Train Acrobolix
Start here
So you're ready to be both acrobatic and anabolic? Okay! So here is how to train to do both:
Start jumping everyday
Ask yourself, "When was the last time I jumped? Did I jump today?" If you haven't jumped today then you're living a cursed lifestyle! "But, but, my joints hurt!" You know why they hurt? Because you aren't jumping! I'm a big mofo and I gotta tell you this: when I stop jumping, I start feeling mortal. My knees and ankles and back begin hurting. When I start jumping again, I begin feeling like a little kid again. You know, kids? They jump off furniture and run around without "warm ups" and don't hurt themselves. So do I. Why? Because I jump everyday! Trust me, part of your pain isn't age, it's because you stopped jumping like a crazy kid and began sitting on your butt (literally) 8 hours a day. So start jumping everyday! Standing jumps. Long jumps. Skip jumps. Hop jumps. Box jumps. One legged jumps. Even jumprope! To succeed at Acrobolix training, you need to jump a lot! Don't complicate it, don't quantify it, just make sure you're jumping everyday in new ways and having fun!
Start stretching everyday
Do stretch kicks and practice the splits. Everything you do, everyday, should be through a full range of motion. I have so much to say about stretching that I could write a book about it. So I did! Buy my flexibility ebook, Legendary Flexibility, to learn how to be badass flexible.
Learn one trick at a time
A trick is an acrobatic flip, twist, or kick. Cool moves! The secret to success in tricking is to learn one move at a time. Start with the backflip. Study video clips of it for weeks. Imagine yourself doing it as you watch. Go find a gymnastics or cheer gym and get some help. Make friends. Learn it, get it consistent, then pick another trick to learn. And another. And another. And another! One trick at a time until you have one hundred moves! Visit this page to read my tutorials about tricking.
Get pumps to build muscle
I don't care about the differences between myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy blah blah blah. Look, you want to build muscle, then you must do body part split training. You need to get skin tearing pumps with a higher volume of isolation exercises while moving appreciable amounts of weight. After you get an arm pump, you shouldn't even be able to touch your scalp. After leg day, your legs should look goofy swollen and feel like jellow. A couple days per week per bodypart is plenty if you eat well. Build and sculpt those muscles by forcing more and more nutrients into the muscles with bigger and bigger pumps.
Eat good and supplement A-Z
Here is how to know if you're eating good: first, nobody argues that it's bad. Nobody talks shit about eating kale and sardines, or drinking beet juice or fish oil. These are non-controversial. Why? Because they are equivocally fucking awesome. So eat foods that are equivocally fucking awesome and don't let yourself get hungry. That's all you have to do to eat good. Frequency and timing and intermittent fasting? Ignore that shit. Second, supplement with everything you can afford A-Z. I take everything. If there is even a hint of it being promising, I'll at least try it. I consume dozens of pills per day, because I want to be the best. Is that healthy? Yes, absolutely. And it makes me Jacked! And hey, Jack Lallanne did it too, he ate bowl fulls (I'm serious, literally) of pills daily. That bastard lived into his 90s as the most fit man in the world for his age. So I'm gonna do that now, so I can be one of the most fit men in the world at my own age.
Get strong on the classic lifts
Deadlifts, squats, presses, olympic lifts: power on these movements help build muscle and explosiveness. They are an essential ingredient in Acrobolix training. The best way to get strong on these lifts is to avoid failure and allocate 1 hour blocks of time per lift and practice them like a skill. Stop when you begin to suck at them. Here: treat these lifts with the same technical respect you would juggling or playing a musical instrument. If you aren't putting your head and heart into these lifts with the intention to make every rep better, like you would when practicing those type of skills, you're training wrong.
Work to control your body
Bodyweight training too. It's no joke when you've already built an appreciable amount of muscle mass. It'll make you bulletproof and solidify your gains in anything else you do. Jump on a pair of rings and hit some pistol squats. Pure magic.
Do all of this
How do you balance all of these things? You do tons of them some seasons while doing little of them some seasons (emphasize lifting and bodybuilding in winter, emphasize tricking and stretching in summer). Sometimes, you do all of them at the same time. But most importantly, you start! Start doing it all. And trust me, a higher balance is something you can achieve, just try it!
Too much?
Yeah of course it's too much. Look, you have to jump, stretch, trick, build muscle, and lift! That's a lot of crap to do! So avoid junk training by doing exactly the right amount of work necessary to get your result and no more. That's efficacy and efficiency at work. That's the art of Acrobolix training: learning when you've done enough of something so you can still have the resources to do enough of something else... and then enough of something else... and then enough of something else!
Questions?
Visit the Acrobolix Group on Facebook, these guys are my friends, I love them. I join in the discussion sometimes myself.
And don't forget to: