IGX

There's a thread about this in the Training forum, but I want to coalesce my conflicted feelings about this product.

First off, it's a large book. ~300 pages of information including a thorough index. I purchased this book because I've always had a significant interest in bodyweight training and conditioning and my last purchase from Dragon Door, Pavel's "Power to the People: Professsional" was excellent.

As I read this book, I got this vague feeling that the author was not who he said he was. I subsequently read on the Dragon Door forum that "Paul Wade" was a pseudonym, and that the author wished to keep his real identity private due to his previous incarceration in several US prisons.

There is language used in this book that indicates the author (or an editor) is from the UK. Little things like using "basin" for "sink" and stuff like that. But in the book, the author claims to have been incarcerated at the age of 22 in 1979, going to San Quentin, and later to Angola and then Marion, and had spent 23 years as a criminal, 19 of them incarcerated. A bit of a disconnect then, the author using some UK terminology.

To further support this, the website http://www.convictconditioning.com is registered in the UK. There are already bits and pieces of this website up, which you can view in the Convict Conditioning thread started by Smet in the training forum. Notably, the ad copy is up, the "Cellmates" section, with links of interest to visitors to Convict Conditioning, and interestingly enough, a consultation page, where a testimonial is already up, despite the consultation service not being live at this time, given the website's still under construction, and that the book just came out a little while ago.

There is also a blurb for "Convict Conditioning 2: Advanced Prison training Tactics", a sequel. Remember, at the time of this writing, the book as only been out for 2 weeks or so, despite proofs being sent to people back in April or May of 2009 (Craig Ballentyne mentioned the timeframe in his blurb for the book)

The author lists some of his accomplishments:

1. A dozen one armed handstand push ups WITHOUT support. To me this means he balanced on one hand in the middle of a room and did 12 one armed handstand push ups. Like he said, this feat cannot be duplicated by even olympic level gymnasts.
2. Won the inmate run push-up/pull-up competition for 6 years in a row at Angola.
3. Won the 1987 California Institutional Powerlifting Championship without ever having touched a weight.

Pretty impressive, but the anonymity of the author and the lack of records for any of those events tends to cast a bit of a shadow on them, particularly the 12 one armed, non-supported handstand push ups.

The first part of this books spends quite a bit of time selling you on bodyweight training or "old school calisthenics". It uses pictures of old time strongmen, most of whom, incidentally, built their muscle with weights and some gymnastics and handbalancing movements, but mostly weights. This hard-sell of calisthenics includes the tired, time-worn insistence that barbell and dumbbell training will invariably cause injury, while calisthenics will build you a muscular, injury-free body. It also revisits the concept of "functional training" without ever giving you any kind of solid scientific background about how calisthenics are less injury-causing and more functional than weight training.

One thing that bugged me a bit was the glamorization of the convict and of prison. The attempts to portray the convict as a modified archtype of "noble savage" does not reflect the realities of the American penal system. There is a big dose of "prison chic" that initially bugged me, so I just had to take it as a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

According to the author, there are six basic benefits of bodyweight training

1. It requires very little equipment
2. It develops useful, functional, athletic abilities
3. It maximizes strength
4. It offers lifetime protection and strength for the joints
5. It quicky perfects the physique (ironically using a picture of John Grimek here)
6. It normalizes and regulates bodyfat levels

As you can see, #2, #3, and #5 can easily be contested. #1 is absolute truth, #4 is questionable (see the rash if injuries pull ups and chin ups cause many crossfitters), and #6 has a good bit of truth in it.

There is more myth and hype in the explanations of those benefits than I care to get into, but it's similar to the stuff before it, where the book sells you on bodyweight training (I will now refer to this as BWT)

The book offers you progressions on six different exercises, called "The Big Six". These include the pushup, the pullup, the squat, bridging, the leg raise, and handstand push ups.

The progressions are where the book really gets into detail. Each of the exercises has ten progressions, with the first ones being so easy that almost anyone should be able to do them. I found some of the initial exercise choices to be curious, for example, the "shoulderstand squat". This is where you lay on your back, push your body up into a shoulderstand, reminiscent of a yoga pose, and then lower your legs so your knees approach your chin. If you are fat and out of shape, then the shoulderstand squat is going to be difficult for you to do because of that. I can see where if you were injured, the completely unloaded nature of this movement might help you regain range of motion.

