Calisthenics And Dumbbell Workout Routine

I train MMA and used to be an avid weight lifter but in the recent years my eagerness to lift weights has greatly diminished. I haven't gotten a good workout in years simply because it has gotten boring after doing for so long. One day at the mma gym a fellow student recommended calisthenics to me.

His opinion was that weights won't help me at all on the mat and that body weight exercises would not only keep me in shape, but keep me ripped to. I don't know about weights being worthless for combat sports but I do know that calisthenics is all you need. This buddy of mine at the gym is one of the strongest and most muscular grapplers we have and he hasn't lifted a weight in years.

He gave me a program that he said is used by the special forces for their routine. It includes pullups and closed in chinups or reverse pullups but I decided to supplement those with dumbbell lifts to get more reps that match the amount of pushups you can do.

Since most people can do far more pushups than pullups and the whole idea for me behind calisthenics is high repetitions. Another modification I made to the workout was to add some plyometrics into the workout since that would help aid me in a combat sport or any other sport for that matter. Here's the workout I ended up with;

Clap pushups
Tricep pushups

Lat dumbbell pulls or bent row
Bicep hammer curls

Jump squats
Calve raises

Trap shoulder shrugs
Forearm dumbbells

Crunches "on an exercise ball"
Neck "nod" "shake" "tilt"

6 SETS OF TWENTY and go back and forth
from clap pushups to tricep pushups
and so forth for each pair of excersizes

Note: I added dumbbell lat pulls from a bench or chair instead of pullups also because of what muscles it works. "for those of you in MMA or grappling I think it's more applicable because you use that same motion to fish for underhooks from the guard and pull someone down into your guard. also it is good for pulling someone into a clinch or thai clinch etc."