is permissible to explode up a little faster. Just remember, doing a movement slowly is much harder and builds more strength. Exploding up during an exercise, while having some benefits, builds more power instead of strength.
POWER VS STRENGTH What’s the difference between power and strength? Power = strength x speed. Pushing a man to the ground is a display of power. It’s an explosive burst of energy and it’s performed very quickly, but
cannot be sustained for long. Grabbing that same man and forcing him slowly to the ground to lick your shoe is a display of strength. You’re so mean, how could could you? You can tailor this this program to build
strength, power power or both. both. You may want to be more powerful and capable of strong strong short bursts for certain sports. If so, you would do the exercises explosively explosively and as fast as you can while maintaining perfect form. If you want that elusive monkey monkey strength that allows allows you to rip phone books in half however, doing your movements slowly under control will be better for you. In general, I recommend you do the movements slow for at least the Donkey Bitch dimension. Get used to the movements and perfect your form. We want strict perfect reps every time. time. 10 solid slow reps reps in control will beat out 30 fast sissy reps any day. You don’t want to be bending your body in awkward ways to finish sad looking donkey reps just to hit your rep goal. It’s not about the numbers, it’s about challenging yourself.
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DEVELOPING DISCIPLINE This program will test test your mind. You may be super close to becoming becoming a warlord of a particular dimension you’ve been stuck in for weeks, and you will be tempted to weasel your way up to hit that final number so you can move onto the next dimension. Remember, Remember, doing this will only cheat you out of your hard earned Monkey Strength. Half assed donkey reps will make the later stages seem impossible, because you haven’t built built up true strength. strength. Do the exercises slow and in control. Stay disciplined, and you won’t f all all apart in the Mountain Hawk dimension.
LIFE H ACK CONFIRMED Now to contradict myself. myself. An interesting way way to approach these exercises is as follows. Since it’s much easier to do the movements faste r, you’ll be able to do more reps than you would have had you done the movements movements slower. You can use this to to your advantage. Say you make it to to the 5th dimension of handstand push ups, and you can only do 1 rep slowly with perfect form. That’s not much of a workout is it? If you do the movements and a little faster, still with perfect form, you’ll be able to squeeze out a
few more reps to at least get some work in. So you may want to try something like this: Advance through a dimension by doing the movements fairly quickly. Always concentrate on doing your reps with perfect form; these are not sloppy reps just because they are done quickly. Once you beat the warlord stage of that dimension doing the movements at a fast pace, start doing the movements slowly and you’ll be amazed at how many less reps you can do. do. These are the the real reps. They’re much harder, so you’re not a real warlord until you’ve conquered the dimension dimension using slow reps, in perfect control. I promise you, if you just do the reps fast and move onto the next dimension, it will catch up with you eventually and you’ll realize you’re not as strong as you thought you were. Doing the movements slow is almost like a hidden boss stage. You thought you passed the dimension, but realized there’s an extra difficulty setting with much harder
movements, and way more rewards. Claim your gold young monkey, do them slow. Personally, Personally , I like to switch things up. Sometimes I do the movements super slow, other times I like to explode up and build those fast twitch muscle fibers. It’s good to do both from time to time. Or to get
the best of both worlds, explode up for the positive movement, movement, and then slowly lower yourself back down for the negative. That builds a great mix of both strength and power. Alright enough talking, let’s get to the exercises!
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Pull ups are one of the harder Monkey Strength movements. You are pulling up your entire body weight with muscles you probably haven’t used in years. Don’t worry I’ll bring you along slowly and build you up properly so you have bullet proof joints waiting for you in the higher dimensions. dimensions. Don’t even attempt a full pull up until you reach that dimension you eager monkey! Welcome to the first exercise!
1. STANDING PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 40 reps. Do as many reps as you can. If this is your first time doing this this exercise, and you manage manage to get 3 sets of 40 reps right away, congratulations. You are now a Donkey Bitch Warlord of the 1st Dimension! Dimension! If you made it to that 40 th rep on your 3 rd set with very little struggle, struggle, you can move onto the next dimension. If you ended up squeezing out that last rep barely staving off a heart attack, stay in this dimension until it becomes easier for you. Do this for all exercises. To get started, go for a walk outside and find a pole. Any vertical pole or object will do. I used my doorframe when I was too lazy lazy to leave my monkey house. You will be pulling yourself towards towards the object. This exercise has very little resistance, so this is a perfect starting movement to condition your joints, and get get you used to the pulling pulling movements. movements. If an exercise is ever too difficult to do the way I’m describing it, either reduce the range of motion, or alter the angle to make the movement movement easier. There are levels of difficulty to every every movement. You can stand further away from the pole until there is almost no resistance, or you can stand with your toes nearly touching the pole for maximum leverage and increased difficulty.
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Starting Position: Stand a few inches inches away from the pole or object. The closer your feet feet are to the object, the harder the exercise will be. Start 3-6 inches away and find your groove. We all have different length arms and legs, and strange quirks so try to roughly mimic my form, but you may need to alter things slightly to find your comfort zone. Stand straight in front of the pole and grasp it comfortably with your hands. Wear gloves if you want to, I do. I’m a lover not a fighter fighter. I like having smooth hands, hands, ain’t nobody got time for blisters. Slowly lean
back while holding the pole until your arms are fully stretched out, this should take roughly 1 or 2 seconds. It’s a slow steady movement. Pause in this position for 1 second, and then slowly pull yourself back towards the pole until you are standing standing straight again. The closer you pull yourself to the wall the the better. Consider letting your forehead gently touch the pole, just don’t smash your nose and get blood
everywhere. This is 1 rep. It may seem easy, but milk this stage for all it has. It’s a very low resistance, high rep exercise to help build your tendons and joints in preparation for the harder movements to come. It may seem like it’s too easy and isn’t doing a lot for your muscles, but trust me, it’s doing a lot for your tendons, and your
joints will thank thank you later. later. Can’t Do It? Phone your mom, and ask her if she still has your baby bottle bottle so you can suckle it to
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2. AUSTRALIAN PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 30 reps. Now things start to get difficult. You are now increasing the leverage by pulling yourself up towards an object like a table, or a really short pull up bar designed for tiny elf children. This is much harder than pulling yourself towards a vertical object, because you have increased the leverage and therefore increased the amount of weight weight you are pulling. You will really feel this in your hands, forearms forearms and back. You might possess the strength in your back right now to complete the warlord stage, but I almost guarantee you that your grip strength is what will give out before that. By the time you complete this step, you will have the grip strength of an eagle. The higher the object you choose to hang from, the easier this exercise will be. This can actually be quite the challenge just finding the perfect object to hang from. Look around your house, look around your neighbourhood, you will find something. Let’s assume you found a tall sturdy table. Don’t use some old rickety rickety table built in 1956 that will snap
and injure you and your family while they are eating dinner. Wait for them to be be finished dinner before you do this.
Starting Position: Grab the table or pole with your your hands roughly shoulder width width apart, and then walk your legs forward underneath the table. Depending on how high your table is, you will be anywhere from a 30 to 70 degree angle from the ground. Lower yourself down until your arms are straight. Pull yourself up slowly until your chest chest touches the edge of the table, table, or get as close to that as possible, hold there for 1 second, and then slowly lower yourself back down to the starting position. Consider starting with a high table or bar and become a warlord warlord in this dimension. Then find a lower table to increase the difficulty before you move onto the next stage. Ideally, when you are hanging your 42 | P a g e
back should be just a few inches off the ground ground for maximum leverage. That is the hardest this movement will get. Can’t Do It? Adjust the angle of your misshapen body so there is less flubber to lift.
3. 1 ARM STANDING PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 50 reps. Look at you, already doing 1 arm pull ups. 1 limbed movements are how you build true strength with calisthenics. You’re only in the 3rd dimension so I’m not going to make this too difficult for you. This is the same basic movement as the regular standing pull up, but you are only going to use 1 of your donkey arms to pull yourself towards the pole. Your other arm rests behind your back patiently waiting for its time to shine. This exercise will improve your grip strength further, and also start to incorporate more of your core. You will be surprised at all the different different muscles that come come into play. You will be using muscles muscles you never knew existed. When I started doing the 1 arm push ups for example, I was shocked at how much effort it took to stabilize my body with my abs and sides. My arms weren’t even that sore the next day,
it was my sides that were really feeling it.
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Starting Position: Find a pole or any vertical object you can get a good grip on. Always start with your weak arm first. Never do more reps with your strong arm than you do with your weak one, that way you will balance out. With your feet a few inches away from the the object, slowly lean back until your arm is straight, pause for a second, then then slowly pull yourself back to the starting starting position. As with the standing pull ups, the closer you stand to the object, o bject, the harder this exercise will be. Can’t Do It? Pray to Britney Spears Spears and ask her to send you strength.
4. L UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 12 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 20 reps. You’ll need a pull up bar, and a chair or o r any object that allows you to rest your donkey legs on while you hang from the bar. Your body will be in an L shape with your arms hanging straight down vertically from the bar, and your legs out in front of you resting on a chair. This will take some weight weight off so you aren’t pulling up your entire body weight. 44 | P a g e
shoulder width apart, and put your feet feet up Starting Position: Grab the bar with both hands about shoulder on the chair so your body makes an L shape. From this hanging posi position, tion, pull yourself up slowly until your chin passes the bar, pause for a second, and then slowly lower yourself down until your arms are straight again. Don’t fully lock out your arms; you always want to keep a little bit of tension te nsion in your shoulders so you don’t rip them out of their sockets.
This exercise will continue to build your grip strength, and start to strengthen your back and biceps in preparation for the next dimension. Can’t Do It? Take off the pink spandex outfit you were wearing, that may have been weighing you
down.
5. BABY PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps. First of all, congratulations on becoming a Power Squirrel! No longer are you a measly Donkey Donkey Bitch. You’re finally ready to pull your entire body weight up off the flat earth, and this will start to build some
serious strength in those squirrel arms of yours. How excited are you? movement, and I want to stress something important. Every This is the first half movement. It’s a baby movement,
exercise in Monkey Strength will have you completing your full range of motion, except these half baby movements. Full range of motion exercises require require a level of flexibility and strength that you might not
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have yet, and these half movements are a great way to prepare your body for the full movement. They still build the muscles required for the full movement, but they are easier. You still want to get your body used to going through the full range of motion though, so I suggest you complete an extra set of the exercise in the previous dimension at the end of your workout. So warm up first, do your 2 sets sets of baby pull ups, and then then do 1 set of L ups. Boom. Strength and flexibility gains. gains. Do this whenever you see a half movement like the baby push up or o r the baby flamingo squat. I was pretty shocked at how much harder this move was compared to the L ups, even though we are only using half the range of motion. That’s because you are now lifting your entire body weight, and depending on how much flubber flubber you have in your belly, this could be a real task. The hardest part of a pull up is that bottom position though, and your joints aren’t ready for it yet. This exercise will build the strength you need for the full full pull up. So milk this step for all you can.
Starting Position: You have 2 options. options. You want to start start from the top top position of this movement, where your chin is above the bar. You can either jump up there using the momentum of your legs, or get a chair or something to lift yourself up there. You want to avoid pulling yourself up from a complete dead hang. That move is in the next next dimension, dimension, so don’t get over zealous now! Get yourself up to the top somehow with your hands roughly shoulder width apart using an overhand grip. Slowly lower yourself down half way until your biceps and forearms form a 90 degree angle, pause briefly, and pull 46 | P a g e
yourself back up until your chin is over the bar and hold for 1 second. Avoid the urge to kip your legs legs up. This creates momentum and makes the exercise easier cheating you of your Monkey Strength. Slowly lift yourself up to the top using your inner Power Squirrel belief system. Do n’t cheat yourself. Can’t Do It? Consider not eating entire birthday cakes for dinner, and try to lose some weight. There’s only so much you can ask of your puny squirrel arms at this point.
6. PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 8 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 12 reps. Welcome to the real pull up. You are now pulling your entire body weight over the the bar from a dead hang. This is no easy task. Let’s not kid ourselves thinking it’s only the 6th dimension, this is a serious feat of strength that the majority o f people on the planet can’t do. Be very proud if you can even do 1 strict rep. Most people need to use a lot of momentum from their legs to accomplish this move, but that’s not a real display display of strength. strength. It’s closer to a cunning magic trick trick full of distractions and lies. You must be very strong to slowly raise yourself from a dead hang over the bar without using momentum from your legs.
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Starting Position: Grab the pull up bar with an overhand grip grip with your hands roughly shoulder shoulder width apart. Calm any swinging motion by controlling your body with your core, tighten everything up. Keep your shoulders in slight tension, and never fully relax in the bottom position. Always keep your shoulders flexed a bit to keep them from straightening out completely, which puts too much pressure on your shoulder joints. Slowly pull yourself up until until your chin is over the bar, pause for a second, and then slowly lower yourself back down to the bottom position. It’s not easy, and many people cry t hemselves to sleep after failing to execute this move. But stick with
it. If you have to use a little momentum from your legs to get get started, then do it. But warlords in this dimension use no momentum. If you are really struggling to do 1 rep, try using some resistance bands. bands . This will allow you to practise the full full range of motion, but with less weight. weight. That or work on the negative form of the movement. Jump up to the top position of this exercise, and just try to slowly lower yourself down to the bottom position under full control. Then jump back up to the top for the next rep. Believe in yourself, yourself, you will be able able to do this one day. Just think of how proud proud your cat will be! Can’t Do It? Search YouTube for “Baby pull ups”, watch the baby doing pull ups, and h ang your head
in shame for 10 reps.
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7. ARCHER NEGATIVES Apprentice: 2 sets of 6 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. This exercise is basically a regular pull up, only you will be sliding to one side after you make it over the bar. This will accomplish accomplish 2 things for you. It will increase increase the amount of time time you spend above the bar, which will increase your back and lat strength; and it will supercharge your arms because you will be lowering yourself down down using mostly 1 arm instead of 2. Consider this a pull up with a 1 arm negative. negative.
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Starting Position: Find a pull up bar and grab it with an overhand grip about shoulder shoulder width apart or slightly wider. wider. Complete a regular pull up. When your chin reaches reaches above the bar, bar, slowly slide your body to one side until your chin is directly directly over one of your hands instead of in the middle. Keep your chin above the bar during this entire slide. Now very slowly lower yourself down to the bottom position using mostly the strength from the one arm you are leaning towards. This will create much more tension on that arm. Try to use as little help as possible from the other arm, even loosening your grip grip a little. Try to go as slow as possible possible on the way down. down. Consider a 3 second pace pace from top to bottom. bottom. The longer it takes, the stronger you’ll get. In the bottom position you will naturally re center yourself.
Now pull yourself back up to the top, and repeat the process only slide yourself over to the opposite hand, and lower yourself down on that side. This exercise increases the time under under tension massively from the previous dimension. dimension. This will really prepare you for the 1 arm pull up. Always do an even number of reps on this exercise, exercise, so both arms get worked evenly. Can’t Do It? Go find a hornet’s nest a nd provoke the leader. When he stings you, use the venom as
a short term burst of energy to propel you over the bar.
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8. 1 ARM AUSTRALIAN PULL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 6 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. reps . Congratulations Congratulations on becoming becoming a Mountain Hawk! Will you fly to Australia Australia to eat kangaroos kangaroos now? Mmm kangaroo pouch slime. o ne You’ve done a similar exercise to this way back in the 2nd dimension, only now you will be using just one arm to pull your bad ass self up towards the bar.
