How to Get Bruce Lee Like Strength Without Ever Going to a Gym

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was a paragon of cool and an icon of the ultimate bad-ass. Not only were his martial arts skills incredible, but he had such an impressive physique that even bodybuilders in the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger admired him.

What’s more impressive is that Bruce trained his body without ever stepping into a gym and with very little use of weights or machines.

• Here are just a few of Lee’s physical feats:
• Performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.
• Could hold an elevated v-sit position for 30 minutes or longer.
• Could throw grains of rice up into the air and then catch them in mid-flight using chopsticks.
• Could break wooden boards 6 inches (15 cm) thick.
• Performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.

While you may not get to Bruce Lee’s level overnight, you can start getting in shape without the use of a lot of fancy (and expensive) equipment. You can do it from the comfort of your own home, in a space as large as a bathroom.

Part of the reason I started training without a gym was because I began training in Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee’s method of martial arts). But I also got tired of paying monthly gym dues. At the time, I was looking for things I could cut out of my monthly budget to save a little extra money.

I thought about getting rid of my gym membership altogether, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my health or physical fitness. So I found another way. For months, I haven’t had a gym membership, yet I’m getting stronger and faster than I’ve ever been in my life.

You don’t have to buy lots of weights or machines, either. The most expensive equipment you’ll need (a simple doorway pull-up bar) will cost no more than $35.00.

Bruce Lee was a big proponent of holistic or total fitness. His workouts included strength, speed, endurance, and flexibility training.

Here’s just a few of the ways you can start getting stronger, faster and more toned without ever stepping into a gym:

1. Calisthenics. There are so many different bodyweight exercises out there, but we’ll start with the basics. For the lower body: lunges and squats are a good start. For upper body: pull-ups, push-ups, and shoulder press ups. For your core: crunches, chops, and reverse crunches will get you going. What’s great about bodyweight exercises is that they build functional strength. They’re natural movements you would use in real life situations like sports, self-defense, gardening, or doing chores. Plus when you do bodyweight exercises, you force your body to use more supporting and balancing muscles than you would on machines. For more bodyweight exercises check out these great resources: The Ultimate Guide to Bodyweight Training: 100 Killer Resources and for an awesome list of bodyweight exercises with illustrations check out Combat Fitness. Bonus: Top 10 Best Bodyweight Exercises for Advanced and Beginners.
2. Isometric exercises. These are basic bodyweight exercises, but where you hold your body in a static position. Examples of these are the frog sit, v-sit, horse stance, hanging from a pull-up bar, and the plank. Calisthenic exercises will improve muscle strength over a range of motion, but isometric exercises are great for joint and stabilizing strength.
3. Range of motion and flexibility. The best exercise I’ve found for range of motion and flexibility is yoga. The best thing about yoga is that no equipment is required and you can find tons of free resources online for yoga routines. Check out Anmol Mehta’s Yoga Illustrations to get you started.
4. Balance. Balance is the ability to keep your equilibrium when your center of gravity is thrown off-balance. There are many ways you can practice balance every day (we won’t get into tight rope walking here). When you’re putting on your shoes or getting dressed, do it on one foot. Walk on the curb and try to walk in a straight line without stumbling. Or if you’re really ambitious, there’s always pogo sticking and unicycling.
5. Dynamic exercise. Dynamic exercise is anything where you’re not performing routine after routine. Things are in flux and constantly changing. You’re moving in more natural movements, rather than continuous repetition of fixed patterns. I recently started doing Jeet Kune Do in the park every weekend. It’s a great way to get a good work out and learn self defense. Not to mention, practicing martial arts tends to make you inspired to further pursue and achieve higher levels of physical fitness. If you’re not into martial arts, you can always pick up a sport like tennis, handball, basketball, or take dance classes. Do whatever you’re naturally drawn to. Or if you struggle with seeing fitness as an enjoyable activity, you might consider getting a Wii Fit.

There’s a lot of other opportunities for exercise that don’t include a gym that I haven’t listed here. Hiking, jogging, skiing, yardwork… The list could go on. Just use your imagination. Make it fun and change it up. That’s the great thing about exercising without a gym, there’s so much to choose from.

