How to Start Calisthenics

Introduction

What Will Be Covered in This Article?

In this article I will teach you the basics of calisthenics and some of the best ways to get started on your journey. I will include sections for each type of beginner into calisthenics; whether you are a fitness newbie or maybe a transitioning weight lifter their will be information that will aid you.

What Are Calisthenics?

If you’re here reading this I assume you most likely have a basic idea of what calisthenics is but if not I’ll give you a brief explanation. Calisthenics is basically growing stronger using your own body weight. Some of the most common calisthenics exercises are push-ups, squats, and sit-ups. After mastering these movements to their full complexity people will move onto intermediate and then advanced calisthenics. It is most definetly possible to get into intermediate calisthenics relatively fast as mastering the easier movements is not a necessity.

Why Calisthenics?

There are a multitude of reasons why someone may want to do calisthenics as opposed to more traditional weight lifting. Some of the biggest reasons are that they cannot buy a gym membership, they don’t have enough time to go to the gym, do not have the large funds needed to buy weight lifting equipment. Those are some reasons but there are still some others that concern the attractiveness of calisthenics such as the versatility of calisthenics, the high ceiling for skills, the convenience of being able to work out close to anywhere. For me personally I have chosen to do calisthenics instead of weight lifting because it is simply much more fun. While your reason may be far different than mine or your reason is not even listed in this section I promise you that the following information will be beneficial to you.

How to start calisthenics

For the Fitness Newbie

When I say fitness newbie I mean exaclty what I am saying. Someone who has little experience with fitness. The Fitness Newbie has no exact body type as it can be essentially anyone. It is possible to find people who have low BMI’s as well as high BMI’s and have them all be fitness newbies. Although, regardless of weight getting into calisthenics as someone with no prior experience is very difficult as how I classify a fitness newbie is as someone who may not yet be able to do more than a couple push-ups and for the calisthenics beginner push-ups are vital. Now, lets talk about how the fitness newbie can begin calisthenics.

How to Gain the Initial Strength
When first starting calisthenics the first thing you need to do is get rid of your ego. The beginning steps of calisthenics will most definitely humble you. The feeling of trying to do an exercise and failing hurts very badly but the happiness you feel when you begin to get the hang of it is unrivaled. 
I have seen many stigmas around the different types of push-ups that can be used to build up the strength to do a full push-up. You may have seen wall push-ups, knee push-ups, and elevated push-ups, many people look at these exercises as easy push-ups or something like that but that is incorrect. All the movements are push based movements, they are exercises that can be used to gain strength. Do not feel ashamed of yourself if you have to do these movements to reach the full push-up, if you feel ashamed you may never get to that full push-up and will feel even more disappointed in yourself. This video by hybrid calisthenics is very good and shows exactly how you can reach your first push-ups

You need to have a mentality of you versus you. You should only compare yourself to your past self. The mentality is very important for the beginning stages of training (I will have an article about mentality soon). To me personally I believe the push-ups is the most versatile movement in calisthenics and that is why I believe it should be utilized by the fitness newbie to gain strength.
 
The Nutrition Side

For someone who has never really taken a look at what they are eating the nutrition part of fitness can be very difficult. There are a ton of different views on diets and that sort of thing but my personal opinion is that the idea of being on a diet is essentially pointless. When someone says that they are on a diet what does that imply? It implies that soon enough they will go off this diet and return to their old eating habits. The goal is not to lose weight then gain it all back after your diet is over, the goal is to keep the weight off and replace it with muscle instead. 

The goal of fitness in general is to be healthy, to create healthy habits so that you can look better, feel better, and have an easier life all around. The sound of this may be terrible to some people as they want to work out to gain the ability to eat what they want but when you start training seriously you will not want to see your progress go to waste because you did not get enough protein or enough calories in. I think for complete beginners the nutrition side is pretty important as it gets you into the fitness mindset. When you take your health outside of exercising it becomes more of a lifestyle whish is the ultimate goal. Simply recognizing the foods you put into your body goes a long way, be conscious about the foods you eat and do not feel guilty about treating yourself sometimes. 

I personally would never recommend calorie tracking to someone who is new to fitness and still very susceptible to the dangerous habits that tracking can cause (although tracking protein specifically can be very helpful). I do track my calories and recommend it to people who are serious about fitness and have their fitness goals in mind and are using calorie tracking as a tool to make this process easier and more enjoyable. Even when you are at this point be wary of developing harmful habits towards food, always think with your brain and not with your feelings when it comes to nutrition and especially calorie tracking. 

Developing a Routine
 Making exercise a habit is usually the hardest part for people. The key is to chill out and let the results come slowly. I know a lot of people will say you need to get in the gym every single day and if that is what you want to do that’s okay but do not force yourself to train every single day if it feels like to much. Work exercise into your existing lifestyle instead of a creating a whole new one that revolves around it. Personally I train three times a week and do other exercise that I want to do throughout the other 4 days. I like to keep it more chill and as long as I see results I am happy since I only compare myself to my past self. The scientific amount of time to create a habit is 22 days which feels just about right and works with exercise. When you start to feel weird about not exercising or skipping a training session you know you have made it far.
 
So basically to develop a routine choose 4-5 exercises that you like to do find a good amount of reps you can do for each and start to do that exact workout 3 times a week. As time goes on you may get tired of certain exercises which you can simply switch out for another exercise. When you feel the workout is getting easier add more reps or possibly move onto the next variation of that movement.