Starting Position: Find a horizontal bar about chest height or lower. Grab the bar with both hands, and walk your feet forward and hang from the bar with with your arms straight. Now let go of the bar with one hand and place that hand behind your back. Slowly pull yourself towards towards the bar with your one mighty arm, leaning into the bar with the opposite shoulder. shoulde r. Pause for a second here, and then slowly lower yourself back down. The lower the bar is to the ground, ground, the harder this will be. If you have the option in a park somewhere with multiple height bars, start with the higher one first and become a warlord in this dimension, and then move down to the lower bar. Ultimately, your back should be just a few inches off the ground ground when your arm is fully extended hanging from the bar. Can’t Do It? Increase your intake intake of plant based protein powder. powder. Use your furious farts to propel propel
you up off the ground.
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9. TOWEL UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 6 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. towel. I know they Now we need some serious equipment. You’re going to have to scour your city for a towel. are hard to find, so if you can’t find one go to a Laundromat and find an old defenceless granny to
overpower. You should have the strength by now to pull the towel from her grip. You will use this towel wrapped around a bar, so one hand will be on the bar with the other hand grabbing the towel. This will concentrate the weight of your body onto the hand gripping the bar, and help you progress towards the 1 arm pull up.
Starting Position: Find a pull up bar or horizontal tree branch and throw a towel over the bar. You can start off by gripping the towel very close to the bar to make things easier. Once you become a warlord in this dimension, lower your hand further down the towel to make things harder. The goal is to
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have your hand low enough on the towel so by the time you get over half way to the top, it can barely help anymore with the movement and you are basically doing a half 1 arm pull up in the top position. Grab the towel with your strong hand, and leap up and grab the bar with an underhand grip with your other hand. From a hanging position, position, pull yourself up to the top slowly slowly until your chin is above the bar, pause for a second, and then slowly lower yourself back down until the arm gripping the bar is almost straight like a regular pull up. Never lock your arms out out completely or you’ll rip your arm off. Then how
will you overpower grannies in the Laundromat? Can’t Do It? Give the towel back to the granny in the Laundromat. Laundroma t. Apologize, and offer to make her
tea and crumpets as you watch wheel of fortune together.
10.
SPIDER MONKEY PULL UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 8 reps. doing these. People Welcome to holy shit town. To the naked eye, you’ll look look like a superhero while doing won’t even care that you are only doing half the range of motion. You are still pulling your entire
bodyweight up over the bar for the first time with 1 arm, so don’t be surprised if thunder just starts erupting as you get over the bar. It is a glorious time, and the gods are celebrating celebrating your achievements. Seriously, congratulations congratulations if you can even get 1 rep of o f these bad boys, you are truly a Mountain Hawk if you can. In fact you should consider catching catching a wolf with your bare talons and drinking its its blood to celebrate. Or just high five the first person you see if you don’t want to drink the wolf blood. blood.
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Starting Position: Find a pull up bar, and jump into a regular chin up with an underhand underhand grip so your palms are facing towards towards you. Pull yourself up to the top with both hands hands so your chin is over the bar. Now let go with your strong hand, and slowly lower yourself down half way until your arm is at a 90 degree angle. Now pull your Mountain Hawk ass back up to the top until until your chin is over the bar again. Pause for a second here, and try to repeat. This move takes tremendous grip strength, the forearms of a lumberjack, and the biceps of a professional professio nal arm wrestling orangutan to achieve, but I believe in you. Seriously celebrate after achieving this badge of honour. Most people on the planet couldn’t do this in a lucid dream let alone reality. Be careful though, people might actually be blinded by the light beaming out of your body if they get too close to you after accomplishing this otherworldly feat of strength, so have some sunglasses ready to pass around if you are doing this in front of a crowd. If you can’t get to the halfway halfway position, try a quarter of the way. Heck, try just a few inches and keep trying to get lower and lower, eventually you’ll get there.
Can’t Do It? Get a blood test to find out if you have baby arm syndrome. syndrome. If it comes back positive,
buy some athletic sleeves to hide them while out in public.
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11.
THUNDER MONKEY PULL UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. Congratulations! Congratulations! You have officially become become a Thunder Monkey! Monkey! You are now allowed allowed to wear your Thunder Monkey shirt out in public instead of fantasizing about it in the mirror in your mom ’s living room. Not many humans humans can do a 1 arm pull up. You will be in elite elite company should you shock the world and pull this off. You will be pulling your entire entire bodyweight up into the air using 1 arm. arm. You will be utilizing your full range of motion as well. It doesn’t get harder than this. this. You may want to drink some coffee before this
one, and have someone slap you in the face a couple times for good measure.
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Starting Position: Same as the half 1 arm pull up, find a pull up bar and grab it with both hands using an underhand grip, and pull yourself up to the top until your chin is above the bar in a classic chin up position. Now let go with your strong hand, and slowly lower yourself down until your arm is almost straight. Don’t fully lock it out. Now use your herculean herculean might to lift yourself back up to the top until
your chin is over the bar again. Pause for a second here as your life flashes before before your eyes, and repeat. Do whatever you want with your free arm. Some like to have it tucked behind their back, others like to have it out to the side for balance. Grab your crotch with it for all I care, just don’t use it to help your
monkey ass up to the top. If you need to use a bit of momentum from your legs to get going in this dimension, that’s fine. Kip up a little bit, but eventually your goal should should be to do these with straight
legs using no momentum. Can’t Do It? Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger if he will pee on you. The hormones might help.
NOW WHAT? you’ve done it! A Thunder Monkey pull up! You’re so strong right now. Do you really really Congratulations, you’ve
need to be stronger than that? Just keep working on these for awhile. Do them slower and slower to make them harder. If for some reason you feel like you need a harder challenge, get a weighted vest or some ankle weights. The ankle weights might even make you taller by stretching your monkey body out. In my opinion, adding adding weights weights to a one arm pull up up is kind of crazy. You don’t want to bulk up and be unable to fit through doors now do you? Doing the entire Monkey Strength Strength program with no added weight will build the perfect looking physique; you don’t really need t o go beyond it with added weights.
But if you absolutely have to, start slow. Put a couple coins in your pocket and go from there. there. If you do get a weighted vest, start with the least amount of extra weight possible, and start back at the Power Squirrel dimension. Progress back up to the Thunder Monkey dimension with your 10 pound vest, then add 2.5 to 5lbs and repeat the process. We’ll see, maybe a Gorilla Strength Strength book will have to be written to take us beyond our inner monkey to
find our spirit gorilla. Until then, keep on doing these these 1 arm pull ups, preferably in a public place so people can bow down to your greatness and build statues of you.
Chapter 12: Bridges Bridges are one of the most important important exercises exercises you can do. If you have any back pain, progressing through this exercise series is the best way to heal it completely. Whether your pain is from old injuries, or your spine has slowly degraded over time and started to curve downwards due to the ever increasing 56 | P a g e
amount of time you spend posting pictures of your cat on facebook; bridges will gently stretch your spine back into its original position. Bridges will correct correct your posture, eliminate back pain, likely make you taller, and give you a renewed sense of confidence! confidence! Sad people slouch, confident confident people stand tall. I used to suffer from back pain, mainly because because I sat at the computer so much. I thought I had some serious disk degeneration at one point, and within a few weeks of doing bridges the pain started to leave my body. We hunch over too too much. Whether we we are looking down at our phones or laptops, or even reading a book, it seems like everything everything we do is in the hunched over position. position. You better not be hunching right now! It’s very important to rebalance yourself out, and the best way to do that is to slouch in the opposite direction. Doing bridges will not only correct your posture, but it will bring a new found mindfulness to your spine when sitting at the everyday body positions. You’ll find yourself wanting to straighten out your spine
computer, and really noticing noticing it when you are slouching like a jackass. These exercises are super important to help rebuild the very foundation from which your yo ur entire body operates from; your spine. Think of bridges as more of a flexibility movement, rather than a strength based one. Even though they will build some serious strength in your back, shoulders, triceps and core; core; I want you to use bridges as a way to open up your back and increase your dexterity. dexterity. Focus mainly on stretching stretching out as far as you can you’ll be ready for the exorcist like flexibility that the later dimensions require. with every rep. That way you’l
1. SHOULDER BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 30 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 50 reps. This may be more action than your back has seen in years! It’s pretty easy to do, but this will begin your
journey to stretching stretching out your spine, spine, and possibly even growing growing an inch or more in in height.
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too much pressure on your shoulders, shoulders, because your bony Starting Position: If this exercise puts too body is stabbing into your wooden floor, floor, you may use a yoga matt. Get one made of natural material material though, those plastic/rubber plastic/rubber looking ones will off gas poisons into your brain. Lay flat on your back with your feet flat on the floor a few inches away away from your bum. Can I say that on tv? Feet should be roughly roughly shoulder width width apart. Place your arms arms on your chest so they aren’t supporting any weight or helping with the movement. movement. Now thrust your hips up into the air until only your feet, shoulders and head are touching touching the floor. Go as high as you can without breaking your body in half. Exhale on the way up, hold the position for a second, second, and then inhale as you slowly lower yourself back to the ground. Can’t Do It? Go to a massage parlour and have a tiny woman walk on your back back to loosen up the
years of laziness you have accrued.
2. BAMBOO BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 40 reps. Now you have to use some actual arm strength. Don’t be surprised if you can’t do this. On my first attempt, I was pretty sure this was an impossible feat for the human body, but as I practised it, I stretched out further further and further each week week and was able to do it comfortably. Stretch out as far as you can, and focus on loosening up those shoulders. shoulders. If you find this easy, how dare you laugh at my poor shoulder mobility!
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Starting Position: Sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front front of you. Your spine is straight, straight, and your body is in an L shape. Your hands are on the floor with your fingers fingers pointing towards your toes. Now transfer the weight weight of your body to your hands as you thrust your hips upwards upwards slowly until your body is in a straight line and you are looking up at flat earth Santa (or the ceiling). Your arms should be standing straight up, like bamboo. See what I did there? Hold for a second, and then slowly lower rest! yourself back into the seated position. Don’t you dare rest!
Can’t Do It? Have your cat perform cat claw acupuncture on your shoulder blades to loosen up your
shoulder chakras.
3. BURNT BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps. Warlord: 3 sets of 30 reps. You will need a raised surface like a table or a bed around knee to waist height to rest your hands on. What? You don’t have a knee height table? You loser. So un-Japanese-like un-Japanese-like of you. You’ll find something. Usually, you don’t don’t want to burn your bridg bridges in life, but you will be happy to set this one ablaze when you’re done.
Starting Position: Lie down with just your head and shoulders shoulders on your bed or surface of choice, with the rest of your body hanging hanging off the edge and your feet flat on the floor. Place your hands behind you flat on the bed so so your fingers are point towards your toes. It’s a little awkward, and if you’re not very flexible go back to the bamboo bridges and improve that wrist and shoulder mobility you lazy panda. Raise yourself up into the air by pushing off with with your legs and your hands so your back comes
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completely off the bed. Go as high as you can, pause for a second, and then slowly lower yourself yourself back down until your shoulders are touching the bed again. These actually worked my thighs more than anything. They were burning like the fires of Christmas past. Probably because because my bed was too high and and I was a loser with with no knee high table. table. Having your hands higher than your feet makes this exercise easier than a full bridge though, so do persist. It will become easier over time. Can’t Do It? Fly to Japan where they have shorter tables. They eat dinner kneeling on the ground
over there, so ask a family if they don’t mind you living with them until you complete this exercise.
4. BRAIN BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 25 reps. Now it’s time to use your head. Not for imaginative thought, meditation or creating the life you desire,
but to balance your body on. Actually your head should should never really touch the ground, ground, it will just serve as a warning signal that you have gone low enough in your rep and can push yourself back up now.
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feet tucked in towards towards your beautiful beautiful bum. Have Starting Position: Lie down on the floor with your feet a folded towel underneath your head. head. Place your hands flat on the floor beside beside your head so your fingers are pointing back towards your toes about shoulder width apart. Same as the burnt bridge only there is no Japanese dinner table, table, and no family to annoy. Push yourself up slowly as far as you can. Your back is now arching like a dome. Try to straighten straighten your arms as much as possible, pause for a second at the top, and then lower yourself down until your head gently touches the towel. These are actually pretty tiring, because you are under constant tension and never really get to rest. But this exercise will build great stamina and flexibility! Now you are really starting to stretch that spine! Can’t Do It? Put a helmet helmet on. In fact keep keep it on for the rest of your life. You can never be too safe.
5. HALFLING BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 12 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps. Wow look at you, you’re a Power Squirrel! How proud are you right now? You’re ready for the half ling
bridge! This is similar to the Brain Bridge, only you are increasing your range of motion even further, which requires slightly more strength and flexibility. flexibility.
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Starting Position: Lie down flat on the floor with a soccer soccer ball by your side. Raise your hips up while sliding the ball under the the small of your back. Place your hands on the floor with your fingers fingers pointing towards your toes, and slowly raise yourself up as far as you can until your arms are as straight as possible, hold for a second, and then lower yourself down until your back gently touches the ball. Rinse and repeat. Can’t Do It? Try using a cat or small alligator underneath you instead of the ball. That might
motivate you more.
6. BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps. This exercise is not much harder than the halfling bridge, in fact it’s much easier to get into because you don’t have that awkward ball to lay on. This is the full bridge, and while it’s only the 6th dimension, I 62 | P a g e
suggest you keep this one in your arsenal as you progress progress through the later stages. stages. I like to throw in a set of these at the end of my bridge workouts no matter what dimension I’m in. They act as health insurance for your spine. Sometimes I do them for reps, reps, other times I just hold myself in the top position and stretch up as far as I can for 20 seconds or so to increase my flexibility even further.
Starting Position: Lie down flat on the ground with your feet tucked near your glutious maximus. Put your hands flat on the floor beside your head so your fingers fingers are pointing towards towards your toes. I keep mine about shoulder width apart, but play around with your position and angle to find the most comfortable position position for you. Slowly push your hips up into the air with your legs legs and arms until you reach your maximum height, pause for a second, and then slowly lower yourself back down until your back is on the floor again. When I first tried these, my range of motion was so limited; I looked like a frog in handcuffs trying to eat a muffin with his feet. It was embarrassing. embarrassin g. My arms could barely extend, and only my lower back would bend slightly. As you keep doing these, your arms will straighten out further, and your upper back will curve in a glorious glorious arch. Then you will truly truly know spinal integrity. integrity. As you get more more advanced, you can move your feet and hands closer and closer together and form a truly impressive arch that reaches high into the mountains. Can’t Do It? Get a Lego set and build a colourful bridge bridge to look at as you cry yourself to sleep.
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7. DESCENDING BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 5 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. Now it’s time to test your iron iron spine out and take it for a spin. These really do feel like a full body workout. I can’t think of a muscle that isn’t used in this exercise. Maybe your tongue. You are going to
be reaching backwards and walking down a wall with your hands, much like Spiderman did in the movie The Princess Bride.
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Starting Position: Find a wall, stand a few feet in front of it with your back facing the wall. Not too far, you are going to be bending backwards and walking down this wall with your hands, so get close enough so you can reach it. Slowly bend backwards backwards and reach for the wall with your hands, hands, allowing your palms to press gently against the wall with your fingers pointed down towards the ground, and your head upside down looking at the wall. Slowly walk yourself down the wall, wall, inching down one hand advanced you can take bigger “steps”. You may feel at a time and breathing steadily . As you get more advanced the need to adjust your feet during this movement to get further away from the wall as you get closer towards the bottom position. position. This is fine; just do so mindfully and carefully. carefully. When you reach the bottom, it’s actually nice if you have a baseboard, something sturdy to grab onto but it’s not necessary. necessary. Now gently, and with control, slowly place one hand on the floor with your
fingers pointing towards towards your toes like a regular bridge. bridge. No jerking motions do it as smoothly smoothly as possible. possible . Then bring the other hand down to the floor as well. Now you’re in the top position of the regular bridge. Stretch up as high as you can, and then lower yourself down to the ground, and stand up back up. I was actually super proud of myself for completing my first rep of this exercise. The scariest part is reaching for the wall. Once you are there, you can trust your strength and flexibility to walk yourself down the wall. If you don’t feel you are able to do it safely, keep working on the regular bridges until you are stronger and more agile agile in this area. It won’t be long before you are walking down walls,
looking like Neo did when he was dogging bullets in the movie Bridesmaids. Be mindful of your sweaty hands and feet as you do this exercise. It’s more strenuous than it looks, and
when you start sweating, it can really compromise your grip on the wall. Your feet on the floor may start to slip as well. Consider wearing gloves if this is a problem for you, and maybe wear shoes or use a yoga matt with a good grip.
