How To Start Calisthenics For Beginners ( Step-By-Step )

Wanna Start calisthenics? But stuck in where to start? 

Well, Don’t worry.

I will be sharing with you a step-by-step process of how to start calisthenics for beginners at home. To perform each of the calisthenics exercises you need not require any equipment.

Calisthenics is a great way to build up an athletic body, increase strength get more mobile, and improve your coordination, stability, and body perception 

Instead of only showing you calisthenics exercises and workouts for beginners like push-ups, pull-ups, and dips, Which you can see in every beginner’s videos and blogs, this blog will show you a comprehensive overview of calisthenics beginner exercises that will prepare your whole body in different areas.

All the exercise inside this blog post are not about any fancy calisthenic movement instead, they will help you in building a strong foundation for calisthenics exercises 

This will hardly take a week to practice and getting used to it, but all this will help you as a base exercise for every calisthenics moves you try in the future like pistol squats, l-sit, pull-ups variations, push-up variations, and many more

These exercises will solely target your mobility, perfect form, and making your body use it for advanced calisthenics exercises.

Also, it will allow you to build well-prepared tendons, ligaments, and joints This is important to stay free of injuries especially when you progress to advanced movements later 

All of the basic Beginner exercises are categories into 3 Parts- 

1. Hand Conditioning

2. Shoulder Conditioning

3. Leg Conditioning 

You might hear the word “ Body Conditioning “ in a martial art, kung-fu, or any other fighting sports. 

The meaning of the words is very simple that, making your body parts stronger by practicing particular activity regularly.

Like how, you have to train your muscle to performs different calisthenic exercises and workouts without getting any injuries.

So let’s start with our first point - 

Hand Conditioning - 

The first kind of movement for beginners we take an eye on is to strengthen your hand, which will support you in every calisthenics exercises 

Supporting can be done in many different positions, It's everything where you are above the place you rest on.

You can support yourself in a dip support position, in a handstand position, in a bridge position, in a push-up support position, or in a side plank position 

They all have one thing in common You have to stabilize your body against gravity because the center of gravity is above the point where you rest on. This is really important because if you don't activate your muscles to stabilize yourself. You have to deal with unnecessary pressure when the joints get compressed under the load 

The different support positions will activate different muscles and have different benefits in 

1. Push-up support position

In a push-up support position, you will activate your whole anterior chain by pushing your arms into the ground, Move your shoulder blades forward and keep your legs straight 

From this position, you can easily move into the side plank the concept remains the same Just stabilizing your body against gravity 

2. Bridge position

The opposite of the push-up support position in terms of muscle activation and of course spine Shoulder leg and arm movement is the bridge position 

You will now work on your whole posterior chain while stretching the anterior one 

In this position, you extend your spine and your legs. Your arms are extended and behind your body, The goal is to raise your body as high as possible while bringing your shoulder blades together You can do this movement with bent or extended legs while the extended version is the harder one 

3. Dip support hold

The next position is to dip support hold 

Here you push your shoulder blades down keep your body on the tension and extend your arms without resting in your joints 

4. Handstand support

The last basic position is the handstand support

 For a beginner, we suggest doing the pike stand because it's much easier And you don't have to deal with the high pressure of your whole body weight and the difficulty of balancing 

Here you push your shoulder blades upwards and aim for a vertical upper body and open shoulders.

 For most people, it's very hard to open up their shoulders because of their lack of shoulder mobility and stability in this position

All those positions focus on straight arms and it's essential to learn them first before you start with movements like push-ups or dips. But of course, you can also support yourself with bent arms Later when you progress you will see that there are many options for supporting positions.

Shoulder Conditioning

All right, that's it for the supporting positions now we move on to the next important movement which is hanging.

 Hanging is not only important if you want to do a pull-up but also it strengthens your shoulder muscle which will help you performs the hanging calisthenics exercises. 

And it will also improve your grip strength, correcting the posture, increase core, stability, open up the shoulders

The best ways to this exercise are by practicing passive hang ( dead hang ) and Active hang ( tightening your shoulder blades with small movement )

Before you start with an active hang you should be able to do the passive version first 

Highly recommend -  Try achieving about 20 seconds of passive hang before you should start working on the active version. 

If you have shoulder and mobility problems then you should aim for a hollow body position. 

This position is very good to work on your shoulder flexibility by stretching your lats.

The active hang is very important because this is the first movement you should do when you learn the pull-up, Without the active hang you won't be able to stabilize your shoulder and produce enough strength at the bottom of the movement 

Leg Conditioning

The last movement is about the lower body, and it's no surprise that the squat is highly recommended.

A Deep squat hold offers many benefits like improving ankle, hip mobility, Working on your body alignment especially in the spine keeping your knees healthy, and increasing back stability 

Most people struggle with flexibility when it comes to the deep squat they compensate for the lack of flexibility and mobility

There are a lot of exercises that will help you to get the necessary flexibility to be able to do the deep squat

After practicing then deep squats you can then try different variations of squats including, normal squat, sumo squat, etc.

 

The squat position is essential to train if you want to continue with Archer or pistol squat training someday.

But even if you don't have this goal you should include it into your workouts 

As a beginner in calisthenics start with the exercises until you created a solid foundation of your strength And then you can move on 

Final Thought - 

Calisthenics is not just limited to some particular exercises. Every exercise you perform using your body weight will come under calisthenics exercises.

That’s why I made this post to share with you some basic mobility required to start calisthenics, after practicing these mobility exercises you will able to performs other bodyweight exercises easily