Beginner’s Guide to Calisthenics for Audiophile Nerds

Great discussion. Very close to my heart.

I have been addicted to strength from early youth.
I worked in forrest as human machine - carried out logs, split firewood etc in my teens and early adulthood. This made me stronger than anybody I knew. My wrestling coach made fun over me that I learn no technique because I don't need to.
Fast worward to uiversity years and I got permanent gf. Got lazy and out of shape from years of videogames and beer.

I turned 30, got to be father, then something hit me and I discovered calisthenics. In about a year I was in the best shape I had ever been. It is addictive, cool, feels great to do and accessibility is not a thing. I love training in silence and without distractions - I have no business into gyms.
Now 7 years later I am heavily into weighted cali. I intend to never quit. I went a bit crazy with it and it turns out one can wreck the spine by attaching 100 kg on a belt around waist for dips and pullups - so now I gotta split it between weight vest and metal hanging under balls.

 

Advantages of cali from my intense but humbling experience:

• it maximizes function and ability (it blows people's minds if they see someone do a one arm pullup or front lever)
• accessibility - no shit music, no Insta bloggers, no competition for station. It makes me laugh if some gym rat tells me about his gym struggles
• every movement is compound - no isolation crap even possible
• Promotes full range motion
• there is some magic in it how it transform physique and fitness in more rapid and extensive way than other resistance training for the same effort
• Gives the same thrill as doing heavy ass deadlift without the injury risk
• Even with weighted cali injury risk is very low.
• It drastically improves posture

Some negatives that I discovered:

• really, there is only one - not feasible to train lower body at advanced level with bodyweight stuff
• for elite freaks some weights, cable machines etc give noticeable boost to break away from plateau

 

My favorite movements:

• (Weighted)pullup - the carry over of ability is so underapreciated. Posture perfected. Front lever. One arm pullup. Muscleup. Do I have to spell out it is the best lat exercise bar none?

• (Weighted) dip on gymnastic rings - it must be among the best pushing exercises ever. Not for the weak of mind as every part of the movement at the beginning feels like you are going to split in half - my body used to flood with fear and adrenaline of this. The rewards are huge of course. Steel core, pecs and triceps grow like crazy.

• (Weight west) pushups on parallets - very long range of motion - massive stretch - forget bench press, it is obsolete compared to this movement.

• (Weight west) rows on gymn rings. As the great Arnold said - "for thickness you need to row"

• High deficit (some 4..6 inches under front leg) bulgarian split squat with kettlebells. Caution - DOMs for a week. It obliterates everything in your legs without any risk to lower back.

 

You sure it's not Texas BBQ instead?

 

can you share if you are more into low rep or high rep calisthenics?
or if you have experimented with both where have you landed.

I know either can give you a great physique and great results but I started my serious weight training journey with Mike Mentzer/HIT style. I eventually learned the shortcomings of that - mostly massive CNS fatigue over long periods of time although I watched myself grow after each exercise.

so now I am experimenting with high rep bodyweight exercises versus forced negative bodyweight/weighted calisthenics at low volume and frequency.

 

It really depends on what your goal is.

Hypertrophy:
If your priority is to build mass it is likely best to stick with 7..15 rep range. Strong research behind it etc. Main thing for adding mass is how many hard sets can you do per week (better to think in terms of month or cycle - longer than week). In high rep range you can do more sets before overtraining issues come up.
There is discussion in bodybuilding circles and research about 30 reps being equal to 15 for hypertrophy. This has to be taken with big grain of salt - it is in controlled environments. In real life, people without coaches and with distractions it is unlikely one would do 30 reps with the same quality as 15.
Hard set is anything up to 2..3 reps in reserve - maybe even 3..5 for low-bar squat and deadlift at advanced stages where the loads are going insane.
It also depends on absolute str levels - there is a massive difference between 120 kg dude squatting 250 kg for 5 reps and a 65 kg buddy doing 125kg for same 6 reps. For their body weight the effort is the same, however the big guy will be able to do much less of those sets a week - and might still grow muscle with more reps left in the tank. Recovery systems, organs (heart, lungs etc) do not scale linearly with size. Smaller people have relatively larger intestines.
For programming it makes sense to do longer sessions for hypertrophy - as the quality and 'freshness' is not the main thing here. Rest times can be whatever, up to about 5 min. Do not be fooled with the internet smarts that - 'for mass you need to keep rest times below 2 min' - or whatever nonsense like that. My advice is to rest until you can perform the next set with reasonable quality, even for mass training.

Ability (strength, power, speed, skill):
For ability you are better served in 2..7 rep range. Power, strength, speed etc are all built in lower reps. And it is not like 5 reps hard set won't build muscle, it still does.
On pure strength protocol you will not be able to do as many hard sets (per month or cycle) as in 12 reps range.
It makes sense to limit the workout sessions to no more than an hour of work.
Rest times should be long, no less than 3 min for heavy compound movements - can be less for skill work, plyometrics and movements that only use small muscle groups. I personally do about 5..7 min rest times between heavy str sets, and I only do supersets, which means between the same movement the muscles get at least 10 min rest. You want maximum recovery between sets - to ideally perform every set as well as the first or second.
Quality is common denominator for ability work.

