Bodyweight Calisthenics: The Progressive Training Workout Routine
What do you think about when you hear the words calisthenics workout? Unfortunately, our minds usually go back to the monotonous physical education classes we took back in high school. However, a true bodyweight calisthenics routine can help a person gain immense functional strength. As you perform a calisthenics workout, make sure that it involves lots of progressive training. When you train progressively, you build your strength over time instead of putting all your efforts in on endurance.
If you look at the history of physical fitness, calisthenics exercises have been used for a really long time. Before modern workout routines came into prominence, calisthenics workouts were the way to go. Warriors and strong men of old would use their own bodyweight and through progressive training gain considerable strength and power. For example, strength training that focuses on the ability to push stationary objects or pull yourself up a mountain eclipses a workout that focuses on a basic standard bench press.
Squats and pullups are the typical exercises associated with calisthenics. You can certainly get started with strength training with these kinds of exercises as they provide the best workout routine. However, it gets to a point where endurance is the name of the game, and not strength. It’s nice to be able to do 100 pushups, but I’d rather be able to do 10 perfect one-arm pushups. Strength training needs to be done with low reps to maximize muscular development. To perform low reps, bodyweight exercises have to be made more difficult. Well guess what, you can create a highly challenging calisthenics workout by using only your bodyweight.
You can get all kinds of functional strength and gain lean muscle mass with the help of calisthenics. In fact, I’d argue that using your bodyweight alone can sometimes be preferred in getting really defined muscles. There are quite a few gymnasts that do no amount of weight training. Meanwhile, they can support themselves on rings and bars and flip and jump through the sky. You can find tales of gymnasts who have the capability to lift quite a lot of weight with no prior weight training. Unless they are held down by over 50% of their bodyweight, pullups for these gymnasts can be done effortlessly. The arms of gymnasts are typically large and have lots of definition.
This example alone should encourage you to add bodyweight exercises to your normal strength building training routine. However, ensuring that you keep progressing to harder and harder exercises, rather than more and more reps, is of the utmost importance. That’s why I recommend the progressive training routine outlined in Convict Conditioning. This routine sets you up to perform a variety of 6 different exercises designed to work all of the major muscle groups in your body. The 10-step progessions are constructed so that everyone from a beginner to advanced exerciser may be challenged.
Before you can move to the next level in the progression, there are goals for sets and reps listed for each exercise. Therefore, you can guarantee to increase your strength and not just boost your endurance. You can even find more variety than the 10 steps in here. The variety is nice, but nearly unnecessary, as no more than 3% of the people who have tried this have been able to get to the last step for all of the major exercises.
Would you like to take a fitness challenge? Join me in giving up weights for the next 2-3 months. Substitute your weight lifting routine for a bodyweight calisthenics workout. I guarantee your muscles will be challenged. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll actually gain strength if and when you go back to lifting weights. You can see the results for yourself just by committing to a progressive training routine that focuses on using challenging calisthenics exercises to gain strength.
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