Calisthenics Is A Great Exercise – Try It Yourself
Think of an exercise where you do various bend, pull, push, swing, and jump for building aesthetic and functional muscles. Most importantly, you will feel and look better & lean. The easiest way to get disheartened is blindly following the exercising regimes of the blokes or the so-called health experts on Instagram.
Of course, the exercising regime instructed by them works great, but only if you have been doing workouts for years. It is challenging to know the basic difference among the pull-ups and chin-ups and doing five sets out of the ten is tough, especially for beginners. Ultimately, it would be a lost battle as you lose motivation rapidly.
The major aspect of the calisthenics exercise involves working at the base level of strength and losing a good amount of weight. In this article, you will come across various calisthenics exercises you can do at your home without using any equipment. The best part is that you would be able to do it within the confirmed spaces like your living room. Immediately after mastering these small calisthenics exercises, you can try the hardest one.
Definition of Calisthenics
Calisthenics is an exercising regime where you will not have to depend on anything, just on your body weight. Calisthenics exercises are often performed (rarely) using certain tools like wands and rings. By doing these exercises, you can gain and develop your endurance, strength, coordination, and flexibility.
Advantages of Doing Calisthenics Exercises to Your Body and Mind
Some of the major advantages of doing calisthenics exercise are the following –
Increased Tone and Muscles
Unlike other exercises, calisthenics is one of the best methods to build muscle strength and mass, and that too without using any weights. However, this exercise is not the best choice for people who are hardcore bodybuilders. As we all know, muscles are developed based on the principles of progressive resistance.
Here you can progress the resistance only if the weight is your own body. Calisthenics exercise will assist in creating a good amount of muscle mass and even help in maintaining it. This would be great for beginners that are on the lookout of moderate muscle growth. The best part of calisthenics exercise is that it leads to muscle growth without doing any trauma and tear that is common among weight training.
Good Flexibility
As you get stronger, you gain more flexibility. Frankly, without building any kind of muscle strength, you cannot be flexible. A strong muscle will not lead to straining and contracting compared to a weak one. This allows the muscle to flex and extend easily. No doubt, calisthenics is the perfect way for increasing flexibility of your muscles.
Best for Weight Loss
Unlike other exercising regimes, calisthenics easily takes care of burning the excess amount of fat and that too in two directions. Firstly, strength training exercises create muscle mass and tone all over the human body. Of course, increased muscle mass will improve and increase your metabolic rate. This will allow you to burn a good amount of calories every day. Another advantage of calisthenics is that it helps to improve your heart rate and its rise. This is done through aerobic exercises that are one of the best ways to burn off the excess fat.
Endurance
The major benefit of doing calisthenics exercise is to increase your body’s endurance. In the circuit training calisthenics, one must do various repetitions of the exercise and as much possible to gain the required results. This is by training nonstop without a rest and until one is tired.
Each day that you are doing this exercise, will allow your muscles to heal at night. Then your endurance improves and increases. The best part is that you would be able to do more repetitions just before you reach the fatigue level.
Now when you do the calisthenics exercise along with all the muscle groups, the result will lead to increasing the endurance of all the body parts. This even includes the cardiovascular systems. No doubt, calisthenics can easily improve the various aspects of your physicality. It is one of the best exercises you can do for improving your health and overall fitness. Irrespective of what your physical goals are, the calisthenics exercise is something that you can follow.
Best Calisthenics Workouts at Home For Beginners
Keep in mind that before doing any kind of exercise, you should first warm-up. Try to do some six to ten minutes of cardio and this can be anything from a light jog to stationary run just around your block. All you must do is get your heart rate a bit up.
At times, listening to some music can help you to get motivated during your workouts. Getting pumped up and doing your workout is great as it will make you more interested in doing extra exercises. That is why various people listen to music while doing various resistance and cardio exercises. Music is a great way for getting into your zone and it helps in removing unwanted distractions.
You can take the assistance of heart rate monitor or running watches. Such devices will help in keeping track of your calories that are burned and will help in knowing how hard your heart is beating effectively. You should avoid opting for cheap fitness trackers as they might not display the required results.
Some of the major calisthenics exercises you can do at home are –
1) Walkout Push Up
This exercise helps with working your chest, hamstring, and triceps. You can do three sets of this exercise along with ten reps. For doing this exercise, first, you must stand up and place your legs a little bit less from the shoulder width. Then you must bend over and try to touch your toes but rather than that, just place your palms on the floor. Try to walk forward using your arms until you reach to the standard push up position.
