THE BASICS TO BODY WEIGHT TRAINING

It was summer - sun was setting and we were on some train tracks after a session of looking for new spots. At some point we came across a sign pole and for some reason, I tried to Flag Pole - It wasn't anything great, however, I managed to pull it off.

This was the exact moment when I fell in love with Calisthenics and all things related. From this moment on, I just wanted to get stronger.

It started off a few years ago when my friends joined the European craze of Parkour/Free Running. There weren't that many people doing it in Cape Town at the time, however its popularity was growing and growing fast. It didn't take long before I was attempting to jump gaps, scale walls and everything else that came with this intense free roaming sport

So enough with the babbling, let's get on to the point of this article. 

WHAT THE HELL IS CALISTHENICS?
Putting it simply, Calisthenics is a form of functional exercises that utilizes ones own body weight 

• Push-ups
• Pull-ups
• Squats
• Crawling

...you get the idea. 
The exercises are only limited to what your mind can conceive. 

GETTING STARTED
So before you think "BOOYAH, time to go FSU", let's just sort out the basics and decrease the probability of injury.

MOVEMENT PATTERNS - if you've got problems moving correctly, or have any imbalances that need to get looked at, then fix those before you start - Even just taking 2-3 weeks performing and correcting movements will decrease the chance of injury quite drastically - you can't train if you're injured - So you better check yourself before you wreck yourself (sorry, I just had to) 

learn the fundamental movements - Lunges, Squats, push ups and pull ups. Those are the absolute basics when it comes to calisthenics training. At this point, we're not even going to look at advanced over-head pushes (vertical) or anything along those lines. BASICS FIRST.

If you can't perform the standard variations of pull-ups or push-ups, no sweat, perform an easier version of them - TRX Rows instead of pull ups - Push ups on an elevated surface or knees down. Remember, everyone starts off somewhere. It's all a journey.

BODY COMPOSITION - I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the truth is; if you're on the larger side (and again, I'm not talking about muscle), then doing calisthenics and pretty much any other movement is going to be a challenge. You need to have a decent fat-muscle ratio.

One thing you'll have to work on is reducing as much unnecessary weight as possible. I'm not saying that you have to have a body fat% in the single digits - I'm not and I probably will never be (sad face) but that doesn't and will never stop me from doing/trying something out. I mean, I can do planche push ups and I have some extra love attached on to my frame.

So if you're at the 12% Body Fat mark, then you should be good to go. Of course, the leaner you are, the easier and effortless a movement becomes.

CALISTHENICS AND HIIT - making the most out of a session
When it comes to High Intensity Interval Training, people seem to underestimate body weight training - A training routine should be METHODICAL. 

So lets look at it. We want to incorporate HIIT into a body weight session. lets look at 10 a exercise routine. It'll look something like this.
- Upper Body
- Lower Body
- Upper Body
- Lower Body
- Upper Body 
- Lower Body
- Core
- Core 
- Core
- Core/ Full movement

By approaching it in this manner, you allow to give your muscle groups just enough rest to complete the round. Instead of having a workout that mainly looks at 1-2 muscle groups at a time. This also allows for maximum training intensity. 

Here's a little example of a workout using the above method 

1. Burpee Push Up
2. Static Lunges
3. Pull ups
4. Jump Squats
5. Tricep Dips
6. Jump Series
7. Mountain Climbers
8. Ab Bike
9. Bridge
10. Toe Touches / Spiderman crawl / Bear Crawl - whatever.

That's quite a session and trust me, you'll be finished after 5 rounds of that. The more intense the movements that are being used, the less exercises that are needed...unless you're slightly off in the head.

Now, I'm not saying that you should never have sessions where you focus on certain muscle groups. Leave that training for separate days - I have days that I devote to messing around doing handstands, planching and learning other movement patterns - along with getting stronger.

INCREASING THE INTENSITY OF A MOVEMENT
At some point, certain things are going to start getting easier - which is good - and there are certain methods that we can use to increase the workload of that movement. So let's have a look at some of them. 

1. Remove one of the structural supports
For example, lets look at the push up. Remove an arm and now all hell breaks loose. Pistol Squats, Single Leg lunge/Romanian Split Squats etc 

2. Loading
Kettlebells, vests, chains - whichever you fancy.This should be rather self-explanatory

3. Incomplete/Partial Repetitions
I come from a hypertrophy based background and one thing that I learned over the years when size is the goal: you NEVER REST DURING A SET. By rest, I mean, you never let your muscles rest - and by following that rule, you never "lock-out" a movement. Muscle fibers should be recruited and firing for every second of every rep of every set that you perform.

Let's look at a basic squat. If I perform a full squat and am now standing with my hips locked out. What is there left for my muscles to do? well, not much. Standing isn't such a strenuous exercise (for most). However, if I incomplete the movement to say 3/4 Squats and I don't lock out, then my muscles have to continue to work. 

If you don't agree with this. Go load up a bar. Squat. Slow down the movement and incomplete it. 

I'm not saying you should do this for every rep of every set, but should rather incorporate it into a set here and there. Make it the last 2 or so sets.

4. Slowing Down
By slowing the movement down, your muscles spend a greater time under tension - When it comes to muscle growth, nothing beats straight up Time Under Tension training, commonly referred to as TUT. 

This works well with loaded weights or after a few rounds to just kill off whatever you have left in the tank. 

When it comes to core work, slowing down works extremely well. Semi-Isometric Ab Bike is a favorite of mine and I use it on a regular basis for training sessions.

If you're a beginner, don't even bother with weights, body weight will do it for you - Same goes for removing support, leave that to when you've actually built a nice foundation of body weight strength. 

So the first two that you should be looking at is Slowing Down and Incomplete reps, from there you can work your way up.

CONCLUSION
So remember, stick to the basic movements if you're a beginner - Ensuring that you are performing the fundamental movements correctly. You won't be able to perform advanced movements if you can't do the basics.

Focus on completing full range of motion for everything that you do, unless you're implementing the "partial rep" method to one of your last sets. But if you're a beginner, then you probably won't be there just yet.

And that's it for now. If I left anything out, which I probably have or you would like to know anything, feel free to ask. 

Tambe "doc" Joesha