10 most challenging exercises

Training people here in Tokyo, you may meet obviously and luckily different personalities among your trainees. For those who get shivers just thinking at being in the middle of a bro pool at the gym or the very goal driven individual here is a a little something to help you pushing the gym’s door.

2010’s comeback of the calisthenics fashion brought a little more spice to what you could achieve while training yourself. Usually people tend to try to be able to do more, push more, lift more, lose more fat, gain more. Yet you can also consider to gain new abilities, a new skill that you could not ever do before and train toward that.

Rather than getting stronger at your craft and consider quantity as an achievement, why not considering a new skill done in a proper form an achievement?

This is my list, sorted by crescent difficulty, of the most challenging power moves that took me a serious amount of time to acquire and how to train to be able to perform them.

• Push-Up – Challenge level: “That locker collar left a mark”

Push-Up exercise belongs to the most basic and the most efficient set of exercise you can do with your bare body weight. The iconic exercise of the fit ones. New comer may find himself/herself having shaky arms during the downward motion and may not be able to complete the exercise over the full range of motion.

How to perform?
What muscles are involved?

1. Pectoralis major, pectoralis minor, subclavius.
2. Triceps.

How to get there?

Just train your chest under every angle possible with exercises such as: dumbbell bench press, incline barbell bench press, decline barbell bench press. You will eventually get enough strength to lower more and more your body until full range of motion is achieved.

How long to be able to do it?

Assuming you are starting with a deconditioned level of fitness and your weight is under morbid obesity level, one or two weeks is a reasonable estimation.

• Plyo Push-Up – Challenge level: “I stopped wearing long socks with my shorts”

Plyo comes from the plyometrics fitness paradigm. A way of training that focuses on explosive motions. In comparison to vanilla push-up, this involves far more energy to exert toward the floor to be able to take off.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Pectoralis major, pectoralis minor, subclavius.
2. Triceps.
3. Biceps, latissimus dorsi (amortization).

How to get there?

Same exercises as for the regular push-up are helping, yet, you will have to grow far more strength to be able to do it. Basically when you can bench more than your weight, you should be able to do it.

How long to be able to do it?

If you can do the regular push-up over the full range of motion, again two weeks seem not too optimistic to be able to do the plyo variation. It will just require a specific chest training with heavy weights and low reps. Body is made to be able to rather easily fight gravity. It is not so rare to find new trainees able to do those right out of the box.

•  Dips – Challenge level: “I know what I’m doing”

Pretty basic calisthenics exercise, the way the weight is distributed makes this exercise easy to get good at. You may start with shaky arms and incomplete range of motion but not for long.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Triceps.
2. Chest, shoulders. The cleaner the form the less you will use your chest.

How to get there?

Just do it, a basic routine should bring you to the point that even all shaky you could be able to do half a rep. From there it is only a matter of perseverance.

How long to be able to do it?

Depending on your initial fitness level, your mileage may vary. The heavier you are the harder it is. Super skinny individuals would get there faster.

• Chin Up – Challenge level “I have my own locker here”

A step toward the pull up. Your arms being in supination, there is no slack in your biceps, therefore the movement is way easier to perform than its pronated counterpart: Pull Up.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Lats.
2. Biceps.
3. Forearms, rhomboid.

How to get there?

Best for my very own case was a mix of lat pull down to really focus on the lats and concentration curls. I believe that assisted Chin Up machine might help since it is precisely the movement you intend to accomplish, according to the SAID principle. Yet I did not have such a machine by the time I was able to accomplish it.

How long to be able to do it?

Once again your own weight is your challenger, yet, lats are huge muscles and biceps the very muscle nobody skips. With say a bodyfat of 15 to 20% and a month of training you could be there for your first full range of motion rep.

• Pull Up – Challenge level “They know my name at the front desk”

Chin up’s bigger brother. I don’t count this one as a variation, this one is a big step up in difficulty. Remember that biceps first function is to be a forearm rotator, muscle synergy allow it to be a flexor (yes!!! Biceps primary function is not to bow!). Using a pronated grip almost totally inhibit the help this muscle would provide otherwise.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Lats.
2. Biceps, forearms, rhomboid.

How to get there?

In my case, wide grip lat pull down did wonders, if you are able to pull, in a proper form, more than your own body weight then you should be able to perform a pull up. I found myself also running out of grip rather than lat strength during intensive bar sessions. Over-sized bar grip during your pulling exercise is a well known way to increase your forearm and grip strength.

How long to be able to do it?

This one honestly takes a lot of efforts, a great fitness level and a rather low amount of dead weight (aka fat). Mind that worldwide, the 20 reps pull up is a common daily test for firefighters and army troops to assess health condition. 3 to 6 months is to be expected.

• Handstand Push Up – Challenge level “I stopped wearing running shoes while squatting”

If you are able to do all of the above, handstand press against a wall should be a cake walk. Real challenge starts when you get rid of the wall. Without control, power is nothing and this exercise is the proof. Having this one done over the full range of motion is extremely satisfying.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Shoulders.
2. Triceps.
3. Abs, obliques.

How to get there?

Once again, if you follow this challenge list in the order and checked everything before, you should have enough strength to do a full set of those against a wall. Gymnastics handstand training and handstand walking on a soft ground is what you usually need. Here more than anywhere else in fitness training, you should learn to fall before walking. The soft padded ground also trains balance and forearm strength.

How long to be able to do it?

Balance could be a one day thing or a two months struggle trying every day. Think of when you had your little wheels removed. Having a gymnast in your environment definitively helps. Then it is just a matter of trying to get lower and lower.

• Dragon Flag – Challenge level “That gym is closed at night? But I’m not done yet!”

