What is Calisthenics?
For those of you who may not know what Calisthenics is, it’s a form of strength training just using body weight. Which in my opinion is a great way of working out and gaining strength when you don't have any equipment.
Workout equipment can be pretty pricey and so can gym memberships. So what if we don’t want to be spending so much money on fitness or just don’t have the money? Calisthenics training!
Calisthenics workouts can be done at home, outside, at the beach, anywhere really. All you need is you and the motivation to keep training. As you progress in training with your body weight, more weights like dumbbells, weight vests and so on can be incorporated into workouts as well but you don’t have to incorporate these into it. I guess it's just a personal choice, you can still progress and get stronger with just your body weight and adding more difficult exercises into your workout. There’s also different exercises that may need pull up bars or dip bars etc.. but again you don't have to use these in your workouts.
I think especially for beginners none of this is really needed at all. It might not be as fast as going to the gym and lifting weights but it's a whole different type of strength. It’s a great way for beginners to start working out and gain strength. When you progress enough and start to feel like exercising with just your body weight might not be enough, then start working with weights. Although calisthenics is body weight training but you can always do both right?
It’s what your personal goals are. Calisthenics is not for everyone. If your goals are to get really big, more for the looks than strength, it might not be for you. Big muscles don't necessarily mean more strength. Like I said, a whole different type of strength.
I think it’s an awesome way to gain strength and again can just be done from home. There’s also some very cool looking exercises you can work up to being able to achieve like handstand push ups, planches or have you ever seen videos where people are holding onto a pull up bar and make it look like they are walking in the air? Yeah, things like this can be achieved by calisthenics training. Pretty cool skills to have.
Anyway, I'm no pro at calisthenics and I haven't trained for a long time now, I’m not going to lie, I've had a few stages where I start training for a month or so and get some good progress and I end up giving up. Then all that progress I've made is just lost so easily by being lazy. But I’ve been wanting to improve my fitness and strength game for too long now but I keep being lazy and doing nothing about it.
I feel like maybe when I started, I did too much and didn’t eat enough or just the wrong things that I burned myself out, I need to get my plan right. So I'm going to give myself a challenge. I haven't worked out what exactly I will do, but I will try and start off with less this time and keep working up when I feel like I'm ready. Not push myself too hard to just burn out again.
I usually find great workouts from a calisthenics pro called Chris Heria. He has loads of workouts and informational videos on his YouTube channel.
Click here to check it out.
He also has his own app called Heria Pro where you can find more of his routines. On the app you can plan your workouts, track your progress, all the usual workout app stuff. This app is free to download and he does have a lot of workouts you can view for free but some of them you will need a membership for. There’s enough free workouts for beginners to get into calisthenics and see if they like it before paying for the membership. The membership is an easier way to get workout plans but he also has loads of videos on YouTube that you can check out and make your own workout plans.
Of course there’s so many different people you can find on YouTube to help you on your calisthenics journey. Personally for me Chris is my favourite so far and I like using his app so I don’t waste so much time looking on YouTube and trying to make my own plans.
Maybe I will do a few update posts on here of my progression some time , I just hope I stick at it this time.
Here's a short video i found on Youtube explaining a little bit about calisthenics:
