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How To Assemble a Classic Cheese Board

(Image credit: Lauren Volo)

A movie night at home is one of my favorite ways to spend time with my friends. Everyone can get comfortable on the couch and you get to take movie snacks beyond the standard soda and popcorn. I like to serve hearty snacks and small plates that become a meal in themselves. These recipes are easy on the host to make, and will leave everyone happy to change it up from the popcorn routine.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/date-night-menu-10-small-plates-for-movie-night-with-your-best-buds-236099′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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(Image credit: Devon Jarvis)

This cart is so spiffy it will make you want to mop your floors, morning, noon, and night. Okay, maybe not, but it will help tackle the headache you get when you’re screaming, “Where is that sponge I saved specifically for scrubbing the oven?”

Take a deep breath. With its cool steel construction and narrow silhouette, which allows for ultra-flexible placement in your home, the IKEA RÅSKOG cart is the answer to your cleaning supply storage dilemma.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/the-ikea-raskog-cart-as-cleaning-kit-236479′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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Who says you have to say goodbye to s’mores when summer ends? These warm, gooey treats deserve to be enjoyed year-round — especially this time of year, since you’re likely have a few too many chocolate bars lying around the house. Gather them up and you’ve got Halloween s’mores.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/halloween-smores-236348′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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Ask a hundred people you meet this week what instances spurred their biggest growth in life (any dimension of it) and I’ll wager most of those stories will fall under the umbrella of “mistakes.” And the bigger the flub, you’ll find, the more learning (and benefit) they probably received in the long-term. You’d think that knowing this we’d welcome the missteps and embrace them as the natural, productive, and highly potent opportunities they are. But not so much. Instead, we live in fear of them, try to circumvent them, endeavor to hide them even when they inevitably happen. We get thrown off by a skewed perception (social media and otherwise driven) that others magically operate out of perfection. We fall prey to the idea that when we make a mistake, we have a problem instead of an opening. It’s too bad really—because in doing so we cut ourselves off from perhaps our most effective catalysts for change…and success.

When we think of success, our minds naturally zero in on the desired outcome. Success is the ultimate goal, the end product, the final result we wanted all along. While successfully attaining an individual outcome is gratifying, there’s the whole process from desire to result that we tend to gloss over, not to mention the bigger perspective we get on what’s possible to desire (and achieve). Mistakes are an essential part of any transformation. Not only do they underscore the whole fallible humanity we’re working with, but they bust open the entire process of transformation, helping us break through into deeper dimensions of commitment while redirecting us toward more constructive pathways.

The challenge is to learn to accept the messiness of change—health change, career change, family change, lifestyle change. We can, of course, take a lesson from history here. Life is and has always been trial and error. Human—and all of—evolution was one massive set of false starts and broken lines with only a few (and their progeny) getting out alive. There’s perspective on the five pounds you gained over the summer.

It’s simple really. If we can just accept the patchy, errant nature of progress, we have a better chance of using our mistakes to propel rather than sink our success. Here are a few thoughts on that.

1. Mistakes move us to learn

Sure, failure smarts, but when the sting wears off, we find ourselves more open to the feedback of the experience (hence the saying, “There is no failure, only feedback.”) Mistakes knock us off our rigid axis, freeing us from the delusion that the way were doing it was the best way, let alone the only way. Although we of course knew this intellectually, mistakes help us absorb this truth very quickly.

We land in a place of teachability, a place in which we’re more receptive to new influences and perspectives. Call it necessity or humble pie.

Maybe we’ve been stuck in a fitness routine that served us well in our 30s and 40s that doesn’t meet our needs in later decades, and it took an injury to finally realize it. Maybe we thought after five years of being gluten free that eating a stack of pancakes wouldn’t be a big deal for our IBS. The feedback makes a grand statement we won’t soon forget.

After the inevitable regret, the point here is that we become willing to learn, willing to do it a different way, willing to build resolve. We’re motivated to avoid injury. We’re committed to give up foods or stressors that don’t serve us. Our brains themselves are even supercharging these efforts, operating at heightened sensitivity. Research shows we have a unique form of memory known as error memory, which helps us perform motor tasks differently. Likewise, serious food reactions can result in instinctual aversion. Far from mere avoidance learning, we can take on a mindset that makes the whole blunder feel like a positive move when we put it in context or see how we can use the information to move our health forward.

