By now you all know who Craig Ballanytne is. He’s the creator of the original high intensity home program – Turbulence Training.

Over the years, he’s come out with some great workouts. The most famous of which is his 6-month bodyweight training manual.

Using this program, he’s put together an incredible deluxe package using only his bodyweight workouts to help you get the most out of your bodyweight training.

I had a little chat with Craig about his bodyweight workouts:

Parth: Craig, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to me. Lets get right into this. Tell me, what exactly is the Turbulence Training Bodyweight Deluxe package?

Craig: The Bodyweight Deluxe program is my famous 6-Month Bodyweight Training manual showing you how to lose fat and gain muscle with only bodyweight exercises. It includes some of the most challenging workouts I’ve ever created. You’ll love it, it’s a lot of fun.

Parth: I’ve tried some of those workouts, and I must say they are tough. But with a new fitness product coming out everyday, people get confused on where to start. What is one tip you would give to people starting out?

Craig: If you are completely beginner with no current workout history – or interest in working out – then simply find something you like to do, and do that activity. Combined with eating less, you’ll lose fat.

But if you want a structured workout for maximum bodysculpting, then you need to get a professional program. If you want to workout for 6 days per week, I don’t recommend that and you won’t like my program.

But if you want to get results in just 3 short workouts per week, with exercises you can even do at home if you want, then Turbulence Training will work perfect. We have a beginners program for people who aren’t working out, and an intermediate program for people who are experienced – but I make even my advanced clients start here.

Parth: Nice. Love the variety. Like I said, there are lots of fitness products coming out every single day. But people still prefer Turbulence Training over all the others. What makes Turbulence Training so special?

Craig: It’s proven. A lot of new programs are copycats but don’t have all of the magical ingredients that Turbulence Training does…and the biggest thing all these copycats don’t have is massive, massive, massive proof like Turbulence Training.

There are very few programs that can say they’ve been used by millions of Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and Shape magazine readers, plus all of the folks online and the good people in the TT Transformation Contests.

It’s really just Body for Life or Turbulence Training, and Turbulence Training is based on the most recent science and gets updated all the time.

Parth: Well, I like Turbulence Training because I can do it at home without any equipment. Speaking of which, lets talk about bodyweight training. What are the benefits of bodyweight exercise?

Craig: Most bodyweight exercises are a combination of resistance training and interval training, so they work to burn calories and sculpt muscles. You won’t become a massive bodybuilder with bodyweight exercises, although if you’re a gymnast and you train hours per day, it’s obvious that you can gain a lot of muscle mass.

But most people are going to get lean, athletic, fit bodies with bodyweight exercises, and as much as I love weight training, I have to admit that bodyweight exercises are easier on the joints.

Parth: True. You have a lot of different bodyweight programs out there. Just curious to know. What’s the main difference between training a man and training a woman?

Craig: Most women can and will work as hard as a guy, but they are fearful of getting bigger.

This won’t happen unless they eat too many calories, but I make two small changes…

First, I have women use more bodyweight exercises. Whenever possible, we’ll choose an equally difficult bodyweight exercise rather than using the dumbbell or barbell version. Women prefer this, and it might be slightly better for bodysculpting.

Second, we could also use fewer sets. Remember, getting big is all about volume – eating more and doing more repetitons. So we’ll only do 1 set per exercise with some women rather than 3 sets. That cuts back volume, and eliminates any fear of getting bigger.

Parth: Ok. This actually leads to my next question – why is muscle building so important in your quest to drop fat?

Craig: It’s not mandatory. You can lose fat without gaining muscle, and most women just want the fat loss.

But most guys need to gain some muscle if they want to look amazing, so that’s why I use muscle-building programs so much.

Plus, it’s important for everyone’s health to be as strong as possible in their old age.

Parth: Ok, so what’s the difference between Turbulence Training for Fat Loss, and Turbulence Training for Mass Gain?

Craig: The fat loss program is more of a home workout program focused on metabolic resistance training to sculpt the muscles and burn calories, along with interval training to burn more fat.

The mass program is supersets of heavy lifting focused on building strength and mass.

Parth: Makes sense. Alright, so what’s your background Craig? What motivated you to create the Turbulence Training bodyweight workouts?

Craig: Like most folks in the fitness industry, I played a lot of sports when I was younger. That led to weight training. From there, I realized I wanted to be a strength coach in professional sports.

I went to school for Kinesiology, which then led to a Master’s Degree in Exercise Physiology. Along the way I studied what made a good NHL Strength Coach (they had Master’s Degrees and were Certified Strength And Conditioning Specialists – CSCS).

I also started training athletes, along with men and women for fat loss. Then I started working with Men’s Health in 2000. And I invented Turbulence Training in 1999, and finally put it online in 2001. The rest is history.

Parth: Yup, and it’s looks like it’s been a great run. Hopefully I’ll see some more great Turbulence Training workouts for many years to come.

So, as I stated in the interview, Craig has some great workouts. To learn more about each of his workouts, click on the links below to read their reviews:

• Turbulence Training Bodyweight Deluxe
• Turbulence Training for Abs
• Turbulence Training Bodyweight Workouts
• Original Turbulence Training Workouts
• Turbulence Training for Abs DVD
• Turbulence Training for Women
• Turbulence Training Bootcamp
• Turbulence Training for Muscle

Tags: bodyweight workouts, craig ballantyne, Fat Loss, mass gain, turbulence training