Barefoot Fitness

From Brooklyn to Moscow

 

 

I've been to a few different corners of the globe. In each of them I've found physical cultures; small pockets of athletes whose physical condition is as much a reflection of who they are as any resume. I've spent time with Kenyan acrobats and runners, Nepali Sherpas, Kiwi Crossfit girls, American Pride fighters and just about anything in between. The one common factor among all of them is that they enjoy the process. They aren't doing it simply because they have to. They do it because it's who they are.

About fifteen years ago in New York City, a group of men referring to themselves as The Ruff Ryders forsook conventional gyms and began working out in city parks using bodyweight calisthenics movements. The workouts were conducted primarily on horizontal bars and consisted of basic movements like dips, pullups and muscle ups brought to high levels of skill and strength.

They referred to their workout as "The Thug Workout." The idea spread and has lived on since, taking a variety of evolutionary turns.

Part of the initial appeal of this concept was that these workouts could be done in an impromptu fashion on the street, where much time was already being spent. Time spent on the street often equaled time making money, so being able to work out without leaving a particular street block was akin to working out in one's office.  

There is no real central organization to this type of exercise and small, devoted groups are scattered across the globe. One of the largest and most impressive of these groups, The Bar-barians is still in Brooklyn, New York and they are starting to take a key role in changing the structure of the workout style.   

The Bar-barians are working to bring their method of freestyle, minimalist training to greater levels of public awareness and refer to it as Elite Bodyweight Training. According to one of their core members, Rick Seedman, they don't use words like "ghetto" or "thug" to describe themselves and take a bit of offense to those who do.

Rick is the unofficial spokesman for the group online, and is behind most of the better quality footage you'll come across. He and the other Bar-barians are currently working on a full length documentary.

The Bar-barians have a list of requirements on their website and have created a structured system through which people can advance.

I asked Rick about their involvement with other groups and upstarts and he said, "Zef, I and the others provide training routines, advice and homework for our members over seas that aren't able to train with us here in NY. We aren't trying to recruit people for their skill. It's not a freak show or circus. What we're looking for is genuine people who share a passion for working out, pushing their limits, and improving themselves physically and mentally."

Improved organization and the ability of groups like the Bar-barians to promote themselves in online social networks and on communities like Youtube has led to a rapid increase in the popularity of freestyle bodyweight training. What was once isolated mainly to a handful of inner city American neighborhoods is now popping up in cities around the world.  

One such recent upstart of the bodyweight training movement is a group in Moscow, Russia, organized about a year ago in part by a man named Anton Kuchumov. They're not yet associated with the central groups in New York and haven't gotten the memo from the Brooklyn guys so they refer to their training as "Ghetto Workout." The idea is catching on fast in the former Communist republic, and in one year membership has expanded to around 1,700 people.

Anton is 21 and was born and raised in Moscow. He is a student pursuing a Master's in Management at the Higher School of Economics and has been an athlete since childhood in a diverse set of backgrounds including acrobatics, tennis, martial arts and parkour. He is one of three original founders of the ghetto workout movement in Russian and parts of Eastern Europe.

I caught up with Anton in order to see how a concept has migrated from New York to Moscow and taken hold so quickly.

Barefoot Fitness: What is the Ghetto Workout movement, and where did it come from?

Anton Kuchumov:  Ghetto Workout is aimed at physical development through body weight training using the common objects around you. The idea is that one can have a healthy and strong body even without gyms and weights. The difference between GW and other types of training is the imagination which you bring to the workouts. You can use trees, walls, fences and other constructions to design new exercises. This way you are limited only by your imagination and your body will never adapt to the training you give!

As a part of "One More Day Community," GW also sets the goal of a healthy lifestyle among youth and helping them to develop certain skills to be successful in life. We want to make people become interested in the development of their personalities.

Maybe we are extremely lucky, but I would rather bet that the way we perceive life has helped us grow so rapidly. This is not only about building bodies; it is about building minds as well. “Developing minds through developing bodies.” And as the OMD motto says: “Life is a very beautiful thing and you always have One More Day”.

BF: How did it end up in Moscow?

AK: It started when Danila Cherkasov, one of the founders, watched a video on YouTube from a group of men in Harlem, New York called “24 Hour Ghetto Workout” and got really inspired with the idea of training on the streets. I still remember the first training session in the Underground, running stairs and doing pushups and dips.