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Can’t Do It? Cover your walls in mirrors mirrors so you can hold hands with your twin doing this exercise exercise in do this, mirrors are the mirror dimension. You two can walk down the wall together. Don’t actually do slippery and you will both likely hurt each other.
8. ASCENDING BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 8 reps. Congratulations Congratulations on becoming becoming a Mountain Hawk! The mountain is is your home now. now. Go establish your your dominance over this land, and become the fair yet ruthless leader this world needs of you right now. This exercise is basically the same as descending bridges, only instead of quitting at the bottom like a hopeless romantic; romantic; you will persevere and walk yourself yourself back up the wall. This exercise not only stretches out your spine, but also really works your core on the way up. It’s a full body movement, and
you will be glad there are only 8 reps in the warlord stage.
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Starting Position: Stand a few feet away from a wall with your back to the wall. Find your perfect distance and then slowly lean back back and reach out for the wall with your hands. With your palms on the wall and your fingers pointing down towards the floor, ask yourself “what the heck am I doing with my life?”, and then proceed to walk yo ur way down the wall until your hands are on the floor and you are in
the full bridge position position.. From here, stretch stretch up as high as you can, and then reach out to the wall very slowly with one hand. No sudden movements here, or you can twist your spine uncomfortably. Now reach out to the wall with your other hand, and slowly walk yourself back up the wall, adjusting your feet as needed. Gently and slowly push off the wall as you get near the top until until you are standing up straight again. Holy crap. crap. This is an amazing exercise that will really get you sweating. Make sure you haven’t eaten anything in the past few hours, because you may get nauseous. You should be fasted anyways, remember?! Be careful not to make any sudden movements as you transition from the wall to the floor, or the floor back to the wall. That is the hardest hardest part of the exercise. exercise. With control, control, balance on one hand and find the wall with your other hand slowly slowly and carefully. It can feel awkward at first, but you’ll get used to it. When pushing off the wall in the top position, try not to do it too quick or it will be uncomfortable for your lower back. Do it slowly and in control. control. Moving your feet feet closer to the wall will make this this easier. Can’t Do It? Watch the movie The Conjuring. It’s much scarier than walking down a wall backwards
you scaredy cat.
9. FREE FALL SAFETY BRIDGES Apprentice: 2 sets of 3 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 6 reps. I’m not gonna lie to you, these are terrifying. You know that trust exercise where you fall back with your
eyes closed and your friends catch catch you? This is similar, only your friends friends are watching tv in the other room so you better figure out a way to survive on your own. I spent months hiding in the ascending bridge dimension trying to avoid these. They are scary because you no longer have the safety net of the wall to help guide you down. They actually aren’t that hard, and I’ll go easy on you for now. Instead of asking you to lower yourself yourself all the way to the floor and risk decapitating yourself, yourself, you can use a raised platform to safely land on.
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high table, your couch, or even a steep Starting Position: Find a raised platform like a bed, a waist high grassy hill. The goal is to bend backwards until your hand hand fall gently on the surface of the object you you chose. You will land land softly softly in a full bridge pose. There is a slight chance you won’t have the flexibility to do this gracefully enough and will come crashing down onto your object, so make it a soft one to start off with. I suggest using a couch, and try to land with with your hands on the high back instead of the seat cushions. Standing about a foot away from your couch, with the couch behind you like you are about to sit down; start leaning backwards. backwards. Bend your knees and try to look back at the couch as your head turns upside upside down. Now reach straight straight behind you for for the top of the couch. couch. This is much easier easier than landing on the seat cushion to start off with because it requires less flexibility. 69 | P a g e
Don’t fall into position, control yourself slowly to get there, and gently place your hands on top of the
couch so that your fingers are pointing down towards the floor. Now walk yourself down a bit until your hands are on the seat cushions and you are in a full bridge position. position. Flex up as high as you can, and then inopportune time. Just figure a way out of this mess. Hopefully your cat didn’t jump under you at this inopportune
slowly lower yourself down until your back touches the couch cushions, and then stand back up and repeat the exercise. If these are still too terrifying for you, just spend more time on the ascending bridges like I did, and focus on improving the flexibility of your upper spine. Do the exercise really slowly, and stretch stretch back as far as you can in each position to build a Gumby back. Eventually you will loosen up and be able to free fall to your platform of choice without slamming your head into the ground. Since your head is storing all the useful information you’ve learned up to this point, try to avoid that.
When you are ready to increase the difficulty of this exercise, try landing softly on the seat cushions instead of the back. Since the surface is lower, it will require more flexibility. Start with something high, and work your way down to a firm mattress mattress on the floor before moving onto the next dimension. Can’t Do It? Ask a large man to support your lower back as you descend to the ground. He will make
you feel safe, but try not to fall in love with him.
10.
FREE FALL BRIDGES
Apprentice: 2 sets of 3 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 6 reps. Call your mom, let her know you love her. The free fall bridge will likely be the last exercise you attempt in your short time on this earth, but in the unlikely scenario in which you survive this task, you will have mastered your inner fears, and built one of the stronger and more flexible spines this world has ever known. These are similar to the free fall safety bridges, only there’s nothing safe about them. You are removing removing the one object that was keeping keeping you alive. You are going to slowly bend backwards backwards until you reach the floor in the full bridge position. The first time is always the scariest, but once you do it once, you will start to build those neural pathways in the brain and it will become easier and easier. It’s actually not that hard if you have the upper spine flexibility required to bend backwards all the way to the floor under full control. Without that super flexibility flexibili ty these will seem impossible. impossible .
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Starting Position: Stand on the floor, floor, with no objects objects behind you. Feel free to to do this outside on the grass or even on your bed as an added safety measure. measure. Slowly start to bend backwards backwards like the free fall safety bridges, bending bending your knees as you get lower. Straighten Straighten your arms out behind you as you slowly lower yourself backwards backwards down towards the the ground. Your head should be upside down looking at the floor as you place your hands gently on the ground with your fingers pointing towards your toes. Stretch up as high as you can here in the full bridge position, and then lower yourself to the ground until your back touches the the floor. Stand back up and try it it again. This exercise is more mental than anything, but you should be used to this movement by now with the free fall safety bridges. Do consider having a friend support support your back as you do this movement, movement, just to build confidence and develop that muscle memory further until you are 100% confident you can do this on your own. Just remember, remember, you are in control the whole way down, down, you are never falling and landing on your hands. You are always gently placing them them down, so there is no actual falling falling or danger. It’s just easier said than done because of the flexibility required.
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underwater. The children’s pee should help thin the Can’t Do It? Find a local pool, and try this move underwater.
blood and increase flexibility. flexibility.
11.
LUMBERBACK BRIDGES
Apprentice: 2 sets of 6 reps. reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps. Congratulations Congratulations you Thunder Monkey Monkey you. You made it! The ultimate ultimate test in back flexibility flexibility and strength. If you somehow pull off this move, you truly truly do possess a Thunder Monkey spine forged forged by the Thunder Gods. We are going to slowly lower ourselves into a full bridge from the standing position, and then defy gravity and stand back up again! It doesn’t seem like it’s even possible, but it is, and when you master this step, you are basically bullet proofing your back against any future pain.
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yourself back like you did on the free fall bridges. bridges. Consider doing doing Starting Position: Slowly arch yourself this on the grass your first time just to be safe , but you’ve already accomplished the scariest part in the previous exercise, exercise, so you should be good to go. When your hands gently touch touch the earth, stretch stretch up as high as you can to get a good stretch in, and then use a little rocking motion to shift your weight from your hands towards your feet, and use the momentum of the swing to spring off with your hands and stand back up again. This is a pretty popular yoga move. Are you going to let let a hippy yogi with elephant pants show you up while they drink their chai tea in a full lotus pose? No, you’re you’re not. So psyche yourself up somehow, defy physics and do this move! Can’t Do It? Buy some elephant elephant pants. Use the embarrassingly embarrassingly revealing revealing nature of these these pants as
motivation to get yourself out of the crotch in the air pose to a more respectable standing position. position.
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NOW WHAT ? Once you’ve become a Thunder Monkey Warlord in this dimension, you will have the strongest most become a body flexible spine in all the land. You really don’t need to move beyond this final move and become
contortionist do do you? You planning on joining a circus or something? something? Continue doing doing the lumberback lumberback bridges, and throw in some regular bridges and bridge holds at the end of your workout to further stretch out that spine and improve your strength. One way to make these harder would be to bring your legs and hands closer to each other in the bottom position. The closer your feet are to your your hands, the harder harder this move is. is. It requires requires way more flexibility. Inch those feet back further further and further towards towards your hands for the ultimate stretch. stretch. You might even be able to cross them them so your feet go slightly behind your hands. Good luck getting out of that position. Another way to move past these would be to stand on a raised platform, and then lower yourself down so your hands are lower than your feet. That would be a truly impressive move. I don’t even know if it’s physically possible to do, so don’t take my word for it. If you want to increase your strength in this
movement though, consider adding wrist weights. These will make standing back up a little harder, and will increase your core strength strength massively. I suppose you could push off with your feet into a full handstand as well, you show off. I’d just stick with the regular move though; it’s an impressive party trick and will build all the spinal integrity you will
ever need.
Chapter 13: Handstand Push Ups Are you ready to grow the thickest hair you’ve ever had in your life? How about increasing your brain
power by 1 million percent giving you the ability to read your own mind ? It’s time to flip upside upside down my friend. There are so many benefits benefits to this handstand push up series that go beyond muscular muscular growth . It’s not just about building super cyborg shoulders to impress your cat; there are actually a lot of benefits to spending time upside down. We spend the majority of our lives upright, and it’s no wonder our skin st arts to sag in our later years. ye ars.
We are fighting against gravity our entire lives (or density for you flat earthers). W ouldn’t it make sense to flip upside down as often as possible so gravity can pull your skin the other way and balance things out? That’s just common hippy sense. Standing upside down also increases circulation circulation to your head. This will help with hair growth, mental function, acne, eye sight and any issue you can think of relating to the head area. When you’ve built up enough strength, consider doing handstands against the wall every day, just long enough to get blood
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flowing to your brain. The more often you can do it the better, better, so consider throwing throwing it into your daily routine, as often as possible. It’s also just really fun to be upside down.
1. EINSTEIN HEADSTANDS Apprentice: 1 minute. Warlord: 2 minutes. Einstein headstands headstands are the first step on your road to doing 1 arm handstand handstand push ups. You have to build the shoulders and triceps up slowly in order to handle the full weight of your body, so we start with the easiest possible way to to be upside down. By resting on your giant Einstein head.
Starting Position: Get a towel and place it on the ground next to a wall. Make sure you have no face. Also be sure there pictures of your family on the wall; you don’t want to kick your grandma in the face. is plenty of space behind you to land. You will be supporting your entire entire bodyweight bodyweight partly split
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shoulder width apart, and get into a sprinter ’s stance. Get a timer, timer, or use a timer app on your smartphone so you can see how long you are going. going. This is a timed exercise; you aren’t doing reps you are just holding yourself in position for as long as you can. With your head resting on the towel, and your hands supporting you, start the timer and then kick yourself up with your dominant leg or whichever feels comfortable. comfortable. When you feel the wall with both feet that is when your countdown countdown begins. If you position your smartphone smartphone just right, you will be able to see the time as you go to motivate or terrorize terrorize you. You could also film yourself and use your video as a timer. Play around with the positioning positioni ng of your hands to get the most comfortable support. I found this was really working my triceps a lot until I adjusted my hands a bit to find a more balanced position. The goal is to hold there for 2 minutes. Set your timer for 2:05 to allow you 5 seconds to get into the headstand, and then try to hold on for dear life until you hear that alarm go off. Can’t Do It? Watch more flat earth videos to c onvince yourself that gravity doesn’t exist, and maybe
you’ll feel lighter.
2. FLAMINGO STANDS Apprentice: 30 seconds. Warlord: 1 minute. Now you will be supporting your entire bodyweight with your arms. Some might call you a superhero. This exercise is all about balance; balance; it really is an art of finding the perfect angle. This will really develop your wrist strength and use a bunch of stabilizing muscles you’ve probably never used before.
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Starting Position: Kneel down on the floor with with your hands on the ground about shoulder width width apart. Get up on your feet and place your knees outside outside your arms and have your thighs resting resting on your elbows as you slowly lean forward and lift your legs legs off the ground. Your thighs are balancing balancing on your elbows and you are holding your feet off the air trying trying not to fall forward. You might even want to have a pillow in front of you just in case you do lean too far forward. You should be able to stop yourself in time by dropping your legs down and catching yourself. Why do I make these exercises sound so dangerous? You’re like 3 inches off the ground.
Have your smartphone timer in front of you. Since your goal is 1 minute, have a timer set for 1:05. Start the countdown, and then get get into position. All you have to do now is hold yourself up there while waiting for that sweet alarm of satisfaction. Can’t Do It? Go bird watching watching instead. See if you can find a flock flock of flamingos and ask them them how
they do it.
3. HANDSTANDS Apprentice: 1 minute. Warlord: 2 minutes. Now you are ready for an actual handstand against a wall. Some people struggle struggle to get the 2 minutes required to become a warlord in this dimension, others laugh their way to 2 minutes scratching their bellies as they show zero signs of struggle. My first attempt at this, I got 1 minute. It took me 15 weeks to get to 2 minutes. I found it very difficult! When I finally got to 2 minutes, I actually actually felt so proud that I challenged some of my YouTube friends to attempt this super human display of strength. As if they 77 | P a g e
could even come close I thought. I received video after video of people who barely worked out, getting 2 minutes like it was nothing to them. They all did it on their first attempt, and they could have gone longer but they got bored of being so strong. They were all likely taking steroids or were descendants descendants of Olympians.
Starting Position: Find a wall, and place your hands about shoulder shoulder width apart or wider, maybe maybe 6 inches or so from the wall. Start your timer at 2:05, 2:05, and kick yourself up to the wall until both feet touch touch the wall and you are facing away from it. Continue breathing breathing normally, and hold yourself up there there as long as you can. If you are struggling with this exercise, exercise, try changing your hand position so your weight is stacked evenly above your arms, which which should be locked into position. position. If your elbows are bent, you are forced to use your triceps more, and I believe that’s why I struggled so much with with this exercise. exercise. But
now I have the triceps o f a unicorn, so it’s all good. Can’t Do It? Put a bunch of ice cubes in your pockets before you start. The cold melting ice water
should cool you down and refocus you as it trickles down your face.
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4. Baby HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps. Now you have shoulders of steel. You should be capable of pushing your body off the ground ground from a handstand position. position. Your cat will be so so impressed. We are only going to go halfway down though. Doing a full handstand push up will be too stressful on your elbows; you need to build your tendon strength first. Remember, the shorter the range of motion, the easier the exercise. Your goal is to go halfway down, but if you can’t do it, just go as far as you can. Even if it’s just 1 inch, keep doing that for build the strength to go lower. lower. You can do this with any exercise. If you can’t do the the reps and you will build full range of motion, do do a half range. If you can’t do half, half, do a quarter. You will still be building
strength, and you’ll be able to complete the full range of motion in no time. Just stick with it and you’ll get there!
