Start Today With These Simple Exercises You Can Do At Home Or In The Gym
So you want to start calisthenics training, but you just don’t know where to begin? Maybe you haven’t done any training in a while and want to get back into shape without the gym? It can be kind of overwhelming to look at people doing advanced exercises when you can barely do a pull up.
Let’s face it, you just don’t know how to get going right?
Calisthenics is similar to weight training, but there are a few small differences. You need to think about training your whole body, t get everything to work together.
On this page you will find some simple exercises that will get you up to scratch and on your way to building serious superhuman strength.
There are 2 big workouts for you to try out depending on what level you are at!
A Simple Starting Point
If you want to get into calisthenics, you can easily get going with some press ups and some planking at home. You can build up to do crow stands and l-sits over a few weeks, and you can start doing some wall walks too.
Squatting and bridge progressions should be high on the agenda to get your legs and back working. The mistake a lot of new gym goers make is not working their back and legs properly. This could put you at risk of injury further down the line, and you will struggle to get very far at all.
People have pretty poor posture these days. I do, you probably do, we all do. It is something we should all work on but we don’t tend to think about it too much. I certainly have bad posture and now I do a lot of bridging and other back exercises to correct that.
When you start calisthenics training, make sure you are working your whole body and not leaving any parts out. You will get much better and faster results this way.
The way to do this is by working all of the basic movements, Push, Pull & Hold, which you can find out about here.
The Complete Beginner’s Workout
Here Are 5 Exercises To Do If You Are Completely New To Training
Squats
Like I said, you gotta train your legs. Get those squats on, do them around the house while you are cooking or doing the ironing, be careful around hot, sharp or otherwise hazardous materials though.
Press Ups
Press ups are great. There are so many different variations you can do you will never run out of ways to make them harder. Start doing them, keep doing them.
Make sure you keep your body straight, and as you get better move on to progressively harder variations. Like squats, you can do push ups anywhere so make a habit of doing them.
Planks
Planking is an easy starting point for core work, but once you can plank you can plank. You will want to move onto more advanced core exercises pretty quickly because pretending to lie on the floor for a minute is extremely boring. Having said that, it is a great starting point that doesn’t exactly require a lot of instruction.
Bridges
Bridging will fix your back up quick sharp and they are surprisingly knackering! If you can’t do a full bridge do half bridges or shoulder bridges. But start doing them because no doubt your back is all over the place, like mine was.
Bridging will also bring massive benefits and doing them properly can set the foundation for lever exercises further down the line.
Inverted Rows
The thing about inverted rows is that it may be difficult to find somewhere to do them, and pull ups might be too hard. You can usually find somewhere to do them, down the park or using a rack at the gym, but it is important that you improvise if you have to and start doing some pulls as soon as possible.
Everyone I know has struggled with pull ups, but they are one of the fundamental movements you need to be making part of your training. If you don’t you will be all push and no pull. You can still get good at isometrics, but that leaves a third of your training out!
You should either find somewhere to practice them, or get a pull up bar for your home.
Doing Pull Ups At Home
If you are going to buy a pull up bar, I would recommend the hanging door frame types, not the bolt on at the side ones. You get more grip variations from the frame ones, and from what I have found they just tend to work better.
Did I mention they double up as push up grips? Perfect for practising parallette type work as you develop.
This is the best starting point for your training, in my opinion. These exercises combined work your whole body right from the start and you will be well on your way to learning some new tricks!
Moving On To More Advanced Exercises
As you start to develop, you will start getting on the pull ups more and leg raises too. This means you want to find yourself a good pull up bar, or a good improvised one…
The bad news is a door frame pull up bar will leave you limited with the leg motion for full raises, but if you can use the frame at the gym, or a goal post down the park to at least get one good session in every week. But you can still get your l-sits and tuck planches on the go for extra core work on other training days.
So ideally you will have access to a pull up bar, in which case you can get started with the Foundation Workout.
The Calisthenics Foundation Workout
A Total Body Workout That Forms The Benchmark For Advanced Calisthenics Progressions
Pistol Squats
Dammit you still gotta do those squats mate, but hopefully you will be moving on to pistols now which look awesome! Pistol squats are 1 legged squats FYI.
When you are ready for them try using a chair or stool for support with one arm. As you get stronger you will be able to use your arm support less and less until you can do them free standing.
Pull Ups
Getting on to pull ups is rewarding, and just like push ups, there are a whole load of variations you can do to keep progressing. Get them down and keep pushing yourself to get better at them.
But pull ups are hard work when you first start out so make sure to get your inverted rows – ^ Above ^ – to build up the strength to take them on.
Dips
Keep progressing with your push ups all the time. I will often do 100 reps in sets of 20, leaving a minute or so between sets and making each one a different variation.
As you progress you will be able to smash this out in 10 minutes no problem. But if you want to step it up a notch, get on some bars and do some bodyweight dips.
Single bar or parallel dips are great. They will become the staple push exercise for your strength training, and you can do variations to specifically work your triceps or chest more than the other.
Ideally you want to get on the single bar as soon as possible because it requires better balance and stability, especially in your wrists, getting you well on the way to mastering those muscle ups.
Hanging Leg Raises
Hanging Leg Raises will build up your core quickly. But they will also build shoulder stability and get you ready to start lever progressions, so they are a necessity!
These are a killer but you will get great benefits from doing them. Try and keep your legs straight and your upper body as still as possible.
You will find that you inevitably swing so don’t worry too much about it but still try and focus on the most minimal movement possible to avoid bad form.
Those 4 exercises make a great workout by themselves, but don’t forget to do some bridging, and learn to do some floor isometric exercises to to keep progressing and you will never get bored of doing the same old workouts again.
Isometrics
We have covered the basic training exercises to build your strength, but there are other exercises you can try out.
Isometric (Hold) Exercises are great additions to your training. The power moves like the Planche and Levers are good examples of isometric exercises, but they are way ahead of you right now.
There are a few you can try today like the L-Sit and Crow Stand, you can check out the page on beginners isometrics exercises here.
Progressions And Lever Development
The more you focus on variations of the exercises the better you will develop. Racing through all the progressions to get to the top will not do you any favours.
Take the time to master each of these basic exercises and you will lay a solid foundation to build from as you get stronger