At advanced levels nuance starts to matters. It is useful to mix the two modalities, eventually.
I dislike the high rep ranges personally, but the hypertrophy benefits are hard to argue - and in advanced levels of str some hypertrophy is required to level up. Still, my 'high rep' means no more than 10, usually. Rarely 12.
At advanced levels recovery is the Holy Grail - nobody gets to be elite without nailing recovery and managing overtraining. I have a lot to learn here, still.

Easy way to think about it is like this:

• For hypertrophy you need volume times intensity.
• For strength you need intensity squared times quality.

Some of the best resources:
For bodyweight and kettlebell training - Pavel Tsatsouline. His advice has served me the best.
He also has numerous books that I have not yet read, but intend to.

For strength and overall ability training - Andy Galpin has a podcast and has appeared on HubermanLab.

For hypertrophy - the longer interviews with Mike Israetel are worth listening.

# - edited for clarity and usefulness - #

 

For anything beyond beginner level going to full muscular failure is not good idea. Beginner will not be able to tell anyways unless someone is screaming to their face to induce fear of death.
(I have had that experience in a sports science lab).

It is completely fine to train every day. I think it does not even matter if you hold the weekly volume the same. The main thing is consistency and managing your time. It might be impractical to train every day.

I've done a year training every day and on other extreme doing super long sessions few times a week. Results are similar - I actually find the every day routine favourable, as I am fresh every time. Going ballztowall I am a wreck for several days.

Unless the technique is diabolically bad it is quite hard to injure oneself with bodyweight stuff.

The first year or so the main thing is to get maximum number of quality reps in.
The finer stuff matters later on.
Like in audio - why bother with expensive cables when your transducer is shet.

 

So true. The training practice has to be just as natural and automatic as eating dinner at the same time every day.
One needs to build it so that it is automatic and not even thinking about it. It will become reflexive at one point with consistent practice.
Same story with food interventions. There is no such thing as dieting for x amount of time - there is how you eat for the rest of your days, and that has serious outcomes, good or bad.

Children are awesome training buddies - they play and do not ''mentally sweat''.
To witness a 5 yo girl do 3 clean pullups is great sight on its own. Their strength ability for their body weight and lack of experience is surprising. But oh, they are so clumsy and can't coordinate at all, it is funny to observe.
Reminds me how apes are way stronger than human for same muscular cross section - but they are very clumsy, lacking fine motor control compared to us. Their motor neurons blast full on - full off, unlike grownup human.

 

My 0.02c: walk a lot.

I take as many chances to walk as I can, but because my brain is weird and always wanting novelty I can't just hop onto a treadmill and have youtube on, that ends up being a deeply banal (the English word, not the Filipino one) process that I end up hating.

One of the issues I've always had is that I've never had a consistent workout routine that lasts for more than half a year at a stretch, most often 3 months steady before I fall out of the routine and have to get back into it. What I've never had trouble with, however, was walking through nature or doing novel things like lifting heavish weight recurve bows or rock climbing or just going around taking photographs with friends.

Habit formation is one of the biggest hurdles to many folks and at least for some segments of the population it's well-nigh impossible (if anyone gainsays this then I'll tell you to take your ubermensch mindset and shove it up your nose-- mindfulness is a deeply important skill to develop but refusing to acknowledge that the paths that work for you won't always work for everyone else is a dangerous line of thinking that I see well evidenced in modern day societies). If you need to gamify something, go for it; find friends that make things fun. If you really can't stick with one routine indefinitely then try different things out that are within your means so that there's always that element of joy and novelty.

But really the important thing is to walk a lot and be in the moment when you're cleaning a shower wall with a brush, really tense and flex muscles in your motions when washing dishes or reaching up to change a light bulb. Check your posture when you sit in a chair. Stretch well when changing your curtains out. This won't work if what you want to develop are vanity muscles and all that jazz, but it's at the least a great stopgap from fully deteriorating.

The caloric deficit thing is true, but damn is it rough for folks who use food as a mood-regulation mechanism. Lots of folks grow up food-insecure and so develop unhealthy relationships with food, never mind that you're very often combating your lizard brain aspect of "ooh pleasurable substances" when encountering sugary stuff etc. That's the part those who have an unhealthy relationship with food consumption really ought be wary of, the overuse of it as a self-soothing thing.

 

Traps to avoid:

• With cali there is really no need to train core on it's own. It is fine to do it in the beginning to get something going. Later on it is waste of time. You get there by doing the main movements. Pullups (chinups especially) activate the crap out of your abs when done with clean form. Legs straight together, pelvis rotated front. When you now add some weight, it gets significantly more intense for abs as well. Anything you do on gymnastics rings is going to bulletproof core. Dips, levers, skin-the-cat, L-sit holds, muscleups etc. I've done no core specific training in 5 years and still can do all of the most difficult abs stunts there are (Dragonflag, front lever etc).
• There are hundreds of movements in cali. Pick 5. You will not progress by jumping to new and exiting new movement every week. If goal is overall str and mass - there are a few fundamental movements that need to be there - pullups, dips or pushups, some squat variation, some hip hinge. Upright pushing and some rows are recommended as well.
  