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Starting Position: You want to be traveling traveling half the the distance from your head to the floor. If your head is 10 inches off the ground in a full handstand, go down 5 inches, and then push yourself back up to the top position. Get a small object that stands about about halfway from the floor to your head to serve as a measuring stick so you know you are going the same exact distance each rep. You can use the amazon delivery box that your pink spandex jumpsuit came in. Place your hands about shoulder width apart or wider, about 6 inches or so from the wall with the box between your hands. Kick yourself up into a handstand, and then slowly slowly lower yourself down until until your head touches the box, pause for a second, second, and then slowly push yourself back up to the top. Your elbows should angle out slightly as you do this movement, about 45 degrees or so. Find the most comfortable position. If you feel any shoulder pain, you don’t have the right angle. When done right, these baby handstand push ups will strengthen your shoulders and triceps in the safest way possible. Can’t Do It? Take your clothes off. That extra pound and a half of cotton was likely the reason reason you couldn’t do it.
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5. HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps. Congratulations Congratulations on becoming a Power Squirrel! May you have great success foraging for nuts in the forest. Now you are ready to do a real handstand push up, all the way to the ground ground with that noggin of yours.
Starting Position: Get a towel to place on the floor between between your hands for your head to gently gently touch in the bottom position of this movement. It’s not an absolute requirement, but it’s safer, and it
will feel better gently touching a towel with your head than it would your yo ur solid unforgiving floor. Approach the wall in a sprinter ’s stance with your hands roughly roughly shoulder width apart apart.. You can have them a little wider if it’s more comfortable for you. When you are ready, kick off with one leg and get
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yourself into a handstand position with your feet resting resting against the wall. Slowly let yourself down until your head gently touches the towel, pause for a second and then exhale as you push yo urself back up to the top position. It’s not out of this world harder than the half handstand push up, but you will definitely notice your
triceps being engaged more. guarantee it will will help, but it could. Can’t Do It? Cover your body in mayonnaise mayonnaise. I can’t guarantee
6. ILLUMINATI INITIATE HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 8 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps. These are the handstand push ups “they” don’t want you to know know about! A secret passed down from
the oldest reptilian overlords overlords in the hollow earth. Whenever you form a diamond symbol with your hands, you are signalling to your reptilian forefathers that all is well. Similar to the illuminati push ups (chapter 16) you are going to bring your hands together to form a diamond shape with your pointer fingers and thumbs almost touching. This is going to work your triceps a lot more, and will build elbows that could throw a baseball to Pluto.
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Starting Position: Grab a soccer ball, and get into a sprinter’s stance with your hands close together with the ball resting in the diamond between your hands. Your pointer fingers and thumbs like when they touch it gets uncomfortable, from each hand should almost be touching. I don’t like especially if you haven’t cut your nails in awhile. So keep on top of that grooming you hippy. The ball is optional, but since this is a half movement, it is nice to have something to smack your head into to signal
that you are going the same distance down each rep. Consider using a regular sized soccer ball to start off with, and then when you become a warlord in this dimension, switch to a smaller ball or object. Then become a warlord again at that height, and keep going lower and lower each week until you are almost touching your hands hands with your head in the bottom position. position. That will help prepare prepare you for the full illuminati handstand handsta nd push ups in the next dimension which are extremely difficult. The difference between the half movement and a 3 quarters one is tremendous, tremendous, so take things slow. With the ball between your hands, kick k ick up into a handstand position with your feet resting against the wall. Now slowly lower yourself yourself down until your head gently gently touches the ball, pause for a second, second, and then slowly push yourself back up to the top position.
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If you are struggling with this one, place your hands slightly farther apart instead of touching. The closer they are, the harder it is on your triceps, so start with your hands a few inches apart and work your way towards getting them closer and closer. Can’t Do It? Train butterflies butterflies to grab your socks and fly you up to the top position of each rep. It’s an
expensive, but practical solution.
7. ILLUMINATI HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 8 reps . Warlord: 2 sets of 12 reps. Now you are ready for the full illuminati illuminati handstand push ups. Before, you were just just a low ranking initiate privy to very little secret information. information. Now you are a high ranking member and you will be shown the mysteries of the universe.
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Starting Position: Get into a sprinter’s stance with your hands almost almost touching. touching. They should be forming a diamond shape signalling to your reptilian overlord ancestors ancestors that you are ready. Kick yourself up into a handstand position with your feet resting against the wall. Now slowly lower yourself down to the ground while inhaling. When your head gently touches the top of your hands, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself yourself back up to the top position. I place a towel over my hands just to have a softer surface for my head to touch. It also gives me an ever so slightly slightly shorter distance to to the bottom position which makes it an easier movement. movement. Eventually you can remove the towel and go the extra inch to your hands. These really build those elbow tendons up nice, so be sure to milk the last stage for everything you can by going lower and lower before moving onto this dimension. Can’t Do It? Activate your reptilian super strength by performing the ritual in chapter 9 of the secret
handbook that mysteriously appeared under your bed last night.
8. LEBRON HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 6 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. Congratulations Congratulations on becoming a Mountain Hawk! Hawk! May you soar free my friend. Don’t poo on anyone. You will be testing every bit bit of that hawk strength with with this one. You are going to be using a basketball in one hand, similar to the Lebron push ups (chapter 16). It can be a little tricky to even get into the starting position, but I believe in you.
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Starting Position: Grab a basketball and and a towel, and go find find a wall. I probably should have have used an actual basketball for the Lebron Lebron move, but I was too lazy and cheap to buy another ball. Face the wall in a sprinter’s stance with the ball close to to the hand you will be balancing it on. The towel is between your hands ready for your head to gently touch it in the bottom position. Kick up into a handstand with your feet resting against the wall. Now, somehow lift one of your hands off the ground while balancing on the other, and find that basketball to rest it on while avoiding crashing down into your glass coffee table and shattering shattering your pelvis. You will have to lean to one side a bit to keep your balance on the one hand while you search for the ball with your other. Once you’ve made it to this position with your hand on the ball, and you have overcome your panic
attack; position the ball so your hands are roughly shoulder width apart. Now just like the regular handstand push up, slowly lower yourself down until your head gently touches the towel, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up into the top position. If you can’t get all the way to t o the ground on your first attempt, just go as low as you can, and keep trying to go lower and lower as you get stronger. This will work the one hand on the ground much harder, but the one on the ball will be forced to stabilize more so it really is a tough tough workout for both arms. This will develop your shoulders shoulders and triceps like crazy. That coupled with the fact that your workload will double now, since each set must be done with both arms, you will be building some serious strength with these. But you can handle it, you’re a Mountain Hawk! Can’t Do It? Use a watermelon instead of a basketball. It will crack under the pressure of your
weight, but you can use this to your advantage by licking up the juice in the bottom position to fuel you back up to the top.
9. BABY HERCULES HANDSTAND PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 8 reps. You’re going to have to summon some of your hunter gatherer ancestor strength for this one. You will
be basically pushing your entire bodyweight off the ground ground with one arm. It’s only a half movement, but it’s still extremely challenging. Baby Hercules can do it, so you should be able to do it too. That is assuming you’ve milked the previous dimension dimension for every bit of hawk milk you could. This exercise requires a lot of strength, but but also balance. It may be tough to find that initial sweet spot on the wall, but you’ll get into a groove with more practice.
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Starting Position:
Get into a sprinter’s stance facing a wall, and kick up into a handstand. handstand. Consider
having a box or ball between your hands, similar to the half handstand push ups to measure distance traveled accurately. accurately. Slowly lean to one side and shift your weight weight to one arm as you re center yourself. Hold your other arm out to the side for balance. balance. Now slowly lower yourself down down until your head gently touches the ball, hold for a second as your life flashes before your eyes, then Hercules Hercules your way back up to the top. Can’t Do It? Buy an aloe plant and water water it once a week. week. It will be motivating motivating to see this plant grow grow
big and strong unlike your flabby plateaued body which has all but given up at the thought of completing this exercise.
10.
STARGAZER HANDSTAND PUSH UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 6 reps. Welcome to the stargazer. In the bottom position of this exercise, it will look like you are pointing towards your favourite star in the sky, wishing you were anywhere else but here doing this brutal exercise. You will essentially essentially be doing a 1 arm handstand push up using your full range of motion, with with just slight assistance from from your stargazing stargazing arm. arm. Somewhat similar to the anchor push ups (chapter (chapter 16) only without the ball.
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Starting Position: Consider using a towel or even a cotton glove glove on your supporting hand to help it slide across the floor easier. easier. Also get a second towel for your head head to gently touch in the bottom position. Face the the wall in in a sprinter’s stance and kick up into a handstand. Slowly shift most most of your weight to one hand, and turn turn the other hand over so the back of your hand is on the first towel. Now stretch that overturned overturned hand out in front of you away from the wall as far as you can reach. From here, slowly lower yourself yourself down as your overturned hand slides forward away from the wall. It won’t be able to help much, so your other hand will be doing the majority of the work, but use your
overturned hand as support. Look at it more as as a guide instead of doing doing much heavy heavy lifting. When your head gently touches the towel, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up to the top position as your support hand slides back towards your body. There aren’t many human beings on the planet that can do this. If you struggle with it, you’re in good
company. Just keep working the lower stages if you can’t do this one yet. Try doing a half movement, this exercise in one week like you did on and working from there. Be patient. You won’t be beating this
some of the earlier exercises. Enjoy your time here and take things slow, it’s not a race. You have have the the rest of your life to continue getting stronger. If it was too easy, it would be boring. Can’t Do It? Get a Ouija board. Ask the spirits if you’ll ever be able to do this exercise. When they
say no and laugh at you, yo u, use their mockery as motivation to accomplish this seemingly seemingly inhuman display of strength.
11.
HERCULES HANDSTAND PUSH UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 4 reps. Warlord: 2 sets of 10 reps. Congratulations on finally becoming a Thunder Thunder Monkey! Now you’re swinging around in trees like you
own the place. Be humble young Thunder Monkey. Monkey. Brag not about your newfound newfound shoulders of steel that could lift a truck into the air while you change a tire. Just change the tire and keep quiet. this, although I’ll give This is the boss level in the handstand push up series. It doesn’t get harder than this, you some ideas on how to take this exercise further in the unlikely event of this becoming too easy for
you. You will be pushing your entire entire bodyweight off the ground ground using your full range of motion with just one arm. An impressive impressive feat to say the least. least.
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Starting Position: Get a towel for your monkey head head to gently touch in the bottom position. Get into a sprinter’s stance and kick up into a handstand. handstand. Slowly lean to one side and shift your weight to 1
arm, finding your sweet spot with your other arm out to the side for balance. Slowly lower yourself down until your head touches the towel, pause for a second if you can, and then push yourself back up to the top position. I made it sound so easy didn’t I? There’s a good chance you won’t be able to do this motion slowly, and you might eve n need to kip your
legs up a bit to build momentum. This is a serious amount of weight to press into the air with one arm, so use all your monkey tools to get you up there. Can’t Do It? Get a monkey suit, suit, and wait for a thunder thunder storm. When it comes, comes, go out into the storm storm
holding a long metal rod to attract a lightning strike, because that’s about as close as you’ll e ver get to becoming a Thunder Monkey Warlord of this dimension.
NOW WHAT ? Need to make this exercise harder? It’s too easy for you? Do you have Bigfoot genetics or something?
There are a couple ways to make this harder. One would be to do the exercise slower with no kipping of the legs. Another would be to put on some ankle weights to increase the amount of weight you are pressing. But the coolest way to advance in this exercise would be to do the movement freestanding with no wall for support. You should be practicing freestanding handstands throughout this whole series just for fun. At the beginning or the end of your sets, try to hold yourself in the air with your feet away from the wall. It takes a lot more stabilizer muscles to do this, and will really build up your wrist strength. Once you can hold yourself in a handstand position away from the wall for 30 seconds or so, start doing regular handstand handstan d push ups with no wall for support. Then start to work your way back up the dimensions freestanding. freestanding. Work your way towards towards balancing yourself yourself in the air on on just 1 arm. Once you can hold yourself there comfortably for 10 seconds or so without falling over, then and only then should you consider trying a 1 arm handstand handstand push up from that position. Start with a half movement, movement, and then progress to the full range range of motion. But my god, if you can get to the point where where you are doing 1 arm handstand push ups freestanding without without a wall, you will the baddest Thunder Monkey in all the land!
Chapter 14: Leg Raises Do you want abs of granite that were chiselled out of the fires of Helm’s Deep? Look no further further than leg raises! Sit ups are for weirdoes in the park wearing short shorts. They don’t use use your full range of motion, and they work fewer fewer muscles than leg raises raises do. If you want a lame 6 pack with no supporting 93 | P a g e
muscles, do sit ups. But if you want true core strength, strength, an 8 pack capable of digesting dynamite, dynamite, obliques that could cut a watermelon in half, and groins of passion; do the best core work available to human kind, leg raises. There’s a reason they call it the core. core. It is the foundation of your entire body! It’s the glue that keeps
everything together. If you have super strong arms but a weak back and core, if you attempt to to lift a goat over your head, your body will crumble under the weight and the goat will laugh at you. It’s because you lack the stabilization. stabilization. Picture a tree tree with thick thick heavy branches and a tiny tiny thin trunk. It won’t last.
When I was a high rise window cleaner, I used to carry around a large bucket of water everywhere I went. It wasn’t my arms that that were sore the next day, it was my my obliques! Those are the muscles on the
sides of your body. It took so much core strength strength to stabilize that bucket bucket of water as I walked, and until that point, I had never realized how important the entire mid section of the body was. It is the foundation in which everything else is built. It’s the trunk of the tree. Neglect this part of the body, and your strength will not be functional. With leg raises, you will develop develop strong abs, sides and back, as well as strengthen strengthen your lower body. You will develop a mystical groin strength which will come in handy during the new daring sexual positions you find yourself in after being too afraid to attempt them before.
1. SITTING KNEE RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 40 reps Like all other exercises in the Monkey Strength program, we start small and go for low resistance high rep exercises. The reason we do this is to to build the nervous system and tendon strength first, which will allow you to do the harder movements in the higher dimensions without getting injured. The eventual goal of this series is the karate master leg raise where you are hanging from a bar raising your legs up into the air completely straight. straight. An impressive display of core strength indeed, but slow down monkey! Let’s start with something easier first. The sitting knee raise is about as easy an exercise as you can do for your core, but it’s still pretty challenging. Especially if the only core exercise you’ve been doing over the last month has been
sneezing as you vacuum vacuum your house. I actually felt felt this one in my groins groins the most. most. They may seem easy at first, but when you get up around the 40 rep range, you’ll feel it.
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Starting Position: Grab a seat, either on a chair or the arm of your couch. Have your hands down by your sides on the couch for added stabilization. stabilization. Lean back a little bit and extend extend your legs out straight so they are just a few inches inches off the ground. Now bring your knees up slowly slowly towards your chest, hold for a second, and then slowly lower them until your legs are straight again never letting them touch the ground. Bring your knees up as high as you can for each rep, exhaling exhaling as you lift them up, and inhaling as you lower them back down. In general, you always want to to exhale during the hardest part part of the movement as it gives you extra mystical hippy strength. Can’t Do It? Lie in bed and watch watch tv. Now slowly raise raise your knees up with your feet still on the bed. Haha, you can’t see the tv anymore.
2. RESTING KNEE RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 35 reps Now you get to lie down. See? Working out isn’t so hard. Now you are increasing the leverage, which is the key to progressing in all calisthenics movements. You’ll be laying down flat on the ground, and now
your knees will be harder harder to lift. They will feel heavier. Damn you gravity! gravity!
