Body weight exercises, or Calisthenics if you’re feeling fancy, are an essential part of our training toolbox. They are effective, can be scaled easily to your level, and in most cases require no equipment, which is great if you’re just starting out or are travelling.
Although calisthenics are often presented as fast exercises for cardio routines, they are perfect strength building exercises if they are done slowly. While they are excellent for cardio work, it is better to save that for when you have become very familiar with them; that way, you can be sure that you’re still doing them properly even at speed!
To begin with, try to get used to a few basics. We recommend the basic push up and the squat. Both affect multiple muscle groups, and can be learnt fairly easily. In the videos below, Al Kavadlo demonstrates some variations of each exercise.
Keep in mind that these videos are a demonstration, not a workout, so you would not normally do these exercises in a sequence in the same session.
Since you cannot quickly alter your body weight up and down, calisthenics use leverage and body positioning to scale up and down. This allows you to train using more effort without adding extra weights, or reduce the effort to practice a movement. Same goes for squats:
The ultimate benefit of calisthenics is that they allow you to explore the natural movement of your body, so don’t be afraid to mix it up. While routines and fixed exercises are important strength builders, learning what your body is capable of is a great experience. In our case we found it to be a great motivator – if it can do this, what else can we do from here?
Some notes of caution on doing body weight exercises in general. First: remember to breathe properly. Don’t hold your breath when exercising; it does not do you any good unless you really want to get a hernia. How you should breathe varies from exercise to exercise, but in general, you want to exhale as you make effort (for example, when you are pushing yourself up in a push up) and inhale as you return (for example, as you are lowering yourself).
Go for long, deep breaths – shallow breathing won’t give you enough air and triggers a bunch of responses in the body and mind which you don’t really need to deal with.
Next: don’t bounce. This can happen a lot, especially if you’re trying to go fast, but what you want to do is to keep your movements under your own power at all times. When you’re doing push ups, you might be focusing on pushing up (it’s in the name, after all), and allowing gravity to pull you back down. That way you’re only doing part of the exercise. Push up, and then lower yourself down. Same with squats.
If you are trying to build strength, work slowly; this takes the momentum out of the exercise, so you have to work harder. You’re exercising yourself, not the laws of physics. Your joints will be happier too. You can develop power by working explosively, but that is a discussion for another day – preferably after you’ve already developed your strength and technique a bit.
Finally, focus on form, not volume. A lot of effort in the wrong direction will not get you anywhere good. If you need to scale down to keep good form, do that.
Some people think that it’s embarrassing to do push ups on their knees until they build up enough strength to do regular push ups, but when you’re working on improving yourself you need to focus on what will make you improve. There is nothing demeaning about working sensibly to improve yourself.
The following is a good example of a routine for a beginner:
If you need more advice about progressions in body weight training (both easier and harder), both Pushing the limits and Convict Conditioning are excellent resources, and include excellent information on how to frame your training to boot.
There are countless varieties of body weight exercises and variations of each. Once they start getting easy, you can usually level it up by trying a more difficult version. Picking up a few of these exercises is a great investment for your training. Have fun!
Header image: Marine recruits attempting push-ups. PhotoID: 20056611320 Submitted by: MCRD San Diego Operation/Exercise/Event: Hotel Company. Photo by: PFC Charlie Chavez (Public domain)Other images and videos courtesy of Al Kavadlo, used with permission. Thanks Al!