• Cali movements are generally skill intensive. Once a week for one movement is not enough. Get as many high quality reps in as you can. If goal is to perfect a single movement, practice every day. Even at advanced level 'grease-the-groove' is still useful.
• Stop theorizing and trying to find best instruction material or 'ze best paid plan'. It is 95% work and 5% instructions. A great coach or an experienced friend to learn from would be very helpful.
• Do not be afraid to record your movement in a video. It is not about vanity, it is about seeing with your own eyes what you do wrong. You will do plenty wrong for a long time. I had a karate-kickboxing coach who insisted to record our sparring for us to see how in specifics our stance, guard, ducking etc was off.
• Lack of consistency. This has been parroted everywhere and it is still worth repeating - especially with skill intensive stuff, like cali. Whatever makes you stick to it, do it! For me what helped was I installed 5 pullup bars around my house hold. I like building stuff, so I built parallets, gymn rings etc. A few years in I started taking notes - it refined to a level that now I have detailed record of every workout I do. This is keeping me accountable, gives insight into progress (or lack of progress) and helps planning the next stage of my training.
• Take your individual constraints seriously. Internet advice and 'science' is all generalized, averaged. You are not general human being. In about a year you'd start discovering about your limitations and strengths. Can you do deep dips? Is low rep high load more suited to you, or rather higher rep lower load? How you recover from various loading schemes? Mike Mentzer style suits to some and not at all to other. Some do well with high rep, short rest times. Goals, individual differences and practical constraints all matter to this end.
• Stretching is pathologically misunderstood concept. You do not stretch before heavy str exercise! You can do it after. Static stretching helps, but does not grant mobility. The main tool for better mobility is working on your range of motion under load and with proper form.
• Injury is another misunderstood thing. The norm is to either ignore it and pile on, or completely refrain from the movement that caused it. Both can be equally dangerous choices. The right thing to do is to attempt that movement with reduced load and/or reduced ROM below the threshold of pain. If the thing persists for more than a month, or if it is severe, of course the first thing to do would be to see doctor or physio.

 

My biggest tip for calisthenics is wear sunscreen when your outside. Having nice skin is good. And also skin cancer from the sun is preventable.

 

Equipment that I use and like.

Must haves:

• Pullup bar. Straight, no nonsense, no 'horns'. I've sampled them all, straight it is.
  (This one was installed in a workplace I used to work).

• Paralletes. These are staple in all sorts of pushing and push type holds. The grip and range of motion these allow is up to no debate. Forget wrist pain and limited ROM movements. When picking a version, get a set that allows at least full depth push ups - but not the biggest ones. First they take up some space, second you'd want to set them close together for diamond push ups etc (random Google photo)

• Gymnastic rings. These allow to do almost every cali or gymnastic movement there is with nearly no constraints to freedom of movement. The added difficulty of instability, especially in pushing movements encourages great potential for growth. I use them mainly for dips, rows and push ups. The bang-for-buck ratio here is insane. (random Goodle photo)
• 

Nice to haves:

• Long climbing rope - it is fun to climb and it will help with so many modalities. The main one is grip strength. Obviously it taxes core a lot.
• Weight vest. Once you progress in strength, and you will with consistent work put in, the simplest way to increase intensity is to add weight. Unfortunately most vests only add some 10 kg. Some go as far as 20 kg. I got the Kensui vest - it takes olympic weight plates up to ridiculous total weight. In practice I have found that 50 kg on a vest is the upper limit for usability - the shoulder straps get rather inconvenient past that and the center of mass goes out of whack. I add the rest on the belt.
• Belt for hanging weight below your ballz. You can hang any heavy junk you find in houshold. Old electric motor, junk metal, whatever. I used a rusty truck rim for 5 years before getting olympic plates. This is cheap and convenient way to add weight to some of the staple movements. It works well for pullups and dips. Not so well for rows or pushups. Gives unique center of mass - moves it lower. So you swing like a stable (mathematical) pendulum - much easier to control and stabilize the movement.

Except for the weight vest, everything in this list is cheap stuff.
For 200 $ you can get everything essential. Compare that to just a cheap Olympic barbell, a bench and some weight plates (many times more).

 

Pictures or it did not happen.
If anyone could be inspired and not put off by my ghetto training I share my channel in YT

 

Pullups are a natural movement for humanoid, you know hanging and climbing is what was required of our ancestors to survive - I think pullups can be done all the time, multiple times a day even.
Modern people will not hang or climb much at all - I believe this to be a mistake.
As with everything, when starting from zero it needs to be built up in increments.

 

We should fold this into the main fitness/workout thread.

 

Also, thirst can often mask itself as hunger, so drink more water!

 

No. This is good thread. Keep good thread separate. Do not bury.