Calisthenics At Home | What You Need
Food. Sleep. Exercise.
These are the constants when maintaining a proper lifestyle.
Exercise seems to elude most people, especially those who are busy at work, school, or home. Not to mention that people don’t particularly enjoy working out (though we believe that there is a way it can be fun for people of all shapes and sizes). Popular excuses include: not having enough time, space, or equipment or just plain being busy--to which we say: the obstacle is the way!
For starters, there’s an opportunity for a quick workout as soon as you get out of bed. Before you swipe at your phone for five-minutes, consider doing some exercises from the comforts of your bedroom, living room or even your bathroom. No excuses. Set it as your alarm message to remind yourself and write it down in your daily journal.
“But I don’t have equipment…”
This is where “calisthenics” comes in.
This means anything that involves standing, running, jumping, pulling, and pushing counts.
Calisthenics improves the body’s muscular and aerobic conditioning and enhances psychomotor skills such as balance, agility and coordination.
Under the umbrella of calisthenics are exercises we’ve known all our lives: push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and squats. In fact, these four exercises alone, if done in a regular and proper basis, hit all the muscles needed for progressing into more complicated forms of exercise.
Add that to the fact that most, if not all, calisthenics exercises require the use of your own bodyweight, which also allows you to measure your overall strength and movement control.
Pull-ups strengthen the back and arms; push-ups strengthen the chest, triceps, and shoulders; sit-ups strengthen the abdominal muscles; and squats strengthen the legs.
In order to become successful in calisthenics you need to utilize your core to increase mechanical advantage (e.g. a slight posterior pelvic tilt can help reduce sway during pullups and improve posture). This calisthenics at home article is all about bring your movement mastery to a place where you are comfortable to not so time sensitive: home.
Although calisthenics is generally done with zero equipment, there are things you can buy that can enhance or assist certain movements, read How to Do Gymnastics at Home with Minimal Equipment. So here’s a list of must-haves as you go through your very own calisthenics journey:
Pull-up Bar Station
Pull-up bars are a favorite for exercises such as basic pull-ups, retention pull-ups, muscle-ups and dips. Now, pulling yourself up for a single rep is easy, but maintaining form and stability for varying sets of 10 to 20 repetitions should be your goal.
Too short? Losing your grip easily? No worries.
For those just starting out, you can prop yourself up on a chair to assist you in your first few rounds. As long as you’ve got the right form down pat, you should be fine.
Weighted Vest
Adding weight to your standard workout will help increase the intensity and difficulty of your training.
If you’re either a beginner trying to perform movements for reps (here at Movement Guru form trumps repetitions, and repetitions without form equal injury and dysfunction.
As with all exercises, it’s important to increase weight and intensity gradually. Else, you risk getting injured.
Start with 10-pounds to get your heart warmed up for more intense movements. If that isn’t enough, keep adding weight until you’re satisfied.
This way, you will constantly be challenged to improve your technique and perform the workout more efficiently. Once you remove the additional load, you may shock yourself with how much progress you’ve made!
A word of caution: Weighted vests are not recommended for explosive exercises such as running or jump squats as they can damage your joints, ligaments, and especially your spine.
Also, increasing load for your workouts is a double-edged sword: too much weight and you may delay progress and/or sacrifice proper form. Find the appropriate balancing point between weight vs. ability to complete uncompromised form.
As we always say, listen to your body and be patient with adding weight. Progress, not perfection.
Gymnastics Rings
Aside from pure muscular strength, training for stability can exponentially increase your body’s maximum output.
Think of this simple analogy by Athlean-X's Jeff Cavaliere: firing a cannon from a canoe will yield lower power than firing that same cannon from a more stable base.
How does this analogy apply to gymnastics?
Well, if you’ve seen a seasoned gymnast on a ring, it’s easy to see why. Rings introduce instability and force your body to work harder. Unlike with a stable surface where you can transfer power easily, rings take a lot of effort just to get a good grip.
If you’re looking to make substantial gains to your pull-up, muscle up, or push up game, gymnastics rings may just be the right tool for you.
Amplify old routines by suspending a couple of rings over a spacious area. With rings, you can perform exercises like ring dips, ring rows, and assisted pistol squats that encourage more movement and take your intensity to the next level.
Besides making you look like a legit gymnast a la Cirque du Soleil, gymnastics rings improve your core strength, overall balance, effectively target stabilisers that may not ordinarily be switched on and may even help keep your shoulders healthy by adding wiggle room for internal and external rotation.
Moreover, utilizing rings can also expose you to different grip variations such as the false grip and even give you new strength goals such as the coveted iron cross (see video below), which, as it’s name implies, will make you an instant man of steel!
No wonder these are Ido Portal's favorite equipment!
Parallette Bars
Maximize your bodyweight strength training using parallette bars, the parallel bar's sleeker, more city-living-friendly cousin.
