Calisthenics is growing in popularity and for good reason.
Performed well and consistently, calisthenics has the potential to be a life-changer for its participants.
We love calisthenics! Here are 12 reasons we’re convinced that you will too 😊
1. Calisthenics Never Gets Boring
If you’re working on your dead-lift, it doesn’t matter if you’re lifting 20kg or 100kg, you’re still doing the same movement.
Calisthenics is different.
In order to progress, we move you to a harder variation of the exercise.
This keeps you moving through increasingly difficult exercises and ensures that you never get bored.
On top of that, there are a tonne of skill moves that you can learn, from handstands to muscle-ups, to laches, to backflips.
This vast array of skills and strength moves means you never stop learning, the possibilities are endless!
2. Calisthenics is Fun
Fun is subjective, but calisthenics teaches you to move your body in many ways, utilising your strength and skill levels.
We’ve trained 100s of students who have all said the same thing, doing calisthenics is a fun way to workout and therefore feels like less of a chore to exercise and get strong.
If you enjoy your workouts, you can guarantee you’ll be more likely to stick to them in the long run.
3. Calisthenics Looks Cool!
Let’s be real, this is probably one of the number one reasons people take up calisthenics.
Many intermediate to high-end moves look very cool and will turn heads when you do them.
If you’ve never seen a human flag before, for example, it can be a bit of a surprising moment when you see one performed.
This can be a great motivator to encourage you to keep up that consistent, regular training.
4. Calisthenics Training is Functional Training
The strength you build doing calisthenics will make your day-to-day life easier.
Getting back pain from sitting down too much? Glute strengthening and bridging will have that fixed in no time.
Want to be able to climb, jump, trek, run and move your body in all the unique ways it is capable of?
Calisthenics makes your body able to do amazing things!
5. Calisthenics Builds an Aesthetic Physique
Okay, so calisthenics will have you feeling strong and able to do amazing things, but let’s be real, a lot of the reason people like to train is based on how they will look.
Calisthenics build fantastic physiques!
You will build lean muscle all over your body (especially if you don’t skip legs!), with extra emphasis on growing your lats.
Don’t want to get too big? No problem, with calisthenics you don’t need to have the biggest muscles to be the best, but if you want to build massive muscles, you can do that too.
This is largely controlled by your diet and exercise programming.
6. Calisthenics is Suitable For All Levels
Despite what a quick YouTube search may show you, calisthenics is a very accessible sport.
Not yet able to do a push-up? No problem we can put your hands on an incline and slowly work your way down until you can do them on the floor.
Can’t yet do a chin-up? That’s okay; first, let’s activate your lats with leg-assisted progressions and scapula work. Then, we’ll work through some negatives and partials before nailing a chin-up.
On the other spectrum, if you’ve been doing strength training for a long time, we’ve got some extreme feats of strength for you to work on.
First, let’s get you a muscle-up, then we’ve got the back lever, human flag and front lever.
Beyond that, we have a one-arm pull-up and planche.
These are just the basic exercises; the limits beyond this are your imagination.
7. You Can Train Calisthenics Outdoors
Unlike other strength training methodologies such as bodybuilding or power-lifting, calisthenics is perfect for training outdoors.
Often requiring no more equipment than a pull-up bar or the ground beneath you, and with many outdoor gyms across Sydney and Australia, there are plenty of options for training.
Outdoor training has been proven to relieve stress [1], boost your mood [2] and increase your vitamin D levels.
8. Calisthenics Encourages Holistic Training With Extra Focus on Mobility
To unlock some of the hardest moves and reach your potential at calisthenics, it’s not good enough to have a tonne of muscle with little to no mobility or body control.
Moves such as V-Sits and Bridges require high levels of mobility.
Skill moves such as handstands and muscle-ups require high body awareness and control levels.
9. Calisthenics Encourages an Inclusive Environment and Community.
Bring together a group of people who are passionate about a specific subject and that tends to make an awesome community.
Calisthenics is one of those hobbies that if you meet someone who does it, you tend to hit it off immediately.
You’ll be sharing ideas and showing what you can do and be mates in no time.
With the rise of new competitions and meetups across the globe, the calisthenics community is only growing stronger.
10. Minimal Equipment is Required
With calisthenics, you are the resistance you’re going to be lifting.
This means you require minimal equipment.
A pull-up bar is ideal, or you can use gymnastics rings over a tree.
This is perfect for training outdoors or if you are travelling, with no gym required.
11. Calisthenics Builds Bodyweight Training Techniques For Life
The old saying, like riding a bicycle, is also true with calisthenics.
If you learn to handstand, even if you don’t do it for several years, your body will still remember and pick it back up much quicker.
Progress through your pull-ups, and your body will remember and re-learn those skills quickly.
If you commit to calisthenics, it will see you able to make moves that you once thought impossible for life!
There are many videos out there of 70+ people who are still moving their bodies in amazing and inspiring ways.
12. Calisthenics Offers Excellent Carryover to Other Sports
Want to get better at any sport that involves using your own bodyweight?
Calisthenics not only grows your strength, but also increases your body awareness and coordination.
Rock climbing, obstacle course racing, gymnastics, parkour, all these sports, you will see a massive improvement in.
But our students even report improvements in other sports such as netball, football and running.
This is in part due to the increased strength, but also due to the improvement in your body awareness and even hand-to-eye coordination.
