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Gmail - The Herschel Walker Workout
Gmail - The Herschel Walker Workout
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7/4/2021 Gmail - The Herschel Walker Workout
With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece
each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems
from the past. This article was originally published in July 2016.
As a boy I followed the Dallas Cowboys, and one of the players I really admired was
Herschel Walker. He was a beast, but the guy could move like nothing else.
A few years ago I read somewhere that Walker’s legendary, granite-like physique was
built not by lifting weights but through bodyweight exercises — lots of them. On the
order of 2,000-3,000 push-ups and sit-ups every day.
Talk about an intriguing regimen! I wanted to learn more about it. How and why did
Walker develop this program for himself? What underlay his fitness philosophy? Were
sit-ups and push-ups all he did, and if not, what other kinds of exercises did he do?
I searched online, and while I couldn’t find more details, I discovered that Walker was
an even more impressive athlete than I had imagined and a true fitness renaissance
man: he had excelled in both track and football in college, earned a 5th degree black
belt in taekwondo, competed as an Olympic bobsledder, and even danced with the Fort
Worth Ballet. Oh, and he’s continued his insane bodyweight workout into his 50s, in
addition to training for MMA.
Now I really wanted to know the full nature and motivation behind Walker’s unorthodox
training program. I was able to finally discover it by getting my hands on a copy of Basic
Training, an out-of-print book he wrote in the 80s along with Dr. Terry Todd, an Olympic
weightlifter and conditioning expert. The book remains so sought-after that thirty years
after its publication, used copies continue to command a crazy premium.
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Below you’ll find the background on how Walker developed the unorthodox bodyweight
training program he’s been doing for over forty years, as well as details as to what it
consists of. The Walker Workout is definitely not for everyone, but its exercise
components are in many ways the least interesting thing about it. Walker’s story and
overall fitness philosophy — one that eschews excuses and convention, and prizes
autonomy, improvisation, experimentation, and consistency — offer interest and
inspiration for all.
As a boy, Herschel had a speech impediment, was short and chubby, and didn’t seem
destined for athletic greatness. In running races with siblings and playing games with
friends, he was slow and uncoordinated, struggled to keep up, and felt lacking in the
confidence and endurance to really push himself. In elementary school, he was bullied
and beat up by his classmates, and thus often chose to stay inside during recess rather
than going out to play.
After finishing the sixth grade, Walker decided he wanted to turn things around for
himself. He approached a track coach who had mentored his older brothers and told
him he “wanted to get bigger and stronger and faster and be better at sports.” As
Walker remembers, the coach responded that “it was simple but I had to work hard at it.
He said to do push-ups, sit-ups, and sprints. That’s all he said. But it was enough.”
Herschel went home and got started on his new bodyweight program straightaway; his
parents had always taught him that “you can’t make excuses in life, you’ve got to get it
done,” and he thus made do with what was available:
There weren’t any weights then at school, of course, and we sure didn’t
have any out in the country, but I used what I had, and that was the living
room floor and the dirt road that ran from the highway out front up the hill to
our house. I did my push-ups and my sit-ups on the floor most of the time,
and I did all my sprints up that hill out front.
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direction as the animals did in order to develop his agility and reaction time. There was
a chin-up bar out back and he added chin-ups and pull-ups to his routine as well.
While push-ups, chin-ups, sit-ups, and sprints formed the core of Walker’s workout,
they were hardly the only exercises he did. Herschel did different bodyweight exercises
like squats and dips, loaded hay and performed other chores around the farm, wrestled
with his brothers, took up taekwondo, played tennis with friends, and even practiced for
and entered dance competitions with his sister. He later theorized that this diversity of
activity contributed greatly to his athletic success (something that’s been born out by
recent research):
Walker in fact didn’t play his first organized sport – basketball — until 7th grade. He
started doing track and field in 8th grade, and only began playing football in 9th. He
continued all three sports throughout high school, while still continuing to do his
personal bodyweight workout each day on his own.
(It’s worth noting that while Walker was committed to athletics, he was equally diligent
about succeeding in school, strictly setting aside at least two hours a night to do his
homework; for his efforts, he became valedictorian of his high school and president of
its honor society, an accomplishment, he says “I was as happy about as I was about
the good things that happened to me on the football field.”)