Each step has guidelines on when to go to the next step. There is some unique use of props like a basketball and baseball to help you with limiting depth of movement and improving on the quality of the movements.

In my opinion, the progressions are the greatest strength of this book. I got several ideas on how to train very weak and detrained individuals to reach the point where push ups and pull ups are possible for them to do.

The training guidelines, or, how to put it all together, is a section that I find weak. For beginners, he recommends 2-3 worksets of the push ups and leg raise variations on Monday, and the pull up and squat variations on Friday. In my opinion this is kind of low volume.. He also describes the "grease the groove" technique, but insists some "fellow prison athlete" told him about it, and calls it "consolidation training".

In fact, there's a significant number of the RKC's Hardstyle techniques listed in here.

He recommends a deliberate pacing for repetitions. 2 seconds down, 1 second pause, 2 seconds up specifically for the push up, and deliberate speeds similar to this for the other movements, with the recommendation to occasionally do the movements explosively.

The recommendation to start slowly is appreciated, although his example is a bit over the top regarding this. All exercise should be started slowly, both to build skill, but also to allow the slower adapting connective tissue to acclimatize to the new stimuli. There are somewhat gentle reminders that consistency and quality is the key to successful physical training in any endeavor.

So, to summarize

Pros:
-entertaining and interesting read
-good progressions, including the use of cheap and unique props.
-good explanation of exercises
-good, if basic, tips on how to keep your workouts on track

Cons:
-unsubstantiated claims by the anonymous author
-excessive hard selling of BWT by running down weight training
-unnecessary criticism of bodybuilders, yet the fact that you can build muscle using BWT is a theme through out the book.
-glamorizing convicts, prison chic.

Overall I don't regret this purchase. I have a bit of an issue with the excessive marketing of this product, but that is a particular quirk of mine and it's a book that I will keep in my library. I did learn a few things from it, which makes it a worthwhile purchase for me. I have to admit that I will probably purchase the sequel as well.

A brief note: This book was ordered on December 8th and was received on December 10th using regular shipping. It arrived damaged. I emailed Dragondoor's customer service and they said that they are sending me a replacement copy. I was very pleased with both the speed at which the order arrived and the resolution of the problem I had with damaged materials.

Very good review, and thanks for the detail.

Excellent review. Since I was interested in the progressions, I pre-ordered it as an X-mas present for myself, and I agree with Shaf's summary and evaluation. Especially the criticism of "prison chic", and the training schedule (twice a week for newbies???), and the bit with the "shoulder stand" squats. My first thought on seeing this was "No fat guy is ever going to be able to deal with 50 rep sets of this thing."

Also missing from the book was any kind of compensations for all the repetitive work "Wade" would have you do. Even with a gentle, gradual increase in volume and intensity, all those pushups are going to build strain areas in the chest, neck, shoulder girdle and wrists, and maybe even the hip flexors. And no, pullups aren't the compensation for pushups - they are a balance, but not a compensation.

they are a balance, but not a compensation.

Realize that for years people worked and exercised and just existed. They didn't realize that they were doing it wrong with 12 hour workdays on a farm or in a coal mine. "Compensation" I believe is derived most recently from Scott Sonnon's work. It no doubt existed before, but realize that there are people who only run,, do pushups, and situps. That's all they know, and they are fine. With the bridge you activate the rear and increase the ROM of hip flexors. Variations on rows and pullups compensate for pushups as well. Leg raise are the opposite of squats.

I'm currently training a lot of athletic senior citizens and the whole "tonic/phasic" thing is very accurate. Pavel and HS may be on to something in terms of correcting and maintaining optimum body qualities. They don't match the work capacity of a Valery Fedorenko, but no one is going to confuse Fed's physique for optimal balance. His training is GS specific.

Women use weight machines and do Pilates. Nothing wrong with machines or Pilates. I'd just have a women build up to men's pushups and only look at Pilates from Joe's original notes. (Pilates for Men,.. the IGX approved text). Convict Conditioning is just taking something simple and seeing how far you can go with it. Not a bad idea in this ADHD world.

TomFurman wrote:

they are a balance, but not a compensation.

