Growingskill
Back Lever Progressions
The friendliest of the big statics — tuck to full back lever, with the shoulder extension prep that makes it safe. Full back lever unlocked in 2026; pullouts are next.
Calisthenics Lab
$ cd ./topics/calisthenics-lab
Calisthenics Lab
A calisthenics skills library, training principles, and the engineering lessons hiding inside them.
28 notes🌱 9 seed🌿 19 growing🌳 0 evergreen
I train bodyweight skills, mostly handstands, rings and levers, and I keep finding that training principles explain engineering better than engineering jargon does. Progressive overload is incremental migration. A deload is a tech-debt sprint. A skill tree is a learning path you can see.
The Lab is my skills library: every skill family I train (handstands and HSPU, levers, planche, pulling, rings, legs, core) with my current progressions, goals and how-to guides, plus a fitness radar and a competitions tracker. The metaphor notes connect training back to building software. Head to the Lab to explore.
Start here
- Progressive Overload and Incremental Migration: small, steady, measured increases win, in the gym and in a codebase.
- Deloads Are Tech-Debt Sprints: recovery is part of the plan, not a break from it.
- Skill Trees as Platform Capability Maps: prerequisites, progressions and visible paths.
Training principles as engineering lessons
- SAID: Train for the Production You Actually Run: specific adaptation to imposed demands.
- Golden Paths and the Recommended Routine: opinionated defaults you can leave once you know why.
- Hypertrophy and Skill Phases: Build vs Harden Cycles: alternate building capacity and refining it.
- Regress, Don’t Grind: Graceful Degradation: step back a progression instead of failing ugly.
- You Can’t Serve Two Masters: one primary goal per block.
Related elsewhere
- Spaced Repetition: skills, like memories, come from short sessions spread over months.
- Driving a TypeScript Codebase to Zero Errors: progressive overload, applied for real.
Open questions I’m exploring
- Is handstand balance a good mental model for control loops and backpressure? Small corrections early beat big ones late.
- Can a skill tree’s prerequisites be learnt from training logs rather than designed by hand?
- What’s the engineering equivalent of a deload, and how often should a team take one?
- Back Lever Progressions
- Balance Is a Control Loop
- Calisthenics Programming: Skill vs Hypertrophy Phases
- Core Progressions
- Deloads and Tendon Adaptation
- Deloads Are Tech-Debt Sprints
- Dips and Ring Dips
- Front Lever Leverage
- Golden Paths and the Recommended Routine
- Handstand Push-up Progressions
- Handstand Technique: Base, Stack, Corrections
- Hypertrophy and Skill Phases: Build vs Harden Cycles
- L-sit and V-sit
- Pistol and Shrimp Squats
hover to explore · click to open
Notes (28)
- Growingmetaphor
Balance Is a Control Loop
A handstand is a feedback loop with a sensor, a delay and an actuator. So are autoscalers, rate limiters and a real-time UI under load — and they fail the same way.
Calisthenics Lab - Growing
Calisthenics Programming: Skill vs Hypertrophy Phases
Once the beginner routine stops working, alternate blocks that build capacity with blocks that turn it into skill, with a deload between. You can't push both at once.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
Core Progressions
Ab wheel, dragon flag, hanging leg raises and the human flag — anti-extension and compression work that every lever and handstand borrows from.
Calisthenics Lab - Growing
Deloads and Tendon Adaptation
Muscles adapt in days, tendons in weeks. Planned deloads and short, spaced bouts of loading keep the slow tissue in step — and the same is true of teams and their tech debt.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
Deloads Are Tech-Debt Sprints
Tendons adapt slower than muscles, and organisations adapt slower than code. Schedule the recovery week before an injury schedules it for you.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
Dips and Ring Dips
Parallel-bar dips to rings-turned-out dips. Stability, depth and turn-out are what the ring ladder adds, and why ring dips carried over to my muscle-ups.