Willing to put in 110% effort day after day, Walker filled out, got faster, and improved his
athletic skill; it wasn’t long before he was excelling in all three sports and beating the
kids who had formerly surpassed him:
What a good feeling that was, too, to know all that hard work was paying off,
and to know that even though I wasn’t all that good to begin with, I could get
better. I remember a bunch of kids I grew up with who had a heap more
talent than I had but who never trained much or tried very hard. I’m not
saying they didn’t try at games, but almost anybody’ll try hard in a real
game. What matters is how hard you try before the game, especially when
nobody is watching you. That’s what’s important. If you can bear down and
really train and try hard before the game, the game’ll take care of itself.
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Walker was a versatile, standout athlete in high school. In track, he won the state
championship in the shot put and the 100- and 220-yard dash, and anchored the
victorious 4X400 relay team. In football, he rushed for 3,167 yards his senior year and
led the team to their first state championship.
This dual success continued at the University of Georgia, where he became an All-
American in both track and football, helped the Bulldogs win the Sugar Bowl as a
freshman, and won the Heisman Trophy as a junior.
Walker played sixteen seasons of professional football, the first three with the now-
defunct United States Football League. In the NFL he racked up massive rushing yards
(18,168 all-purpose yards, the ninth all-time best) while playing seven different
positions. Combining those yards with those he garnered in his years playing for the
USFL would put him first on the NFL’s career rushing list.
In 1992, while Walker was still playing pro ball, he competed in the Olympics, placing
7th in the two-man bobsled competition.
In more recent years, he’s tried his hand at MMA, winning the two bouts he participated
in by TKO. Walker felt his MMA training left him in better shape at age 50 than when he
was playing football in his early 20s.
And all along, up until the present day, he’s kept up with the bodyweight workout he first
starting doing in junior high. In fact, he didn’t start lifting weights until several years into
his professional football career. It’s not that he had anything against it, but he had seen
improvements in his strength and speed every year since high school, and figured he’d
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only start lifting once those gains ceased. After his football days were over, he returned
to a bodyweight-only program, as he believes it protects the joints and promotes fitness
longevity.
So what exactly was included in a program that allowed Walker to become a standout
high school athlete, one of the best college football players of all time, and a leading
rusher for the NFL, as well as spend his career nearly injury-free and maintain his
fitness into his 50s?
Massive reps. From middle school up through middle age, Walker has done thousands
of push-ups and sit-ups nearly every day. Such a massive number of reps isn’t typically
recommended to build strength, as your body adapts to the exercise, but Walker found
a way to keep on making gains in his fitness by infusing his workouts with a whole lot
of:
Variety. From martial arts to dance, Walker engaged in a wide range of physical
activities and exercises throughout his life, and continues to do so. As he told nfl.com, “I
was doing CrossFit before they gave it a name.”
He also was constantly looking for different variations of individual exercises to try, in
order to keep them challenging:
I was always trying to find some new way to sprint or some new way to do
push-ups or sit-ups to keep my interest up and to make my body work in
different ways so it would get strong from every angle.
Oftentimes, Walker simply made up his own variations himself, because he was a
fitness renaissance man who constantly liked to:
Experiment. Walker was never one to take conventional advice; instead, he enjoyed
trying his own experiments, and seeing exactly what exercises worked uniquely well for
him:
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The way I usually do things is to try something new and then check it out
real good as to how it feels. If it feels good to me — if I think it’s really
working me hard — then I’ll add it to all the other exercises I do. But if it
doesn’t seem to work the way I want it to, I’ll just let it go. By doing things
this way I only do exercises that feel right for me. Everybody ought to try
different exercises, too. Just keep experimenting.
Thus Walker freely created his own exercises and workouts — simply going at it ‘til his
muscles burned — and assessed their efficacy based on how they made him feel, and
the results they garnered.
While those who stick to strict, standard programs might think his routine is nuts and
ineffective, Walker simply doesn’t care. Even now, he maintains unorthodox habits:
sleeping for just five hours a night, waking up at 5:30 a.m. to do scores of sit-ups and
push-ups, eating only once a day (and sometimes fasting for several), and consuming a
diet that consists largely of soup, bread, and salad without worrying about his
macronutrients; he figures if the “farm strong” men he grew up with never thought about
how many grams of protein they were eating, he doesn’t need to either. He just
completely does his own thing, treats himself as an n=1 experiment, and lets the results
speak for themselves.
Given this level of autonomy, it’s no wonder he’s remained so motivated throughout his
life. As Walker put it, “I try, with all my workouts, to make them fun. I like to experiment
with different things, and I think that trying new exercises helps to keep you fresh and
mentally ready.”
I did a lot of the things I did because I loved to do them or because I thought
they’d help me get better in the things I thought I could be good at.