Realize that for years people worked and exercised and just existed. They didn't realize that they were doing it wrong with 12 hour workdays on a farm or in a coal mine. "Compensation" I believe is derived most recently from Scott Sonnon's work. It no doubt existed before, but realize that there are people who only run,, do pushups, and situps. That's all they know, and they are fine. With the bridge you activate the rear and increase the ROM of hip flexors. Variations on rows and pullups compensate for pushups as well. Leg raise are the opposite of squats.

....
Convict Conditioning is just taking something simple and seeing how far you can go with it. Not a bad idea in this ADHD world.

Yes, I was thinking of Sonnon when I mentioned compensations. I am just saying that this "lack" is a flaw in this supposedly divinely perfect system, not that that it was a show stopper.

The reason I brought it up:
When I started doing the compensations from "Forward Pressure" (Sonnon's version of a pushup routine), all of a sudden my ability to do one-legged balance poses in Bikram radically improved because of the additional body-knowledge/kinesthetic feed back in my hips, butt and psoas led to better alignment of those areas. Similarly, when I started doing the "thoracic mobility" stuff from "Ageless Mobility", my performance of EVERYTHING improved, because I suddenly understood where my solar plexus and rib cage needed to be. Think of the Alexander Technique, but instead of working on the neck elongating, I "unslumped" by lifting the solar plexus, and everything else followed. I think Dave Chesser would have classified me as having "Yang's Disease", but all the usual remedies (shoulder dislocates, bands, pec stretches, etc) didn't help me nearly so much as thoracic mobility work.

Compensations have made a big difference in my ability to understand and solve my limitations (and "sensory motor amnesia"). Convict Conditioning has nothing like this, and so a lot of well meaning people who try it may stall in their progress sooner rather than later. Not everyone, maybe not even most people, but a lot of people.

Well, if you want a compensation the bridge certainly qualifies.

If you look at the exercise list:

pushup
pullup
squat
handstand push up
leg raise
bridge

The bridge, when you are able to do it correctly is going to:

-stretch the shoulders, lats and pec
-stretch the abdominals
-stretch the hip flexors
-There will also be significant upper back involvement in the holding the bridge or pushing up into it.

And he recommends flexibility work as well.

The only issue is that the bridge is one of those movements that can fuck you up.

To me, the bridge is a good exercise, but I legitimately know someone who broke their neck doing bridges so...yeah.

TomFurman wrote:

...I'm currently training a lot of athletic senior citizens and the whole "tonic/phasic" thing is very accurate. Pavel and HS may be on to something in terms of correcting and maintaining optimum body qualities...

Tom, do your DVDs cover the approach (and/or protocols,) that you use with the "athletic senior citizen," population ? What other resources, specifically, do you recommend for this group ? (With respect to Com. Pavel's work, ETK ?...or something else ? With respect to Pilates for Men, any DVDs you like ?)

TIA

Abandoned by Wolves wrote: Similarly, when I started doing the "thoracic mobility" stuff from "Ageless Mobility", my performance of EVERYTHING improved, because I suddenly understood where my solar plexus and rib cage needed to be. Think of the Alexander Technique, but instead of working on the neck elongating, I "unslumped" by lifting the solar plexus, and everything else followed. I think Dave Chesser would have classified me as having "Yang's Disease", but all the usual remedies (shoulder dislocates, bands, pec stretches, etc) didn't help me nearly so much as thoracic mobility work.

Glad to see you're curing your "Yang taichi disease." I'm working hard on mine too and find that, like you, some things work for some and other people need something else. Every tool you have in the toolbox is useful.

Building that proprioception/kinesthetic awareness of your body is very hard for some people to do but it's really useful.

TomFurman wrote:Realize that for years people worked and exercised and just existed. They didn't realize that they were doing it wrong with 12 hour workdays on a farm or in a coal mine.

Your continual romanticizing of labour is hilarious. Since you want to maintain the mobility of Tinker Bell into your 90's, I advise you avoid serious physical labor at all costs.

The funny thing is that the largest real market for your brilliant mobility stuff would be folks who do hard manual labor for a living. But you're right, for the most part they don't give a shit; they don't mind being the Tin Man instead of Tinker Bell. Its hard to do much of anything after that much work.

Awesome Review Shaf.

Cayenne wrote:

TomFurman wrote:

...I'm currently training a lot of athletic senior citizens and the whole "tonic/phasic" thing is very accurate. Pavel and HS may be on to something in terms of correcting and maintaining optimum body qualities...