On a side note, I will, however, say that for me, it took a lot more discipline to work out from home. It was easy for me to just go to the gym. Once I’m there, there’s not a lot else I can do other than work out. But at home, there’s always distraction, always other things you can do besides working out (like laying on the couch or surfing the internet). For me, practicing martial arts inspires me to be physically fit. While you might not have this problem, I thought it only fair to be upfront about this issue.

The other motivator for me to work out from home — besides saving money — was the variety of workouts. There’s just so many more options with bodyweight exercises than machines. You can always do something to further challenge yourself. If push-ups are a breeze, you can try doing them on your fingers or in a close grip (with a medicine ball). If pull-ups become too easy, train for a one arm pull-up (insanely difficult).

Attaining Bruce Lee like fitness isn’t just about doing the types workouts he did and eating the same diet. What made Bruce so great was his natural curiosity and drive to constantly explore and learn more about fitness and personal growth. (His personal library contained over 2,000 books!)

Tap into your own curiosity and make fitness enjoyable. Challenge yourself to new levels of fitness. Go beyond what you think you can do.

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee

BLUEPRINT YOUR GAINS FOR LONG-TERM GROWTH

Apply a little planning to your workouts to get bigger, stronger, and fitter, forever. Check out this one-year training plan!

One of the inalienable quirks of being human is that you always want more. From the moment you fill your lungs for the very first time as a newborn, being "more" is all you think about. You get damn good at it, too, because there's an unquenchable worldwide thirst for more horsepower, more information, more sex, more calories, more money, more strength, and more size.

Sadly, as most lifters and athletes will tell you, these gains don't last, and your eternal quest for more eventually hits a non-scalable wall—unless you adapt. It's the same with your love life—dating the same partner, eating at the same restaurants, and always doing the same things can't fulfill your emotional needs—unless you do these things with the one whose finger you end up putting a ring on, of course.


It turns out that variety is the spice of life, love, and muscle growth. You need to be flexible with fitness to ensure long-term growth and adaptation. I'll show you how.

BUILDING MUSCLE IS A GAS:

You want to pack on more muscle or improve performance, and the reason you can get your gains at the gym is because your body is the most adaptable thing on the planet—even more so than your iPhone. Unfortunately, you don't keep adapting endlessly.

A well-established study in the "British Medical Journal" calculated the exact speed and amount of adaptation your body is capable of—it's a formula called General Adaptive Syndrome (GAS), and it explains why you need variety to undergo continued adaptation.

The trick to long-term growth and performance is to treat your muscles like a player. Seduce them with a new workout every 4-8 weeks and their progress will keep you satisfied for as long as you're willing to make them sweat. Keep reading to find out how and why it works.

A LOVE AFFAIR OF MUSCLE:

The GAS graph shows that your body grows and performs in peaks, troughs, and plateaus that have a start and end point. Let's say you've just begun a new training cycle that you plan to stick with for as long as possible. It's time to walk through each phase of the GAS graph so you can see how it applies

GAS KEY

• 1 New stimulus
• 2 The alarm phase
• 3-5 The adaptation phase
• 6-10 Plateau
• 11 The exhaustion phase

WEEK 1 THE NEW STIMULUS

A training cycle starts the moment your muscles are confronted with a new stimulus. Let's say you usually do 4 sets of 8 reps on all your exercises. The new stimulus would be to do 3 sets of 15 reps on a totally new set of exercises or even on all the same group of exercises.

During the first week of this new training cycle, your body will adapt and might actually make gains. It'll be a refreshing change so you'll be motivated to see how far this new technique can take your physique and performance.

WEEK 2 THE ALARM PHASE

This is when your exercise performance might decline. You might not be able to push the same size weights you did the previous week or squeeze out as many reps. A set of 15 reps may feel long, arduous, and painful.

Frustration can fester as you wonder if this technique is the right one for you. You'll think about quitting, but may get a glimmer of hope in the final workouts of this week that will seem slightly easier and yield some strength increases.

WEEKS 3-5 THE ADAPTATION PHASE:

During these weeks, your body and brain reap the benefits of your hard work. Your nervous system becomes more efficient at instructing your muscles. This helps you use larger weights, which inflict micro-tears to your muscle fibers. They'll repair and grow back thicker and stronger, making you add muscle.