A saying I’ve heard attributed to a few people is “I never lose. I either win or learn.” Make this your mantra, and be willing to always ask what the lesson is.

2. Mistakes give rise to healthy self-compassion

It’s a truth that’s unfortunately lost on too many people. In contrast to the stereotypical drill sergeant model of continual butt kicking, showing ourselves self-compassion is a key motivator to keep progressing toward our goals. Research confirms that compassionate acceptance of our own mistakes enhances our enthusiasm and determination to move forward toward our goals.

A junk food binge won’t, in fact, help you improve your health or lose weight. But stressing about or abusing yourself over it won’t either. Use the chance to detach from the choices, offer up compassion, and take a nonjudgmental but discerning look at what set the chain in motion and what the real effect was. (It probably wasn’t as enjoyable as you thought when it was all said and done.) What did you need that you weren’t getting? What reserves (of patience, of self-care, of sleep/rest, of solitude, of activity) were running low? How can you take better care of yourself next time? A bit of kindness goes a long way in making the best of a situation and applying it for your benefit in the future.

3. Mistakes free us from sabotaging fears and help us take more positive risks

It’s amazing the number fear can do on our health efforts. When we fear a certain outcome (e.g. regaining the weight, injuring ourselves, not training adequately for a race, coming in last with something, doing anything we felt pressured to take on, etc.), we give it energy and attention. Our mind at times can even compulsively get wound around it. We become so entranced with trying desperately to tread the edge that we end up falling right in.

And then it’s done. Having hit up against the thing we have feared the most, there’s a certain relief. The biggest bogey isn’t trying to break down the psychic door. It’s here on the couch sitting next to us. And suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a catastrophe to live with. Not our first choice, but not the complete disaster we stressed so much about averting.

There’s a certain fearlessness that comes with “failure”—as in multiple failures, time and time and time again. It’s one way elite athletes actually build resilience and hone discipline. Because the more fearless we are, the less inhibited we are, and this opens up major possibilities.

The cliche (but still insightful) question goes, “What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?” A better version might be, “What would you attempt if you realized that failure didn’t matter and wouldn’t be the last word?”

Because if we’re not making mistakes, we’re not taking big enough risks…

4. Mistakes reboot our motivation

It might seem counterintuitive. What knocks us on our duff is what’s going to help us win the race? With a little resilience, yes. We admit we haven’t been living up to our healthy ideals, and it’s taken a toll. Even when we’ve been chugging along in the usual routine, it’s easy to get complacent, easy to check out. We might have discipline to keep going with whatever healthy behaviors we’ve put into place, but we can drift away from the core of what we’re doing.

Hitting a major snag changes that. Suddenly, we’re not operating on autopilot anymore. We have to think once again about what we’re doing. We have to be solution-minded, and to do that we reinvest.

If we find ourselves in the midst of a panic attack because we’ve let our stress levels skyrocket, if we take a spill on the treadmill because we’re overtired from staying up late too many nights, if we realize our waistline has crept up because we’re trying to eat the way we did a decade ago when hormonal reality was different, we’re going to have to get creative and commit.

5. Mistakes move us from an improvement mindset to an expansion mindset

This is big. And maybe the point people most commonly miss.

Mistakes move us out of the small view of success as honing a skill to (supposed) perfection and into a enlarging perspective that embraces success as living into encompassing actualization and fulfillment. To move on from them, we view mistakes against the larger backdrop of the vision we have for our lives. Doing so helps us see them in right proportion (i.e. not a big deal in the grand scheme). We surrender the loss, in other words, to re-affirm the vision and gather ourselves to keep pushing forward.

Success can be bench pressing a particular amount, but that’s a situational, limited view. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a performance goal, but it focuses on a skill, not a life.

Most of us want a successful life.

That means not just improving what already exists, what we’re already operating out of. Mistakes keep us nimble and creative, open to a larger picture, focused on expansion rather than perfection. They might disappoint us in the moment but ultimately remind us of the overarching design we’re aiming for.

