Prisoner Workout: Bodyweight Exercises for Confined Spaces

Prisoner Workout: Bodyweight Exercises for Confined Spaces

If you have not lived in Great Britain you probably do not know who Charles Bronson is  (No – not the actor). I certainly do not and l lived in Britain for 13 years. Well he probably does not know who he is either, as he started life as Michael Peterson, under which name he was arrested for robbery in 1974. He was sentenced to 7 years with an opportunity for parole after 4. Following a series of violent and often bizarre incidents, he has now served over 40 years in prison. He changed his name to Charles Bronson during a brief 69 day spell out of prison and used that as his nom-de-guerre as a bare-knuckle prizefighter. He now goes by the name of Charles Salvador.

During these years behind bars, and often confined to isolation, Bronson became a fitness fanatic, creating workout programs that require only his bodyweight and a few odd objects. His extreme regimen has given him near-superhuman strength — he claims to be able to do 172 push-ups in 60 seconds, pick up a pool table by himself, and bend a steel prison cell door with his bare hands. He’s set many prison fitness records as well, including one for most push-ups in an hour: 1,727.

He has written up his regime in a book called “Solitary Fitness” which has good descriptions of the exercises he uses, though it is less effective as a book of workouts. He uses a weird coding system which takes patience to unravel.

Bronson is not alone. Prisoners all over the world have created highly effective strength building routines they can perform in the tiny space of their cell or with limited equipment in the jail yard. There is no shortage of incentive for a prisoner to keep fit. It helps pass the time. It helps channel energy. It makes one less vulnerable to attack.

To quote a famous prisoner, who everyone knows, prisoner 46664

“Even on the island, I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building from Monday through Thursday and then resting for the next three days. On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to forty-five minutes. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and various other calisthenics.” ~ Nelson Mandela from Long Walk to Freedom, 1994

 The Exercises

Think of a confined space – maybe 10 foot by 5 foot with a bed and a chair. Think of how little you can do in such a space.

The core bodyweight exercises below work the entire body and can be done in a confined space (once you find a way to do pull ups) . You can create a nice range of variations with small tweaks – one handed, one legged, steeper angles, overlapped hand positions, the mind boggles.  The basic idea is to do 10 repetitions of an exercise and build up the number and the pace at which you do them.  You could choose to do just one exercise and see how many you can cram into a timeslot, like Ryan Ferguson, wrongly accused of murder did in a Missouri jail.

Push ups

Push ups is a bread and butter routine for inmates. Bronson claimed to do 2,000 push-ups a day. Push ups work a range of muscle groups including the chest, and the front and back muscles of the upper arm (triceps and anterior deltoid). The beauty about push ups is there are lots of variations

• Change hand placement – go wider to work chest muscles or narrower to work triceps.
• Cross over hand placement – gives a wider chest, shoulder and triceps workout
• Hindu push up – this brings in the back and hips. To do a Hindu push up, start in a downward dog position and then make a swooping motion taking your hips toward the floor and then bringing your head up between your shoulders. It will look a bit like a dolphin diving. Then return the way you came.

 

 

• Handstand push up is fabulous for shoulder workouts. To do this  start in a handstand position. Slowly bend your elbows and lower yourself body towards the ground. Keeping balance will require all your core muscles to be working. You may find it easier to start off trying these against a will.
• One-Armed is the top of the pile

Pull ups

Pull-ups are a highly effective at working a wide range of muscle groups, including the the “wing” muscles on your back (laterals), biceps (upper arm), trapezius (large muscle along your spine in your upper back), chest, and forearms.  They can be done anywhere you can find a place to hang. Search out in the local park or buy a pull up bar that fits across a door frame or just use the top of a door or door frame (make sure the door does not move when you start hanging). The basic pull up is done with palms facing away from your body. Again there are lots of variations

• Chin up works your biceps more and train your laterals (wing muscles in your back) in a different way. Instrad of having your palms facing away from you, face them towards you.
• Change hand placement – go wider or narrower to work different muscles
• Mixed Grip – have one palm facing you and the other facing away. Do one pull up and then change sides. This narrows the zone of work and brings in the chest muscles and the trapezius.

• Commando pull up. This extends the mixed grip pull up. Pull yourself right up and across so the bar is next to your head – alternate sides and alternate hand grips.
• Typewriter pull up. Grab the bar with an overhand grip slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Pull yourself up until your chest is at the bar. Now, move your body toward one hand, taking some of the weight off the opposite hand. Keep your chest at the bar. Return your body to the center and repeat on the opposite side. Return to the center and lower your body under control. That is one repetition.One n
• One-handed  is the top of the pile

And you can extend the range of pull ups by turning each pull up into a hanging leg raise. Get into pull up poisition. When you reach the top of the pull raise your legs to horizontal or higher.

