Convict Training
I wasn’t able to use weights at all for a full year while I was in prison. Even after I did gain access to some weights, they were very light. You have to make the best of any situation. Sometimes you’ll go into a gym that doesn’t have the right equipment, has bad equipment, or has hardly any equipment at all. You’re always able to use something to train, you just have to improvise and get creative. I’ll go through my training routine in prison to demonstrate my point. I would run my workouts on the same method as I would with normal weights – on a five days-on, two days-off split.
Chest
We started our chest exercises with press ups. We would do press ups with our own weight for the first set, and then have someone push down on you for the second set. We would add one more person pushing down on you for the third set and a fourth person for the last set, depending on how strong you were feeling.
We would do dips as a second exercise. We’d find a wall to use and do your first set of dips with no weights. For your second set we would get someone to stand on a chair and push directly down on you. That person would push on you a little more for the third set, and if you didn’t max out, they would push even harder for your fourth set or get someone else to push down on your legs.
For the third exercise we would do either decline or incline press ups. For incline press ups, we would put our feet on the ground and our hands, evenly spaced, on a raised bench. You would do the first set with someone lying on your back, and continue adding people for your second through fourth set. We would use the same concept for the decline press ups, except you would have your feet raised on the bench and do the press ups on the ground. There are a range of different exercises you can do with no weights for your chest.
Back
For back, we would do chin ups on a door frame. We would lift our own weight for the first set, and then gradually have people apply more and more pressure to your legs as you moved on in your sets.
Our second exercise would be bent-over rows. We would grab a towel and have one person lie in between your legs. You would bend over into your bent-over row position, have them lie within the towel, and do a row. For the second set you could have two people within the towel, lying on top of one another, and gradually increase the weight of the people for the third and fourth set.
After that we’d move on to single arm rows, still using a towel. One person would sit feet first and do a single arm row with another person using both arms to apply pressure. To increase the weight, the other person would either apply more pressure or you could switch them out for a stronger person as you moved through your sets.
We also did lying rows for our back. You would lie on a table and have a towel wrapped underneath you. Someone would lie in the towel, and you would do rows, increasing the weight of the person or the number of people, depending on the different sets.
Arms
We would use a towel for bicep curls. Someone would hang onto the towel, applying more and more pressure as the sets increased.
There was also a number of inventive ways to do hammer curls. We would use buckets and increase the amount of water we put in them as we moved through our sets. You could also do curls with a broomstick and add water bottles to the end of it. Depending on your set, you would either add more water or more bottles.
Dips were a great exercise for our triceps. You would do your first set with your own weight, and then get people with heavier weights to sit on your shoulders or your lap to make it harder. We would also do tricep kickbacks with water bottles, and gradually increase the weight of the bottles for our sets. Tricep extensions were done by holding a towel behind your head and having someone push down onto the towel. As the sets increased, so did the pressure that the other person would apply.
Shoulders
Our first exercise would be shoulder presses. We used a broom and added water bottles or buckets to the ends of the broom. How much water or how many bottles we put on there would increase with each set. You could also use a towel, and have someone push down on it, or you could even use your hands. The other person would push down harder with each set or you found a heavier person for more pressure.
We would move on to side laterals, where someone would push on the sides of your arms while you tried to lift them up in a lateral, side motion. I also enjoyed doing reverse flies for my rear deltoids (delts). I would also do shrugs, where I’d take a towel and lift people, one lying on top of the other, between my legs.
Legs
Legs and quads were my favorite. We invented something called “Totem Pole Squats”. For the first set, you would go up against a wall and squat one person sitting on your shoulders. For each set we would add another person, everyone sitting on top of the other. It sounds interesting but you have to see it to believe it. Sometimes we’d get up to fifteen feet high in the air, between people either sitting or standing on you! The key with these squats was getting the weight in the right place. If it was in the wrong place, you would put major pressure on your spine and risk a huge injury. I got in trouble many times doing these in prison.
We would also do lunges with one person sitting on your shoulders. You would increase the weight of that person as the sets increased. We moved on to sissy squats. Even though you do these squats with little to no weight, they are one of the hardest, ugliest exercises known to man.
For hamstrings we would do stiff-legged hamstring curls. We used a towel to lift a person up from the ground, and increased the weight of that person as our sets increased.
Hamstring curls were the next exercise. One person would lie on a table and you would put a towel over their legs. Another person would lie on the ground and pull down on the towel, increasing the pressure with each set.
Calves were an easy muscle group to exercise. We would do donkey calf raises, with one person on your back to start and adding more people or more pressure as the sets increased. I would sometimes go up to three people on my back and two others pushing down on them, so you can lift quite a bit of weight with these exercises. We also did standing calf raises, where one person would sit on your shoulders and another person would stand on them. These were all great exercises and your calves always seemed to get a really good work out, even though you had no machines or weights at all.
Abdominals
Abs were very easy – I’d just do my normal ab routine. I’d lie with my back on the ground and do a half crunch with my upper body, while bringing my lower body and legs in toward the middle as well. I would do sets of 300 crunches, 4-5 times per week. This would always give me a good pump and great results for my abs.
Overall, we did really well and made the most out of our convict training with having little to no weights at all. I don’t feel I lost that much size, even though I had no food and no weights. Convict training was very successful and we used to get whole groups of people from our prison unit training at the same time. Most people really enjoyed it and achieved great results. There wasn’t much else to do so it definitely helped with my boredom throughout the day.