6. Mistakes remind us that it’s all a grand experiment

Finally, mistakes oblige us to remember that all of our efforts, whatever they come to or don’t come to, are how we meet the game of life each day. The more passionately we play, the more we get out of it. But that invariably means more, not fewer, screw-ups and even some errors of colossal proportion.

Mistakes keep us flexible and attentive. Engaged with life rather than with routine. And which life would you rather have?

Thanks for reading today, everyone. Share your thoughts on mistakes, failure and rebooting below.

The post 6 Reasons Why Mistakes Are Important for Success appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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In case you hadn’t heard, Gilmore Girls is coming back on Netflix for four brand-new episodes on November 25. In anticipation of this very important day, Netflix transformed 200 coffee shops across the country to look like Luke’s diner from the show. The coffee shops were transformed for one day only — yesterday, October 5 — from 7 a.m. to noon.

Did you miss out? Don’t worry. Here are all the best Instagram photos of the event across the country so you can live vicariously through them.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/the-best-instagram-photos-from-gilmore-girls-luke-s-diner-pop-ups-237109′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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If sheet pan suppers are a major player in your weeknight dinner rotation, this combination of smoky kielbasa and Brussels sprouts bring that same ease and sophistication with a five-ingredient shopping list and 30-minute cook time.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-smoky-roasted-brussels-sprouts-and-kielbasa-234103′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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I used to be an insufferably picky eater. I hated all meat, most vegetables, spicy food, nuts — the list went on and on. I was afraid to try any new foods because, what if I didn’t like them?

That apprehension made me reflexively dislike anything unfamiliar I put in my mouth, leaving me even more fearful of trying it again, a self-reinforcing cycle that left me living on a diet of cereal, fruit, and rice and beans.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve worked on expanding my palate, with the help of my partner, Charlie, who is a phenomenal and creative cook. Still, I tended to play it safe, culinarily speaking. Until our daughter came along.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/how-dinner-changed-when-i-found-out-my-daughter-has-food-allergies-236100′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

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Baking soda, a mainstay of many baking recipes, has colonized territory way beyond the baking rack. It can be found lurking in the backs of refrigerators, in cleaning kits tucked beneath the sink, and in the list of ingredients for natural deodorants and toothpastes. And while Arm & Hammer is largely responsible for making baking soda the household staple it is today, we’ve been using baking soda for millennia: Back in 3500 BCE, the Ancient Egyptians used it as a cleaning agent and to dry out bodies for the process of mummification.

So, what makes baking soda so special that we can eat it but also use it to fight rust and tarnish? The answer lies in its unique chemical properties.

<p><a href=’http://www.thekitchn.com/why-is-baking-soda-such-a-good-cleaner-236104′><strong>READ MORE »</strong></a></p>

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Today you take your first steps towards becoming a ninja/jedi/assassin/superhero, without needing to step foot in a gym.

Interested? Of course you are!

That’s 4 amazing things all combined into a nerd mecha-robot.

Here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter if you’re a 300-pound guy who wants to lose weight and get back in the dating scene; it doesn’t matter if you’re a mom of three who wants to drop a little fat and gain a little muscle; it doesn’t matter if you’re an in-shape twenty-something who’s just looking for a new workout challenge.

Right now — right in front of you— are all the tools you need to get into amazing shape and live a healthier, happier life.

So…just where the heck are these tools? Check the mirror! Seriously go look in the mirror.

Did you go look? That’s okay if you didn’t. But keep reading.

Bodyweight Training Can Change Your Body — And Your Life.

“Use your body to improve your body.” – Something some zen master said at some point probably

Bodyweight training means doing any exercise that leverages your own bodyweight to build strength and muscle, burn fat, and become more resilient. Now, you might think that’s just basic stuff like push-ups and squats. And those things ARE bodyweight movements, and absolutely crucial to building a healthy foundation.

Hidden in plain sight, your own bodyweight is actually a complete training system waiting to be used. +5 points to Gryffindor for you being a complete training system. Go you!