Now do a push up and after that walk back using your arms and straighten the backup. This can be considered as one rep. Here the walkout pushes up will work on both of your chest muscles and even the shoulders too. Another major benefit of this exercise is the added hamstring stretch you get right at the starting of the movement.
2) Mountain Climbers
This exercise will help you to concentrate on your muscles present in the quads, abs, hamstrings, obliques, biceps, deltoids, triceps, and even the chest. Do this exercise for twenty seconds three times a day.
If you are planning on doing a single exercise a day, then go for the mountain climbers. The best part of doing this exercise is that it works on all the major parts of your body, even including the obliques and abs, quads, hamstrings.
First, to do this exercise, you must be in the standard push up position. For doing the mountain climbers, just pull your knees to the chest at one at a time and that too in quick succession. The major aspect is that you need to ensure that your body is in the push up position all the way throughout the exercise. Make sure you do not bob your hips down and up as you are trying to tuck your legs. Always make sure that you are doing mountain climbers exercise as fast as you can without making any compromise on the technique. After all, this is a high-intensity exercise, and doing twenty-second of mountain climbers can be a bit tiring.
3) Triceps Box Dip
The triceps box dip exercise is a great one for activating the deltoids, triceps, upper back, and pecs muscles. You must continue doing three sets of eight reps of this exercise.
The dips exercise is a great one that works on your triceps. If you are planning on having a bigger arm, then you must concentrate on exercises that are related to your triceps rather than the biceps. Frankly, dips, especially the box dips can be done at any place, even ones where there is an elevated surface, like a sofa, chair, a low wall, etc.
One thing you might be surprised to know is that box dips are dead-simple exercise and each person knows how to do them. For doing it you need to first rest your legs in front of you just like you are doing dips and try to concentrate on the slow negative movements as you do down and the hard explosive upward motion.
Also, bodyweight dips are one of the major moves involved in calisthenics. They can work on your arms which other exercises cannot do. However, while doing this exercise, you must lean forward a bit in this way; it will work on your pecs too.
4) Stationary Lunges
Here the muscles worked in this exercise are calves, glutes, quads, core, hamstring, inner thighs, etc. You must do four sets of twelve reps. Most importantly, here this lunges exercise will work on your legs the most. This is the best exercise for your glutes and quads and there are certain variations you can do, to make sure that exercise session is fresh. As soon as you are familiarized with the exercise that involves the forward lunges, you can easily reverse the lunges or even the side lunges.
Here the actual exercise is easy to do. Just stand straight, take a huge step front, and then bend your knees to make sure that your rear knee is touching the floor. After that try to kick yourself back up using your front leg and try to regain back to your original position. Continue to do the same using your other leg. After you have completed doing with both the legs, it becomes one rep.
5) Inverted Rows
Doing the inverted rows exercise will help in activating your muscles present in your biceps, back, forearms, core, etc. This exercise can be done for three sets of eight reps. The best part of doing this exercise is that you will not need to use the dumbbells for working on your biceps.
The only thing you would need is a surface from where you can hang from using your legs extended in the front. Here you can use a bar of some sort however, as stated clearly, any kind of surface from where you can hang to would be great.
Here the beginning position would be you to hang on the bar, heels to the floor and your legs and back being straight, core engaged, and keeping your arms a bit further from the shoulder. Somewhat you can say it might be at a width apart around the 90-degree angle of your body. You can try the underhand grip for gaining maximum biceps activation.
For doing an inverted row, just get your body to move closer to the bar and then try to straighten your arm.
6) Walking Lunge
In this exercise, you must keep your knees right off the ground. Here it would be better if you do a set of three rounds, followed by reps of twenty minutes.
To do this exercise, you must lunge forward as much far as you can, using your right leg. After that you must bend your trailing knee, to make sure that it brushes to the floor. Take the heel of your right foot for pushing yourself to the next lunge and this time using your left leg.
Doing Calisthenics Exercise During COVID-19 Pandemic
There is no harm in doing your calisthenics exercises at home in this pandemic situation. Doing exercise even at a slow pace is not a bad thing at all. You do not need to panic even though you stop doing the calisthenics exercise at home due to injury or any other reasons.
The best part of doing this exercise is that you will not lose any muscles; rather it would be a great way to rest your body and the strong muscles. Well, that is the advantage of doing calisthenics exercising at home.