Basketball was great because I loved it, but I also knew it helped me
physically for football. All my other stuff — my exercises and all that — I did
because I knew it was good for me. And after I’d work out real hard I always
had a good feeling because I knew I’d done what I needed to do to make
my body improve. I used to think training was a lot like putting money in the
bank. And I don’t say that because I get paid now to run with the football. I
say it because of the feeling I got — and still get — from doing my
exercises. It makes me feel good about myself, just like you feel when you
put away a little money every week and watch it build up.
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Some of Walker’s push-up variations, as featured in Basic Training. For even more
push-up variations (as well as variations for other bodyweight exercises), check out
our post on the “Prisoner’s Workout.”
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his reps until he was doing 2,000 a day as a young man. In college he usually did 300
but that was on top of his track and football workouts. Today he claims to do 3,500
push-ups every day (though he keeps them to “just” 1,500 when he’s doing MMA
training).
At first Walker stuck with doing the standard, hands shoulder-width apart push-up, but
in high school he started incorporating different variations, including doing them with his
feet elevated on a chair, with hands together under the chest, one-handed push-ups,
and handstand push-ups. He would mix these harder variations in with the standard
kind, trying to increase the ratio of harder to easier ones, all the while increasing his
overall number of reps.
The way Walker would do his push-up routine was to start by doing them in the
standard style, but only go halfway down to the floor — he liked the way these worked
his triceps, made him sweat, and increased his endurance. He’d do 150 of these,
stopping for short breaks when he got tired. Then he’d do 10-20 reps of the harder
variations, then go back to the halfway-down kind, then back to the hard ones, and then
finish his floor push-ups by doing standard ones extra slowly. Then he’d end the push-
up round of his workout by doing handstand push-ups — sets of ten with short rests
between sets, done until he hit whatever his overall rep goal was. After Walker got
married, he also threw in 2 sets of 25 standard push-ups, done with his wife sitting on
his back.
Sit-ups. Like push-ups, Walker initially had a hard time cranking out sit-ups and could
barely do 10. Once he could do that many consistently, he would do sets of ten, with
short rests between them, until he reached 50 total reps. Then, he did sets of 10-20 to
reach 100 reps. After that he did 50 at a time, for 6 sets, and 300 total reps. Eventually
he was doing 3,000, which is about as many as he still does today.
As with push-ups, in addition to the standard sit-up, he did tons of variations: straight-
legged, bent-legged, side crunches, leg raises, legs on chair, twists, etc.
Walker also worked his core by playing basketball every day he didn’t play football,
concentrating on and doing plenty of turnaround jumpers and layups and putting extra
twist in the shots.
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Behind-the-head pull-ups.
Running. Walker believes that “running or sprinting is the most important skill most
athletes can have.” His own running most often took the form of sprints — speedy
sprints. Truly, at 6’1” and 225 pounds, it’s amazing how fast Walker did and can move
his muscular physique; he claims to still be able to run a 4.35 40-yard dash.
Growing up, Walker liked to do hills — sprinting up and trotting down — for the
resistance and challenge the incline presented. He added resistance to his sprints in
other ways as well — wearing a weight vest, running while holding small dumbbells in
each hand, or pulling a tire filled with 25-50 pound weights (dumbbells or shots); the tire
was tethered behind him with a 15-foot cord secured to a leather weightlifting belt.
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Above: Walker’s “power clap.” Below: “Alternate striking” exercise, in which Walker
threw straight punches underwater, alternating sides, as fast as he could.
Swimming/water work. Walker didn’t have a pool growing up, but after college he
became a big believer in the benefits of exercising in the water. He didn’t do traditional
strokes but made up his own exercises like the underwater “power claps” and a
modified breaststroke, in which he thrusted his body upwards and out of the water each
time he moved his arms back. He also did his taekwondo kicks and punches
underwater.
Speed was never the goal with these pool exercises, but rather maximum resistance.
“Just get in the water with the idea in mind to fool around with a stroke or an exercise
until you find the best way to do it and the best way to hold your hands to get the most
drag in the water.”
Other Exercises
Stretching
Jumping drills/plyometrics — jumping over a box, side-to-side and back and forth,
to increase agility (here’s how to build your own plyo box)
Jumping rope
Dips — up to a 1,000 a day
Squats — up to a 1,000 a day
Lunges — up to a 1,000 a day
While the Walker Workout certainly isn’t for everyone, there’s a lot you can learn from
Herschel’s whole approach to fitness. I hope it’s encouraged you to put aside your
excuses, experiment, and become more versatile, autonomous, consistent, and
innovative — a fitness renaissance man!
The post The Herschel Walker Workout appeared first on The Art of Manliness.
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