Whether you want to use your bodyweight as a centerpiece in your training routine for decades to come (like me or Team Nerd Fitness Member Jim Bathurst), just build a foundational strength before you move to barbell workouts, or mix in some bodyweight training to complement your yoga/swimming/running/dancing/international jewel thievery, today we’ll take you through exactly how to get started.

The best part: since bodyweight training scales in difficulty and has plenty of variety, it truly can be used from Level 1 to Level 50.

How Bodyweight Training Can Help You Build The Body You Really Want

Your body is a complex piece of machinery that has been fine-tuned over thousands of
generations. Think of yourself as Human Ver. 100000000.0.0.1. We’ve been doing “bodyweight training” as a species since our days as cavemen and cavewomen – except back then it wasn’t called training, it was called “life” and there were no spandex in sight:

Things like:

• Sitting in a deep squat around a campfire with our tribe.
• Crawling under and over things as we encountered obstacles in nature.
• Pulling ourselves up into a tree or over a cliff to escape danger.
• Pushing ourselves up onto a ledge or platform to get a better view.
• Swinging from vine to vine as King of the Jungle. (Okay maybe not this one).

Because we’ve had to adapt to do all of those things to survive, our bodies LOVE the idea of working with all of our muscles and bones and joints in unison to accomplish movements or overcome obstacles.

It’s the reason we rage against the machines in the gym – cue “bulls on parade” – they often create imbalances and other weird problems through isolation and non-functional movement. Think of it this way: Cavemen didn’t pick up various rocks to isolate their triceps muscles or do “curlz for the cavegurlz.” And they certainly didn’t lie on a bench at a 30-degree angle while doing log presses to emphasize their upper pectoral muscles before going to kill a gazelle.

Instead, men and women did whatever they needed to do in order to survive — and their bodies adapted as a result.

If you’ve been reading Nerd Fitness for a while, you know I’m a fan of this quote from the trainer of the actors in the movie 300: “Appearance is a consequence of fitness.”

Bodyweight exercises tap into our full, natural anatomy. Movements like squats, push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and rows recruit all the muscles in our body and teach our body to work in unison. When you do bodyweight training, your body becomes more efficient working as a unified organism: all of your muscles, tendons, joints, and bones get strong as hell together — and safely.

Plus, you get to master your body like a freaking Jedi.

We know that strength training — with your bodyweight or with free weights — also happens to burn plenty of calories and builds muscle and strength. So it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, young or old — bodyweight strength training can help you build a body that looks good and feels good. In fact, as you get older one of the best ways to feel young is to stay strong! Just ask our older rebels.

Period. Exclamation point! Loud noises!

Bodyweight Exercises Can Be Done Anywhere

Read that headline one more time. Crap, there goes that excuse for not exercising! You always have your body with you, which means you always have the ability to exercise, even if it’s just for a few reps here and there.

You can always improve yourself physically. Anytime. Anywhere. Whether you’re:

• Traveling around the world
• Hunkered down in a bunker during the zombie apocalypse,
• Stuck in a cubicle
• Living in a hotel
• Training in your living room
• Near a playground
• On mars. Once Elon Musk sends me there.

Seriously, right now you can just drop down and do some (knee/wall) push-ups.

I’ll wait.

You didn’t do them, did you?! You sandbaggin’ son of a biscuit… you SAILOR you.

Even if you DIDN’T do them, you weren’t completely overwhelmed at the idea of doing a few reps!

My point is this: You don’t need access to a gym to get in great shape. You simply need to know a few moves — which we’ll teach you below — and you can train anywhere.

You Can Make Bodyweight Exercises As Easy — Or as Challenging — As You Need

Although bodyweight exercises are a bit more tough to visualize as a scalable activity compared to weight lifting (where you just put more weight on the bar), with just a little bit knowledge bodyweight training is like improving a particular skill tree in video games.

For example, in the pushup you might start on your knees or with your hands on an elevated surface. Over time, by slowly adjusting the angle you are manipulating your bodyweight, you can effectively change the difficulty of an exercise to make it more challenging. With a tougher angle, you have to move a higher percentage of your bodyweight, and thus more strength is needed!