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hands by your sides to stabilize stabilize your body. With Starting Position: Lie down on the floor with your hands your legs perfectly straight, raise them up off the floor a couple inches. Now raise your knees up slowly until they are straight in the the air, and your shins are parallel with the floor. floor. Pause for a second, and then slowly lower them back down until your feet are just barely off the ground again. If your feet ever touch the ground during this exercise, rinse your mouth out with soap. Can’t Do It? Whenever you go for a walk outside, raise your knees up to your chest with each step so
people will know you are training for this exercise.
3. RESTING DONKEY LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 30 reps These are very similar to the Resting Knee Raises, only you are increasing the angle of your leg bend similar to a donkey. You Donkey Bitch. With your feet slightly further away from your body, we increase the leverage which makes this exercise more difficult . It’s all about that leverage.
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Starting Position: Lie down on the floor in the same position position as the resting knee raises with your hands by your side. Instead of a 90 90 degree bend at the knees, stretch it out to 135 degrees. Raise your feet a few inches off the floor, and then slowly raise your legs until your knees are roughly straight in the air. Pause for a second, and then slowly lower them back back down until your feet are just barely above the ground again. Don’t let them touch the ground. Pretend the ground is lava. Although your back will be burning, don’t burn those feet!
Can’t Do It? Place your cat underneath underneath your knees. The guilt of you potentially potentially crushing crushing him should
keep you motivated to keep proper proper form. Why do I always assume you have a cat?
4. RESTING CRICKET LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 25 reps These are similar to the resting donkey leg raises, in that the first part of the movement is identical, but at the top of the exercise you will use your herculean might to straighten straighten your legs out fully much like a cricket would trying to escape a curious child.
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position as the resting donkey leg raises with with Starting Position: Lie down on the floor in the same position your hands down by your side for support. With your legs at a 135 degree angle angle and your feet a few inches off the floor, slowly raise your legs legs up maintaining that that 135 degree bend. When you’re knees are perpendicular to the floor, straighten straighten your legs out completely. Now your back and legs are at a full 90 degree angle. Pause for a second, and then slowly lower your legs down fully straightened out. When they get to an inch or two off the ground, pause for a second, and then re-establish your 135 degree leg bend for the next rep. This movement will prepare you for the resting goat leg raises by doing the negative for them. The negative is the lowering movement, and the positive is the raising. If you are ever stuck doing any movement, a good way to train the muscles is by doing the negative portion of that movement only. For example if you can’t do a full pull up, jump up to the top position, and then slowly lower yourself
back down. This will use all all the same muscles muscles as the full pull up, up, just not as intensely. intensely. Negatives are are a great way to develop the strength needed for the full movement. The archer negatives are a good example in chapter 11. Can’t Do It? Dab some essential essential orange oil on your your wrists. You’re not very strong, but at least you’ll
smell nice.
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5. RESTING BABY GOAT LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 20 reps Congratulations Congratula tions on becoming a Power Squirrel! Impressive. We might even be able to see through your belly flab now and witness your 6 pack emerging from its long slumber. You are going to keep your legs straight throughout througho ut this whole exercise, much like a panicked goat. Have you ever seen a goat get scared? They stiffen up and and fall over. That’s pretty much how I get myself out of any sticky sticky situation as
well. It’s bullet proof. This is a half movement movement only. Hence the baby goat. goat. What you thought thought you were an adult goat already? Be real.
Starting Position: Lie on the floor with your goat hands hands by your side for support and your legs on the ground. Do the resting cricket leg raises to get your legs off the floor and straight up into the air so they are perpendicular to the floor. Now slowly lower your legs down fully straight until they are about half way to the floor, pause for a second, and then raise them back up to the top position keeping them fully straight. You are avoiding the hardest part of the goat leg raise for now, which is the bottom position of the movement. movement. Can’t Do It? Try doing this movement underwater. It will be much easier to lift your legs, although
you may experience slight breathing difficulties.
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6. RESTING GOAT LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps The resting goat leg raises are the final exercise where I allow you to lie down. No more sleep exercising for you!
hands by your side for support. support. Raise your legs legs a Starting Position: Lie down on the floor with your hands few inches off the floor and keep them perfectly straight. Slowly raise your legs up fully extended until they are perpendicular to the floor, pause for a second, and then slowly lower them back down until they are a few inches inches off the floor. Rinse and repeat. repeat. If you are struggling with this exercise, it is likely the flexibility you lack, not the strength. And you call yourself a power squirrel?! I was struggling to get my legs up to that top position because my hamstrings were stiffer than a praying mantis after a colonoscopy. Stretch out those hamstrings and you’ll find these much easier.
Can’t Do It? Get a mirror on your ceiling. Now you’ll be able to identify the asshole who can’t even
lift his legs in the air while lying down. You know, for the police report. report.
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7. SUSPENDED KNEE RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Now we are going to be hanging from a bar, just like you would when doing pull ups. ups. In fact, if you can’t
hang from a bar, you might need to progress further in the pull up series before attempting these. Some people will start to lose their grip before their abs give out. You are working against gravity much more now due to the angle of the lift, so we will start back at the basic knee raise movement like we did earlier in the series.
shoulder width apart, and Starting Position: Grab onto a pull up bar with an overhand grip about shoulder keep your shoulders flexed a bit. Don’t hang loosely or your arms might fall off . It should be high
enough to where your feet are are entirely off the ground when when fully stretched out. Just one of the many advantages of being being short. Suck it tall people. people. Slowly raise raise your knees up until they they are parallel with the ground, your legs should have a 90 degree bend to them. Pause for a second, and then slowly lower your legs down until they are straight straight again. Exhale on the upswing, inhale on the the down. I actually found these easier than the resting goat leg raises. They require less flexibility, but more more strength, and flexibility flexibilit y was my weakness. I spend too many hours sitting in a chair, and not enough time outside prancing in the forest. Can’t Do It? Go to a local kindergarten kindergarten school, and ask if you can enrol in class there. Since you are
in the same developmental category as most kindergarteners, at least physically, they should let you in.
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8. SUSPENDED DONKEY LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps Congratulations, Congratulations, you are now a Mountain Mountain Hawk! You eat Power Squirrels Squirrels for breakfast. breakfast. Unless you are vegan of course. course. Hey you shouldn’t be eating breakfast anyways! You should should be fasting until noon. noon. Ok, moving along. We are now going through the same progressions as we did on the ground, only we are hanging from a bar. So we want to keep increasing the angle of our leg bend to make it harder and harder.
shoulder width apart, ever Starting Position: Grab onto a pull up bar with an overhand grip about shoulder so slightly flexing your shoulders shoulders to ease the tension on your shoulder shoulder joints. Bend your knees at about a 135 degree angle like a donkey would when trying to attract a mate. Your feet should be going behind you to start off. Slowly raise your legs maintaining maintaining that same angle angle until your knees are up over waist height. Pause for a second at the top, and then slowly lower your legs back down to the starting position. Can’t Do
house plants. As they spring spring back to life, maybe maybe it will motivate motivate you to drink It? Water your house
some water yourself, and take your hydrated ass to the park and do this exercise.
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9. SUSPENDED CRICKET LEG RAISES Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps Crickets are kind of cute when they’re not not jumping at you. This exercise is similar to the suspended reading ahead are donkey leg raises you’ve just completed. You completed them right? You’re not reading
you?! Start off in the same position positio n as the last exercise, exercise, but straighten your legs out in the top position.
Starting Position: Grab a pull up bar with an overhand grip, and hang helplessly in the air. Bend your legs at a 135 degree angle so your feet are behind you slightly. Slowly raise your legs until your knees are up over waist height. When you get get there, straighten your legs out completely. Your body 103 | P a g e
should be in a perfect perfect L shape. They call this the the L sit. Pause for a second, possibly the longest longest second of your life, and then slowly lower your legs down keeping them straight all the way to the bottom position. Then re-establish your 135 degree bend for the next rep. Can’t Do It? Watch the movie Forrest Gump. Little Forrest was able to run away from mean
teenagers throwing rocks at him while his legs were in knee braces. So when attempting this exercise, have someone throw rocks at you to give you the full cinematic experience. experience.
10.
SUSPENDED BABY GOAT LEG RAISES
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 15 reps Now we are going to be really testing that hawk belly of yours by doing this movement with fully straightened straightene d legs. We aren’t going to go through the full range of motion though, so take a sigh of right now, don’t attempt it. You want to build up relief. The bottom range of this exercise is too difficult right your core and mighty groin strength first.
with an overhand grip grip about shoulder width apart. Assume Starting Position: Grab a pull up bar with the suspended cricket leg position with your shoulders slightly flexed. Bend your knees at a 135 degree angle with your feet slightly slightly behind you. Do the first half of the suspended cricket cricket leg raise, and straighten your legs at the top to get into an L sit . This doesn’t even count as part of your rep, how how much does that suck?
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So now that your body is in that L sit, slowly lower your legs legs down about half way to the ground. This is actually the starting starting position. None of what you have done so far has even remotely remotely contributed to your rep numbers. Poor you. Now slowly raise your legs until they are roughly waist height or higher keeping them perfectly straight. Pause for a second at the top, and then slowly lower them down until you reach that half way point again. These can feel awkward if you start swinging, swinging, so grip tight tight and keep your abs engaged. Control your movements; don’t dance around like a monkey up there. If you can’t lower your legs down half way, just go as low low as you can, and increase your range of motion slowly slowly over time. time. Can’t Do It? Take your shoes off. Surely it was the the .7 pounds of pleather pleather holding you back.
11.
KARATE MASTER LEG RAISES
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps most of the known creatures in the Wow, you’re a Thunder Monkey! You have stronger abs than most Universe. You could crack open a coconut on your abs of steel, and you might might want to after this workout to rehydrate yourself. yourself. It’s all about about those electrolytes.
Starting Position: Grab a pull up bar with with an overhand grip grip about shoulder width apart. With your shoulders slightly flexed the whole time, slowly lift your legs up until your feet are at waist height, keeping your legs completely straight the whole time. Pause for a second at the top, and then slowly lower them back down. 105 | P a g e
If you ever find yourself cornered by thugs in an alley and you happen to spot a pull up bar close by, try to lure them towards the the bar. When they are close and about to attack attack you, grab the bar and complete this exercises to take them them all out one by one. As they walk towards you, kick each each one of them in the chest. They will either fall back or explode. Then go celebrate your victory. Can’t Do It? Do an enema. The likely likely reason you can’t do this exercise is because you have too many
cheeseburgers cheeseburgers in your colon, and squeezing them together in the top position is throwing your heart chakra out of alignment with with your spirit animal. So... fix that.
NOW WHAT ? This is the boss stage of the leg raise dimensions. In reality, once you get to 2 sets of 20 reps of karate master leg raises, you won’t need stronger abs. I’m going to have to write another book to advance beyond this series for those wanting to push the limits. But for now, if you want to make these even harder, there are a few things you can do. Do the movements slower. It’s much harder to do these really slow than it is to explode up, so if you are doing 20 explosive reps, try doing them super slow and see how many you can do. I got 3 sets of 20 of these explosively, and then in my my next workout I decided to do them really slowly. I only got 13/10/9. You will build much more strength doing these exercises slowly. You could also try raising your feet higher higher than waist height. height. Have you ever see Lou Corona doing these these leg raises? His feet almost almost touch his head, and he’s 67 years old. So go higher which which will loosen up your hamstrings and entire backside more. Instead of wondering how you can get stronger in this exercise, think of how you can become more flexible. flexible. Work your way towards folding folding yourself in half like a body contortionist. Once you’ve exhausted all options and really do want to get stronger abs, consider throwing on some ankle weights. I’m a huge fan of pure calisthenics without using any weights, weights, but some people want to
push beyond what is possible with just the body. body. In my opinion, you will start to to build too much bulky muscle, but suit yourself. Start off slow with the lowest weight possible, possible, and start at the 7 th dimension and work your way through the series series again. Only add more weight after you you can slowly do 3 sets of 20 reps of the karate master leg raises again. Then consider adding a tiny bit more weight and starting over. Take a baby step approach with the weights, weights, just like we have with this whole whole book. Slowly make the exercises harder, and allow the body time to adapt. Don’t be a hero and test yourself and see if you can lift 50 pounds of weight with your legs. Slowly add weight to increase your tendon strength, and you won’t injure yourself. I myself haven’t felt the need to t o add weights, I love pure calisthenics calisthen ics and my core feels very strong. I
have strong visible abs, and any further development would be purely for aesthetic reasons, and that’s not what motivates motivates me. Besides, if you want want better looking looking abs, lose more more body fat. Go back to chapter 106 | P a g e
2 about diet, and follow the advice there and you’ll get way mo re visually noticeable results than if you were to add weights to your leg raises. Getting strong and completing the stages in this book are what motivates me, and doing the exercises super slow with full control and discipline is what I strive for now. Perfect your form first, and then ask yourself if you want to move beyond that.
Chapter 15: Squats Welcome to leg leg day. The most skipped skipped day in all of workout land. I will admit it, it, when I first started working out I completely avoided any leg exercises because they were boring to me. I just started doing push ups and pull ups. I figured hey, I ride my bike to get groceries groceries a few times a week, and I go for long walks in the woods; my legs are Herculean in their abilities so I don’t need to do any specific leg exercises. Boy was I a misguided donkey bitch, aimlessly wandering the earth. There are so many benefits to having strong legs; in fact I would argue that they are the muscle group you will notice most in your daily life once you start developing them. them. Most people focus on the upper body, because it looks most impressive in photos. You really notice usually look somebody works out when they have a big chest and strappi ng vascular arms. People don’t usually down to the legs in awe. Men are walking around shirtless in jogging pants and you can’t even see their
legs, your gaze is drawn to their upper body. So unless you wear fluorescent short shorts all the time, show off your goods. Plus, most men have hairy ass legs which can take away from the it’s hard to show magic. But truly strong muscular muscular legs are very attractive in both men and women, and having strong
legs will make more of a difference in your life than any other muscle group.
WHY NOT SKIP LEG D AY ? Think about it, we walk on 2 legs. From standing to walking, jogging jogging to sprinting, climbing stairs, stairs, kneeling down to work on something; our legs come into play in our lives way more often than our forget the summer I spent as a bicycle courier. Riding my bike around town for other muscles. I’ll never forget 8 hours a day, sprinting up steep hills to get packages to their destination destination on time, all the stop and starts
at red lights; by the end of the summer, my legs were Thor like. I would notice it in my ever day life. Walking up a flight of stairs became noticeably noticeably easier. It was almost fun how effortlessly I would would glide up those stairs. There was no leg fatigue when I would ride my bike to get groceries, I could go for long walks and never run out of energy. I felt more solid in my stance, because my base was stronger. Having strong legs was making a noticeable difference difference in my life. Our legs are our base. I remember remember before I started started working out, out, I was 112 pounds pounds of hopelessness. My girlfriend would hug me, and I remember struggling to even keep my balance. It was like I had to put in 107 | P a g e
extra effort to make sure I didn’t didn’t fall over. I felt weak. When I started taking my calisthenics training
more seriously, and I started doing squats and lunges, I noticed that when my girlfriend hugged me now, I felt like I had a solid base to stand on. I could support her and feel her love course through my body, so doing squats will not only give you a stronger base to stand on, they will let love into your heart without sending you crashing down to the earth incapable of standing your own against your 100 pound partner. Leg day is good times. So in the Monkey Strength leg series, you will slowly work your way towards a 1 legged pistol squat where you will lift your entire bodyweight off the ground with 1 leg. An impressive feat that most accomplish. I challenged a bunch of cyclists to see if they professional cyclists and bodybuilders can’t accomplish. could do 20 pistol squats, and so far none of them have been able to do it. Most can’t even do 1 rep. You would think cyclists would have some of the strongest legs out there, I know I felt like I did when I was a bike courier. But cyclists and bodybuilders bodybuilders who squat with heavy heavy weights never use their full range of motion. They also lack the balance and coordination to do 1 legged squats. Most of them will fall backwards if they attempt them. Their strength isn’t functional in all positions. positions. What we do here is build true functional strength using our entire range of motion , and there won’t be a situation out there that you can’t handle. Balance and flexibility are just as important as strength. That’s what the Monkey Strength program is all
about, acquiring full control over our bodies and developing dexterity dexterity and strength in all positions. Leg strength is a huge part of that, so let’s get into the exercises!