If you're training for sport, this is the time when you'll become fitter and improve upon your overall performance. Each week sees an improvement and you'll soon sport arms so powerful you could throw a lamb chop past a starving wolf.

The key to long-term progress is to stay in this phase for as long as possible. As soon as your gains taper off and begin to plateau (usually somewhere after week 5 or 6), you should take a break, then switch programs.

WEEKS 6-10 PLATEAU

This is when you reach a point where your rate of adaptation slows down and you hit a muscle-building or performance plateau. The stimulus isn't different enough to cause your muscles to develop and they become stale. You won't necessarily lose strength or size, but you'll lift the same sized weights. It's a bit like gym purgatory.

WEEKS 11 AND BEYOND THE EXHAUSTION PHASE

Your training has now become detrimental to your goals. Every rep you do is a cancer on your muscles; it bores them with the same tired stimulus. You'll get weaker, lose energy, and may even get ill. Your physique will deteriorate as you lose muscle and gain fat while your performance is in a slump.

You need to take at least two weeks rest or do a totally new type of training that is the antithesis of what you were doing.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

For the best results, you should be flexible with your fitness. Let your muscles play the field of training techniques to keep growing and improving their performance.

Bear in mind that athletes usually adopt new techniques every 4 weeks while novices can keep making gains for up to 8-12 weeks using the same technique.

With that said, progress isn't always linear or constant. Sometimes it comes in batches when you least expect it. You might train hard for weeks with no results then, all of a sudden, progress slaps you in the face and your best lifts jump up by 44 pounds or you stack on 4 pounds of muscle.

"THE RESULTS CAN SEEM INSTANT AND ALMOST SEEM EFFORTLESS, BUT THEY ARE ACTUALLY THE REWARD OF MONTHS OF CONSISTENT AND PERSISTENT EFFORT."

The results can seem instant and almost seem effortless, but they are actually the reward of months of consistent and persistent effort. But the moment you feel the relationship with a training technique going sour because of a lack of gains, you have a few options: use a new training technique (way of exercising), take one or two weeks to rest from all training, or dramatically reduce your workout load by at least 60 percent.

Rest is never a bad thing, and it's recommended that you take a break whenever you hit a plateau or switch routines. But if you're motivated and keen on getting fast results, then feel free to jump straight into a new technique.

Should you choose to do this, make sure the new technique is vastly different from the last one you did or builds directly on your previous routines. Starting a new routine that's not different enough from the previous one means there won't be enough variation to trigger growth and progress.

This will keep you in a perpetual state of exhaustion which can lead to overtraining and burnout. For constant progress, decide on your goals and take your muscles out on the town by gathering information on several different types of training that are specific to your end goal.

Once you have all that information, then you can put it together in a long-term training plan that corrects failures and builds on success.

Always remember to mix things up to challenge your body and mind, because variety is the spice of a muscular life.

CRAFTING A YEAR-LONG PLAN

The following is a progressive plan to help a beginner progress to an intermediate lifter in less than a year.

STARTING OFF EASY

The high reps of endurance training will gradually accustom your muscles to being resistance training without any risk of injury. If you keep the rest periods low, it will also help you burn fat.

STRENGTH ENDURANCE TRAINING

Strength Endurance 1 (E1): 

2 sets of 15-20 reps per exercise. Rest 30 seconds between sets

Strength Endurance 2 (E2): 

3 sets of 12-15 reps per exercise. Rest 30 seconds between sets

Strength Endurance 3 (E3): 

4 sets of 12-15 reps per exercise. Rest 30 seconds between sets

 PICKING UP YOUR GAME

By this stage your muscles and nervous system will be attuned to getting put through its paces. You can now start gunning for size by decreasing the repetitions, increasing the size of the weights you use, and setting personal bests.

TRY BODYBUILDING HYPERTROPHY TRAINING

Hypertrophy 1 (H1): 

4-6 sets of 8-10 reps per exercise. Rest 2 minutes between sets

Hypertrophy 2 (H2): 

5-7 sets of 6-8 reps per exercise. Rest 2 minutes between sets

PLAYING IN THE BIG LEAGUES

You will have now mastered the form of the basic exercises and can dramatically add weight to build strength and power with lower repetitions.

