Calisthenics for Complete Beginners (Tips, Exercise Form, Programming)

so this video is going to be for those of you who want to get into body weight training but you might not know where to start so there are a lot of categories of body weight training that you can go into such as Statics Dynamics hand balancing sets and Reps and weighted calisthenics but before going into any of those you're going to have to really Master the foundations and that's what this video is going to be about this is just to make sure that your progress in these categories if you choose to go into them

are consistent and injury free now I'm going to split this video into three sections you're going to have to warm up which you should never skip uh I'm going to list out Push Pull core and legs exercises that you can start out with and then I'm going to give you some advice and tips on how to program and structure your own training now this video might be a little information heavy but these are all things that I would say to my younger self who is just starting out with the sport and everything I say in

this video are things I learned from trial and error throughout the last four or five years and could be useful to you when you're starting out if you want to make the most out of your training sessions then don't skip your warm-up a lot of these moves are compound exercises that are pretty stressful on your shoulders elbows and wrists as well as your hips and knees if you're draining legs if you're just starting out at least 10 to 15 minutes should be set aside before your working sets to warm up your body and prepare it

for whatever it's going to be doing that day as it could warm-up decreases your risk of injury and allows you to train for a longer period of time before reaching fatigue if you don't already have a set of resistance bands I highly recommend investing in some as they can be used to isolate condition and work out your smaller muscles that you can't really do with your body weight alone as a lot of these body weight exercises are compound movements that involve several different moving Parts at the same time now the most important joints to warm

up and condition properly are your wrists and I usually throw these in at the end of my warm-up before I go into my working sets as our wrists were not really built to manage heavy amounts of stress at disadvantaged Angles so it's important to keep them conditioned and strengthen them over time to be able to handle exercises such as push-ups or handstands on the floor now you might find it boring or you might find it goofy when you're doing arm circles before every workout but just like any other sport you're going to have to eventually

create a warm-up routine if you want to go for any sort of progress [Music] the most foundational pushing exercise in calisthenics is of course the push-up where you will be pushing around 60 to 70 percent of your body weight using your chest shoulders and triceps if you can't do push-ups yet then find an elevated surface such as a couch or even a wall so you can decrease the amount of load that you feel the more traditional push-up involves your shoulder blades being retracted or pulled back during the whole movement but I would recommend that you

try to push your shoulders forward as you go up and retract them as you go down to train the small muscle located on your side between your lats and your abs known as the serratus anterior you can also Target your Cerritos more by doing scapular push-ups in a regular push-up position or even a plank as this movement of pushing your shoulders forward is incredibly useful down the line if you're looking to progress my biggest tip for this stage is to film yourself from all different angles to make sure that your form is either correct or

at least improving over time you're going to want to make sure your butt is down and your ankle to shoulder line is straight during the push-up and your elbows don't want to be flared to think about rotating your elbow pits forward as you do doing them to ensure a healthier shoulder position [Music] once regular push-ups are too easy for you you can always make them harder try out some different surfaces hand positions and widths if you go wider you'll get more of a stretch in your chest and you can utilize some unilateral work to put

more emphasis on one side at a time and on the other hand you can also go narrower with diamond push-ups to put more stress on your triceps and you can make everything more difficult by elevating your feet another way to make things more difficult is to start trying out explosive reps or you can do the opposite by performing pause reps where you stop and hold a position that you might be particularly weak in once you're comfortable with push-ups it's time to start training for the dip first you want to get comfortable supporting your entire body

weight up just by your locked arms time you're going to want to start lowering yourself down into the bottom of a dip position catching yourself and then doing that for reps over time again you will be able to push yourself back up and perform a full body weight dip similar to push-ups you don't want to Sag your shoulders or let your shoulders go up to your wrists you always want to pull them down the best you can with your lats to ensure good form and less risk of injury now that we've covered the basic horizontal

