The effectiveness of the Ido Portal Method is no longer a secret.
Ido’s knowledge is quickly becoming the premier system for building body weight dominance.
Before you watch the videos below, remember that the best gains are made when following a system, which is basically a recipe.
Keep the movement recipe simple:
Find an effective training system and practice it relentlessly.
Everything works… for a little while. Literally everything. Some programs are more effective than others, but people who commit themselves to any one system are going to see results from their effort. If you’re not getting results, it’s time for a self-audit to identify what’s missing. Chances are high the audit will reveal it’s something you’re not doing, or in some instances, not doing, that’s holding you back.
Allow me to rant on the value of practice…
Practice until you are sick of practicing. Then practice some more. Had a bad training session? Come back tomorrow and do it again. Build
There is no substitute for hard work. You’ve got to tear up your hands, sweat and have a willingness to be sore and humbled by the difficulty of the movements.
Practice increases understanding, awareness and insight, motor control, strength/stability/endurance/power/mobility.
The “elite” become “elite” because they practice. A lot of athletes who are household names across the world, practice 10x more than people think. When you’re watching them on television, you’re seeing the finished product. Thousands of hours of behind the scenes blood, sweat and tears prepared that athlete to execute on the main stage.
Exercise #1: QDR: Beginner Rotational Push-Ups
Now, while doing something is generally better than doing nothing, it is possible to practice incorrectly, which is why receiving feedback from a mentor or a teacher so valuable. A teacher is an advanced practitioner. The teacher, through experience, has acquired understanding, knowledge to share with students.
The best teachers maintain the humble student mentality despite being experts at their craft.
Exercise #2: NDA Beginner Lateral Push Ups
With movement, more specifically body position, it is very easy and quite common to think that you are practicing technique correctly when you are not.
Improper body alignment or stopping short of a full range of motion are two extremely predictable situations that a teacher has the eye and understanding to verbally cue or re-position.
Exercise #3: Beginner Hybrid Push-Ups
A person could slip any (or all) of these exercises into their current workouts and get the full benefit. Remember, each of these exercises is a puzzle piece that makes up an entire program. Progress will always be faster when working inside of a system, which is a well drawn out plan.
Exercise #4: Dive Planks
Another problem the distanced onlooker has with Ido Portal’s current portfolio of work is there isn’t a clear and defined starting point for a beginner. Beginner in my world means someone who’s unfamiliar with all of this stuff. Not someone who’s banging out unsupported handstands, looking to move on to an iron cross.
Exercise #5: Push-Ups with Toe Touch
One option a beginner has is a tedious scavenger hunt through old information on Ido’s previous blog. Before I started to assemble the puzzle pieces, this is what I did. It sucked.
If sifting through hundreds of blog posts seems a bit tedious, there are other fantastic training programs similar to the Ido Portal Method approach. These books serve as a logical stepping stone into the Ido Portal Method movement philosophy.
Are they identical? No. Are they extremely similar? Hell yes. Will you get results? Hell yes.
Here are those alternative training systems, should you decide to investigate further…
A quick word about equipment…
Whether you’re a novice or advanced trainee, a simple equipment set up can catapult your progress and increase your enjoyment. Actually wanting to workout because you enjoy the process is just as important as training intelligently.
For the beginner, gymnastics rings and parallettes are the best starting point and will provide big bang for your buck. There are endless exercise progressions and variations using rings and parallettes.
L-Sit progressions, tuck and push-up variations, vertical and horizontal pulling exercises, hanging challenges just to name a few.
Nayoya Gymnastics Rings
The Nagoya Gymnastics Rings (Amazon, $30) currently have a 5-star rating and over 1,007 customer reviews. You’re welcome to shop around, but for the price and quality, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better deal with similar quality.
Best-selling author and movement enthusiast Tim Ferriss has raved about these gymnastics rings after testing them himself in past newsletters and blog posts.
Gymnastics rings are an unbeatable buy in my opinion.
For parallettes, I constructed mine from PVC using these exact instructions. It was inexpensive, simple and fast to assemble. They work fantastic.
If you aren’t in the mood to DIY, I recommend these parallettes.
Cheers to you.
M(eaux)tion Fitness 