What is Calisthenics? Ultimate Beginners Guide
What is Calisthenics?
Calisthenics is essentially bodyweight training. It means doing bodyweight movements with minimal equipment in order to master control over lifting and moving your body against gravity.
While weightlifters use external objects, such as dumbbells, to provide resistance for strength training, calisthenics allows you to move your body in certain ways which enables your own body to provide the resistance needed for strength training.
If you are looking to begin your calisthenics journey but you have absolutely no idea where to start, then you have come to the right place. In this guide we have covered everything calisthenics, including:
- benefits of calisthenics
- most essential information you need for beginning calisthenics from the leading calisthenics athletes in the world
- basic movements that it is essential you start with
- importance of good core strength
- generalisation vs specialisation
- maintaining a lean body weight
- mindset you need to adopt to go from a calisthenics newbie to a calisthenics master
You may be thinking that calisthenics training is a relatively new concept since it is only recently that it has exploded in popularity in the fitness industry but it has actually been around since the time of the ancient Greeks. The word ‘calisthenics’ stems from the Greek words ‘kallos’ meaning ‘beauty’ and ‘sthénos’ meaning ‘strength’.
The Benefits of Calisthenics
1. Workout anytime, anywhere
Without a doubt one of the greatest things about calisthenics is the freedom of being able to do it wherever you want, whenever you want.
Since most of the exercises require very little or no equipment there is no need to drag yourself to a gym to fork out for membership.
Your body is your equipment for the majority of calisthenics movements so you’ll have a hard time forgetting to bring it with you wherever and whenever you’re looking to get a workout in.
Also due to the increasing popularity of calisthenics more and more calisthenics parks have been popping up all over the world so keep an eye out for them.
They are a great way to get a training session in outdoors and you’ll probably meet a few fellow calisthenics athletes!
2. Most natural way to train
All of the exercises stem from natural movements that your body is capable of achieving with increased strength, flexibility and mobility.
So by progressing onto more and more challenging skills your strength, flexibility and mobility will naturally increase as a result.
3. Decreased risk of injury
Since calisthenics is the most natural way to train the risk of injury is greatly reduced.
With weight training a lot of people frequently get injured due to not applying the principle of progressive overload effectively. For example, you have gym goers loading up the barbell for barbell squats before they’ve even got comfortable with the body weight squat.
If you aren’t comfortable lifting your own body weight, do you think it’s wise to add an external bar loaded with weights onto your back?
This is why everyone should begin with calisthenics even if they plan to move onto weight lifting at a later stage.
It is so important to begin with the foundation strength of being able to lift your body weight before you start lifting external weights in order to decrease the risk of injury.
Through calisthenics you apply the overload principle to stimulate muscle strength and development in a much safer way than you would with weight training.
You progress by altering the amount of body weight you are lifting, the muscle groups you are targeting, the angle you are performing the movement and so on.
No one is going to have the strength to even attempt a muscle up before having the strength needed to master the pull up so you decrease the risk of injury when it comes to learning the muscle up because the movement pattern is transferable.
Whereas with weight training there is a greater likelihood of injuries occurring because you are using an external object to provide the resistance. This often does not involve a natural movement pattern, with weights that are too heavy which can put a lot of stress on your soft tissue structures, such as your ligaments and tendons.
4. Most of the exercises are compound movements
This means that different muscle groups will be working together to complete the movement.
Take the muscle up for example, this is a movement that consists of three different phases; the pulling phase, the transition phase and the dipping phase.
In order to complete the movement successfully many different muscle groups have to work together.
So you are able to improve your body’s overall efficiency, which will lead to burning more fat and building lean muscle simultaneously.
5. It's Fun!
Who would have thought right? Working out can actually be fun, what!? Yes it can, and it should be.
Think of calisthenics like a challenging yet rewarding video game. There are so many skills and progressions to learn and there is always a progression to get started on.
You can always use a fraction of your body weight to start off with and slowly over time you can add more weight onto these exercises, going onto harder progressions, eventually utilizing your whole body weight.
Compare this with weight training where you’re stuck on the same level week in and week out.
Take the push up vs the bench press for example. With the push up you can start with normal push ups… then move onto explosive push ups… then elevated push ups… then planche push ups… then handstand push ups.
Now let’s look at the bench press, you start off with the bench press… then you add weight to the bench press… then you add more weight to the bench press… then more weight… and more weight until you can’t fit any more plates on the bar.
Which one sounds more fun to you?
Once you’ve mastered the basics, just like how you would increase the weight of your bench press from week to week, you need to be progressing your bodyweight movements.