and downward pushing movements we need something to train our overhead pressing strength and for this the best exercise is the pike push-up which is actually used to simulate handstand push-ups with feet support you want to move your feet as close as you can to your wrists while keeping your legs straight and keep in mind you want to keep your elbows tucked and your elbows Frozen in space throughout the rep not going too far forward or too far back if you're having trouble with this move you can start in a regular push-up position and then slowly

move your feet closer with each rep and find that you will push more vertically each time next you're going to want to balance your pushing strength with your pulling strength primarily your back biceps and rear delts these rows can be done on a low bar or a sturdy table and are opposite in mechanics to a push-up where the same rules apply you start with your feet close move them far and eventually Elevate them to increase your difficulty and prepare you for Pull-Ups while doing any pulling exercise you're going to want to retract your scapula or

pull your shoulders as far back as you can to get the most back activation puff out your chest and think about squeezing your shoulder blades together behind you next you're going to want to find a pull-up bar and just simply hang from it if you can do this then you are ready and prepared to try your first pull-ups because you have to first get comfortable holding your body up and also being able to move your lats from a dead hang position so you can fully go from a dead hang to an active hang now the

form for pull-ups are similar to what I mentioned for rows you want to keep your shoulders down and back as you're doing them and squeeze your lats behind you as you pull if you have more of this rounded back position with your shoulders in front of you you won't be targeting your back to its full potential now if you've never done pull-ups before you can ramp up to it by using resistance band and slowly using a weaker bed over time to help you strengthen the ranges of motion you can also try jumping and holding for

as long as possible arrange in the pull-ups and descending slowly you can also if you find that you are struggling with a particular range isometric holds are incredibly useful now pull-ups take a really long time to master and I might do a separate video about how that can be achieved but in the end aim to be able to get your chin fully above the bar with your arms locked at the bottom play around with different grips as you progress and try to minimize the swing that a lot of people have when they first start doing

pull-ups in my opinion there isn't much better than just pull up and row variations to build a solid back foundation and strength for when you move on to harder skills in the future since there are generally less foundational pulling exercises than there are pushing exercises I recommend using this time and freedom in your programming to really focus on locking in perfect form and control in your pull-ups as it'll go a long way before you try any harder skills or variations now if you don't have any pull-up bars or anything that I do pull-ups from there

is an exercise that I would recommend that you can do on the floor which is the reverse elbow plank however this is an extremely intense exercise and I recommend you proceed with caution before attempting it next is how you can train and condition your core using only body weight exercises now I don't recommend going too overboard with your ab training as your abs are actually being heavily used during other exercises such as push-ups and pull-ups I recommend throwing these at the end of your workout after you're done with your other exercises as to not fatigue

your abs prior to doing them now to ensure that your apps are actually strong enough to continue in this mode of training I do recommend training for the skill known as the l-sit the progressions for which I am showing on screen right now you're going to want to start with some knee raises and then over time extend the lever by either using a one leg in one leg out and doing this for reps at first which is slightly easier than at the end goal which is going to be a isometric hold now this can be

done from a pull-up bar or a dip bar which is slightly more difficult uh the same process goes for each you want to extend the lever over time and slowly move from Dynamics to isometrics now to actually train this mechanism known as AB compression where you use just your abs to bring your legs up to your chest you're going to want to slightly lean forward and bring your legs up to your chest for reps or isometric holds the farther back your fingers are the easier the exercise will be so find your starting point and then

slowly Lean Forward over time to increase difficulty you know what else and lastly we have legs now if you do a lot of walking walking upstairs or jumping then your legs are probably already accustomed to your own body weight so body weight squats might not be enough to place enough stress on them for them to grow now the exercise I'm showing on screen right now is a kneeling quad extension in which you can start with your body upright and then lean back more over time to place more stress on your quads you'll find that with

