Calisthenics merely is body weight exercises. The phenomenon of calisthenics is moving your body through training to keep fit and build body weight. Calisthenics requires no fancy equipment. You can do your basic calisthenics routine during home workouts without the need of having a trainer or equipment around you.
Push-ups, crunches, lunges, dips, jumping jacks, squats, handstands, broad jumps are all calisthenics. The good thing about calisthenics is that it leaves you no excuse for not working out, you can do it anywhere, and at any time,
If you have no injuries, you are good to go and ready for these super exciting exercises. The mastery of calisthenics improves your lifestyle. You know that feeling of being able to move through space freely, just like air!
With calisthenics, you can build body mass and strength without dumbbells or weight lifting. For the sake of this article, we will go into doing calisthenics without any fitness equipment, but we can integrate household furniture and items most people have.
Let’s get started by warming up!
Never start exercising without a proper warm-up. A warm-up gets you ready both physically and mentally. The heart begins increasing its rate to get the red blood cells to the muscles at a faster pace. Red blood cells carry oxygen with them which is vital for a high performing muscle!
You should include exercises into your warm-up that are easy for you and do not strain your muscles. For most of us, this includes jumping jacks, mountain climbers, and high knees. These exercises are enough to get the body warmer and warm up the muscles. Warmed up muscles are less likely to get injured and allow more straining activities.
Wrist and shoulders need that extra attention
Now the body is warm we need to get the wrists and shoulders ready for the harder exercises. For most people, including me, these two parts are the weaker parts of our body. To put things into perspective, our legs are working every day to carry our weight; this doesn’t go for the wrists and shoulders. Therefore they need that extra bit of attention in the warm-up.
Start by doing some shoulder rolls, after that do some windmills forwards and backward. Now that the shoulders are warmer let’s focus on the wrists. Start by moving your hands while keeping your lower arms static. After that get on your knees and lean forward onto your hands. Move forward until the palm of your hand comes of the ground. Lean back and forth for about ten times.
In calisthenics, a lot of the movements are carried by our upper body. Let’s get your upper body ready! If you are strong enough, I advise doing some push-ups to get the upper body ready. When push-ups are still hard for you, you could do some knee push-ups or an incline push-up by leaning against a wall, table or chair.
Basic Calisthenics routine: A full body workout
Now that you are warmed up we can get ready for our home workout. Since in this scenario, we do not have any equipment at hand, we’ll focus on a full body workout. Without the proper hardware, it’s harder to focus on one part of the body. Especially the back is hard to exercise without any equipment.
Enough about things that are not possible! Within the full body workout, we want to tackle the following muscle groups; The legs, the chest, the back, the shoulders, and the core! For the sake of the article, I will give an option for all of the parts we want to exercise. Feel free to pick your preferred exercise because maybe you are not ready for some of them or you’re stronger and need a harder challenge.
Legs
For the legs, we will perform squats and split lunges. The regular squat will allow you to focus on your legs in a controlled matter. The split lunges will enable explosiveness in your leg muscles.
Chest
We will do diamond push-ups and regular push-ups. The diamond push-ups will put more emphasis on the arms, and the regular push-ups will focus your chest more. Remember the wider you put your arms, the more you will target the chest. Do make sure you don’t overdo this and put to much strain on the elbows.
Back
For the back, we will step away a bit from the calisthenics way. There are some alternatives you could do using a door and a table but in this case, find something heavy with a comfortable grip or fill up a backpack with some heavy books.
We are going to body rows. Hold the weight in one hand and lower your body standing up until the back is parallel to the ground. Now pull the weight up while keeping your arm next to the body. When done correctly you should feel the back muscles working.
Shoulders
To tackle the shoulder let’s do pike push-ups and wall walks. The pike push-ups will help to focus on your shoulders in a controlled matter. The wall walks will get your shoulders ready for more straining exercises.
Core
For the core, we will do the superman exercise and high plank hold. Hold the plank for a minute before moving on to the next part of the routine. In this case, you want to go back to the legs
Do all the exercises for eight to ten reps per set and the whole routine for about three to four times. It might not be perfect but when on the road it will maintain your strength and helps you to stay in the routine of exercising. Feel free to adjust any of the exercises mentioned to your strength level!
Workout done? No, not yet! Time to cool down and stretch.
When you finished your workout routine, it is essential to do static stretching. Stretching helps with the recovery of your muscles and increase there flexibility. When the muscles are warm, they allow for a better stretch.
Increased flexibility is critical in calisthenics because it enables harder progressions and helps to avoids injury. Make sure you tackle all the parts of the body.
On holiday? No problem a hotel room is all you need!
After reading this article, you have no excuse anymore to skip a workout! The holidays can be a challenge when trying to find the right spot to finish your routine, but you should now have a good idea of how to create alternatives when you are on holiday.
Sometimes the hotel offers a free gym and provides some calisthenics equipment like a dip station or a pull-up bar. If not. be sure to check out calisthenics parks. I use this website every time I’m on the road! Did you find a park which is not there yet? Be sure to add it.
Remember muscle growth and strength is not merely done by exercising. Having a proper diet is more than half of the effort to grow those muscles! So even when on holiday keep an eye on what you are eating, there are plenty of healthy and delicious options even when you are out!
No equipment? No problem!
Start with a proper warm-up, do that killer workout you’ve handpicked yourself or follow the one suggested and finish up by stretching the whole body. Next time the weather is terrible, and you can’t go out to the bar park make sure you finish your routine at home!
When you don’t have the option like a bar park or you do not have equipment available what do you do to get your workout done? Let us know in the comments below! Thank you for reading.
