There are a couple things you could do to get really good with bodyweight exercise.
You could pay Ido Portal a lot of money to personally coach you.
You could take the mindless way out and buy Foundation One through Four on the Gymnastic Bodies website. I don't get paid to endorse it, but it is literally the end all be all when it comes to bodyweight exercises. Every exercise is paired with a mobility exercise, and the program itself employs linear progression with it's own periodization protocol. The downsides is that it costs a lot of money to get and it requires some special equipment like stall bars. No other bodyweight expert measures up to Coach Sommers. Even Ido Portal was trained by Coach Sommers and I see some Ido Portal nut riding around here.
If you don't want to spend the money, but you still want to train with bodyweight exercises, then buy a copy of Coach Sommers "Building the Gymnastic Body" and work through the progressions. I don't consider bodyweight movements with added weight to be bodyweight exercises any more than I'd consider a barbell backsquat to be a variation of an airsquat. You can find Building the Gymnastic Body for free on the internet in PDF form if you like.
Once you've read through that, you can use the Killroy70 template off the BtGB forum.
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I've been a member of the list since I started my BtGB program this past January 09.
I began with a very basic program, working out 4 days/week and working four static positions every day, which included:
1) planche variations
2) BL variations
3) FL variations
4) Handstand work
After I finish my static work for a given workout, which generally consisted of 7-10 sets of each movement, the remainder of my workout looked like this:
Day 1 - horizontal plane pushing and pulling FBE
Day 2 - curling (inverted pullup) and dipping variations (RTO dips, etc..) FBE
Day 3 - pullup and HeSPU variation FBE
Day 4 - multiplane pulling variaions + varied pressing work
Anyway, I didn't want to get into anything that I considered even remotely advanced until I had become somewhat proficient in some of these exercises. Just to give an idea of progress, I'll give a quick list of where I began with the FSP (very first workout) and where I'm at now (i.e. yesterday's workout):
1) Planche variations: Frog stand 12 sec hold; tuck plance 10 sets of 8 sec holds
2) BL variations: tuck BL 8 second hold (VERY difficult, uncomfortable); FULL BL 10 sets of 4 sec holds (plus some reversals out of the BL to an inverted hang)
3) FL variations: Tuck FL 10 sec hold; 1/2 FL (one leg fully extended, one tucked, alternating e/set) 10 sets 4 sec holds (5 holds/leg)
4) Handstand work: couldn't even get into a handstand; kicking up into a handstand, using the wall as a "spotter", and working 10 sets of 20+ second holds (at the 20 second-mark, I'd stop using the wall as a spotter and go for as long as I can free standing)
**5**) When I started I was training the L-sit, but I felt it was really compromising my FL work, however, when I started I could not hold a floor L-sit for even 1 second; Yesterday, I tested and held a pretty good V-sit for a full 10 seconds. Surprised the hell out of my self!
**6**) One other area of very surprising progress: When I began, I couldn't do one since XR muscle up (even after devoting nearly 8 months of Crossfit work last year, no ring muscle ups achieved). Yesterday, I performed 15 single non-kipping muscle ups. They weren't perfect, pure-strength slow muscle ups, as there was a bit of leg movement, but definitely nothing that resembled a "kip."
Anyway, looking through my logs for the last couple of months, I'm pretty stunned at my progress following coach sommer's progressions.
Ok, on to the point of my post!.....
I'd like to begin working the basic ring strength series, which for me would look like:
-muscle up to support -->backwords roll -->inverted hang-->back lever-->inverted hang-->1/2 front lever-->down
What's the best way to work this into my program? As I stated above, for the last couple of months its been the 4 FSP's followed by 2 FBE, 4 days/week. There are some other things I'd like to begin working on as well, such as 360 pulls, which I imagine I could probably use them as a substitute for my static FL/BL work, perhaps embedding FL/BL statics into each 360 pull.
Should I perhaps substitute some FBE for the basic ring strength series maybe 2x/week?
I guess this post is getting a little long, as always, any feedback would be appreciated.
If you don't know how to periodize your program, then what I recommend is known as the
Steady State protocol.
Basically, you do
the exact same thing for 8-12 weeks straight. If you started with 5 sets of 5 dips, you end with 5 sets of 5 dips. This method is genius. Your first four weeks should be challenging, the next four weeks fairly easy, and the last couple weeks extremely easy. For all those familiar with periodization, that looks an awful lot like overloading with a planned deload. Granted, I wouldn't do this with a beginner (I'd have him make progress as often as possible until he stalled out, then back off a bit and do Steady State), but you get the idea.
The Steady State protocol can be used with virtually anything, as well. Weights, rocks, bodyweight exercises, sandbag stuff, kettlebells, hill sprints, whatever. Once you complete your Steady State cycle of 8-12 weeks, increase the difficulty of the exercise, increase the repetitions, add weight, you get the idea.
The other "bodyweight guys" like Matt Furey, the fictional Coach Wade, and even the Kavadlo Brothers pale in comparison to Coach Sommers. There's nothing wrong with them, but if you want to see the progressions for advanced bodyweight strength, you're not going to find it doing goofy shit like unilateral pushups, basketball pistols, or thousands of dands.
As far as equipment, you could buy/make yourself a pair of gymnastic rings, get a free standing pullup bar (doorway pullup bars are OK but they tend to fuck up doorways), buy or build a dip station, build or buy a set of parallets for planching and lsits, and maybe get an ab wheel for shits and giggles. Those things should keep you covered in the gymnastic department for a long time.