a lot of body weight exercises one other way to increase difficulty besides doing explosive or controlled reps is to increase the length of the lever that you are moving another way for legs is to do one-legged squat variations such as the shrimp squat or the pistol squat due to the amount of stability and balance required to execute them properly as with any one-sided movement you're going to want to train both sides equally I recommend starting out with your weaker side and matching the number of reps with your strong side especially if you're a beginner I

do highly recommend doing at least some work for your legs as leg activation and a lot of skills is incredibly important such as keeping your legs straight and l-sit now I do highly recommend training for pistol squads because of the balance and Mobility factor that it gives you I found it has a lot of carryover to weighted squats if you are planning to train those in the future however like I said before a lot of these single leg squat variations require a lot of Mobility now having low Mobility myself in the past training for these

movements has given me a reason to also train my leg mobility and do a lot of leg stretching foreign [Music] list of fundamental exercises that you can do with your body weight but the exercises I chose are the ones that I either did while starting out or I would recommend myself to do if I were coaching the version of me that was starting out in each section I listed all the exercises in an order of increasing difficulty so you can hopefully find the move that you are comfortable with if you're just starting out and you

get to look at what's next when choosing your starting point look for an exercise that you can do at least five or six reps of if you can't do five reps or a five second hold of an isometric exercise then it might be too difficult for you in the meantime and you should work on an easier variation I always start my workouts with a brief warm-up so I can loosen and mobilize my joints as Mobility is the key to good form I follow this with a slight strength ramp up just to prepare my body for

my working sets being careful not to get too fatigued during this phase next for my working sets I always do compound movements these are push-ups pull-ups dips and squats and they are pretty much all full body exercises to some extent Simplicity is really key to body weight training you don't need to do a hundred different exercises to reach your goals you can really just save your energy and focus on the bees after my working sets this is when I might do some isolation work such as tricep push Downs or bicep curls with a resistance band

I always go very light in this portion of my workout as I use it to condition my elbows and I always focus more on range of motion and control lastly I'll do some stretching to decrease the pain in my muscles or to keep my range of motion in order to continuously make progress in body weight training or any sort of training you're going to have to try to make your workouts more and more difficult from week to week or month to month now some ways to do this is you can either select a harder exercise

which is much like putting on more weight and weight training or you can add the number of reps to each set or increase the amount of sets that you do per day or you can aim to improve your form which is also a way of improving intensity there really isn't a one-size-fits-all program that is going to work for everyone since everyone has different schedules and Baseline levels of strength I do recommend when you're starting out to train at least three to six days a week depending on your schedule and if you do go for the

high frequency route you're going to have to lower the volume or your intensity in each session or you can split up each session into targeting only a specific muscle group to optimize rest on the other hand if you do go for the lower frequency workout program then I do highly recommend that you up the volume or your intensity in each workout or you can do multiple muscle groups such as full body workouts if you find that you're feeling sore before every single workout this may be an indicator of over training in which case you're going

to want to back off on either the frequency the volume or the intensity of each session it's important to remember that actual gains and muscle mass and strength are made in between your sessions during the resting and Recovery phase you proper sleep and nutrition if you do happen to train while you are sore then you might be interrupting your body's natural mechanism to recover and you're risking a potential injury and loss of progress the way resistance training actually works is while you are working out you are damaging and breaking down your muscles little by little

to stimulate them to grow later if you train too frequently or too much you are not giving your muscles the chance to actually grow back past their original strength or size since this was more of an introductory video to calisthenics make sure that all of the moves for each muscle group in this video are comfortable for you before you move on to harder elements in that muscle group for example I'm going to say that you're going to need around at least 30 push-ups 15 pull-ups and 15 dips with good form and control before you move

on to harder elements such as weighted variations and straight arm elements if you do decide to skip mastering the basics then I can't guarantee that your journey will be injury free or that your progress will be consistent in the future I'm going to make more videos of where to go from here once you've mastered the basics and how to start training for harder elements past this point overall enjoy your journey don't get discouraged by slow progress celebrate your achievements and stay safe we're all gonna make it [Music] [Music]