1. AIR SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 30 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 50 reps I will admit it. These squats are weird, and something you’ve probably never never done in your life, but this is the easiest squat possible because you are lifting zero weight. weight. You are lifting air. If you can’t lift air, you
should re-examine re-examine your whole life. This exercise is actually actually a play on the shoulder stand yoga pose which has many proclaimed proclaimed health benefits like improving thyroid health, digestion, digestion, releasing lymphatic blockages in your neck and back and other hippy shit like that. that. We are going to use this pose to slowly slowly build your leg strength, and loosen up those knees and hips in preparation for real bodyweight squats.
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Starting Position: Lie down on your back, back, either on a yoga mat mat or your bed ifif it’s firm enough.
Your
arms should be tight next to to your body. I want you to slowly tuck your feet in towards towards your bum, and then push off with one leg to propel the other one up into the air as you push down with your hands for support. With both legs pointing straight up towards the ceiling, your back is lifting off the bed as you anchor yourself with your elbows. elbows. Reach up and support your back with with your hands so just your head, neck, shoulders and elbows are touching the floor. Just getting into this position can be a challenge for some people. You probably don’t lack the strength, but your flexibility might not be up to par. Just get yourself as straight as possible, this is the starting position. Now slowly bring your knees down to the abdomen as far as you can reach, pause for a second, and then slowly push them back up until your body body is straight again. Congratulations, Congratulations, you can now lift air. This will get you used to the squat movement without putting any weight on your joints. Can’t Do It? Make a video of yourself yourself trying to get get into the shoulder shoulder stand pose. As the folds of your
body mush together in a pool of embarrassment, remind yourself that potato chips are not a food group, and then try to complete this exercise.
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2. PLATFORM SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 40 reps Now you will actually be standing on the ground and squatting yourself up off the earth; with the help of a little table of course. You’ll have to find find a knee height stool, or table. Find something to support part of your bodyweight so you don’t have to squat your lumpy body off the ground in its entirety.
Starting Position: Stand in front of your knee height height table with your legs straight straight and your feet about shoulder width apart angled out slightly. slightly . Bend forward so your legs and back are in an L shape, and your arms are flat with your hands on the table. table. With your arms supporting supporting some of your weight, slowly squat down until your hamstrings hamstrings touch your calves. calves. This is the full range of motion in a real squat; your butt is almost touching touching the floor. I see old ladies here in Thailand resting resting in this position, so you have no excuse! It’s a very restful pose when you are flexible enough to do it. So go as low as you can, pause for a second, and then slowly stand back up using both your arms and your legs until you reach the starting position again. Can’t Do It? Imagine a miniature pony encouraging you do it. That should help.
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3. TABLE SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 30 reps This is similar to the platform squats, only the table is higher, and the finishing position has you standing up straight instead of bent at the waist waist like a jackass. This will add slightly more weight weight to your squat, and strengthen your knees for the upcoming dimension dimension where you are no longer supporting any of your body weight with your arms.
Starting Position: Stand in front of a table that is about waist height with your feet roughly shoulder width apart. Place your hands on the table and slowly lower yourself yourself down until your hamstrings touch your your calves while holding onto onto the table for support. Pause for a second, and then use both your legs and arms to stand up until you are completely straight again with your hands still on the table. You are training your lower body to do the full squat movement, just with some weight taken off thanks to your mighty arms. Your knees will thank you later when you are lifting your entire body weight with one leg! Can’t Do It? Go for long walks in nature nature as often as as you can. This will build build leg strength. strength. Just try not
to get eaten by a bear.
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4. BODYBUILDER SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 30 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 50 reps These are what bodybuilders bodybuilders think a squat looks looks like. It’s cute. If you go to any any gym and set your gaze towards the squat rack, you’ll see a freakish being with ungodly amounts of weight digging into their
shoulder blades (doesn’t that look comfortable?) and they’ll be squatting that weight for reps. They only go half way down though. They would probably snap their knees knees in half if they went all the way down to the bottom position, because they haven’t trained their joint strength like you are doing. You’ll be dancing in the street when you ’re 170 with no knee pain if you become a Thunder Monkey Warlord in this series. This is the first unsupported squat where you are lifting your entire bodyweight off the ground, but you will only go half way down. You’ve been very gentle on your knees so far, building strong tendons that can handle your entire bodyweight, and now it’ s time to test them out in the safest way possible, by
using only half your range of motion. This will build the strength strength needed to progress to the real real squats.
Starting Position: Stand up straight with your feet roughly shoulder width apart. Your toes will probably angle outwar outwards ds a bit; just find your most comfortable comfortable position. I usually have my hands down by my sides, and then as I squat down I bring them out in front of me me for balance. Slowly lower yourself yourself down until your thighs are parallel with the floor, pause for a second, and then slowly stand up again. Try to keep your back straight. straight. I’m still working on this myself. You want to avoid having having your spine
curve forward as you squat down. Film yourself from the side, and try to keep your back from rounding out. In the very bottom position, position, your lower back will round round out slightly, but try to keep it as straight straight as possible until then. This requires great flexibility flexibility in your hips, so stretch out those hips! 112 | P a g e
You should be able to tell roughly when your legs are parallel with the floor, if not, do this exercise next to a mirror, or film yourself. yourself. I find making videos of myself working out to to be very helpful, because I can analyze the footage after and look for mistakes. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was doing an exercise perfectly, but after reviewing the video footage, I realized that I looked like a 90 year old man with a spinal disorder struggling struggling to escape a pool filled with invisible sharks. Can’t Do It? Ask one of the bodybuilders bodybuilders in the gym to carry you home, since your legs are of no use
to you anymore.
5. SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 30 reps Congratulations Congratula tions on becoming a Power Squirrel! You can now start traveling through tree branches instead of using the sidewalk. sidewalk. You are now going to use your full range of motion motion like we were designed to do by our creator, Santa Claus. Our legs can bend all the way down until our hamstrings are touching our calves, and they do so for a reason. It’s actually a very comfortable resting position. Some people even fall asleep in it, but most o f us aren’t flexible enough to stay upright in that pose. Try it yourself; if
you find that you have to lift your heels off the ground in order to stay in the seated squat comfortably, then you need to work on your ankle and hip flexibility. These exercises will help with that, but don’t forget to stretch as well. You should stretch out after each workout. Try to become as flexible as possible with every joint in your yo ur body! Doing these full range of motion squats gives us functional strength that allows us to have a solid base to operate in when we need to work work on things close to the ground. They are very helpful for activities activities such as gardening, washing your bathtub, or hiding in your cupboards when playing hide and seek with your neighbours. neighbours. What, you don’t do that? You loser.
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Starting Position: Stand up straight with your feet roughly shoulder width apart, toes angled out slightly, and your hands by your side. Slowly lower yourself yourself down until your hamstrings hamstrings touch your thighs. Go as low as you can. Remember if you can’t go all the way, go as far as you can and you will build the strength to go further further and further down each week. week. Pause at the bottom for a second, second, and then slowly stand back up again with your hands out in front of you for balance. Most people feel like they are falling back slightly with these squats. It’s because they have poor
mobility in their ankles, knees knees and hips. Holding your hands fully stretched stretched out in front of you helps to counter balance that backwards backwards lean and keeps you upright. upright. When you are truly flexible, flexible, you should be able to do these with your arms close to your chest. Can’t Do It? Come to Thailand so you can see all the 90 year old women women in full squats gardening,
then ask yourself why you let your body become so inflexible and lumpy? lumpy?
6. NARROW SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps This squat is similar to the last one, only your feet feet are closer together. together. This will help challenge your balance more, and start to put you into a similar position for the pistol squat. Don’t you dare get distracted by the Thai girl who who walked into my photo shoot. You pay attention to me not her! her!
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Starting Position: Stand up straight with your heels almost touching, and your toes angled out slightly. With your hands by your side, slowly slowly squat down until your hamstrings hamstrings touch your calves moving your arms out in front of you for balance. Pause for a second at the bottom, and then slowly stand back up. If you’ve been diligent in doing your movements slow, you should be able t o do this exercise without falling backwards in the bottom bottom position. If it’s still too awkward, try having your heels raised slightly completed the warlord stage like that, try above your toes with your back to a grassy hill. Once you’ve complete them again on flat ground.
Can’t Do It? Train birds to stand on your arms to act as counterweights so you don’t fall backwards. You’ll need 8 birds.
7. BABY FLAMINGO SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Have you ever seen a majestic baby flamingo flamingo balancing on just one leg out in its natural natural habitat? Me neither. Still, this is an important and fu fun exercise. It’s your first 1 legged squat! squat! In baby flamingo flamingo squats, you’ll be leaning forward as you squat down on 1 leg. The later stages of the 1 legged legged squats
have you leaning backwards, and are much more challenging challenging on your balance. Baby flamingo squats are a very important step to help build up the necessary strength for the pistol squat, while not challenging squat does. Who doesn’t want a your balance too hard. hard. These also work your bum more than a pistol squat nicer looking bum? Think of all the chairs that will be impressed impressed as you sit on them.
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Starting Position: Stand up straight with your feet close together and your hands by your side. Slowly lift one leg off the floor, and bend it behind behind you as you squat down with your other leg. leg. Both hands are out in front of you for balance, and you are leaning forward forward with your body. Squat down until your knee from the other leg is roughly half way to the floor, pause for a second, and then slowly stand back up, keeping the other leg tucked behind you the whole time. Tell me you don’t feel tho se in your bum the next day!
Can’t Do It? Since this is is only a half movement, movement, and you still can’t do it, for your next meal I want
you to bring the food only half way to your mouth.
8. BB GUN SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Congratulations Congratulations on becoming a Mountain Hawk! Use your new found talons of steel to kick doors open for people. You are now ready to attempt a BB gun squat. It’s the baby version of the pistol squat. Same exact movement, but you will only be going down half way to the ground.
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Starting Position: Stand up straight with your feet close together and your hands down by your side. Slowly lift one of your legs straight out in front of you as you squat down with the other leg. Bring your arms out straight in front front of you for balance. Lower yourself down until your thigh thigh is roughly parallel with the floor. Your other leg should be either straight out in front of you or at least a few inches off the ground. Pause for a second, and then slowly stand back up. These are as much about balance and technique technique as they are about strength. strength. Find your center, center, and try not to lean back too far. Keep your weight above above your knee, and push off with your heel to get back into a standing position. Can’t Do It? Consider doing everything everything you used to do with your hands using your feet feet instead.
Eating, washing yourself, giving giving your lover a sensual massage etc. Your legs need all the extra work they can get.
9. BOUNCY PISTOL SQUATS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Now we are going to go through the full range of motion for a pistol squat, but we will assist ourselves out of the bottom position with our hands. There are several ways to achieve this, do what’s most
comfortable for you. You can have a soccer ball by your side, and when you are in the bottom bottom position, push off the soccer ball with your hand to help assist you out of the bottom position. If a ball is too unstable and unpredictable, unpredictable, you can do this exercise beside a small platform like a bed on on the ground, or a small small stool. How I like to do these these personally is when I’m in the bottom position, I put both hands behind me, and push off the floor to get myself myself out of the bottom position. This may be too 117 | P a g e
low for you, and you might need a raised platform behind you. Play around with it, but the idea here is to lower yourself slowly all the way down unassisted, and make sure you are in full control of this position before using your arms to assist yourself back up.
Starting Position: Have a ball by your preferred preferred side, or stand next to a low solid solid object. Standing up straight with your feet close together, slowly lift your non squatting leg straight out in front of you and slowly lower yourself down on one leg until until your hamstrings touch touch your calves. Do this slowly and in full control. I used to fall back a lot when first attempting these, it’s all about balance and flexibility. Pause for a second in the bottom position, and have your hand ready to push off the ball or platform, and use as much leg strength as possible to stand back up. These are no joke. It’s almost a full pistol squat, and one of the harder movements in this series. Just
remember, balance is everything. Technique is everything. Maybe you want platforms on both sides of to a rope and pull yourself up out of the you to push off with, that’s fine. You could even do these next to bottom position. Point is to just assist your legs slightly with your hands in that bottom position to make things easier on your legs for now. 118 | P a g e
Can’t Do It? Invent some sort of jumpsuit with springs on your bum to help you out of the bottom
position.
10.
FLAMINGO SQUATS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Much like the baby flamingo squat, you will be squatting down on 1 leg while leaning forward, but your goal is to gently touch the floor with your knee.
straight with your feet feet close together. together. Slowly move your non squatting Starting Position: Stand up straight leg behind you, bending it at a 90 degree angle as you squat down with the other leg. Lean forward and have both arms straight out out in front of you for balance. Squat down until you gently touch touch the knee of your non squatting leg to the ground. ground. Pause for a second, and without pushing off with your knee, slowly lift yourself back up with your 1 leg. You might want to have a towel towel to make your knee landing more comfortable. comfortable. I find it’s fine on the floor, just t ry to touch down very softly, and land on t he fleshy part in front of your knee, not your knee cap. You may not be able to touch the ground with your knee and make it back up alive to tell your tale. Don’t worry about it; just go down as far as you can. Keep progressing progressing until you can gently touch touch your
knee to the ground, and stand back up. Some people have long thighs thighs and this will be easier for them. Damn you genetically gifted thigh freaks. Don’t fall to the ground with your knee, this should be a slow controlled descent.
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These are the best bum building exercise that I know of, so keep them in your arsenal. I usually finish leg day with a set of these on each leg, even though I can already do the higher dimension pistol pistol squats. I find they compliment the pistol squat perfectly to develop the ideal leg to bum ratio. Can’t Do It? Shake your fist in the air at flat earth Santa for giving you short thighs, but somehow
muster up the determination to “show him” and beat this e xercise.
11.
PISTOL SQUATS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Congratulations, you’re a Thunder Monkey! Apprentice... Apprentice... That is assuming assuming you can can do 10 reps reps of this
incredibly mind altering altering exercise. exercise. This exercise requires requires some serious balance. balance. You lean one inch in the wrong direction, and you might not be able to push yourself back up off the ground. Don’t get frustrated if you keep falling falling back in the bottom position. Just keep working on it, and eventually eventually your brain will adapt and keep you stable and upright. upright. By the time you are nearing the the warlord stage, you will have legs of steel, knees capable of kicking cars over, and thighs that will be comfortable for your lover to sit on.
Starting Position: Stand up straight with your feet close together. Raise your non squatting leg straight out in front of you off the floor as you slowly squat down with the other leg until your hamstrings touch your your calves, keeping your arms arms in front of you for balance. Pause for a second, then slowly push off with your heel, and stand back up.