TRY PURE STRENGTH AND POWER TRAINING

Power (S1): 

5-10 sets of 4-7 reps per exercise. Rest 3-5 minutes between sets

Pure Strength (S2): 

3-4 sets of 1-4 reps per exercise. Rest 3-5 minutes between sets

HOW TO USE IT

The difference between exercise and training is that exercise is movement without purpose, while training has vision and a clear goal.

As such, you must always think long term. There's no point thrashing it out for two months, stacking on muscle, shedding fat, and bolstering your performance only to quit and watch it waste away.

Even if you're a total beginner, you don't need a personal trainer to tell you how to schedule your long-term training strategy. Lay the foundations by doing strength endurance training (or any other technique suited to beginners) for 2-3 months.

Pay attention to your progress and, when your performance starts to decline, take a week off and start training for growth using the hypertrophy training guidelines.

When the scale tells you that you aren't adding muscle, start a power or strength training program. You'll notice that, after this, you'll revert back to endurance training to shock your muscles into growing further. This seems counterintuitive, but your muscles won't be used to doing such high repetitions, which will shock and spark the growth process again because you will have started a completely new cycle. And, when you do hypertrophy training again, you'll stack on size faster than you've ever dreamed.

Now that you know the rules of the game, you can tailor your plan to your goals and play smarter than your competitor.

ARNOLD'S BACK TRAINING

It would be a mistake to think the "back" consists of a single muscle. It's a group that includes the middle and lower traps, rhomboids, the upper and lower portions of the latissimus dorsi, the erectors (low back), and even the rear delts. Arnold's approach to this complex group came from all angles.

When he began competing at the elite level, Arnold's back wasn't as imposing as his mammoth chest and arms. By employing basic, multi-joint movements to target all areas of his back, he was able to bring it up.

Here are some the basic principles Arnold followed when training back.

Arnold typically broke his back training into two types of movements: chinning and pull-downs for lat width, and rows for overall thickness. Lat pull-downs and pull-ups build a strong V-taper, while rows and bent-over movements better target the middle-back musculature.

"When he began competing at the elite level, Arnold's back wasn't as imposing as his mammoth chest and arms. By employing basic, multi-joint movements to target all areas of his back, he was able to bring it up."

Chins with an underhand grip and pull-ups were a big part of Arnold's approach to building wide lats. He also varied his grip width, went up to the bar behind his head and to his chest, and sometimes used added resistance or simply his bodyweight. The net result was an assault the worked the lats from multiple angles for better overall development.

"Wide-grip pull-ups coax the upper lats to come out," Arnold said. With wide-grip movements, the elbows stay out away from the sides, meaning the upper lats become the focus. With close-grip and reverse-grip back exercises, the elbows stay in tighter to the sides; this reduces the emphasis on the upper lats and instead places more of the focus on the lower lats.

One technique Arnold favored was to shoot for a total number of chins, say 50, rather than target a particular number of sets. "On the first set you may do 10 reps. Perhaps you struggle with 8 reps on the second set. You have 18 reps now. If you make 5 on the third set, you have 23 reps. You continue to add them until you reach 50, even though it may take you 20 sets to do it. That's how I built up my chinning power, and I was very successful with it."

For Arnold, with chins or with any other back move, gains in strength meant he'd have to increase the weight. "After you've mastered 10-12 reps in any type of chin, then you can start to put weight around your waist." Arnold argued that just increasing the number of reps you do as you get stronger wasn't as beneficial to the bodybuilder looking to maximize muscle growth as increasing the resistance.

Not everyone can do chins or pull-ups with their bodyweight. Arnold recommended using the pull-down machine until your strength levels increase. Once you can do at least 8 reps with the equivalent of your bodyweight, he suggested switching over to the chinning bar.

Exercises in which you pull the weight perpendicularly into your body—often called rows—were also a big part of Arnold's back workout. He favored all kinds of variations—seated cables rows, T-bar rows, bent-over barbell rows—but again each one was done with high volume and progressively heavier weights, pyramiding the weight up on successive sets for fewer reps.

