The Naked Warrior: Master the Secrets of the super-Strong--Using Bodyweight Exercises Only

Forget the gym. You don't need weights to get supremely strong. In fact, they can be detrimental to your strength. This book will show how the ancients and the old school strong men used to train. Pavel reintroduces the concepts of strength breathing and the phenomenon of irradiation. Whoever thought you could develop such strength with simple bodyweight calisthenics? Forget the gym and get this book!!

Pavel is controversial. Some people love him and some hate him. Pavel's book really delivers results that other books don't! I have experienced gains in strength and flexiblity. If you can do a one legged squat while holding a 20-40lbs weight on your chest, then don't buy this book. If you want to be truly strong not just look strong BUY THIS BOOK! One reviewer suggested that you look up the 2 exercises on the net and start doing them. Well, if it were only that easy!! What Pavel offers is.....1# SERIOUS TIPS starting from couch potato strength to being able to do these very hard exercises. I go to a gym and the pro's(with exercise science degrees)there can't even do them. These exercises are tough really tough. My advice is stick with it, don't rush be patient, it will take a few months or maybe longer. Use the props like a box or bench to assist strength development. 2# He is able to communicate deep internal muscular control without sounding new agey. That alone makes this book very valuable, especially for the martial artist. For a martial artist doing Sanchin kata, T'ai Chi or Yoga ,you will be taken to a level that most teachers don't teach or don't know. 3# He also imparts many exercise science concepts into plain English. Which again is amazing since he is Russian. I have learned many concepts like proprioception, antagonist muscles and many others. Not only do you learn these terms but he teaches you how to directly apply them to your training. I have no time to sift through a scientific textbook to pull out these concepts. Maybe I am a slow learner but The large print and repetitive bullit points really help beat these concepts into your head. So I love the format of the book. One reason I decided to review this book was after 6 months of owning it I kept coming to reread it and marking it up with my pen. Pavel's whole philosophy towards exercise is NOT mindless repetitions of any exercise it is about increasing your sensitivity of learning. Getting stronger through Building skill. He does use his concepts over in other videos and book. His philosophy is widely applicable to many types of training thus extremely effective and efficient. Good Luck

This book is the antithesis of books that recommend high rep calisthenics. Those are fine for conditioning, but do not build much strength.Naked Warrior is all about building limit strength throughout your entire body with high tension bodyweight drills, specifically multiple variations of the pistol and the one armed pushup. Not only will following the program enable you to do those two terrific exercises, but the high tension techniques will be useful for any other strength pursuit you choose. I was able to start doing one armed pushups in about a week using the principles from the book, and should be able to do the pistols soon.The exercises can be done anywhere, and take very little time during the day. A few pistols and one armed pushups a day will do far more for you than cranking out endless Hindu squats, crunches and two handed pushups and take nowhere near as much time.

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 www.MyTrainer.com

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.

Pavel's latest is really an elaboration on earlier principles explored in his other books, but applied here to only two body weight exercises. Principles that were introduced in ptp such as body tension and power breathing are explored more indepth here. The book isn't long, but you wouldn't want anymore info to digest, because what it talks about is very focused and complex. What's here is more than worth the measley 40 bucks. I've done matt furey's combat conditioning hindu squats/pushups and gotten good results, but eventually my joints started to click in ways that I wasn't going to be able to work through, and I was never able to perform the 1 leg squat, even though I could do a couple hundred reps straight. After applying the nw principles I was able to fire off five full pistons (1 leg squats) after a couple of days. Don't make the mistake of assuming that since you know the two exercises revealed in the book that it would pointless to buy it. The exercises really only serve as a teaching device for the principles.