Parallette bars, with their narrower surface area, take conventional floor exercises like the L-sit and handstand to the absolute brink. Furthermore, they also make for freer movement and more difficult angles that you would otherwise not be able to achieve on flat ground.
Wooden parallettes are relatively affordable, but those lucky people with extra time on their hands can easily make their personalized parallettes at home using PVC or aluminum like in the video below.
However, if you don’t have the time or patience you can always order one online.
Although parallette bars are usually associated with gymnasts, they can be used by anyone and everyone.
Adding parallette routines to your workout yields great results regardless of your sport of choice. Yes, it’s a scaled down version of the parallel bar but it easily boosts upper body strength, coordination, core control, and flexibility, while granting you the toned and balanced physique of gymnasts who have mastered their bodyweight-to-strength ratio.
Ab Roller
Lay down your mats and roll out in a routine that focuses on the abs and core muscles.
This small yet intimidating device is sometimes overlooked in many core workout routines simply because many people cannot perform roll outs.
But don’t fret. With enough patience and proper cueing, you can avoid a banana-back form and improve your hollow body position in no time. It’s worth mentioning that getting your core to this level of stability is extremely important in calisthenics.
If you’re using this device for the first time, it would be best to progress from a kneeling position. In which case, make sure to brace properly, only reach as far as you can, and time your breathing during the movement, always aim for posterior pelvic tilt.
Jeff Cavaliere's Never Do Ab Wheel Rollouts Like This! video provides a good set of guidelines with body cues for performing the ab roll out safely and more effectively. See below.
The best part of using the ab roller in your home workouts is that it is one of the lightest and most portable among all the tools mentioned here but, easy as it is to carry, it may just pack the strongest punch out of all your routines!
Gloves
Much as there are "calisthenics purists" who insist on doing their routines “the natural way”--that is, bare fisted and unassisted--there are also those who prefer to innovate.
While we totally respect said purists (you can put down your pitchforks), there are so many benefits you can get from using workout gloves.
The main purpose and strongest selling point of workout gloves is that they provide great protection for your palms and fingers against callous formation. In the same way boxing gloves protect your fists in the ring, workout gloves can keep your hands safe, prolonging your workout and reducing any pain you may experience from going commando.
Although the average calisthenics purist might tell you that gloves hinder your body to adapt to the strains and demands of working out, thereby making you glove-dependent, there’s also the argument of keeping yourself as pain-free as possible for the duration of your workout.
Even though some gym rats may tease that “your gloves should match the color of your purse”, it’s much better to keep the skin of your palms intact.
Seriously, ditch the ego and get the assistance you need. Better safe than sorry!
The longer you’re out of injury or pain, the more that you can invest in your strength goals. If, however, gloves make you feel like a wuss, you can opt for lifting straps or some good ‘ol gym chalk to aid your grip.
I use this chalk.
Putting It All Together
If you’re itching to shred some gainz and veinz after reading this, here’s a a quick home routine you can try!
Warmup
Most people place the core and abs last in their routine but sometimes you can rob yourself off the strength gains of the most important aspect of calisthenics training so we suggest you start by warming your core muscles good before your working sets!
3 Sets Of 1 Minute Planks
Remember the hollow body position*
3 Sets Of 10 Scapular Pull-ups
Keep your arms straight the whole time and focus on getting your shoulder away and below your ears*
2 Sets Of 10 Push-ups
Just like the scapular pull-ups, keep your arms straight and imagine screwing the floor outward with your palms*
Working Sets
Here we work with the classic 5x5 strength formula, After all, in calisthenics, the focus should be on quality over quantity.
Moreover, doing your compound bodyweight exercises in this manner can be of great benefit, especially if you are struggling with technique and/or form. Plus, you can easily manipulate your intensity and volume.
Ring Or Regular Push-ups
Weighted Or Regular Pull-ups
Ring Or Parallette Dips
Standing Or Kneeling Ab Roll Outs
Finisher
It’s just as important to test your limits when it comes to your workouts so here we combine static holds and explosive exercises to send you to the floor gasping after your workout. Bet you thought when we said “quick” it would be easy! Not here on Movement Guru, we train to excel and excel in training we shall! Do these finisher exercises for 1 minute each or as long as you can.
Hanging L-sit Hold
Make sure that your scapula is stable and maintain an active hang
Ring Mountain Climbers
Place the ring height about a fist from the ground and push downward
Hollow Body Dip Hold
Focus on stabilizing your scapula and make sure not to lean forward too much
Alternating Jumping Lunge
Maintain 90 degrees on both knees and push from the lead leg (the leg in front), not the supporting foot
Start Building Your Calisthenics Kit Now!
Hands free or with equipment, the important thing with working out is that you’re actually working out.
Schedule your routine. It doesn’t even matter if you prefer it in the morning, during an afternoon break at work, inside your home, outdoors, etc. What matters is you put the work in and aim for a healthy balance of balance of diet, sleep, and exercise.
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