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You likely have the strength to do this, but if you are struggling to complete this exercise, work more on your flexibility. Film yourself and examine examine your form to see where you’re going wrong. You can see in the photos above, my spine is curved a bit and that’s not ideal. It’s something I’m working on; I’ve
suffered from poor hip mobility my whole life. I’m a Sagittarius, that’s a common problem with us freaks. The spine should be much straighter in a normal human being, but my my body is weird. My posture has opened up a lot since star ting Monkey Strength though, so I’ll just keep plugging away at the bridges until my back is straighter straighter than an arrow. Just do the best you can with what you’ve got. Most people fall backwards in the bottom position of this exercise because they have the ankle flexibility of a pregnant elephant. Be more active with your legs in your daily life. Ride your bike to get groceries, go for long walks, hike up mountains, jog in the forest, and do whatever you can to develop those stabilizer muscles muscles in your legs. Consider getting a standing standing desk and doing whatever work related related things you do while standing instead of sitting. Balance on one leg from time to time. These will eventually become easy for you. When all else fails, grab an object with some weight to it (no more than 5 pounds) and hold it out in front of you while doing these squats. squats. This will keep you from falling back back and allow you to build the strength necessary to do these free handed. Can’t Do It? Try flapping your arms like a bird during this exercise. Maybe you’ll create enough
momentum and lift to propel yourself off the ground, since your legs are useless good for nothing stumps.
NOW WHAT ? This is the boss stage of the leg series. When you can do 2 sets of 20 pistol squats on each leg, and 1 set of 20 flamingo squats to finish off your workout; you will have such powerful legs, you are unlikely to need to make the exercises any more difficult. difficult . But of course I know you will want to, so there are several things you can do. First of all, do these exercises as slowly as you can. We always move faster than we think in these exercises. If you take a solid 2 seconds to lower yourself, yourself, pause for a second, and take 2 or 3 seconds to stand up, it will be much harder than if you drop down down fast and explode back up. So be honest with yourself, and do the movements slowly to develop true strength. Don’t use any bounce in the bottom position to create momentum. momentum. Just power your way up slowly using pure Monkey Strength. You can also try bringing your hands in closer to to your chest instead of straight straight out in front of you. This will make it harder to balance, and will develop some new muscles. You could even move your hands behind you for the ultimate challenge. challenge. On the other hand, you might want to build explosive strength for sports and jumping over people in line at the bank. Try lowering yourself down super slow, then explode up so fast that you actually jump
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off the ground when you come up. If you can do that, you’ll be dunking basketballs even if you’re 4 feet tall. If you really want to develop your leg muscles further and add size, consider adding weights to your pistol squat. Start slow and just just hold a light 5 pound pound object out in front front of you. Then slowly start adding more weight. Never more than 2.5 – 5lbs at a time . Just be careful to keep your balance and don’t drop those weights on your toes. toes. You could try a weighted vest, vest, but it might unbalanc unbalance e you too far to the back. You could try try an ankle weight on your non squatting squatting leg. leg. That will give give you superhero superhero groins. You could also have a friend press down on your arms as you do these. As they press down on your arms, arms, they squat with you, basically basically doing table squats using your arms arms instead of a table. Sounds like a bad idea doesn’t it? It will likely end in the first dual squat related death in history, but you’ll both be in the
record books. If you do end up adding weights, drop your reps down to 2 sets of 15. You’ll end up exhausting yourself
if you do 2 sets of 20 reps holding a 50 pound weight. And finish off with 15 or 20 flamingo flamingo squats.
Chapter 16: Push Ups Good ol’ push ups. I like to think this this was the first exercise exercise ever invented. invented. Some caveman caveman was walking
in the forest with a woven basket full of berries berries and he tripped and fell flat on his stomach. Berries everywhere. The other cavemen started laughing at him and in a panic to save his dignity, he started doing push ups as if he had planned the whole thing out. His tribe members members looked on in awe as the push up was born. They started holding competitions competitions for who could do the the most push ups, and that is also how math was invented. To this day, Krug Thompson holds the record for 397 consecutive sea shells of push ups. Push ups are the ultimate exercise. They not only build up a glorious chest, commanding shoulders and “don’t mess with that guy” triceps; but as you progress to the later stages and start doing 1 arm push ups, they really do work the entire entire body. By doing push ups, you will notice notice the benefits in your daily life. Pushing doors open will become easier, moving moving your fridge will now become possible and having sex for longer than 80 seconds at a time will now be an achievable goal. The great thing about push ups, and most of the exercises in Monkey Strength, is that you can do them anywhere. You don’t need any fancy equipment. Only in the pull up series and the higher higher dimensions of leg raises do you need a pull up bar, and even then you can probably find a horizontal tree branch near your house that will suffice. But with push ups, the only thing holding you back from doing them anywhere anytime is your pride. You might get some funny looks if you start doing them in public, but I eat funny looks for breakfast! They’re delicious. Not that I would ever eat breakfast of course.
Before I got serious about working out, push ups were the only exercise I did and I had a somewhat all of monkey land. There’s just such satisfaction in respectable physique. It’s my favourite exercise in all
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being able to do a 1 arm push up. It’s a primal gorilla chest beating kind of exercise, so bow down to the
almighty push up, it’s one of the best exercises you can do for your body! In this series, we will start pushing ourselves straight against a wall with the least resistance possible to get your shoulders and elbows conditioned conditioned to handle the weight weight of your body. The eventual goal is the 1 arm push up which requires incredible tricep strength as well as an iron core, so keep that in mind as you progress through the series. Really focus on those triceps, and pay close attention to how your building those elbow tendons up. up. You’ll really elbows feel. A lot of these these stages are geared to towards building start to feel them during the 1 arm standing push ups, and when you complete those, the illuminati push ups will give you the mystical tricep strength that your reptilian ancestors tried to pass onto you. You’ll be able to hold a n alligator down down with one hand. hand. Well... A baby baby alligator maybe. maybe. A frog for sure. sure.
DO PROPER PUSH UPS Keep your arms tucked to your sides. sides. Your elbows should bend straight straight back against your body; they should never flare out to the side. The shoulder joint isn’t isn’t designed to turn like that. that. Flared elbow push
ups are one of the worst things you can do for the shoulders. shoulders. Plus they are a lot easier because they they take away the focus on the triceps. You will not only get way less benefit from doing doing them, you will risk injuring yourself. You’ll need strong healthy triceps later on when attempting 1 arm push ups so pay
attention to proper form throughout this whole series. I challenged Vegan Gains (a fellow YouTuber) to a push up contest a few years ago, and I had set the bar at 52. He’s a 6’2, 200 pound guy, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to see if his massive massive arms pounds could push up his giant body more than my tiny arms could push up my tiny body. I was 5’7, 130 pounds
at the time. He never did complete the challenge though. I think it was because one of his high heels broke off when his purse was stolen by an old granny, and he injured injured his breast in the pursuit. So we never did get to see who could do more push ups. Thankfully, a fruitarian named Barnanaboy responded to the challenge, and he beat my 52 by getting 53. That son of a bitch. But they were were sissy half push ups ups with his elbows flared flared out to the side. side. Admittedly, my form was atrocious at the time as well, but his was even worse. I figured, if that was the game we were playing, I’d oblige and I was able to get 6 1 of the saddest looking push ups you’ve ever
seen in your life to win the contest. Barnanaboy disappeared disappeared into the shadows of the jungle that night, and that made me king monkey again so I rightfully returned to my monkey throne. I enjoyed the spoils of victory for awhile, but after receiving much criticism on my form, I started to look into proper push up form and that’s when I discovered what a real push up looked like. I decided to give them a try. With my arms tucked to my my sides, and my elbows going straight straight back instead of flaring out, I was only able to muster muster a measly 35. 35. It was a pretty pretty shocking difference. difference. Real push ups, like you will will learn how to do here in Monkey Strength are much harder on the triceps, and much easier on all your joints because your body is now properly properly aligned. This will build build real strength strength and keep you young and and healthy into your 300 th year when you move up into the mountains to live with your goats. 123 | P a g e
1. STANDING PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 30 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 50 reps Let’s face it, you’re a Donkey Bitch. You’re not ready for real push push ups yet. Even if you think you can do
them, you need to start here and build up your joint mobility and tendon strength first. Standing push ups will train your nervous system to get used to the pushing movement. When you become a warlord in this dimension, you’ll be ready to move on and let gravity gravity have its shot at defeating defeating you. These standing ones may surprise you in how difficult difficult they are though. You will definitely definitely feel the burn if you are doing them slowly and in full control. control. Which you will, right?! right?!
palms on the wall with your Starting Position: Find a wall, or a tree (you hippy) and place your palms hands straight out out in front of you. Your feet should be be close together. together. With your hands pointed pointed up towards the ceiling, I want you to slowly lean in towards the wall until your forehead gently touches it, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back off the wall until you are standing up straight again. Can’t Do It? You can’t push yourself off a wall? What can you do?
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2. INCLINE PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 40 reps Now we are going to decrease the angle of your body to the floor, which will shift more weight to your front side making these harder to do. Increasing the leverage is essentially equal to adding weights. I want you to be somewhere half way between a standing push up and a real push up flat on the ground. Your body should be at a 45 degree angle to the ground ground roughly. To do this, find an object that is roughly waist height for you you to push off of. If this is too low for you, find something something higher up to decrease the leverage and make this exercise easier until you can get down to that 45 degree angle.
Starting Position: Find a solid table, couch arm, or any solid flat surface about waist height that you can put your hands on. Make sure it’s not going to slide away as you put your weight into it. Put your hands flat on the surface about shoulder width apart. Find the perfect distance from the object for your feet so your body forms a flat line perfectly straight with your arms straight down on the surface of the shady object you decided to risk your life on. Keep your feet close together almost almost touching, and then slowly lower yourself down until your chest comes in contact with the object, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up to the top position. Work on getting your form perfect. No spine bending, no flaring of the elbows, and keep the movements slow and steady.
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Can’t Do It? Look for a flying spoon that throws food into into your mouth automatically, automatically, since your arms
are basically useless.
3. KNEELING PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 20 reps Warlord: 3 sets of 30 reps Now we are on the ground doing push ups, but our pivot point is not our feet , it’s our knees. This will take a significant amount of weight off your arms in preparation for the full push up.
Starting Position: Get a towel or yoga mat for your knees to rest on. Kneel on your towel towel with your feet together, and place both hands flat on the ground about shoulder width apart. Slowly lower yourself down with your elbows tucked tight against your body, not flaring out to the side. Stop when your chest is a few inches off the ground, pause for a second, and then slowly push your awesome self back up until your arms are straight again. This exercise is identical to a full push up as far as your chest and arms are concerned, it’s just slightly
less weight to push. Can’t Do It? Take your knee towel, you know the one that that you would have used to better your life by
strengthening strengthenin g your body with this exercise? And wear it to work instead. S ince you’ve given up all hope of having a respectable body to look at, you might as well just drape yourself in towels.
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4. BABY PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 15 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 25 reps Now we will be in the full push up stance, but we will only go go down about half way down. You baby. The hardest part of a push up is getting out of the bottom position, so we will give you some time to strengthen your body before before attempting the the full push ups. Baby steps young monkey.
Starting Position: Grab a soccer ball, and place it under your hips so you’ll know how far to go down during this exercise. While kneeling down with both hands on the floor about shoulder width apart, and the ball under your hips, extend your legs out behind you so that your toes are on the ground instead of your knees. Keep your feet feet close together; together; your body should form form a straight straight line now. Slowly lower yourself down until your hips touch the ball, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up. Don’t you dare bend your body down so your your hips touch the ball while your arms barely
moved. You’re not sexually thrusting at the ball, keep your body straight. Play with different positions positions of the ball if you are struggling. Placing it under your knees will restrict the amount of depth you can go down, making the movement easier. Placing the ball under your chest will allow you to go deeper down, making the exercise harder. Work your way up to doing these with the ball under your chest before you move onto the next dimension. Can’t Do It? Maybe just balance the ball on your head. At least you’ll have a cool party trick to show
people.
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5. PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Congratulations Congratulations on becoming becoming a Power Squirrel! Squirrel! Think of all the dogs dogs you can outrun now. You are finally ready to do an actual push up. Full bodyweight, strict strict form and slower than than a grandpa at a supermarket.
Starting Position: Get into a comfortable push up position with your hands roughly shoulder width apart, and your feet close together. Having your feet together forces you to engage your core more in order to keep you from toppling over to one side. It’s almost like taking the training wheels of f your bike; you now have to balance on your own. Now slowly lower yourself yourself down until your chest is a few inches off the ground, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up. This is a great exercise to keep in your arsenal. Some days, when you want to just switch things up a notch, even if you have advanced beyond this dimension, it’s fun to just se e how many push ups you can do. Throw in an endurance day every once once and awhile and do 2 or 3 sets of as many push ups as you can just for fun. You can also elevate your feet onto onto your couch or something high high to make these even more challenging challenging as a bonus set. I usually do 10 push ups as a warm up for the 1 armed push ups, and often finish off those workouts with elevated illuminati illuminati push ups just for fun. Yes it’s fun. Can’t Do It? Consider teaching a high school gym class. Most high school gym gym teachers can’t do a full push up either so you’ll fit right in.
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6. 1 ARM STANDING PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 25 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 50 reps You are ready for your first first 1 arm push up! up! Kind of. We are going to to be standing up doing these against a wall, just like the first exercise in this series, but we are only using 1 arm now. These will start to strengthen your triceps for the harder stages to come, and they will also get you used to what a 1 arm push up feels like form wise. You will notice your core engaging engaging more as your body tries to compensate compensate for having only one limb to balance on.
Starting Position: Stand up straight facing a wall with your feet close together, and place whichever hand you think is weakest weakest on the wall fully extended in front of you. Always start with with your weak arm, and never beat the reps with your strong arm. That way your weak arm has a chance to catch up. I like to place my hand in line with my shoulder horizontally, but slightly lower than shoulder height. Experiment with the position that feels best for you. Slowly lean towards the wall with just your one magnificent arm until your forehead gently touches the wall, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back away until you are straight again. You will know after the first rep whether whether your hand is in a comfortable position position or not. Make the necessary adjustments adjustments until it feels right. Just like the other push ups, your elbows are tucked close to your body and bending back straight not flared out. You will really feel this exercise exercise in your triceps. You will feel it even more in the illuminati illuminati push ups in the next dimension, so I wanted to prepare you with something a little lighter to get your triceps used to
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working harder. This exercise will really strengthen the tendons in your elbows so by the time you are doing 1 arm push ups, you’ll be giggling at how strong you feel . Can’t Do It? Next time you’re having sex, try balancing yourself on just one arm. It might not be the best sex you ever had, but at least you’ll have a better chance at completing this exercise on your next
attempt. Make sure to to switch arms half way through. So switch at about 15 seconds.
7. ILLUMINATI PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps These push ups are an ancient secret that have been buried for thousands of years in the deserts of Tibet. Until now. These are the secret push ups that “they” don’t want you to know about! They give you molten plutonium triceps with the density of a neutron star. Illuminati push ups are much more tricep and elbow intensive than regular push ups, but you are ready for them now.
hands close together so your thumbs thumbs Starting Position: Kneel down on the floor, and place your hands and pointer fingers are almost touching each other. That will form the diamond illuminati sign that will signal to your reptilian overlord ancestors that you’re re ady for battle. Have your hands maybe an inch
apart, I find it gets uncomfortable during the exercise if they are t ouching, especially if you haven’t cut your nails in awhile you hippy. Now bring your feet back so they are close close together, and lower yourself yourself 130 | P a g e
down until your chest touches the back of your hands, pause for a second, and then slowly push yourself back up to the top. Keep your elbows tucked close close to your body. Even though your hand position has curved curved a bit compared to a regular push up, you should still focus on keeping k eeping your arms close to your body, and never flare your elbows out. hobby. Since you don’t want triceps with the density of a Can’t Do It? Maybe begin star gazing as a hobby.
neutron star, you can at least look at stars from a safe distance without hurting yourself.