Squats

The squat is one of the most basic yet effective bodyweight movements that works your upper leg muscles (quads – inner and outer, hamstrings, glutes) and  hips, and inner thighs. The basic squat is simple. Just stand upright legs apart, width of the shoulders and lower yourself into the buttocks and thighs holding your arms out in front for balance. Now for some variations:

• Prisoner Squat. Place your hands behind your head and squat until your thighs are below parallel. Come up. That’s one repetition.
• Add Weight – find something heavy and hold it on your shoulders or out in front of you and squat. A box of wine or a barbell or 10 pound bag of rice will do the trick
• Squat Jumps – add some explosiveness to your squat. When you reach the bottom of the squat, explode off the ground as high as you can go. When you land do the next squat. Make sure you are somewhat warmed up before you start these.
• Pistol Squat. You guessed it – top of the pile is one legged.  As you squat on one leg, the free leg swings out in front of you and you start to look a little like a pistol. This is tough to master so you should work slowly up to it using a solid object as support with one arm.

Dips

Dips come in a range of forms and essentially work your triceps, chest muscles, shoulders and forearms. Prisoners typically will put their hands on a chair with their feet on the floor or propped up on the bed ad lower themselves to the floor. You can do this from the floor too. Get on the floor. Put your hands shoulder width apart on the floor behind you and straighten your elbows to lift your hips off the ground. Keeping your hips high, breathe in and bend your elbows straight behind you. Breathe out and straighten your arms. Best varioations cme from holding at the bottom and/or top of the move and also balancing some weight on your stomach.

 

 

 

Burpees

Burpees are a classic cardio bodyweight exercise that strengthen and tone a range of muscles in your body. To perform burpees, follow the instructions below:
a.Bend your knees and put your hands on the ground, making sure that they’re a shoulder width apart.
b.Kick your legs out behind you into a push up position and slowly bend your arms until your nose touches the ground.
c.Slowly straighten your arms, kick your knees back in, then stand up and jump up in the air.
d.When you land, repeat steps a-c for as many repetitions s as you can manage.

Now for some variations.

• Burpee with push up. Perform the burpee normally, but after you kick out your feet to a push up position, go ahead and do a full push up.
• Burpee with Hindu push up. Instead of just doing a full push-up, make it a Hindu push-up
• Burpee with pull up. Stand underneath a pull up bar or tree branch that is high enough that you have to leap to reach it. Perform a burpee normally, but when you leap up grab the bar and perform a pull up.

So much for the individual exercise, how about a few prisoner workouts that inmates use?

Deck of Pain

This is supposedly a favorite workout routine amongst prisoners because they usually have a deck of cards handy. Take a standard deck of 52 cards. Assign one of the above exercises (or one of their variations) to each of the four suits. So you could have something like:

• Clubs: Push ups
• Spades: Pull ups
• Diamonds: Squats
• Hearts: Burpees

Start drawing cards from the top. The suit tells you what exercise you’re doing; the number tells you the repetitions. Face cards count as ten repetitions; aces 11. So if you drew the 6 of diamonds you would do six squats; if you drew the jack of clubs, you do ten push ups. Draw the cards and perform the corresponding exercise and repetitions until all the cards have been drawn.  You could choose to put a time limit on it to fit the time you have – as many cards as fit into a 20 minute workout.  Always rememebr to make time to warm up before you start ansd stretch when you end.

Greasing the Groove

Instead of having a set time period where you try to crank out as many repetitions as you can, with greasing the groove, you’re building repetitions into the daily routine throughout the day. You might set up a system where every half hour, you perform ten push ups. Assuming you’re up for 12 hours a day, that’s 240 push ups every day. My army training was a lot like that. Take 5 for smoke break started with 5 push up. Another great way to do this is to do 10 squats every time you get up out of your chair.

What do we learn from the inmates stories? You do not need any equipment, though a pull up bar is a great add. You do need some commitment to make the effort. You can find the time by building bodyweight exercises into your daily routines.

Original article and prisoner line drawings form ArtofManliness.com

Get the book from Amazon  Solitary Fitness by Charles Bronson

Workoutswithoutweights.com has a good article on Bronson Workouts

Nelson Mandela revisiting his Robben Island cell based on image from Daily Telegraph UK. Quote from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom available from Amazon