Short answer: Block periodization, training splits and supersets are the three methods we'd keep in almost any program (S tier). High frequency training comes next (A). Grease the groove is a good tool for the right person (B). Drop sets, cluster sets, circuit training, EMOM and HIIT are useful in narrow cases, but they won't build much strength or skill on their own (C).
I'm Sondre Berg. I've trained calisthenics for 15 years and coached thousands of students, and the same question lands in my inbox every week: which training method should I use? So Dr. Yaad and I sat down, picked ten of the most common ones, and ranked them. For each one we asked what it's for, who it suits, and whether we actually use it.
The full episode runs 52 minutes. Watch it here, or skip to the method you care about. Every section below has its own short clip.
The tier list at a glance
| Tier | Methods | One-line verdict |
|---|---|---|
| S | Supersets, Block periodization, Training splits | Use these constantly, as long as you match them to your goal |
| A | High frequency training | Great for strength, skills and power |
| B | Grease the groove | Very useful for a specific kind of athlete, risky if you wing it |
| C | Drop sets, Cluster sets, Circuit training, EMOM, HIIT | Niche tools, fine for health and variety |
Nothing is an F. If you're moving, you're doing something right.
Are supersets a good way to train strength?
Clip, 2:57 long. It starts at 00:35 in the full 52 minute episode.
Yes, and they're the best time saver in this list. A superset means two exercises back to back. Pair a push with a pull, and neither one tires the muscles the other needs, so you skip most of the rest time and fit far more work into a short session. Researchers call this agonist-antagonist paired set training, and a 2010 review in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research covers how it works.
You can also pair two exercises for the same muscle (the old bodybuilder way) or an upper body move with a squat. We both prefer the push and pull version.
With unlimited time, straight sets are slightly better. In practice the results come out very close, and I've used supersets almost exclusively since becoming a dad. Squeezing training between fatherhood and work is exactly what they're for. A few things that help:
- Take 20 to 30 seconds between the two exercises to bring your heart rate down.
- Rest one to three minutes after the pair.
- Use this test: if you can perform exercise A as well as last time when you come back to it, you've rested long enough.
- You can stretch it to three or four exercises if you're short on time.
Our tier: S. We started with A, then realised we both use it all the time.
Are drop sets worth doing?
Clip, 2:55 long. It starts at 03:32 in the full 52 minute episode.
Only in some situations. A drop set means you train an exercise to failure, make it easier, and keep going. It produces a lot of fatigue in a very short time, which is exactly why it's hard to recommend widely.
If you're short on time and just want to get slightly stronger and build some muscle in 15 minutes, it works. It's also a fair way to maintain during a stretch when you can only fit in a couple of workouts a week.
It's a bad fit when your goal needs high strength, like a full planche, muscle-ups or a one-arm pull-up. And if you train most days, the fatigue will pile up on top of everything else.
We do see a narrow use in advanced calisthenics, where you build time under tension in a hold. A 50 second full front lever that you step down into a one-leg straddle is a good example. It's super niche, though.
Our tier: C.
Is high frequency training good for building strength?
Clip, 6:17 long. It starts at 06:27 in the full 52 minute episode.
Yes, for strength, skills and power it's one of the best things you can do. High frequency training means you spread your volume across more sessions. Instead of five sets of an exercise twice a week, you do two or three sets four times a week.
The reason it works is fatigue. The third, fourth and fifth sets of an exercise create far more fatigue than the first two, and that fatigue doesn't grow in a straight line. Drop those extra sets and you can train more often, and each set you do is done fresh and at higher intensity. Strength comes from heavy loads, and you can only handle heavy loads when you're not already tired.
Skills work the same way. Think about learning ten French words. Three hours in one go is a worse deal than 30 minutes, four times. Your brain keeps what it gets reminded of, and so does your movement pattern.
Some practical examples:
- An athlete who's strong enough for handstand push-ups but can't quite make the pattern click. Dr. Yaad has them do handstand push-ups daily for a week at low volume, and the progress often shows up fast.
- A full body session every day with four exercises and two sets each, rotating the exercises a little.
- Power training. You only build power while every rep is at full speed, so once you slow down, the sets stop building power. That's why Dr. Yaad warms up with muscle-ups almost every day. Low volume, explosive reps, a rest between reps if needed.
The catch is hypertrophy. The research on frequency and muscle size is mixed, too: a 2016 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine linked higher frequency with bigger hypertrophy effects, but the studies didn't always match total volume, so don't read it as a free win. Muscle growth likes a lot of fatigue, and people who are already muscular need more specific volume to grow. Beginners and intermediates will build a decent amount of muscle with this approach anyway, since strength work drives size early on.
Our tier: A.
What is grease the groove, and does it work?
Clip, 7:56 long. It starts at 12:44 in the full 52 minute episode.
Grease the groove is a method where you practice a movement many times a day at a low effort, far from failure. It works, but only if you apply it carefully.
The idea comes from Pavel, an old school strength coach. If you can do 10 push-ups, you'd do about six, spread through the day. He mostly used it to help people get their first pull-up.