8. LEBRON PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Congratulations Congratulations on becoming becoming a Mountain Hawk! The world will will never be the same. same. You are now ready ready to start focusing on one arm instead instead of two (or three for my homies from Chernobyl). Chernobyl). You will still be using both arms, but one will be on a basketball, and the uneven nature of this push up will work the non ball hand harder. Also your reps reps will double. Although your your goal is the same as the last exercise, exercise, 2 sets of 20 reps, I want you doing that for each arm. It’s a lot more work, which brings a lot more results. You can handle it, you’re a Mountain Hawk!
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Starting Position: Kneel down on the floor with a basketball in front of you. Yes, I regret not buying a basketball for the Lebron movements. movements. Assume the same same position as a regular push up, only one of your hands will be on the ball (your strong hand) and the other hand will will be on the floor. With your feet close together, your weaker arm straight, and your strong arm slightly bent on the basketball; slowly lower yourself down down until your chest touches the the back of the hand on the ball. Pause for a second here, channel the inner strength of Lebron James and then slowly push yourself back up to the top. Remember, your arms are always tucked close to your body, no flaring of those elbows! I swear to god if you flare them... The hand on the ground will be doing more work, work, especially when you get get in the lowest position. The hand on the ball will still get a good workout, especially your triceps as they never really get a chance to rest since your arm is always bent and under tension. These will slowly get you used to doing 1 arm push ups, and the increased increased workload will have you gaining gaining more muscle as well. Win win for you. Take a short break before switching the ball to your other arm; give it a chance to recover. Can’t Do It? Instead of pushing pushing off the basketball with one hand, pick the ball up and throw throw it into a
hoop. If you you practise practise enough, maybe you’ll become the next L ebron James and with your millions of dollars you can buy a green screen and hire a film crew to lift you up with invisible wires to make it look like you can do this exercise.
9. BABY 1 ARM PUSH UPS Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps You are so strong right now. You are about to attempt your first real 1 arm push up, but I’ll go easy on you. Only lower yourself half way down so you don’t don’t snap your arms in half like a fruitarian trying to lift
a watermelon into their shopping cart by themselves.
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Starting Position: Get into a standard push up pose with both arms arms on the ground, but spread your legs wide apart as if you were on a first date. Now that we are doing 1 limbed movements, we need to spread our feet wider so we can balance ourselves better without twisting our spine and puncturing our dimension. spleen. We’ll talk about this more in the final dimension. Place a soccer ball (or a makeshift device because you left your soccer ball in Chiang Mai) directly beneath your hips. Start with your weaker arm and place your hand roughly shoulder width apart like you would in a regular push up. You might inch your hand a little closer closer to your chest if it feels right. This is the tricky part, finding the perfect placement for your hand so it’s at t he right angle to where you
feel comfortable and strong pushing your entire bodyweight off the ground with 1 arm. Now take your other hand off the ground and place it behind your back or on the back of your thigh like I’m doing. You should now be anchored with both feet, and just 1 arm. Slowly lower yourself down until your hips touch the ball. Don’t dip your hips to accomplish this you hip dipping asshole. Keep your back straight straight and use your mighty arms arms to reach this position. position. Your body should remain perfectly straight, straight , no twisting to the side with your hips. It should look just like a regular push up except your other arm is resting resting on your thigh like a jerk. Pause for a second when your hip touches the ball, and then slowly slowly push yourself back up to the starting position. position. Move the ball up to your chest to become a warlord of this dimension. Those few extra inches are what warlords are made of. Since this is a half movement, finish your workout off with a full range movement like the illuminati push ups, or even elevated illumanti push ups with your feet up on your bed. I find it extremely satisfying to complete my 2 working working sets, and then have a fun set at the end where I switch switch things up a notch. It keeps things interesting, and there are no rep targets for the last set, just do as many as you can and have fun. Can’t Do It? Since you’re so easily bullied into submission, never leave the house with more than
$10 dollars, s ince there’s a good chance someone will take it from you with little to no resistance. Never carry more than you are willing to lose.
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10.
ANCHOR PUSH UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Now we are going to be using our full range of motion with 1 arm, but assisting slightly with our other arm stretched out fully on a soccer ball. Similar to the Lebron push ups, but the ball will be much further out to the side, and therefore won’t be able to help as much due to the increased distance from your body.
Starting Position: Grab a soccer ball and get into a regular push up position with your feet close together. Your hands should be about shoulder width apart, and the ball should be placed next to your strong arm. Always start 1 limbed movements with your weak arm, remember? With one hand anchored on the ground, place the other hand on the ball with your fingers pointing out to the side and move the ball as far out to your side as you can while keeping both of your arms straight. Now slowly lower yourself yourself down until your chest is just a few inches off the ground. ground. The hand on the ball will start to move out further away from you as you do this, try to keep it straight the whole time. Pause for a second at the bottom, and then slowly push yourself back up with both hands as the ball gets closer to you again. If you are struggling with this one, keep the hand on the ball a little closer to your body, and bend your arm a bit at the elbow. This will allow you to help more with that arm and make the movement easier. Do it like this until you become a warlord in this dimension, and then do it properly with your arm fully extended to conquer this dimension once and for all. Give yourself a little break after after doing the first arm before moving moving on to the next arm. If you do your next set right away, your other arm will still be a little fatigued from your first set, and it won’t be at full 134 | P a g e
doing sets back to back in as little time as possible, just relax you go getter capacity. I’m not a fan of doing not a Power Squirrel panicking to find enough nuts before winter anymore; you’re a asshole. You’re not Mountain Hawk now. You should be enjoying yourself. Sometimes I take a few minute between sets to just relax and breathe the fresh air if I’m outside. Or I’ll read some hater comments on YouTube i f I’m at
home. It’s always illuminating to find out more about the many flaws you have from people on the internet. I had no idea my armpit hair was too long before starting a YouTube channel. Can’t Do It? Ask Elon Musk Musk if he has any room in his his space car to take you to to the moon. The gravity
is a little lighter up there, so these should be easier for you. Just be careful not to push up too hard and float away into the never ending darkness eternal.
11.
THUNDER MONKEY PUSH UPS
Apprentice: 2 sets of 10 reps Warlord: 2 sets of 20 reps Congratulations Congratulations on becoming a Thunder Monkey! Monkey! No one will ever take your bananas again.
You’ve made it to the boss stage! You are finally ready ready to rise off the flat earth into kinghood. kinghood. You will
be lifting your entire bodyweight off the ground with 1 arm, and you will be using your full range of 135 | P a g e
motion. You’ve already done the half motion of this exercise, so it’s not much of a stretch for you to
complete the whole thing. Actually that’s exactly what it is, you have to stretch further. I hate when I instantly contradict myself.
Starting Position: Get into a classic push up position with your 1 arm directly beneath your shoulder, but instead of having having your feet close together; together; spread them as far apart as you can. Bring your other arm behind your back, or rest rest it on your thigh. Slowly lower yourself yourself down until your chest is just an inch or two off the ground. Your body remains perfectly straight the whole time just like a regular push up, no bending of the back and no twisting of the hips. hips. Pause for a second in the bottom position, position, and then push your monkey ass back up to the top. See that wasn’t so hard was it? You probably had the strength to do this several exercises ago, but you didn’t have the much more important tendon strength in your elbows that will keep you injury free for
life. If you start these too early and you cheat yourself yourself through the other steps, steps, you will end up hurting spent so much time building building up. Don’t rush through those shoulders and elbows of yours that you’ve spent
any of the dimensions, and you’ll be able to accomplish these without exploding.
Can’t Do It? Start wearing a cape everywhere you go. That should help convince yourself that you possess the superhero strength required to do these push ups. That, or you’ll be taken away to an insane asylum, and since you will spend the rest of your days in a straight jacket, you will have a good excuse for not being able to do these push ups.
’
OH WE RE NOT FINISHED The eventual goal of the thunder monkey push ups is to accomplish them with your feet close together keeping your body completely straight straigh t during the entire movement. No twisting out to the side with your hips either. That is the very advanced version of this this move, and it will take some serious strength strength to achieve. It might not even be possible, I can’t do it myself. For now, just try to survive the basic
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version without having a heart heart attack, then we can talk about advancing advancing past it. When you are ready to tackle the real Thunder Monkey push up, here’s how I suggest you do it.
Warning:
Don’t twist your hips out to the side like pictured above. above. It’s an awkward and potentially harmful movement. If you can’t can’t do the movement perfectly straight, don’t don’t even attempt it. If you were looking down on yourself from a bird’s eye view, say you had a near death experience ex perience because this exercise was
too hard and you are now floating above your body with your monkey spirit; as you look down on your body it should be perfectly straight just like a regular push up. Not this sad looking looking boomerang shape you see above. The reason my body is twisting like that is because I lack the tricep strength to do this movement perfectly straight. I’ve never seen anyone do do it, so I don’t feel too too bad. But that’s what I’m
working towards even if it is impossible. I suggest you start with the original thunder monkey push up with your legs spread very wide apart, and become a warlord in that dimension. Then when you feel comfortable, move your feet a few inches closer together and try the exercise like that. If you can’t keep yourself straight, you’re feet are too close. This should look exactl exactlyy like the original exercise, exercise, only your feet are slightly slightly closer together. That is the only thing that changes. The closer you have your feet together, the harder it will be to balance yourself because of the tremendous core strength required. Not to mention the triceps of steel you must possess to get yourself out of the bottom bottom position position alive. So while I’ve never actually seen someone do this push up with their feet touching, and it might be more of a myth than an actual movement that humans are capable of doing, I will work towards it for the challenge. Shoot for the stars my friend. And you better believe I will be making a video when I accomplish accomplish it. Race ya?
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NOW WHAT ? push up that I just showed showed you. We don’t even I highly doubt you will ever need to advance beyond the push know if it’s physically possible yet, and you want to make it harder?! Ok let’s assume that eventually,
you will be able to do 2 sets of 20 Thunder Monkey push ups with a perfectly straight straight body and your feet close together. What’s a monkey monkey to do after after that?
There are several ways to advance beyond this without adding weight. One would be to do the spend more time under under tension. So really focus on movement slower of course. It’s harder, and you will spend
that form, and control yourself through every second of the movement. The second way to advance beyond this dimension would be to do these with your legs elevated on a higher surface. An elevated thunder monkey monkey push up will be much harder, and work your shoulders more. But then you are getting into 1 arm handstand handstan d push up territory. That may fatigue you for handstand day, but you could try progressing through the dimensions again with your feet elevated and see how much harder that is. If it’s negatively affecting your hand stand day, move those days further apart, or take more rest days. Or just abandon that whole idea you elevated monkey! If you must, get a weighted vest but add weight slowly. Start off with as little as possible, and consider starting back at regular push push ups and working your way up through the dimensions dimensions again. Slowly add weight over time, don’t rush it. Just like this whole program, program, you have to slowly build your way up to
the harder movements to avoid injury, so don’t just throw on a 60 pound vest and ex pect your tendons to be able to keep up without without falling apart. apart. Add as little weight weight as possible when you move on. 2.5 lbs or 5lbs max. Condition your body properly, properly, and you will keep getting getting stronger safely. safely. One interesting way to add weights to the thunder monkey push ups is to have a weight in your opposite hand. Hold a light weight with the arm that is behind your back, and have it so that the weight is hanging off the side of your body on the same side of the arm that is doing the pushing. This will help counter the lean, but be careful. It can be an awkward movement if you are going to failure holding that weight. You might drop it on your cat, and then all you’ll be able to think about about is how he will exact his revenge on you. Will it be while while you sleep? Or will he hold it it over you for years years to come, pouncing on you when you least expect it? These are the real questions in life. life.
Final Thoughts So that is the program in a nutshell. It’s really fun to advance through the stages, and see your strength
progressing progressin g each week. On day 1, take a shirtless before picture from all angles. Then start tracking your progress by writing down how many reps you do for every single exercise. Also write down the exact date that you started, and just try to improve each week. Don’t get discouraged when you have a bad week and can’t even beat the reps you did from the previous previous week. It happens to all of us. The
universe works in mysterious ways, you don’t always progress in a linear fashion. fashion. I’ve had a few 138 | P a g e
downslides in my workouts where I got weaker each week for 3 weeks, then bust through and hit a personal best on the 4 th week. Just stay persistent, persistent, your body body is always getting getting stronger. Unless your diet is mainly fruit loops and popcorn, then then you might just be malnourished. malnourished. If your nutrition and sleep are dialled in, just have faith in the program and let your body grow at the pace it wants. The higher dimensions of this program are serious feats of strength, so give your body time to recover and rest as much as possible. Your body might be thinking... “Did this jac kass really just make me do five 1 arm handstand push ups?” You might need a few weeks to recover from that as your body goes into overdrive adding new muscle fibers to your shoulders and strengthening strengthening up your support tendons. Just t he next go with the flow. Aim to beat your personal best every week, and if you don’t, aim to beat it the week. If you feel you aren’t progressing, look at your diet, sleep habits and other lifestyle factors that may be weakening your monkey monkey ass. You may just need to up that protein and fat. You can email me your before and after photos at
[email protected] and I might make a video one day featuring all you Thunder Monkeys out there who went from skinny to shredded, and did so in a healthy way with no injuries. injuries. If you want coaching for Monkey Monkey Strength, you can email me me and set up a Skype consult. If you ever feel like you are stuck in a dimension dimension and can’t progress, I can help you get past it. Be on the lookout for the Monkey Strength DVD. Once I can complete that straight Thunder Monkey Push Up with my feet close together, I’ll put together a dvd of all the exercises. exercises. It will either either be available
on www.payhip.com where you bought this book, or I will add it to a tier on my patreon page over at www.patreon.com/vegetablepolice it’s much easier to follow along with the program when you can see exactly how to do each exercise. exercise. I tried to put as many pictures in this book as possible, but the the video is going to be much more precise, and I’ll do some funny voiceovers giving you tips to complete each exercise if you’re stuck. I’ll make a video announcing when and where it will be available, but definitely
consider signing up to my patreon patreon account anyways for the the monthly Q&A! You can ask your Monkey Strength questions there for as little as $1 a month! Consider starting your own YouTube channel and posting your progress through the Monkey Strength program to inspire others. others. Tell your friends about the program program and help them off their lazy butts butts so you can work out together. Hold each other accountable. accountable. What good is a Thunder Monkey if they don’t have any Thunder Monkey friends to wrestle with? Do this program together together with your partner, or your kids. Find a friend and get strong together; together; you can motivate motivate each other to the top! There’s nothing like working out with some good friends, I had a blast working out with my friends in Chiang Mai at Go Gym, testing each other’s strength. Look for the Vegan vs Carnivore workout video on my Vegetable Police YouTube channel to see all the fun we had! So thanks so much for purchasing this book! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I really believe in the program. I do it myself, and who knows, maybe a Gorilla Strength sequel will have to be written to advance beyond the boss stages of this realm. realm. Keep an eye out for that, and thanks again for the support! Subscribe to my Vegetable Vegetable Police YouTube channel for more tips on how to do the exercises properly, and all the different different variations you can throw in. As well as nutrition and other health health tips 139 | P a g e
presented in a light hearted humorous fashion just like this book was. Monkey Strength shirts are available over at www.vegetablepolice.threadless.com Lots of other designs like Thunder Monkey shirts for the pros, and Donkey Bitch shirts for the beginners. Go get strong young monkey. May the thunder flow through your monkey blood.
Helpful Resources: www.YouTube.com/user/canadianwargod Subscribe to my Vegetable Police YouTube Channel www.patreon.com/vegetablepolice Sign up to the Patreon for access to the monthly Q&A www.vegetablepolice.threadless.com Monkey Strength merch www.vegetablepolice.bandcamp.com My music to motivate you during your workouts
[email protected] Email for Skype consults or sending your before and after pictures
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