I guarantee you can train with just your bodyweight for the next 20 years and you will not reach a “MAX LEVEL” screen.

Here’s what an oversimplified progression tree for the pushup might look like:

Wall push-ups -> Knee push-ups -> push ups -> feet elevated push ups -> pike push ups-> handstand push ups.

Show me somebody that has advanced to the end of one or more bodyweight skill trees, and I’ll show you somebody that is in peak physical condition (and looks damn good too!).

Once you learn the progressions, it’s just like adding points to a skill tree or leveling up a skill to unlock the next one in a video game. You start at the base exercise, get stronger and better, and then rank up when that movement becomes too easy. Gamification ftw.

There’s always a new skill to work on, a new challenging variation, the next level in the skill you’re working on.

Bodyweight Exercises Build Great Physiques (Plus, They’re Great Party Tricks)

If you’re like me (and the other 7.2 billion people on the planet), you might look at gymnasts or see what Jim Bathurst is doing in that photo above and say “holy crap I wish I had a body like that” or “dang, would be cool to do that, but not me.”

If you happen to be somebody who is stockier or heavier, you might look at bodyweight-training-jedi and say “I can’t train like them, because i’m not built like them. I need to lose weight first before trying to those things” You’ve got it backwards.

They look like they do precisely because they train like that!

In fact, we have TONS of success stories from people in our community, male and female who have transformed thanks to bodyweight training. Yours truly included!

Some people use the training to slim WAY down, others like me, use it to pack some muscle on (click on each photo for the story!):

Now, not only do ninja/assassin/gymnasts look good, they can also do some pretty cool party tricks – like Jim doing handstands on chairs above.

I don’t think I’ll be doing handstands on stacked chairs anytime soon, or busting out one-handed handstands, but it’s amazing to know what our bodies are capable of when we train them with conviction and follow the right progressions!

If you’re somebody who scrolls through Instagram far too often (like me!), use motivation properly and follow people that inspire you to be stronger, fitter, and better.

May I suggest:

• Mats Trane: 53 years young!
• Andrii Bodarenko: your jaw will drop.
• Madeleine Leander – Starcraft 2 female champion with a PHD in math who has mastered the muscle up!
• Jennifer Tavernier – Dang!
• Nerd_Fitness – hey that’s us! You’ll definitely want to follow us this month.
• Jim Bathurst – Master of the Training Universe at Nerd Fitness
• Staci Ardison – Ring enthusiast, Deadlift addict at Nerd Fitness
• Steve Kamb (me!) – all around goofball working on becoming a monkey-ninja-assassin- gymnast-jedi.

How to Get Started With Bodyweight Training

At this point, you’re most likely nodding your head at your computer and saying “okay fine Steve I get it, I’m going to make bodyweight training a focal point of my training!”

Seriously, I can see you. You look nice today, and those shoes go great with that shirt.

But you might think you’re too overweight or too old or too [something] and that’s all nonsense. Hogwash. Poppycock. Balderdash. (Here’s that 53 year old Gymnast again who is in better shape than 99% of people 20 years younger.)

If you’re brand new to Nerd Fitness, we recommend you get started with the Nerd Fitness Beginner Bodyweight Workout. Read the article, and watch the video below, featuring me about 30 pounds lighter and with helmet hair:

(Fun fact, this is our most viewed video on Youtube at 700,000 views, and my shorts are on backwards. Professionalism at its finest!)

If you’re feeling particularly feisty, check out our Advanced Bodyweight Workout too.

Quick note: If you’re looking for more structure and variety and a boss battle system, you can check out the Nerd Fitness Academy, our flagship program with boss battles and a leveling system with 7 levels of Bodyweight Exercise Routines (and video demonstrations!) to follow along with as you level up.

But you can get started with the basic stuff right, now, equipment and cost free! Start today by creating a free character and start working your way through the Assassin Quests which are primarily bodyweight focused!

Here are the three moves I want you to master:

• The Push-up
• The Squat
• The Pull-up/Bodyweight Row

If you can do a workout with 3 sets of 10 push-ups, 3 sets of 20 bodyweight squats, and 3 sets of 5 pull-ups, you will be in better shape than 95% of your peers.