Between sets, Arnold stretched out his lats, either hanging from a bar or holding on to a stable object and leaning away. Stretching helped maintain the flexibility around the joint. He often tensed his lats between sets as well, contracting the muscle as hard as he could to help achieve a superior pump.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mammoth Chest And Back Workout

Basic exercises, heavy weights, high volume, and high frequency are the techniques Arnold Schwarzenegger used to build his massive chest and back. Try the workout!

It was more than three decades ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger last trained for a competition (1980 to be exact), but even today many young bodybuilders point to The Oak as their biggest source of inspiration.


Though the black-and-white images have long faded on the walls of hardcore Southern California gyms, the training philosophies that built the world's greatest bodybuilder live on. In this, the second exclusive installment exploring Arnold's training, we focus on his chest and back workout.

"Though the black-and-white images have long faded on the walls of hardcore Southern California gyms, the training philosophies that built the world's greatest bodybuilder live on."

Arnold paired chest with back, which are antagonist muscle groups; while one contracts, the other is stretched. Though they are both very large muscle groups, Arnold followed a high-volume, high-frequency approach, performing this workout three times per week. If that wasn't demanding enough, he typically came into the gym later in the evening for his thigh workouts!

Here's a closer look at the specific techniques and approaches that helped lay the foundation for his superhuman gains.

ARNOLD'S CHEST TRAINING:-

Arnold pecs were truly impressive, even as teenager. It was always one of his strong body parts. Arnold prioritized chest training; he did it first in his training when fatigue levels were low so he could train it with maximum intensity.

"I seemed to train my chest hard and correctly from the beginning," he wrote. "My chest grew because I gave it the most attention, placing it first in my workout."

"Arnold prioritized chest training; he did it first in his training when fatigue levels were low so he could train it with maximum intensity."

Here are some of Arnold's best chest-training tips culled from the many articles he wrote and interviews he gave over the years.

Arnold competed as a powerlifter early in his career, so building a big chest started with training for strength. Arnold's top weights on the bench included a 500-pound single and 405 for 8 reps. Arnold once did a 225-pound bench for 60 reps!

Arnold believed the concept of progressive overload was critical to building his pecs. "I strongly believe that the size of your muscles grows with the size of the weights you're using for repetitions."

Arnold included basic multi-joint movements in his routine that hit the pecs from every angle, which he knew would lead to optimal pec development from top to bottom. "I knew the routine had to be basic and very heavy."

Arnold hit every body part, not just chest, with high volume and frequency. His offseason routine consisted of up to 26 working sets on a high-volume day, and he trained his pecs three days per week, taking at least 48 hours off between workouts for recovery. That kind of volume and frequency suited The Oak during his competitive years, but for anyone with a full-time job, it's likely to induce significant jumps in cortisol levels and fatigue. Cycle short periods of high volume or high frequency training into your workout on occasion, but listen to your body for signs of overtraining. Arnold also cycled heavy and light days to both work the muscles with different relative intensities and ensure he wasn't overtraining his pecs.

Once you become familiar with the various basic movements in the gym, evaluate your weaknesses and try variations of basic exercises. "Not everybody responds to the bench press. You need to determine for yourself which are the best exercises for your body." Other variations he commonly tried included using slightly closer or wider grips on the barbell to move the area of emphasis in or out a few degrees.

Know the advantages of dumbbells and barbells, but use both in your training. "I feel a better stretch when doing dumbbells, especially with incline movements. The dumbbells can be lowered deeper than a barbell." This is important because a muscle that's fully stretched is capable of a stronger contraction, so long as you don't overstretch the shoulder joint.

Arnold commonly started with 1-2 warm-up sets and then increased the weight on succeeding sets (called a pyramid set) while decreasing the reps. Still, he trained in a fairly low rep range, often starting at 12 and working his way down to six.

Arnold believed that a lack of focus and concentration was the biggest mistake bodybuilders made when hitting chest. "Flex your pectoral muscles throughout the movement, but especially at the top." Contracting your pecs hard at the top increases the intensity of the movement.