CALISTHENICS is a halfway sport between gymnastics and weight lifting, mixing strength, flexibility and balance (using your own bodyweight), it’s a sport practiced mostly outdoors, There are certain infrastructure specifically dedicated to street workout. This Sport is gaining popularity in recent years.
The word «Calisthenics» comes from two Greek words Kallos (Beauty) and Sthenos (Strength).
Before starting Calisthenics, you should know the different categories that this sport offers and focus on it !
The following list are the different categories, which all have the same goal : Use your bodyweight and play with it.
- Sets & Reps : consists of making a specific sets of a number of repetitions; most of the time “big sets”, which means long sets, in order
to gain muscle endurance or hypertrophy of the body, or strength - Static Moves : Consists of doing strength exercices and mouvements like the planche, handstands ..etc
- Street Lifting : Is the same thing as powerlifting, just that the street lifting is made with
calisthenics exercices, which means, MUSCLE UPS, PULL UPS, DIPS, PUSH UPS..
it consists of doing a maximum of reps possible with the maximum loaded weight. - Freestyle :
Consists of doing acrobatics and agility mouvements on the bar
basic exercices
UPPER BODY
1- PULL UPS
Pull ups, are the mostly complete exercice to build a strong upper body. It increases your strength, size, endurance. With pull ups you mainly develop your back and biceps, your forearms, but also your lap belt. If you want to develop a powerful and athletic upper body pull ups will do the work!
*There is a lot of variations of pull ups: wide, medium, close, Supination, Pronation..etc*
2- DIPS
It’s a basic exercice that works the overall chest, the muscles of the arms, shoulders, and many other muscles.
3- PUSH UPS
Seems too simple if we don’t care about realizing them with good form. push ups are an essential exercice to build a powerful upper body.
The most common mistake made with push ups is to do them too fast.
LOWER BODY
1- SQUAT
The squat will allow you to build your thighs, glutes, calves with a single movement, the squat allows to develop a lower muscular body tonic and synchronized, it’s essential to do the mouvement with the perfect form, your abdominal and lower back would therefore be recruited and strengthened to maintain your stability and your back straight, with or without weights.
2- LUNGES
Lunges are a good exercise for strengthening, sculpting and building several muscles/muscle groups, including the (or thighs), the gluteus maximus (or buttocks) as well as the hamstrings.
3- LEG RAISES
This simple exercise is a great way to work your abs, he’s one of the best exercices to solicit them. he’s not that hard to be done by beginners. There are many other exercises that helps solicit your abs: Plank/Crunch/..etc
I suggest you some basic routines to do before going to the next level, every beginner should start with basic exercises to build a good muscle base and strength, then he can move to the next level, and specialize in a category.
The beauty of this style of training involves the lack of equipment you need to begin and get started.
With all that being said, i want to share with you a PDF FILE that i did to show you more details about STARTING CALISTHENICS !
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