Many calisthenics athletes have changed it to mean going all the way to failure. Dr. Yaad doesn't think that's wrong for something like a planche or front lever, because those skills tire your nervous system more than your muscles. He'd just call it something else.
Then there's the tendon side. Dr. Yaad recently interviewed Professor Keith Baar, who grows tendons in a lab and has run human studies too. You can watch it here: How to Get Bulletproof Tendons ft. Professor Keith Baar (Doctor Yaad Podcast). The idea is that tendons respond to about 10 minutes of loading, and then stop responding. After roughly six hours they respond again. Baar lays this out in a 2017 review in Sports Medicine, and it's worth knowing that it comes mostly from engineered tissue, not a human trial of that exact schedule. So a few small sets, two or three times a day, six hours apart, could build tissue for something like the planche in a fairly safe way.
That might explain why some natural athletes who train by feel stay healthy. Dr. Yaad knows French athletes who train 14 times a week, morning and evening, on the same muscle groups. When he walks down the street with them, they drop into a planche, press, and then carry on to dinner.
It can also hurt you. Most people run grease the groove on vibes, then they progress the exercise too fast on top of their normal training. That's a recipe for injury. If you want to try it:
- Check yourself every so often with a closer-to-max set. If you can match or beat your max, you're recovering.
- Watch your tendons. Aches near where a muscle attaches to a joint are a bad sign, and if you notice them you're already late.
- Keep the six hour gap and the 10 minute cap in mind.
Our tier: B. It's super useful for a particular kind of athlete and not relevant for most people.
How do cluster sets and rest-pause work?
Clip, 5:58 long. It starts at 21:26 in the full 52 minute episode.
A cluster set splits one set into smaller mini-sets with a short rest in between, usually 30 seconds to a minute. You either add up more total volume than you could do in one go, or you hold the same volume and just do each rep better.
Say your max is 10 seconds of planche. You do five seconds, rest 30, do five more. The technique stays cleaner and the fatigue stays lower. Next week you add a third cluster, which gives you a simple way to force progressive overload without piling on fatigue. Powerlifters do the same with singles.
Rest-pause is the cousin. You do the exercise until you stall, take a short breather, and squeeze out a few more reps. One example: you've done 10 pull-ups with 20 kilos and the 11th won't come. You step down, breathe, then take that last rep. One of us used this for about a year when plateauing, around eight years ago, and it worked.
Past about one minute of rest, it's really just another set, but that's semantics.
It's a good tool for plateaus and for technical strength skills. For most people there are easier ways to get the same effect.
Our tier: C. Useful, but niche.
Is circuit training good for strength and muscle?
Clip, 3:57 long. It starts at 27:24 in the full 52 minute episode.
It's great for health and fitness, and it's a poor way to get good at advanced skills. Circuit training means you move through a series of exercises with minimal rest, then repeat the loop. It's everywhere in group classes, and CrossFit and Hyrox are built on it. Calisthenics has its own version in the "God set": 50 pull-ups, one muscle-up, then 50 dips.
The upside is time efficiency, and it's fun. You also get real cardiovascular benefits, so it's a hell of a lot better than nothing.
The downside is the trap of doing the same thing over and over without progressive overload. Fatigue also builds up until your technique falls apart, so you have to choose your exercises carefully. If you want bigger muscles or more strength, you won't optimize either one. If your goal is muscle-ups, handstands or planche, you can spend the same time and get much more done.
Our tier: C. Fine for general health, not our pick for skill work.
Is EMOM training worth it?
Clip, 4:28 long. It starts at 31:21 in the full 52 minute episode.
For strength endurance, yes. For getting stronger, no. EMOM stands for "every minute on the minute". A timer goes off every minute, you do your prescribed reps, and whatever time is left is your rest. As you tire, the sets take longer and the rest gets shorter.
Dr. Yaad recently did a 10 second front lever EMOM and got 13 rounds. That's 130 seconds of front lever in 13 minutes. He wouldn't recommend it for that purpose to anyone else, but for a muscle-up athlete who wants lots of reps of pull-ups, muscle-ups and dips, it's a great method. It's fast and fun.
The best thing about it is how easy it is to compare. "10 seconds front lever EMOM" tells anyone everything about what you did, so people can copy it and measure their results against yours.
It doesn't work for moving up a progression, like going from tuck planche to straddle. Your tissues aren't ready for that much volume. Any skill you can hold for more than 30 seconds stops being technical, so this is really endurance work.
If you want to see a handstand push-up EMOM, say so in the comments. 10 reps on the minute would be brutal.
Our tier: C. We'd like to give it a B, but it's too niche.
What is block periodization, and how long should each block be?
Clip, 5:38 long. It starts at 35:49 in the full 52 minute episode.
Block periodization means you split training into phases, each with one main focus. A typical block lasts four to 10 weeks. It's the one we both get most excited about.
It comes from sports science. Powerlifters use it, and so do basketball and soccer players. Say you want a max bench press in eight months. You'd run a hypertrophy block first to grow the chest, then a strength block to practice heavy lifting. About a month before the competition you taper, drop the volume, recover fully, and show up at your strongest.
