Juarez Valley Method
According to the book Jailhouse Strong, the convicts inside Mexico’s Juarez Valley Prison — one of the world’s most dangerous prisons — use the following rep scheme for their bodyweight workout.
Pick an exercise. You’re only going to be doing one during this circuit. Let’s say for this example, you’re going to do push-ups. This circuit consists of 20 sets. The rep scheme looks like this:
[su_table]
| Set | Reps |
| 1 | 20 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 19 |
| 4 | 2 |
| 5 | 18 |
| 6 | 3 |
| 7 | 17 |
| 8 | 4 |
| 9 | 16 |
| 10 | 5 |
| 11 | 15 |
| 12 | 6 |
| 13 | 14 |
| 14 | 7 |
| 15 | 13 |
| 16 | 8 |
| 17 | 12 |
| 18 | 9 |
| 19 | 11 |
| 20 | 10 |
[/su_table]
So on the odd sets, you’re starting from 20 reps, going down a rep every odd set, and on the even sets, you’re starting from 1 rep and going up a rep every even set. When it’s all said and done, you’ll have completed 210 reps.
Between each set, walk 5-10 steps for a rest and then get back into it. The goal is to complete this circuit as fast as you can.
Mike Tyson Squat Workout
Tyson did this body squat routine while in prison; it doesn’t sound too hard but it’s a real killer:
- Line up ten cards facedown in a straight line on the ground with 4″ in-between each card.
- Begin by standing over the first card, squat down and pick up the first card.
- Holding the first card, take a step forward to the second card. Squat down and place the card you just picked up on top of the second card. At this point, you’ll have no cards in your hand, and 2 cards will be one on top of the other on the ground below you.
- Squat once and pick up the first card.
- Squat once and pick up the second card.
- Take a step forward to the third card, squat down, and place one of the two cards in your hand on top of the card on the ground. Now squat down and place the other card on top of the cards on the ground.
- Squat one time each to pick up the three cards one by one.
- Take a step forward to the fourth card, and repeat this process until you’ve made it through all ten cards.
Greasing the Groove
Instead of having a set time period where you try to crank out as many reps as you can, with greasing the groove, you’re performing reps 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.
I do greasing the groove with pull-ups. I’ve got a pull-up bar hung up in my closet’s doorframe. Anytime I walk by it, I crank out five pull-ups. The number of pull-up reps I’m able to accumulate during the day always surprises me.
Exercise to Failure
For hypertrophy and endurance, simply do one set of each exercise for as many reps as you can.
One Exercise a Day
When Ryan Ferguson was locked up in a Missouri jail from 2004 to 2013 after being wrongly convicted of murder, he started a routine where he focused on just one exercise a day. The goal is to work your way up so that you can complete 500 reps in an hour. It doesn’t matter how many sets you break this up into, just try to get to that 500 rep count before 60 minutes is up.