Tom, do your DVDs cover the approach (and/or protocols,) that you use with the "athletic senior citizen," population ? What other resources, specifically, do you recommend for this group ? (With respect to Com. Pavel's work, ETK ?...or something else ? With respect to Pilates for Men, any DVDs you like ?)

TIA

It's so highly individual. I do pull from my DVD stuff, but a lot of other places. Sometimes I have to overlap what these people have been doing previously since they have developed some skills that should be maintained. I have several doing Silat ground mobility like Crocodile, Cat, Turtle, etc.
Largely the women have been lead to believe that 5 pound dumbells will cure shit. I fix that in the first session.
The old Pilates stuff (Pilates For Men) is good,, but then again, Pavel's stuff, Kurz, Silat, Yoga,, etc. I do a lot of supersets of push/pull since many have gacked up shoulders (internally rotated,, shortened pecs,, yadda-yadda). I have them doing box squats as well since they don't know anything about squatting. I have no clue how many seniors get on a toilet. It keeps me thinking and inventing,.. sharpening my game.
It would be easier yelling at 20 year olds to do wind sprints and dead lifts and take their needle in the ass like a man, but what's the point of doing something easy? Teaching an 80 year old with a hip replacement a Turkish Getup is challenging and may save their life. It pays better too.

Taking care of old people is admirable. Good for you.

OK. So I've been in contact with a guy who says he's an old friend of Paul Wade's and some things have coalesced. So far, this is what's fallen out.

Paul had help with editing and formatting his book.
Paul isn't in charge of the marketing for it
Paul is in the UK currently, staying with family and has been for some time.

I'd like to point out that I don't begrudge the author a single dollar he can make with his writing and consultations. I feel that every man should be free to market and monetize their experiences if they can. Nor am I any sort of person who'd badmouth person's legitimate effort to salvage a life after a generation in prison.

I also do like this book, despite my criticisms of it.

A bit of Paul's friend's and my exchange:

As for Paul’s claims regarding his fitness, I genuinely have no idea either way. I do know that Paul found great solace in physical exercise, particularly in Louisiana, and I vaguely remember that Paul won a competition of some sort many years back when he was still in California. I’d be surprised if records of this weren’t still available somewhere?

I may have the opportunity to coorespond with him via email.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote: I'd like to point out that I don't begrudge the author a single dollar he can make with his writing and consultations. I feel that every man should be free to market and monetize their experiences if they can. Nor am I any sort of person who'd badmouth person's legitimate effort to salvage a life after a generation in prison.

Ditto. The man's done his time and paid his debt. Interesting about his staying with family in the UK...that would explain the Britishisms in the text ("basin" for sink, etc.).

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:

Shafpocalypse Now wrote: I'd like to point out that I don't begrudge the author a single dollar he can make with his writing and consultations. I feel that every man should be free to market and monetize their experiences if they can. Nor am I any sort of person who'd badmouth person's legitimate effort to salvage a life after a generation in prison.

Ditto. The man's done his time and paid his debt.

I concur.

Now, ABW, motherfucker, check your PM's please.

Just got this today. I'm surprised at all of the good reviews it's gotten. The progressions are nothing special.

Book in a nutshell:
1. 90% marketing and bwe superiority hubris.
2. use bwe exercise to get strong not for endurance.
3. 6 exercises: pushup, pullup, squat, bridge, leg raise, handstand pushups.
4. 1-10 levels for each exercise.
5. Do each movement slooowwww.
6. Once you've reached the "progression standard" for an exercise move up to the next progression.
7. 5 programs
8. You must start from the basic movement on each and work your way up or you'll burn out.

Seriously? Doubt anyone has ever used this program and been successful. I can see cutting down the volume on some of the advanced movements but the bridge, leg raise and first 3 handstand movements could be done 3-7x per week. Even for n00bs.

What I like: I think the emphasis on slowing down the movements could lead to some strength if one was diligent following the progressions.

I'll probably be returning this.

I'll stick with my Ross E. books, Scrapper book/dvd/cds and Maxwell Spartan 300 dvd. That and all of the other free shit on the interwebs. Oh yeah, forgot about Kubik's bw book, which is actually pretty damn good. Damn, forgot about Bryce Lanes bw booklet.

I liked the book. Good illustrations and progressions for anyone highly detrained to start getting their fitness back together.

