Complete Beginner to Advanced Step-by-Step Guide on Calisthenics
Starting out calisthenics can be pretty difficult due to the ambiguity of movements and skills involved. In this article, I discuss in detail the steps you need to take in order to progress within calisthenics. Not only will you get into the best shape of your life, but you will also develop skills that may be considered superhuman.
Warm-up
When warming up before a workout you need to implement these three things: blood flow, mobility, and positional drills.
You need to increase the blood flow within the heart and body to warm up the muscles.
Performing mobility drills for exercise such as the v-sit and press to handstand in the joints will help you better perform those skills. Such as the wrists. Warming up the wrists is crucial when performing movements such as handstands, planche, or AOH. Helps decrease the risk of joint pain and injury. Wrist wraps are a common choice to help with the risk of joint pain.
Positional drills are great to get your body accustomed to performing bodyweight exercises. ( hollow body holds, planche holds, and plank)
Warming up should take at least ten minutes. If you find that it's not enough divide your age by 4 and add those extra minutes to the warmup. For example, if you were 20 years old you would divide that by 4 and get 5. So the total would be 15 minutes of warm-up.
Skill training
Including drills to help you develop a better movement pattern for exercise such as the handstand should be performed before the main workout. This is because your freshes during the beginning of the workout rather than the end of it. Such as skills that require balance rather than strength should be at the beginning of a workout.
Periodization
Something that many people don’t understand is periodization. All periodization is, is the process of switching between attributes(strength, explosive, endurance, etc…) throughout a period of time. This might look like having one week that is focused on strength-based exercises, and another week where you're trying to get as many reps out as you can. It’s used to help maintain higher performance, special for athletes who are competing.
Main workout
When you're implementing your calisthenic routine, make sure that you have 4–8 exercises that hit each muscle group (push, pull, legs). You also need a total of 15 repetitions per muscle group ( ex: flute bridge 3x5= 15 reps) in order to progress in a timely fashion.
Fundamental exercises
The exercises you choose for your workout routine will be goal specific, but these exercises that I’m going to talk about are must-have exercises in your calisthenic routine.
Push
Dips
Pushups
Pull
Pullups
Rows
Legs
Squats
Pistol squats
Nordic curls
Jumping squats( plyometrics is a great way to train those 2x muscle fibers)
There are of course different variations of each exercise to help obtain a certain skill, but without the fundamentals, those skills cannot be obtained.
Rest Time Between Exercises
So the rest time between exercises and sets will depend on the attribute you're going for (strength, hypertrophy, and endurance). If you're going for strength, rest times should be between 3–5 mins, hypertrophy 1–3 mins, and endurance 30–90 seconds.
Scapula Positions
Typically your scapula will need to be in a certain position for pulling and pushing exercises. This will help you build as much gains as possible. For pulling exercise you need to depress and retract scapula. All that is is pulling movements, put your shoulder blades downards, and into your mid-back. For pushing exercises , depress and protract the scapula. That’s when you pull the shoulder blades downards and round the back.
Different workout routines
There are many different workout routines for calisthenics athletes:
Full body workouts
The full-body workout routine is one in which you hit each muscle group in one workout session done three times per week. You will typically have 2 exercises for each muscle group( push, pull, legs)
Split routine
So there are two different split routines: Push/Pull/Legs and upper/lower split.
Push/Pull/Legs is when you’re working on exercises that target the different push, pull, and leg muscles on other days. This allows for each muscle group to have more of a focus than if you were to do full-body routines.
The upper and lower body split focuses on the upper on one day, which could include both pulling and pushing exercises while the lower on another day. Because of the limited planes of field with the lower body, there will be less exercise to choose from.
Both these splits are a great way to add extra tension to muscle, the one I would choose is what works for you.
Straight/ bent arm skills
The straight/bent-arm approach puts static skills on why day while dynamics on another. This is a calisthenic exclusive workout routine that can help better focus on static and dynamic skills.
Isometric holds
When wanting to progress within an isometric exercise focus on the 60–75% maximum hold time for that exercise. For example, let's say you can hold a straddle planche for a maximum of 4 seconds. You would hold it for 3 seconds for 7 sets because 3/4 would equal 75%, which is the range you want to work with. The reason you don’t want to go in higher than this is that isometric holds are very taxing on the nervous system. Going 100% may cause you to regress rather than progress.
Vertical and horizontal field
So when implementing calisthenic exercises you should have an exercise in the horizontal and vertical field to work the muscle in different ways. For example, pull-ups work the back, special the lats, while bodyweight rows focus more on the mid-back. Both of the exercises can help increase overall pulling power
Beginner
So there are two different types of beginners: untrained beginners and trained beginners. People who have no experience with exercise and people who have exercise experience but haven’t made much progress.
Untrained beginners
As an untrained beginner, you should perform the following things:
introduce fundamental exercises and become proficient in them.
Utilize higher repetitions to solidify movement patterns and build connective tissue strength.
Focus heavily on individual weaknesses
Being a generalized, balanced routine that starts with repetitions and then transitions to traditional strength training
As a beginner you not only need to build your muscles to progress within calisthenics, but you also need to grow connective tissue which can take much longer time to grow. Doing the basic exercise helps with that.
Now as a trained beginner, you need to be consistent obviously if you want to keep progressing, work in the 5–15 rep range to build strength and muscle, keep a balanced routine of push and pull to build the muscle effectively, and allow not only your muscles but bones, joints, and connective tissue adapt to the exercise.
Now as a trained beginner, you need to be consistent obviously if you want to keep progressing, work in the 5–15 rep range to build strength and muscle, keep a balance routine of push and pull to build the muscle effectively, and allow not only your muscles but bones, joints, and connective tissue adapt to the exercise.
Intermediate
When you reach the intermediate stage of calisthenics split routines will be more effective than full-body routines because it puts more load on an individual muscle group.
When you reach the intermediate stage of calisthenics split routines will be more effective than full-body routines because it puts more load on an individual muscle group.
During this stage of training, you should up the frequency and intensity as much as possible without injuring yourself. This will help you progress faster.
Eccentric clusters
Eccentric clusters will help you obtain exercises such as the HSPU and OAP because it helps build the muscle and connective tissue involved in the movement. Eccentric clusters are when you work the eccentric portion of exercise 3–7s for a few reps. Once you go past the 7s range add extra repetitions to keep progressing.
Advance
During the advanced stage of your training, you should be well-tuned with your body, and focus on the little weak points you have by using isolation exercises and eliminating stress such as not getting enough sleep because it can help you progress.
Conclusion
Introducing the fundamental exercise and sticking with it throughout your calisthenic journey is an important aspect of reaching your goals. Consistency is key, you’re not always going to be motivated to work out and that’s okay, what matters is that you get it done no matter what because discipline triumphs over motivation. In addition, knowing when to pull back from your workouts will help tremendously so that you don’t risk the chance of injury. One of the downfalls of calisthenics is that it is so easy to do, making it easy to overtrain. And as always, whatever you do, don’t lose your gains.
Youtube video ⬇️⬇️⬇️