Whether this is through more reps or doing more difficult variations of that exercise. Changing it up in some type of way by overloading provides new stimulus to your muscles that will lead to them growing in size and strength.
Ultimately the decision is yours whether you want to stick strictly to calisthenics training or weight training but there is no reason why you can’t use a combination of both in your training.
Here at calisthenicsathletes.com our aim is to show you how to master calisthenics skills specifically as it is these movements that we are passionate about mastering and incorporating into our training.
We create in-depth guides for each movement rather than set full body training programmes to give you the freedom to choose what skills you want to learn and we show you how to get there in the most effective way.
Our step-by-step guides break down every skill into easy to follow progressions. So if you are curious about the best way to get started with calisthenics you can check out it out below.
How to Start Calisthenics
1. The Big 4 (Push Ups, Pull Ups, Dips, Squats)
Ah the Big 4 where would we be without use. When it comes to calisthenics The Big 4 are the bread and butter. They are as follows:
These 4 exercises are the foundation upon which all calisthenics skills are built. If you are not strong in these 4 basic movements you are seriously limited to what you can achieve in calisthenics.
It is so important to have a solid bodyweight strength foundation. Think of it like building a house, these exercises are like the foundations of the house, so what happens when you build your house on bad foundations? That things going to come down on top of you!
It’s the same with calisthenics if you don’t have a solid level of strength in these 4 exercises all of your attempts of learning more advanced skills will suffer.
Luckily for you we have created easy to follow step-by-step guides that will ensure you have mastered these movements before progressing. You can check them out here:
The great thing about calisthenics is that when you strip all of the complex movements down to their core they all originate from fundamental these exercises.
For example take the muscle up, looking at it with the naked eye it looks like a magnificent all-in-one complete movement and it is once you master it.
However, in order to master it you have to break it down into its different subroutines that you can practice in isolation and once you break it down you realise that it is actually a movement that consists of three parts; the pull up phase, the transition phase and the dip phase. It is simply not possible to master the muscle-up without mastering the pull up and dip.
All the advanced skills you see, muscle-ups, planches, pistol squats, handstand push-ups, they all stem from mastering these basic movements. So many people make the mistake when starting calisthenics of thinking that they are better than the basics, DON’T THINK THIS.
This applies to everyone beginning calisthenics, whether you are just starting strength training for the first time or you have some kind of training experience with weight lifting, it is still crucial to get back to the simple bodyweight exercises- form and execution of these exercises needs to be mastered.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking because you can bench press your body weight that this automatically implies you’re a master of push-ups, yes a lot of the strength is transferable but when it comes to ‘The Big 4’ we want to be incorporating high reps, which will require a lot more muscular endurance and core strength.
You want to focus your training around the basics until you are able to hit a good number of reps on each basic exercise.
We recommend getting your numbers up to the following:
Pull ups: 15 reps
Push ups: 30 reps
Dips: 20 reps
Squats: 30 reps
*NOTE: All of these reps should be performed with strict form through full range of movement*
You can check out are guides on how to build up to these movements and how to perfect the techniques
2. Quality over Quantity
Do every rep as clean and strict as possible so you will get strong in the full range of motion of the exercise. This will be very important when it comes to the later stages of your training when you are learning skills like the muscle up and handstand push ups.
In every single rep you do make sure you aren’t just trying to get through the exercise or you are never going to excel in calisthenics. You need to be consciously trying to do every single rep with proper form through the full range of motion.
You are better off doing 5 perfect form pull ups with arms fully locked out at the bottom and chin over the bar at the top rather than 20 sloppy pulls ups where you are doing half reps or swinging your legs for momentum. You will get much stronger when you are putting in quality repetitions.
3. Work on a Strong Core
With calisthenics your core is ALWAYS involved. Core strength and stability plays a much greater role in calisthenics training than it does in weight training.
Take the push up vs. bench press: with the bench press you lie flat on your back on the bench so your core is not engaged and you’re just focusing on your shoulders, chest and arms.
With the push up, in order for your body to stay elevated your core must be engaged (like holding a plank). The push up does not require a considerable amount of core strength but when you want to progress to more advance skills such as the planche and front lever then good core strength is essential.
Don’t train for 6 pack abs, train for a strong core. We see so many people in the gym trying to get 6 pack abs by doing all these crazy ab exercises’, for example, cable crunches and although they do work for activating your abdominals these exercises will just simply not give you the core strength you need for skills like the front lever. Trust me if you focus on developing the core strength needed for advanced calisthenics skills the abs will come.