Pro's- Lots of information, illustrations. Good progressions.
Con's- Prison sucks and he glamorizes it. The template design is bad.

I'd suggest we elect Shaf to design a 5-3-1 inspired BW Template with the CC progressions.. LOL.

After reading this wordy thing,.. you realize how concise Pavel is. Actually Naked Warrior 2,, with several years of RKC's, Stretching Workshops and input from Grey Cook, would be interesting. The first was on tension principles. This one could be on overcoming tweaks and weakness.

Mickey Mutherfukkin O'neil wrote:I'll stick with my Ross E. books, Scrapper book/dvd/cds and Maxwell Spartan 300 dvd. That and all of the other free shit on the interwebs. Oh yeah, forgot about Kubik's bw book, which is actually pretty damn good. Damn, forgot about Bryce Lanes bw booklet.

Agree with this. The Kubrik book is good stuff.

grey wrote:I'll probably be returning this.

Besides being the father of KB lifting in America, Pavel also has undoubtedly the most generous return policy of any publisher ever. No wonder why so many owe him so much.

TomFurman wrote:I liked the book. Good illustrations and progressions for anyone highly detrained to start getting their fitness back together.

After reading this wordy thing,.. you realize how concise Pavel is.

I just read this while I was trawling through some posts for cc and it made me laugh so hard I nearly puked!! I had to write a response or I probably wouldn’t sleep tonight.

Much as I hate bwe worship and the prison chic bullshit in cc, even a retard who was raised in a zoo can tell that convict conditioning is written way, way better than anything Tsasouline shitted out. ANYTHING.

Let’s face it, Pavel only had what? Three ideas in his whole life. One, work with kettlebells. two, GTG (which is a Soviet method, not even his idea), three, body tension for strength (read as “brace yourself, motherfucker” Great, revolutionary idea, baldy.). And he spread these ideas over four books. FOUR!

I agree that he is “concise” in the sense that his books don’t have much information. Massive type on every page, pointless photos, blank pages and sometimes only one or two lines per page? What a fucking rip!! At least cc has plenty of information, in that sense it’s “wordy” (but I guess some people just don’t like reading. If so, why buy a fucking book? Go get a dvd!).

By the way, I fucking hate Pavel if you hadn’t guessed. He’s never been seen lifting anything heavier than his dragon door paycheque, he lied about being a “master of sports”, he’s never trained anyone of any note whatsoever, his books and dvds are fucking crap and his arms are about thirteen inches round (beyond bodybuilding my ass!!)

no-one in the UK says basin. Apart from kweers, who are an exclusively southern phenomenon.

jennings wrote:

TomFurman wrote:I liked the book. Good illustrations and progressions for anyone highly detrained to start getting their fitness back together.

After reading this wordy thing,.. you realize how concise Pavel is.

I just read this while I was trawling through some posts for cc and it made me laugh so hard I nearly puked!! I had to write a response or I probably wouldn’t sleep tonight.

Much as I hate bwe worship and the prison chic bullshit in cc, even a retard who was raised in a zoo can tell that convict conditioning is written way, way better than anything Tsasouline shitted out. ANYTHING.

Let’s face it, Pavel only had what? Three ideas in his whole life. One, work with kettlebells. two, GTG (which is a Soviet method, not even his idea), three, body tension for strength (read as “brace yourself, motherfucker” Great, revolutionary idea, baldy.). And he spread these ideas over four books. FOUR!

I agree that he is “concise” in the sense that his books don’t have much information. Massive type on every page, pointless photos, blank pages and sometimes only one or two lines per page? What a fucking rip!! At least cc has plenty of information, in that sense it’s “wordy” (but I guess some people just don’t like reading. If so, why buy a fucking book? Go get a dvd!).

By the way, I fucking hate Pavel if you hadn’t guessed. He’s never been seen lifting anything heavier than his dragon door paycheque, he lied about being a “master of sports”, he’s never trained anyone of any note whatsoever, his books and dvds are fucking crap and his arms are about thirteen inches round (beyond bodybuilding my ass!!)

You're a fucking dumbass. Have you seen any of the PTTP DL team vids? He lifts some decently heavy weight. I admit the advertising is over the top but Pavel has put out some quality stuff.

I concur about Pavel. Despite his marketing tactics he does know his shit. The fact that people like Dan John et al endorse him should be enough to know he's got substance.