Face Level Fitness Training w/ Kevin: Calisthenics 101

What are calisthenics? They are exercises that use your own body weight as resistance. Calisthenics are a great tool for building strength, flexibility, balance, conditioning, and guarding against injury by strengthening stabilizer muscles that support your joints and other muscles. While I have added in working with resistance bands and kettle bands occasionally, calisthenics are one of the biggest parts of my physical training . I even recommend that those who enjoy training with weights incorporate a few calisthenic exercises into their routine to exercise many of the stabilizer muscles that get neglected if one only trains with weights exclusively. You'd be surprised at how many people who can lift hundreds of pounds are amazed at how a set of 30 or 40 push ups with their own weight works them hard. I practiced weight training for a lot of years, but switching to calisthenics has worked wonders for me. I don't knock weight training especially if someone does a few calisthenics with it, but calisthenic training has helped me to develop a more functional overall strength (as opposed to simply being strong at certain gym exercises), made me faster and more explosive, and taken my conditioning to a whole new level. Whether you do calisthenics or work out with whatever, it needs to be functional to benefit you in sports and activities, though I think that calisthenics can go a long way to helping someone transfer their hard work in the gym to the field or river.
Here are a few basic exercises to get you started. As you get a feel for the movements you can progress to more advanced forms of the basics or research other exercises.

Squats. Basically a deep knee bend. You can do them flat footed or Hindi/Turkish style where you raise up on your toes as you squat down. I personally do both styles to vary the parts of the muscle I'm working and fatiguing, switching back and forth every so many reps. These are great for you legs, back, and cardiovascular fitness.

Push-ups. I recommend switching it up each workout between a few different types of push ups. You can do regular push ups on the ground or with your feet elevated to give your upper chest more emphasis. You can also do Hindu / Turkish style push ups. These are also known as Navy Seal push ups (except the Seals actually do the reverse movement each rep that I don't recommend) and Dive Bombers (and another name that they were called in football practice that I don't like to repeat in mixed company). Basically start on your hands and toes with your butt up in the air, looking back towards your shins. Start by moving your head along the ground in a snake-like motion, and let your body follow. You finish with your back arched, head and torso up and pointing straight ahead, and your hips down just barely off the ground. Now, straighten back up to return to the start of the movement and repeat. (If you want to try to do the reverse of the motion a few times, knock yourself out, though I'm sure you'll agree, it's a very unnatural movement). If these are tough at first, begin by simply holding the top and bottom positions for a few seconds, pushing hard against the ground with your hands, and tensing your muscles. Increase the duration of the hold until you are strong enough to do a few reps. Push ups are great for your chest, shoulders, and triceps, and the Hindu push ups will also work your lats a little.

Starting position of Hindu push ups

Finish position of Hindu push ups

Pull Ups (under hand grip) and Chin Ups (over hand grip). Both are great for all of the muscles of your back and also uses your arms. The under hand grip puts a little more emphasis on your biceps. I like to do chin ups looking straight up with my chin in the sky, so that I can go straight up and down instead of swaying out and back as I come up. Swaying backwards too much puts your arms forward and causes them to do more of the work instead of letting the large muscles of your back take some of the load. If pull ups are too hard, start out doing as many as you can (or pulling up partially as far as you can), then swing your legs to get some momentum to assist you with a few more reps. You can also have a partner pull up on your shins by bending your legs backward (which is also good to help keep you in a good chin up position) or use a chin up assist machine at a gym which allows you to set the weight to correspond with how many pounds of assistance you would like. However, I am not a fan of lat pulldown machines other than knocking out some light sets as a warm up when you are first starting to do chin ups.

Handstand Push Ups. These work the shoulders and are very intense because a large percentage of your body weight is placed on your muscles since all of your weight is directly above you (as opposed to push ups where your feet support some of your weight). Basically, put your hands on the ground and kick into a handstand against a wall, then lower and raise back up to the top. While you are building your strength to be able to do this, you can also simply kick into the top handstand position and hold as long as you can. This is the one exercise that in the beginning I recommend having a partner to help steady you as you get into a handstand. You'll develop the strength and balance to kick right into it as you keep practicing. At the beginning, start with your hands back from the wall as this will let some of your weight rest on the wall so you don't have to lift your entire body weight. As you gain strength you can put your hands closer to the wall and workout with more of your body weight. At the beginning, you can also get further away from the wall and bend your legs so that your feet rest flat against the wall, though getting into a handstand from this far back always felt a little awkward. I like to do a set of as many reps as I can do, then rest and hold a handstand at the top for as long as I can. I'm still trying to get strong enough to do a one arm handstand.

hand stands

I'll close by thanking Matt Furey for his book, Combat Conditioning that has taught me scores about calisthenics and conditioning.

Time for me to sign off so I can do some calisthenics this evening. Hope you're encouraged to do the same.

Kevin,

Kevin is a FLI C.O.R.E. team rider and is also sponsored by Faveur clothing, Tooks hats, Globe shoes, Six Six One protection, Freestyle watches, and Mean Monkey hydrospeeds.