Are those movements too easy for you? We have more advanced stuff soon…

Struggle with these movements? Don’t worry, more articles coming this month to help you perfect each of them!

Speaking of this month…

It’s Bodyweight Training Month at Nerd Fitness!

In case you missed it, this month we’re trying something different here at Nerd Fitness: We’re declaring October Bodyweight Training Month!

(Funny story: Our bodyweight guild at NF is the “Assassins’ Guild,” but for SOME REASON our lawyers didn’t think “Assassin Awareness Month” would go over well with the general public. But you and I will know the REAL name. Wink wink nudge nudge.)

It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner or a super-fancy advanced person: We have lots more bodyweight training articles, tutorials, videos, and other surprises planned for you this month, so make sure to keep up!

And coming later this month… we’ll unveil our newest top-secret project: An easy-to-follow bodyweight training system for serious Rebels who want to look like a gymnast and perform like a Jedi (zing!) — without stepping foot inside a gym.

I mean, I’m pretty excited about it. Okay I can get excited about pretty much anything, but this especially.

But for now… answer me this:

What is the BIGGEST thing holding you back currently from getting started with bodyweight training?

What’s one reason you are going to add bodyweight training to your routines this month?

Leave your comments and questions below and we’ll do our best to answer them.

-Steve

###

Photo: Leg0Fenris:Lego Pushup, Exile: Pull-Up Bar

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Today you take your first steps towards becoming a ninja/jedi/assassin/superhero, without needing to foot in a gym.

Interested? Of course you are!

That’s 4 amazing things all combined into a nerd mecha-robot.

Here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter if you’re a 300-pound guy who wants to lose weight and get back in the dating scene; it doesn’t matter if you’re a mom of three who wants to drop a little fat and gain a little muscle; it doesn’t matter if you’re an in-shape twenty-something who’s just looking for a new workout challenge.

Right now — right in front of you— are all the tools you need to get into amazing shape and live a healthier, happier life.

So…just where the heck are these tools? Check the mirror! Seriously go look in the mirror.

Did you go look? That’s okay if you didn’t. But keep reading.

Bodyweight Training Can Change Your Body — And Your Life.

“Use your body to improve your body.” – Something some zen master said at some point probably

Bodyweight training means doing any exercise that leverages your own bodyweight to build strength and muscle, burn fat, and become more resilient. Now, you might think that’s just basic stuff like push-ups and squats. And those things ARE bodyweight movements, and absolutely crucial to building a healthy foundation.

Hidden in plain sight, your own bodyweight is actually a complete training system waiting to be used. +5 points to Gryffindor for you being a complete training system. Go you!

Whether you want to use your bodyweight as a centerpiece in your training routine for decades to come (like me or Team Nerd Fitness Member Jim Bathurst), just build a foundational strength before you move to barbell workouts, or mix in some bodyweight training to compliment your yoga/swimming/running/dancing/international jewel thievery, today we’ll take you through exactly how to get started.

The best part: since bodyweight training scales in difficulty and has plenty of variety, it truly can be used from Level 1 to Level 50.

How Bodyweight Training Can Help You Build The Body You Really Want

Your body is a complex piece of machinery that has been fine-tuned over thousands of
generations. Think of yourself as Human Ver. 100000000.0.0.1. We’ve been doing “bodyweight training” as a species since our days as cavemen and cavewomen – except back then it wasn’t called training, it was called “life” and there were no spandex in sight:

Things like:

• Sitting in a deep squat around a campfire with our tribe.
• Crawling under and over things as we encountered obstacles in nature.
• Pulling ourselves up into a tree or over a cliff to escape danger.
• Pushing ourselves up onto a ledge or platform to get a better view.
• Swinging from vine to vine as King of the Jungle. (Okay maybe not this one).

Because we’ve had to adapt to do all of those things to survive, our bodies LOVE the idea of working with all of our muscles and bones and joints in unison to accomplish movements or overcome obstacles.

