How I Built My Body with Calisthenics (No Gym Needed) 2025 Edition
Like a lot of people, you have probably started making your New Year resolution. When it comes to fitness, 50% of you within the next 6 months will quit that goal. But for the 50% that won’t, here’s how you can change your body with calisthenics.
You should warm up for at least 5–10 mins for blood flow, and mobility, and to warm up the muscles. If you need more time, divide your age by 4 and add that to the warmup. Something that I do is do a set of my workouts at an easier intensity. For example, if I’m doing a leg workout instead of weighted plyometrics, I do bodyweight to help warm up my body.
When it comes to stretching focus on mostly dynamic, and if you do static, no more than 30 seconds because it’s a stationary warmup. Muscles cool down too fast if they are not worked enough.
So there are many kinds of split such as the PPL(Push Pull Leg), full body, bent/straight arm, and others.
Full body is a good routine for beginner athletes, while push-pull leg split and bent/ straight arm split are good for athletes. Bent arm / straight arm splits are when you focus on exercises that require a bent arm one day and focus on exercises that require a straight arm the other day. For example, maybe one day you do basic pushing exercise and then the next day you train for the planche.
I assume you’re a beginner so this guide will be certain around mainly beginner athletes. The beginner workout is down below.
So for push there many different exercises out there but I would just stick to doing one in the horizontal and vertical plane of the field, for example, pushups and dips or pike pushups and pushups. The three staple calisthenic exercises that I would keep on rotation would be pushups, dips, and pike pushups(specifically elevated pushups ) because there are want you need to build up basics as well as to learn skills such as the HSPU or elbow lever.
For pull it would be the same thing. One skill in the horizontal plane and one skill in the vertical plane such as the pullup and row.
Now if you don’t wanna end up like Larry the Lobster in Spongebob it’s important to target the legs. In the beginning, I would have you do jump squats and a pistol squat variation, but as you progress it's important to add hamstring curls and calf raises because your muscles will be more resilient to strength training.
When it comes to learning skills you should do no more than 3 but start off with one. Calisthenics is kind of like when you're a kid and you walk into a candy store with $100 bucks. You don’t know what to buy, so you decide to buy everything. Don’t be like that kid in the candy store because you could end up with a tummy ache. Doing too many skills at one time can cause too much stress on the CNS, decreasing performance.
As a beginner focus on these skills:
Handstand
Pistol Squat
L-sit
Elbow lever( if you work HSPU you will naturally learn elbow lever)
Front lever
Backlever
HSPU
Human Flag
Muscle up
Planche
Front lever Pullup
OAP(One Arm Pushup)
Hefesto
As a beginner, it's a good idea to do hollow body holds, leg raises, planks, l-sits, and pike compression. Now for planks, a lot of people are doing them wrong. You should never be doing a 1 or 2-minute plank unless you specifically want to build plank endurance. Stick to no more than 30 seconds to keep the intensity there, depress protect scapula, squeeze the butt, and lean the body back to put more tension on the abdomen during the plank.
Once you have built the strength up to do a l-sit I would focus on doing these exercises for the front lever and back lever:
Leg raise
Hanging leg raises/ toes to bar leg raises
Dragonfly raises/front lever raises
Hollow body rocks
Front lever holds
Cat cow poses
These are all great exercises to use to learn the front lever and back lever. One thing I want to note is that when you start doing front lever raises, important to know how exactly to do them to progress. So when I say front lever raises I mean full ROM( Range of Motion) front lever raises. When doing these you need to understand that the difference in ROM will affect the muscles targeted and the goal carried out. Top to bottom will help with increasing hold time and is used for advanced athletes. The bottom-to-front lever will help engage the lats more, but a full range-of-motion front lever will work all of this. So when you get the strength to do this exercise after getting proficient at Dragonfly, I highly recommend doing full ROM to start with. If you can’t do full ROM then do eccentrics until you can.
So one of the most important muscles for calisthenics is the shoulders. Without good shoulder health, you won’t perform well in calisthenics. And with that comes scapular development. So it’s important to scapula shrugs and pullups on the bar for moderate to high reps(8–15) 3 sets.
Also, make sure you do some wrist work to stretch out the writs such as wrist rolls.
An example of a full-body calisthenic workout for a beginner could look something like this:
Pushups 3x8–12( Depressed Protracted Shoulders)
Pullups 3x5–8(retracted and depressed shoulders)
Dips 3x5–8
Rows (3x8–10)
Jump squats( 3x30 seconds)
Pistol squat eccentrics 3x5( at least 2 second eccentric)
Calf raises 3x20
L-sit holds 6x5 secs
1–2 min rest
Hanging leg raises 3x5
L-sit Pushups 3x 8
Pike compression 3x10 sec
The only equipment that is a must-have would be a pullup bar and some parallettes. Rings are a nice accessory for those who can buy a pair, and bands can be helpful when learning skills.
I'm going to try and keep these as simple as possible but your nutrient can make or break your calisthenic process. If you are overweight, you're not going to be able to do advanced calisthenic skills. So keeping your weight within a healthy range is important. I’m 5'9'’ so that’s around 150–160lbs is where I best perform at calisthenics. The rules I follow are the 80/20 rule and no more than 5 ingredients. If it’s not a whole food, I’m not going to be eating or drinking it. When it comes to liquid calories make sure they are little to nonexistent, because this helps keep the weight off.
Nowadays people are putting way too much emphasis on taking gym supplements. The only supplement I take is discipline and consistency, so I don’t think protein powder or anything like that is needed, it’s just a cherry on top. Make sure you’re getting around .8 grams x your body weight in kilograms of protein.
About nutrition, to progress in calisthenics your weight needs to be on point with your height. Everyone has a weight point that will help them excel without hurting them in the long run.
So when it comes to performance the best way to determine where your weight needs to be is by using this equation height(cm)-100= 75kg. Then you time it by 2.2 lbs for my Americans to get 165 lbs. So when it comes to performance, this is the weight I need to be at. This will allow me to excel in the performance area of my training, but I will have a smaller physique. Now this is assuming that you have a descendant body fat percentage. If you are overweight, disregard this information until you lose weight. Click this link to learn more about the body metrics equations to use.
The key principle that you need to know within calisthenics is cross-sectional area x neural adaptions = strength. If I dumb that down, all it means is the more muscle you have the greater amount of strength capability. So if you start with calisthenics it’s important to focus on building muscle rather than building strength as your capability for strength will increase. If you guys already don’t know, the strength rep range is between 1–5 reps and hypertrophy 8–12 reps. Endurance is higher than that.
If you are one of those people who likes to work in groups, it’s good to have a gym partner. The only problem with this is that can be helpful or hurtful depending on your gym partner. If your gym bro talks too much about his goals but doesn’t do anything, don’t ask him/her to help you. You need someone who is going to be consistent or who has already been in the gym for a while.
There’s one last thing I want to mention for those who read until the end, you don’t have to work out every day or every other day to see results. Heck, you can work out once a week and see results if done right. Many people think you need to be on the grind 24/7 to make something happen, but that’s not always true. Start slow and as you get better up the frequency.
Make sure when it comes to skill training don’t train a skill more than 4x a week unless it’s handstands. Scapular pushups/pullups are moderate to high reps. When it comes to frequency if you're doing full body workouts at least 2x a week, or 10 sets per muscle group.
So if you are looking to improve yourself this year, you are in the right place. For those who need additional help, click here for the coaching link.