For the transitioning Weightlifter

So, you’re a weightlifter who has known about calisthenics or are just now learning about it and think that it may be a better form of training for you. If this is the case then you are what I would call the transitioning weightlifter. For someone who has been lifting I would dare to assume that you have some muscle built up, some knowledge about training, some knowledge about dieting, and just fitness in general. Even though you may be familiar with these aspects transitioning to calisthenics means there will be a lot to learn.

Where to Start as the Transitioning Weightlifter
Like I said before you probably already have some strength so you can skip a couple steps that someone who is completely new may have to work through. For example you can probably already do some push-ups and possibly some pull-ups. Just like with weightlifting you will probably want to have a mix of push/pull in your training regimen. Some of the best push workouts you can do with calisthenics are any variation of push-ups; diamond push-ups, wide push-ups, deep push-ups, handstand push-ups, planche push-ups, etc. All these push-up variations are great workouts but the latter two are going to be much more difficult than the first 3. Another push exercise is the dip. The dip requires some equipment such as rings or parallel bars. As with the push-up the dip has many variations such as the normal dip, the ring dip, bulgarian dips, and many more. Watch this video for 20 different variations. Now two of the best pull exercises are the pull-up and the chin-up. Both of these movements are relatively similar but the pull-up will be much more back and tricep oriented while the chin-up will hit biceps a lot more while still hitting some back. Like the push-up and dip there are many variations in which you can do these exercises (although there are more variations of the pull-up than chin-up). As a pull-up is already a pretty hard movement the variations like the archer pull-up and one armed pull-up are going to be far more difficult. Here are 25 different pull-up variations. For chin-ups I recommend adding weight when you feel ready to advance. So, as a transitioning weightlifter you should start with a push-up variation, a dip variation, a pull-up variation, and the chin-up as your training regimen. Now you may be wondering, just like I was when I got into calisthenics, what about legs? For legs there are a couple things you can do like normal squats or pistol squats. But in general I recommend that you continue to do leg workouts with weights as it is just much easier.
 
Nutrition for the Transitioning Weightlifter
As I said earlier  am going to assume that you, as someone who has been training with weights has a decent idea about nutrition but there is something that changes when you start calisthenics. Its not a big change but may actually make a big difference for some people. This change is that you are going to burn more calories with calisthenics than you will with weightlifting. This is because you are doing a lot of compound movements that have you moving your body a lot more than when you are weightlifting. For people who are cutting this is phenomenal but if you are bulking this may be bad news regardless it is something you need to keep in mind while going forward into calisthenics.

For the Cardiomaniac (AKA Cardio Is Your Main Form of Excercise)

The Cardiomaniac,  the person who is obsessed with cardio but is now looking into calisthenics as a form of training their body after all the cardio burnt their muscle off. At least that is what I would assume happens to anyone who does a ton of cardio and not much resistance training. The cardiomaniac can be relatively polarizing compared to the last two types as some of them may know exactly what they are doing and have nutrition down while others may think cardio is the best way to gain  muscle and lose fat while eating what they want but as we all know there is not such a training program so perfect. So, in this section I will talk about where the average cardiomaniac should start with calisthenics, when to do cardio according to their goals, and I will give a brief explanation of how adding calisthenics training may impact their nutrition necessities.

Where to Begin With Calisthenics 
So, as a cardiomaniac I have to assume you have built up some leg strength and the small majority who use a rowing machine may have some upper body strength. As this is a small majority of people I am going to focus first on where to start if you have only built leg strength through cardio. So where should you start in calisthenics as the cardiomaniac, I recommend that push-ups be a big part in your workouts. Push-ups are by far the most versatile exercise in calisthenics there are so many variations that can be used to target different muscle groups. For example the normal push-ups is a great overall arm workout while a diamond push-up is great for triceps. Here is a video all about push-ups. 

So, I recommend you start with two push exercise in your training regimen and I also recommend that for now they both be push-up variations. I also recommend two pulling exercises. If you have access to a pull-up bar or gymnastic rings you should start with scapula pulls and work up to doing pull-ups for reps. If you can already do pull-ups than start off with that. For the other pulling exercise chin-ups are a fantastic option. There are ways to work out to chin-ups if you cannot do them already. The band assisted chin-up, or negative chin-ups are great for building that initial strength. You can also do band assisted pull-ups and negative pull-ups if the jump from scapula pulls to pull-ups does not go smoothly. So, what I recommend as the cardiomaniacs first training regimen is two push-up variations followed by a pull-up variation which is then followed by a chin-up variation. The order you do these in is completely up to you.
 
How to Mix Cardio Into Calisthenics Training
 As someone who is transitioning from straight cardio into a mix of cardio and calisthenics may be wondering how to put the two pieces together, and to put it simply it depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to build more muscle then do your calisthenics training before your cardio as you will be able to put more effort into it and if you want to burn calories and lose weight, do the cardio first. I believe that it is truly as simple as that so your goals are going to decide in which your you do these things.
 
How Does Nutrition Change
Your nutrition plan may have to change a little bit and it will most likely be in the form of adding more calories into your diet. This is because you are going to be training to gain strength and build muscle which requires a heavier protein intake. It is generally accepted that you should eat your  body weight in grams of protein each day (some people do 7/8s which also works) in order to start putting on muscle as fast as possible. Another reason why you may need to add more calories is simply because you are going to be burning more calories since you are adding calisthenics to your routine. Calisthenics is a pretty mobile form of exercise as compared to traditional weightlifting so you are going to be burning a significant amount of calories during your training. So, just keep this in mind and make sure you get your protein in!