It’s the reason we rage against the machines in the gym – cue “bulls on parade” – they often create imbalances and other weird problems through isolation and non-functional movement. Think of it this way: Cavemen didn’t pick up various rocks to isolate their triceps muscles or do “curlz for the cavegurlz.” And they certainly didn’t lie on a bench at a 30-degree angle while doing log presses to emphasize their upper pectoral muscles before going to kill a gazelle.

Instead, men and women did whatever they needed to do in order to survive — and their bodies adapted as a result.

If you’ve been reading Nerd Fitness for a while, you know I’m a fan of this quote from the trainer of the actors in the movie 300: “Appearance is a consequence of fitness.”

Bodyweight exercises tap into our full, natural anatomy. Movements like squats, push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and rows recruit all the muscles in our body and teach our body to work in unison. When you do bodyweight training, your body becomes more efficient working as a unified organism: all of your muscles, tendons, joints, and bones get strong as hell together — and safely.

Plus, you get to master your body like a freaking Jedi.

We know that strength training — with your bodyweight or with free weights — also happens to burn plenty of calories and builds muscle and strength. So it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, young or old — bodyweight strength training can help you build a body that looks good and feels good. In fact, as you get older one of the best ways to feel young is to stay strong! Just ask our older rebels.

Period. Exclamation point! Loud noises!

Bodyweight Exercises Can Be Done Anywhere

Read that headline one more time. Crap, there goes that excuse for not exercising! You always have your body with you, which means you always have the ability to exercise, even if it’s just for a few reps here and there.

You can always improve yourself physically. Anytime. Anywhere. Whether you’re:

• Traveling around the world
• Hunkered down in a bunker during the zombie apocalypse,
• Stuck in a cubicle
• Living in a hotel
• Training in your living room
• Near a playground
• On mars. Once Elon Musk sends me there.

Seriously, right now you can just drop down and do some (knee/wall) push-ups.

I’ll wait.

You didn’t do them, did you?! You sandbaggin’ son of a biscuit… you SAILOR you.

Even if you DIDN’T do them, you weren’t completely overwhelmed at the idea of doing a few reps!

My point is this: You don’t need access to a gym to get in great shape. You simply need to know a few moves — which we’ll teach you below — and you can train anywhere.

You Can Make Bodyweight Exercises As Easy — Or as Challenging — As You Need

Although bodyweight exercises are a bit more tough to visualize as a scalable activity compared to weight lifting (where you just put more weight on the bar), with just a little bit knowledge bodyweight training is like improving a particular skill tree in video games.

For example, in the pushup you might start on your knees or with your hands on an elevated surface. Over time, by slowly adjusting the angle you are manipulating your bodyweight, you can effectively change the difficulty of an exercise to make it more challenging. With a tougher angle, you have to move a higher percentage of your bodyweight, and thus more strength is needed!

I guarantee you can train with just your bodyweight for the next 20 years and you will not reach a “MAX LEVEL” screen.

Here’s what an oversimplified progression tree for the pushup might look like:

Wall push-ups -> Knee push-ups -> push ups -> feet elevated push ups -> pike push ups-> handstand push ups.

Show me somebody that has advanced to the end of one or more bodyweight skill trees, and I’ll show you somebody that is in peak physical condition (and looks damn good too!).

Once you learn the progressions, it’s just like adding points to a skill tree or leveling up a skill to unlock the next one in a video game. You start at the base exercise, get stronger and better, and then rank up when that movement becomes too easy. Gamification ftw.

There’s always a new skill to work on, a new challenging variation, the next level in the skill you’re working on.

Bodyweight Exercises Build Great Physiques (Plus, They’re Great Party Tricks)

If you’re like me (and the other 7.2 billion people on the planet), you might look at gymnasts or see what Jim Bathurst is doing in that photo above and say “holy crap I wish I had a body like that” or “dang, would be cool to do that, but not me.”

If you happen to be somebody who is stockier or heavier, you might look at bodyweight-training-jedi and say “I can’t train like them, because i’m not built like them. I need to lose weight first before trying to those things” You’ve got it backwards.

They look like they do precisely because they train like that!

In fact, we have TONS of success stories from people in our community, male and female who have transformed thanks to bodyweight training. Yours truly included!