Also, you should know that when it comes to how defined your abdominals are, it really depends on your body fat percentage more so than the size of your abdominal muscles so maintaining a lean body weight is crucial for this and for the progress of your calisthenics skills which we will discuss more in a minute. Instead do exercises like leg raises, L-sit holds, toes to bars, planks and if you’re doing these exercises along with the compound bodyweight exercises that 6 pack will come.
4. Work on Flexibility and Mobility
Flexibility is the ability of a muscle or muscle groups to lengthen passively through a range of motion and mobility is the ability of a joint to move actively through a range of motion.
Through calisthenics your flexibility and mobility will improve greatly but you also want to be working on these aspects when you first begin training as gaining flexibility and mobility is a lot harder than maintaining it.
So if you put in the work now you won’t have to do much work to maintain it and it will continue to improve as you progress in your calisthenics journey.
Having good flexibility and mobility will allow you to use full range of motion in all exercises which means you will get stronger in every phase of that movement. It is also important for calisthenics because you are getting your body to move in unknown positions for example, ‘skin the cat’ where your whole body hangs upside down on your shoulder capsule.
5. Generalisation vs. Specialisation
To understand how fast you are going to progress you have to understand the difference between specialisation and generalisation.
Think of generalization as the bottom-up approach, meaning you focus on all the basic movements and progress upwards making each movement more difficult unlocking different skills as you progress.
Whereas specialisation is the top-down approach, meaning you decide what skill you want to learn and you reverse engineer the movement to figure out exactly what training you need to do to learn that one specific skill.
When you are new to calisthenics you should definitely be focusing on generalisation. Building a solid foundation in the basic exercises to develop full body strength is the safest and most effective approach. Not to mention the fact that the strength needed for most of the advanced skills requires a certain level of strength in all of basic skills.
It is also important to not compare yourself to someone who is a specialist. This means that if you are looking at someone who specialises in calisthenics skills, such as handstands, they’re going to progress a lot faster than someone who follows a generalised approach.
However, over a longer time period the generalised trainer will be able to do a greater variety of advanced skills.
If you’re a generalist you have to understand that you will get there slower as your spreading your time and effort out over more areas so of course your progress is going to be slower but you will get there if you stick at it.
The great thing about callisthenics is that so many movements require a combination of different skills for example the core strength you gain from learning the front lever is going to drastically speed up your learning curve when you move onto the planche as the core strength is transferable.
If you really want one particular skill you can specialise in it devote your time and energy into it you will progress quicker.
It is really up to you what approach you choose to take, you can always begin with generalisation then as you improve and feel you are really passionate about one certain skill you can then decide to focus more on specialising in that skill and you will be approaching it in a much more favourable way due to the baseline strength you have developed through your generalised training.
As I said earlier, we understand that different individuals have different goals so rather than having generalised full body training programmes we create separate guides for each movement, including the basic exercises, to allow you that freedom to choose a generalisation or specialisation approach.
6. Maintain a Lean Body Weight
If you are carrying unnecessary body fat and you don’t have the strength to match that extra weight it will be many of your skills are going to suffer as a result.
Train and eat for your specific goals. If your goal is mastering calisthenics skills it is not worth going on some massive bulk just to put on a small percentage of muscle if your skills are going to suffer as a consequence.
So even more you start working out take a look at your diet and see if it is tailored for your specific goals. If you are overweight, yes focus on the basics but also implement more cardio so you can get that body fat percentage down which will make the movements a lot easier as your aren’t lifting all that unnecessary excess weight.
7. Set Goals
It is going to be hard to keep track of your progress if you aren’t setting specific goals for yourself. Human beings love to be rewarded so while it is fine to have the far goal of becoming a calisthenics master, this goal will not serve you in the day to day sessions.
You need to break this goal down into shorter term milestones. The great thing about calisthenics is that there are so many skills to unlock, even for beginners in the early stages of training, so you can set a target for yourself by choosing a date by which you want to achieve a certain skill or a certain number of repetitions and use the momentum you get from achieving that goal to catapult you forward to achieving your next target.
It is important to set realistic expectations for building strength, muscle, mobility.
At the beginning of your calisthenics journey everything is going to improve faster. You get that rapid neurological adaptation to your nervous system as it becomes more efficient so your strength and skills will progress at a faster rate.
This does not last forever of course after a few months your progress slows down. This is natural since is the complexity of the skills you are trying to learn increases, do not be disheartened from this just remember how far you have come since the start of your journey and keep focused on your next goal.
There you have it guys, a complete guide on what exactly calisthenics is and how you can get started today! Make sure to check our guides to help you get started mastering your body with calisthenics.
As I have said here at calisthenicsathletes.com we create in-depth guides for each movement rather than set full body training programmes to give you the freedom to choose what skills you want to learn and we show you how to get there in the most effective way.