The part people get wrong is the rigid schedule. There's no universal four weeks of this, four weeks of that. It depends on the person. A few things we agree on:
- Use performance as your signal. When you see a week or two with no progress, that's usually the end of the block and a deload is due.
- Some athletes need eight or nine weeks per block. Others are done in four or five. A good coach adjusts for that.
- Don't deload every fourth week by default. Deload when you need to, and it doesn't have to be a full week. Three days can do it.
- Beginners can use rigid rules for a while to get exposure to the ideas. They'll learn what fits them.
- Avoid program hopping. If you switch before four weeks, you either progressed too aggressively or never gave the program a chance.
Our tier: S.
Is HIIT a good way to train?
Clip, 1:40 long. It starts at 41:27 in the full 52 minute episode.
For cardio and general fitness it's fine. For strength and muscle it's not very useful. HIIT, or high intensity interval training, is basically circuit training with a cardio focus. It's common in group classes because it lets a lot of people train at once.
Our view is the same as for circuit training. Neither of us finds it appealing, and one of us had to look up the definition again. If your goal is specific, like getting stronger or more muscular, you can spend that time on something else.
That said, we don't believe in giving anything an F. As long as you're moving, you're doing a good job.
Our tier: C.
What is the best training split?
Clip, 8:33 long. It starts at 43:07 in the full 52 minute episode.
The best split depends on how often you train, how much time you have, and what you're training for. That's why we put training splits in S tier. Almost every split can work once you know why you're using it.
Push, pull, legs. For most people this is the least useful of the common splits. It needs a lot of training days, and it caps the volume you can do per session, because one workout has to cover all the push muscles with similar exercises. Sessions get long, and the exercises at the end are done at worse quality.
One of us does like a version of it, though: push, pull and handstand. When you're pushing hard on both planche and front lever, you can't superset them, so you separate them. With time to spare, high frequency wins, and this split gives more rest between push days and pull days than a full body or superset approach would. It's less time efficient, and for some stretches of life that trade is worth it.
How to choose. When we program for an athlete who wants to train five to seven days a week, we reach for a push and pull style split. At three or four days or fewer, it's full body, or upper body with legs separated. Push, pull, legs three times a week is one day per muscle group, and in that case three full body days will get you much more progress.
Straight arm vs bent arm. This split comes from the old GymnasticBodies forum days, and it brings back nostalgia for Dr. Yaad. Dr. Yaad has been in the sport long enough that he doesn't buy it, because the muscle groups are mostly the same, and he sees no reason beyond one looking bent and the other straight. I'm not fully with him. At high frequency and lower volume, I think it can help, since straight arm work is usually more tendon heavy. Planche is often limited by the elbows and tendons. Front lever isn't tendon heavy at all, it's more about strength in a shortened range.
Skill vs strength. This one we agree on completely. Skill training should happen when you're most rested, because even a little fatigue makes it far less useful. If you have lots of training days, give skills their own day or even their own part of the day. If you have fewer days, do skill work first in the session, then the rest. Doing handstands after your strength work doesn't make sense, and it can give you negative progress because you end up learning a worse movement pattern.
Full body. It's highly underrated. Unless you work out more than four times a week, full body is probably the best way to go.
Our tier: S.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best training method for building strength?
For strength, we'd pick high frequency training inside a block periodization plan. You keep the volume per session low, train more often, and run each block for as long as you're still progressing.
Are supersets as effective as straight sets?
They're very close. Straight sets are slightly better if you have unlimited time, but supersets let you train much more in a shorter window. Pair exercises that don't tire each other, like a push and a pull, and check that you can still perform the first exercise well when you come back to it.
How often should I train a skill like handstands or planche?
Often, with low volume. Skills respond to frequent practice, and you should do them when you're freshest, at the start of a session or on a separate day.
Is HIIT or circuit training good for building muscle?
It's great for general health and cardio, but it isn't the best way to build muscle or strength. If your goal is something specific, you'll get more from other methods.
Do I need to deload every four weeks?
No. A fixed deload every fourth week isn't necessary for most people. Deload when your performance stalls for a week or two. It can be as short as three days.
What's the best training split for calisthenics?
Train five to seven days a week and a push and pull split makes sense. Train three or four days or fewer and full body usually gets better results. Always put skill work first, when you're most rested.
Where to go from here
Want this written into a plan?
Block periodization, splits, supersets and high frequency work are exactly how the programs in the Berg Movement app are built. You pick your goal, whether that's a handstand, a muscle-up or a planche, and the sets, progressions and phases are laid out for you.
Need something to train on?
The rings, bands and parallettes I mentioned in the video all come from Movement Made, my equipment brand. The idea is that a pair of gym rings, some rubber bands and parallettes to protect your wrists unlock everything you need at your level, so you can do more with less.
Keep reading
If you want to go deeper on set types first, read my guide to 6 set types for calisthenics strength training, or read the 11 most common calisthenics injuries, written with Dr. Yaad. Training tendon-heavy skills? Start with the tuck planche tutorial and the front lever progressions, and read my guide to managing injuries. Dr. Yaad's YouTube channel has more on tendons and rehab.
Tell us in the comments which of these you've tried and what we missed. We might do the next one on whatever you ask for.