That Bruce Lee gimmicky exercise that the big guys despise as an “exercise for skinny guys”. Well, I’m 85kg and I’m pretty sure that even at 100kg I would definitively be able to do it. The amount of strength required is tremendous but reachable. Depending on your ability to gain balance, this one is fighting with handstand press for the 7th place. Yet I found that the strength required to perform this one is about 3 clicks up. Nonetheless, the hype about this exercise being the hardest possible for the core is, I feel, not fully deserved: this is hard, yes, but not too much for somebody already doing weighted core exercises on a regular basis.

How to perform?

1. Lie on a bench perfectly straight, your legs joined together.
2. Grab the bench edge over your head with both of your hands.
3. Raise your whole body straight up with your toes pointing to the ceiling, resting on your shoulder blades only, do not contract to much your neck muscles, you may pinch a nerve.
4. As you inhale, Lower your legs slightly faster than your back so that you reach horizontal position with your legs over the bench without touching it with your back. Your body should form half an arch and your shoulder blades should be the fulcrum.
5. Now slowly exhale while you come back to position 3, avoiding at all cost to break the arch.

What muscles are involved?

1. Abs.
2. Triceps, chest.
3. Obliques, serratus… and all the bazillion little muscles involved in the stabilization of such a crazy position.

How to get there?

I don’t really agree on what people say: I’m not a big fan of negatives and I find them more traumatic and potentially harmful than any efficient. Weighted crunch, bottom up, Russian twist, spell caster, landmine 180 did the trick for me.

How long to be able to do it?

Fact is that doing weighted abs exercise since already a serious amount of time, dragon flags were a two days thing, just the time to pinch a nerve (keep your neck muscle relaxed!) and retry the day after out of stubbornness. If you can add 15-25kg to your crunches this should be doable out of the box. If you are training only with your body weight, one or two months of sustained training are to be expected. Balance is not much of an issue, since you are pinned to the bench by your overhead grip close to your shoulders.

• Muscle Up – Challenge level “Ceiling is lower than expected, next time at the park”

First time I tried, I did not expect it to work and to go up that fast, hence the quote. Had a nice bruise for a week. This exercise comes right from the Olympic gymnasiums. A basic for rings and parallel bars athletes, yet extremely challenging and a complete upper body exercise.

How to perform?

What muscles are involved?

1. Lats.
2. All upper body muscles.

How to get there?

Being comfortable with pull up is mandatory for this one to be done. Try to perform them as explosive as possible so that you gain momentum and reach to cancel your weight and the top of the movement. Try to release the bar and catch it on the fly. You will eventually be able to reach a low dip position that should be easy for you to recover from. Mix it up also with weighted lat pull up and vary the grip width. Also, you will need a serous amount of strength in your forearm to elevate yourself from the low dip position. Over-sized grips all the way.

How long to be able to do it?

You should be really comfortable with wide grip lat pull up beforehand, this is a big step up from this exercise. All in all, starting from zero with a reasonable body fat percentage, one to one and a half year is more than a reasonable target, if you show dedication.

• Human Flag – Challenge level “I now know what hard core means”

This one is more of an achievement than an actual exercise I believe. You get to that point in fitness and strength training that you overcome your very own weight in that position. A went there done that posture. Dragon flag is a bit of that also, yet, to a certain extend it remains a good core exercise.

How to perform?

Here is a video of the exercise done properly, props to the authors.

What muscles are involved?

1. Triceps, biceps, shoulders, obliques in an asymmetric fashion.
2. Lats, pectoralis major/minor and subclavius.

How to get there?

Grip, grip, grip and mostly grip. If you achieve all of the above before this one then you should be able to make it. That would only depend on your grip and balance ability. Push Pull training paradigm also ensures that you get an even distribution of strength to achieve this balance exercise. The thinner the bar, the easiest it is, down to about the diameter of a regular barbell.

How long to be able to do it?

From the point that you are considered to have enough strength to do it, it is the same problem than handstand, balance is unfair matter and could be a minute deal for some or weeks problem for others.

• One arm Pull Ups – Challenge level “Over 9000”

I truly believe as a trainer, therefore having the habit of seeing so much body types, shapes levels that this exercise is not a linear proportional function of your overall strength, that there is a meeting point between strength to weight ratio and ability to lift yourself this way. To tell it more simply, this exercise could be done by ultra fit individuals of an extreme athletic strength. Yet, if you wish to build up more strength you’d gain way too much weight to keep it natural and balanced for this exercise to be done (lever would be way to hard if you keep your legs in right proportions). I believe and that’s just my opinion that there is an optimal type of body for this exercise, evolution would lead to a decrease in performance for this very exercise.

How to perform?

1. Get in a pull up position
2. Remove one hand
3. Here you go

What muscles are involved?

1. Lats.
2. Biceps, forearms, rhomboid.
3. Abs.

How to get there?

Get lean! Incredibly lean. I found myself to be able to do it at a body fat level of 8%, and I mean the real 8%, not the scale told me 8%. That and a very specialized training focusing on this exercise.

Four awesome exercises that lead me to complete this challenge:

• Typewriter pull ups.
• Pull ups cliffhanger grip and try to use less and less your helping hand (supinated one, by removing fingers).
• Machine assisted pull ups, using one arm and reducing assistance over time.
• One hand pull ups. This is a one arm pull up assisted by your other hand wrapped around your wrist.

How long to be able to do it?

How fast can you diet?

If you ever know something to add to that least, please feel free to shoot in the comments. I might be a trainer myself I still fall for those challenges because in fitness you can really only teach what you like, this is all about believing in the way of sports.