Some people use the training to slim WAY down, others like me, use it to pack some muscle on (click on each photo for the story!):

Now, not only do ninja/assassin/gymnasts look good, they can also do some pretty cool party tricks – like Jim doing handstands on chairs above.

I don’t think I’ll be doing handstands on stacked chairs anytime soon, or busting out one-handed handstands, but it’s amazing to know what our bodies are capable of when we train them with conviction and follow the right progressions!

If you’re somebody who scrolls through Instagram far too often (like me!), use motivation properly and follow people that inspire you to be stronger, fitter, and better.

May I suggest:

• Mats Trane: 53 years young!
• Andrii Bodarenko: your jaw will drop.
• Madeleine Leander – Starcraft 2 female champion with a PHD in math who has mastered the muscle up!
• Jennifer Tavernier – Dang!
• Nerd_Fitness – hey that’s us! You’ll definitely want to follow us this month.
• Jim Bathurst – Master of the Training Universe at Nerd Fitness
• Staci Ardison – Ring enthusiast, Deadlift addict at Nerd Fitness
• Steve Kamb (me!) – all around goofball working on becoming a monkey-ninja-assassin- gymnast-jedi.

How to Get Started With Bodyweight Training

At this point, you’re most likely nodding your head at your computer and saying “okay fine Steve I get it, I’m going to make bodyweight training a focal point of my training!”

Seriously, I can see you. You look nice today, and those shoes go great with that shirt.

But you might think you’re too overweight or too old or too [something] and that’s all nonsense. Hogwash. Poppycock. Balderdash. (Here’s that 53 year old Gymnast again who is in better shape than 99% of people 20 years younger.)

If you’re brand new to Nerd Fitness, we recommend you get started with the Nerd Fitness Beginner Bodyweight Workout. Read the article, and watch the video below, featuring me about 30 pounds lighter and with helmet hair:

(Fun fact, this is our most viewed video on Youtube at 700,000 views, and my shorts are on backwards. Professionalism at its finest!)

If you’re feeling particularly feisty, check out our Advanced Bodyweight Workout too.

Quick note: If you’re looking for more structure and variety and a boss battle system, you can check out the Nerd Fitness Academy, our flagship program with boss battles and a leveling system with 7 levels of Bodyweight Exercise Routines (and video demonstrations!) to follow along with as you level up.

But you can get started with the basic stuff right, now, equipment and cost free! Start today by creating a free character and start working your way through the Assassin Quests which are primarily bodyweight focused!

Here are the three moves I want you to master:

• The Push-up
• The Squat
• The Pull-up/Bodyweight Row

If you can do a workout with 3 sets of 10 push-ups, 3 sets of 20 bodyweight squats, and 3 sets of 5 pull-ups, you will be in better shape than 95% of your peers.

Are those movements too easy for you? We have more advanced stuff soon…

Struggle with these movements? Don’t worry, more articles coming this month to help you perfect each of them!

Speaking of this month…

It’s Bodyweight Training Month at Nerd Fitness!

In case you missed it, this month we’re trying something different here at Nerd Fitness: We’re declaring October Bodyweight Training Month!

(Funny story: Our bodyweight guild at NF is the “Assassins’ Guild,” but for SOME REASON our lawyers didn’t think “Assassin Awareness Month” would go over well with the general public. But you and I will know the REAL name. Wink wink nudge nudge.)

It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner or a super-fancy advanced person: We have lots more bodyweight training articles, tutorials, videos, and other surprises planned for you this month, so make sure to keep up!

And coming later this month… we’ll unveil our newest top-secret project: An easy-to-follow bodyweight training system for serious Rebels who want to look like a gymnast and perform like a Jedi (zing!) — without stepping foot inside a gym.

I mean, I’m pretty excited about it. Okay I can get excited about pretty much anything, but this especially.

But for now… answer me this:

What is the BIGGEST thing holding you back currently from getting started with bodyweight training?

What’s one reason you are going to add bodyweight training to your routines this month?

Leave your comments and questions below and we’ll do our best to answer them.

-Steve

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Photo: Leg0Fenris:Lego Pushup, Exile: Pull-Up Bar