Calisthenics Lab - Growing
Front Lever Leverage
The front lever is a torque problem. A back-of-the-envelope segment model shows why each progression is a step in moment arm, why tall people suffer, and why the straddle is less of a shortcut than it feels.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
Golden Paths and the Recommended Routine
The best developer platforms feel like a good beginner programme — opinionated, safe, explained, and easy to leave once you know why.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingskill
Handstand Push-up Progressions
From pike push-ups to the freestanding handstand push-up — the ladder I'm climbing in 2026, the prerequisites that matter, and why balance becomes the limiter at the top.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingskill
Handstand Technique: Base, Stack, Corrections
The cues that took me from wall holds to a 30-second freestanding handstand — build the base, stack the line, and balance with your hands, not your feet.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
Hypertrophy and Skill Phases: Build vs Harden Cycles
You can't push volume and skill at the same time without something giving. Platform roadmaps work better when they alternate building capability with hardening it.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
L-sit and V-sit
Compression is the quiet prerequisite behind presses, levers and muscle-ups. My L-sit to V-sit ladder, the flexibility it needs, and the drills that move it.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
Pistol and Shrimp Squats
Single-leg strength for a calisthenics athlete who also runs. Pistols to weighted pistols, shrimp squats to two-hand shrimps, and why single-leg work keeps the knees and ankles honest.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
Planche Progressions
Tuck planche and tuck planche push-ups are in; the advanced tuck is the goal. Lean, protraction and patience — and why planche keeps getting parked behind handstand work.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedskill
Press to Handstand
Bent-arm and straight-arm presses to handstand are compression and shoulder problems more than strength problems. What's worked for me so far, and what's still missing.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
Progressive Overload and Incremental Migration
You don't add 40kg to the bar overnight, and you don't rewrite a system in one go — small, steady, measured increases win both times.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingskill
Pull-ups and the One-Arm Chin-up
From the first strict pull-up to ring archers and one-arm chin negatives. The vertical pulling ladder, the cues that made it click, and how I'm approaching the one-arm chin-up.
Calisthenics Lab - Seedmetaphor
Regress, Don't Grind: Graceful Degradation
On a bad training day you drop to an easier progression rather than grinding ugly reps. Systems under stress should do the same — shed the expensive work, keep the core going.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
SAID Principle
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands — you get good at exactly what you train. Systems and test suites do too, so make the training look like production.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
SAID: Train for the Production You Actually Run
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands — you get good at exactly what you practise. Tests and staging only prepare a system for the conditions they simulate.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
Skill Trees as Platform Capability Maps
Draw a platform roadmap like a calisthenics skill tree — prerequisites, tiers and mastery levels — so it's obvious what's locked until the foundations are in.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingskill
The Muscle-Up Transition
The muscle-up isn't a pull-up plus a dip; it's the awkward bit in between. False grip, pulling height and a fast lean-over are what got me from zero to eight ring muscle-ups.
Calisthenics Lab - Seed
Training Around a Busy Week
When time comes in smaller blocks and sleep is broken, the minimum effective dose, short explosive sessions and a flexible schedule keep progress going — or at least keep the skills.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingskill
Weighted Pull-ups and Dips
The two strength lifts that underpin most of my skills, logged relative to bodyweight. How I programme them, when to test, and where their carry-over runs out.
Calisthenics Lab - Seed
Wrist Load in Handstands
Your wrists are the actuator, the sensor and the weak link of a handstand. What a pressure-mapping study says about where the load goes, and the prep and cues that kept mine happy.
Calisthenics Lab - Growingmetaphor
You Can't Serve Two Masters
Specialise for a block. Two or three goals at a time beat ten — in training, where goals compete for recovery, and in teams, where they compete for attention.
Calisthenics Lab - Growing
Zone 2 Training
Run slowly enough to stay in zone 2 for the whole session. It builds the aerobic base that makes everything else recover faster, and progress shows up as a faster pace at the same heart rate.
Calisthenics Lab
Coming up
- Balance Is a Control Loop article
- Front lever maths: why tall people suffer article
- Watching the Games for gymnastics pacing explore
- Video: wall to freestanding handstand push-up video
- Experiment: does strict press strength predict the HSPU? experiment
- From a coloured spreadsheet to a skills library article
- Tendons are slow learners explore
- Video: the handstand is a control loop video
- Video: my skills library in 60 seconds video
- Where the weight goes: wrist load in handstands article