There were only three of us, Danila, me and Sergio “Kento” Iv, the third founder. Back then I guess none of us knew how fast and wide the movement would spread. As it became warmer and we got the chance to train outdoors, we went to the streets and started giving open training sessions for everyone each Sunday. Now we have about 1700 members around Russia and several neighboring countries and we keep growing!

BF: The workouts are mostly outdoors right? Isn't it cold in Moscow?

AK: It is not that cold in Moscow right now and moderate cold hasn't stopped us. We’ve had several trainings during 10 degree Celsius and heavy rain. We have several thoughts about training in late autumn and winter, considering that we would not be able to train outdoors. We will train in the Underground because there are a lot of metallic constructions and stairs which could be used during training. Still, only time will give you the answer, because it will be our first winter.

BF: If someone wanted to train like you but only had access to a normal gym, what should they do?

AK: The whole idea of GW is the possibility to train anywhere using what surrounds you. So, actually, you don’t need anything except yourself, some space and imagination to work out. If you have an access to a normal gym you can use bars to do pull-ups and their variations, different types of dips, the floor to do push-ups and so on.

BF: What is a typical workout like?

AK: Every workout is different but each could be divided into three parts: warm-up, basic moves and FGFP (free ghetto flight program).

The idea of the first part is to prepare the whole body for the training. It's some running, jumping, stretching, joint rotations and a few other things to stress the nervous system like pushup freezes until fall.

The second part is to prepare specific muscle groups and body parts for the upcoming exercises. We do basic pushups, pull-ups, dips, squats and so on.

The third part, FGFP is the real workout. It is the freestyle exercises like handstands, human flags, levers, dips with claps, etc. Everything in that part is strongly individual, there are no sets, reps, orders. People just listen to their bodies and do what they feel right to do.

We have an open training session each Sunday, every time we choose a new training place for it. There are a lot of spots in Moscow, in parks, or schools. Usually about ten people show up at our group, although the last few trainings this season we have been having two or three times more than that.

Most of time during the week people train with their buddies and teams and choose the closest spot to them. That is one of the reasons we choose a new place each week for Sunday training – to show people that there are a lot of training places around them!

BF: Are there fixed programs, or do you make up what you're doing from day to day?

AK: Nothing is fixed. One day you want to do a pushups only routine, the other you would like to do dips and handstands on parallel bars. We want people to listen to themselves and hear what their bodies tell them. We believe that is better than a fixed number of sets and reps, because your body condition may vary very much and you should not put yourself into any cells like prescribed routines.

BF: Is there any kind of nutritional plan that your people follow?

AK: We just eat clean. No crappy food, no sweets, no alcohol, no carbs in evening if you want to burn fat and drink plenty of water.

BF: What kinds of people are normally drawn to the workouts?

AK: The people doing GW are mostly men from 16 to 23. We also have some girls who do simple routines. Their backgrounds are different from several years of parkour or other sports training, which means they are in quite good shape, to none at all. Some decided to change their bodies and lives and start with GW.

BF: Are your athletes training for anything in particular?

AK: We are not training for anything in particular. Having a healthy and strong body means that there will be fewer physical obstacles in your life. You get the ability to do things, you could not do before. We also stimulate the development of mind during the trainings so there will be fewer mental obstacles as well. We want people to be more free in their lives.

Ghetto Workout itself is supposed to be fun and we enjoy the process itself. This way we don't feel the need to seek recreation elsewhere. Because of the whole positive flaws and fun during the training sessions you end up being in a better mood and feeling yourself “energized” despite all the hard work you have done.

BF: What are some misconceptions about your style of training?

 AK: A lot of people who see us only on pictures and are not familiar with our training think that such results can’t be achieved without weights or gyms or supplements. However, we don’t do any of that. We just go out and train hard. This way is simple, but ain’t easy.

Another thing is that many people don’t see the difference between GW and parkour. While parkour is aimed on developing agility, speed, balance and accuracy, GW is more oriented on developing strength, endurance and power. They are both street disciplines so they have much in common, but they are still different things.

BF: Tell me something that I don't know about your training.

AK: We spend a lot of time training static strength. If you have heard about A. Zassa, aka Iron Samson, the strongest man in the world in the middle of 20th century, we follow his routines with isometric exercises.