Calisthenics or callisthenics refers to strength training that includes a variety of movements that target large muscle groups, such as grasping, pushing, and standing. These workouts are often performed in a sequence using bodyweight or with minimal equipment.

Simply put, calisthenics is a bodyweight exercise consisting of a variety of body movements.

Originated in Ancient Greece, calisthenics has become popular owing to the benefits it ensures. Anyone can perform these workouts, irrespective of your age, gender, and athletic ability. The beauty of calisthenics is that you don’t need any equipment. It can be done anywhere.

Some of the common calisthenics workouts are push-ups, squats, crunches, plank, lunges, pull-ups, chin-ups, and jump rope.

Here we will walk through the key benefits of doing calisthenics regularly.

Burning a Lot of Calories:

Many calisthenics movements involve cardiovascular training and resistance training. This lets you combine your aerobic (with air) system and your anaerobic (without air) system.

The combination of these two systems lets you burn fat while building muscles.

For example power jumps, burpees, cardio training, and bear-crawls combine these two systems.

Calisthenics involves a constant change in body position, keeping your heart rate high while strengthening your muscles

Improving Coordination and Functionality:

The human body was not meant to work in isolation.

Yet, this is what most gym machines are designed to do. As a result, you might lack flexibility and have no coordination between the muscles despite gaining larger muscles.

Calisthenics trains the muscles together. When you perform a push-up, for instance, you have your deltoids, abdominals, triceps, thighs, hamstring, glutes, calf muscles, and pectorals involved. These all muscles groups work in sync, improving coordination and flexibility.

Improving Your Sports Performance:

There is a type of calisthenics which is known as plyometrics. Plyometrics involves vertical and horizontal jumping.

It not only burns your fat but also improves the actions required for many sports. The quick lateral sprint changes needed for football, basketball, and hockey can be improved using plyometrics.

Many sports require intense moves, where you use the body’s stretch-reducing cycle to improve resistance and muscle power, which are ideal for this calisthenics type.

Minimizing Your Downtime:

How much time does your regular workout routine take?

If you think that it might be around 1 hour, you might have skipped on the time you spend driving to a gym, finding a parking space, and waiting for exercise equipment. It means that you go through a timely process before even touching those dumbbells to get started.

But this is not the case with calisthenics. You can do it anywhere, anytime. Since these exercises are performed with your body weight, it is safe to say that you have your gym with you.

Being Safer for the Joints:

One of the most common issues among weight trainers is joint pain. From hip ache, shoulder pain to wrist problems, joint troubles seem to be part of weight training.

After all, lifting heavy pounds every day impact the body. This negative joint impact gets worse with the lack of warm-up and chronic overtraining.

Instead, you can switch to calisthenics.

This is because bodyweight workouts are easier on your joints.

Because the degree of resistance is not more than your body weight, your joints, particularly the shoulders and the wrists, will experience less press. That will make you far less vulnerable to injury, letting you enjoy your newly discovered muscularity and strength.

Allowing You to Do More Workouts a Day:

Calisthenics lets you do multiple workouts a day compared to weight training where each day is scheduled for a particular body workout.

It is based on circuit training in which you do one set of each exercise in the routine.

This way, you move quickly from one exercise to another one to get more work done.

Doing workouts this way can burn your calories fast as well as boost your metabolism.

Being Free of the Cost:

When you are into a calisthenics regimen, there is no need to pay out for gym membership or spending money on a home gym.

If you still want to bring in those pull-up bars and dip bars, it won’t hurt your budget.

Therefore, no equipment costs, no gym fees. It is all about your body weight.

Calisthenics Routine for Beginners

  • 5 TO 20 REPS OF PUSHUPS
  • REST 30 SECONDS
  • 5 TO 20 REPS OF SQUATS
  • REST 30 SECONDS
  • PLANK, HOLD FOR 30 TO 45 SECONDS
  • REST 30 SECONDS
  • 10 TO 15 ON EACH LEG REPS OF SQUATS FOR EACH LEG
  • REST 30 SECONDS
  • JUMP ROPE FOR 30 SECONDS

It is better if you start with a lower number of reps and slowly increase with practice.

The Bottom Line:

Calisthenics will let you make the most of your workouts, thereby helping you achieve your fitness goals.

With calisthenics, you don’t need to drive to the gym anymore, hand over your cash, and train in a room full of stinky, sweaty guys around you.

Instead, you will have the freedom to perform your workouts anytime, anywhere.