The Naked Warrior: Master the Secrets of the super-Strong--Using Bodyweight Exercises Only Paperback – January 1, 2010

Just one of the things I love about Pavels book, The Naked Warrior, besides the title, is it's simplicity and focus on profound concepts that can only come from a true expert, grounded in experience. And I mean profound, not only in terms of their application to strength, conditioning and development but also to lifestyle. For example, not training to fatigue and depletion, leaves you in a position where you can intensely train your muscles to adapt in size and strength while still having capacity left over, and, avoid the need to go into the typical 48 hours of recovery and healing (like body builders do) before being capable of training a particular muscle set again. This has huge implications for the person that has huge demands on their time and personal capacity and doesn't have the capability to go into 48 hours of healing from a grueling workout taken to fatigue. You can workout in short but powerful stints and get on with your life and still get great results in size and strength. This reminder and adjustment makes this book priceless for me... I feel better, have more control over the use of my time and I'm never really fatigued or walk around like a piece of macaroni waiting to recover. I am doing this now in almost all of my excercise forms including my biking - Short, intense, adaptive, short-of-fatigue workouts - thanks Pavel! A raving fan - John Allen, Founder of [...]

This book is a wealth of knowledge, especially for martial artists that need to maintain a steady practice of reliable strength training moves. The exercises and techniques presented in this book work very well, most especially if Pavel's instructions are followed to the letter. I'm impressed with the results.

The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline is not what it seems. When I purchased this book, I expected a book about working out with just ones bodyweight. This book is not that at all. It is a hypothesis that one wants to do some serious strength training, but due to travel, bad timing, or some other circumstance a barbell is not available. Therefore this book focuses on two exercises to get a good strength workout in until you find a barbell handy.Having said that, The Naked Warrior delivers on its intended topic. Obviously, if you don't have weights handy, you must do body weight exercises. When doing bodyweight exercises, one must focus on either making the exercise exceptionally difficult or doing higher and higher repetitions. Doing higher and higher repetitions is not strength work, but rather endurance work. To make the exercise more difficult, you must shift your weight between your arms and legs so that one arm or leg is at a disadvantage or so that your arms (or legs) are carrying a higher percentage of your bodyweight.Two of the most extreme examples of this are the one-armed push-up (OAP) or the one-legged squat (pistol). Of course you can do easier versions of these exercises, for example pistols to or from a high chair, if your strength and flexibility is not quite where it should be. These are the two exercises that are discussed in mind numbing detail in the book.I, for one, normally use about thirty minutes of calisthenics and thirty minutes of aerobics for my workouts. However, I hate doing more than thirty reps of anything. Therefore, I intend to work in OAPs and Pistols into my regular workouts. Of course, at his point, I can only do pistols from a medium level bench, but believe that I can work them into my regular routine and improve to the point where full pistols are possible. At this point, five pistols to a medium chair is test of my strength, flexibility, and balance.Additionally, this book discusses Greasing the Groove (GTG). GTG is the idea that if you do five or less reps of an exercise thoughout the day, you will eventually get to the point where the exercise is effortless. This is tied to the idea that strength is a skill and that training to failure is counter productive because it requires a lengthy recovery time.Additionally, there are some discussions about using breathing to generate extra strength and how to stay tight during exercises. All of these topics are helpful - at least to me - when attempting these two exercises.Bottom line: Nothing in this book is rocket science. Nothing in this book is a super secret of Soviet Strongmen. However, the discussion of proper form combined with discussion about the tension techniques (staying tight) are well worth the cost of the book. My recommendation is to use this book as a handy reference prior to or just after exercising.

Pavel Tsatsouline has never steered me wrong. I only wish I could have discovered his precepts earlier, but as we are contemporaries, that would be impossible. In my 50's with two metal hips and years of wrestling injuries, however, finding his wisdom now has been the next best thing. His ideas concerning strength, flexibility, recovery, and specific training have made me the strongest and least hurting/injured now (at 57) than at any other point in my life. I've bought and read 4 of his books and now search for any podcasts or interviews I can find of his. There is a gem in each of them, and as a former college coach I say to my colleagues: please listen to some of these gems, though they might be a little counter-cultural in the American weightlifting scene. You won't regret it.

good explanations

A good intro to a few basic body weight exercises that will build all around strength. Nothing wrong with this book but I prefer Convict Conditioning which is in the same genre but has more detailed progressions and a few more exercises. Still a fun and informative read.

Along with Power to the People, this is THE "how to" manual for getting stronger. The workout Pavel recommends contains only two exercises, the one-armed push-up and the pistol, a one-legged squat. But these exercises are not merely prescribed as a routine. Pavel uses them to teach you how to gain total body strength via the mastery of muscle tension. Really, the exercises are just vehicles for you to learn the skill of intense, total-body muscle contraction, although performing them will obviously make you exceptionally strong in those movements. In other words, this books teaches you how to be strong in all movements through the mastery of two basic exercises. For those of you put off by the difficulty of the exercises, Pavel demonstrates how to work up to those movements via easier variations of the exercises. Definately worth every penny.