5 Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting Calisthenics
Who is this for? :Beginner Athlete
1. Prehab before Rehab
What does this mean?
Calisthenics, like any sport involves overuse of the same muscle groups. This means that over time we develop posture that reflects the muscle groups we are training. The most common muscle groups trained are ( and I won’t get too complicated ) chest, shoulders, lats, biceps, forearms. Other trainers will tell you more and they aren’t wrong but for the sake of this post I’m keeping it simple. However, overuse of the same muscle groups, or moving in the same position repeatedly over time leads to a change in your posture, tightness in one group and a weakness in the muscles that do the opposite job ( if bicep flexes, tricep extends, for a basic example ).
This is known as Janda Upper Crossed syndrome ( that you can look up for more info ) but essentially means overuse of one muscle group will lead to tightness in that area and a weakness in the muscle groups that do the opposite job. If you think of someone who only does bench press for example, they are constantly tightening their pecs, and not utilising their upper back muscles ( rhomboids, rear delts, etc. ) that pull the shoulders back to a neutral position.
The most common injuries in calisthenics are rotator cuff ( shoulder ), forearms ( golf or tennis elbow ).
So, what we mean by prehab before rehab is to ensure that you also work on the potentially neglected muscle groups that you don’t hit when training certain movements in calisthenics. This means that rather than picking up niggling injuries that put you for weeks at a time, we add these other movements within our training so that we can ( as best as possible ) avoid significant time out injured or not being able to work on what we enjoy because it hurts every time we do.
We will occasionally get comments like ‘awh but this takes too long’ but recovering from an injury through overuse will take even longer! So, if you want to learn new skills within calisthenics, ensure you are training opposing muscle groups – prehab before rehab.
2. Jack of all trades; master of none
We get, you have seen calisthenics online and you are amazed at what you’ve seen. Now like a pokemon collector, you gotta catch em’ all! What a jack of all trades, master of none approach means though is that you will attempt a lot of different things, but focus on nothing too specific and ultimately get frustrated at your perceived lack of progress because there is someone on Instagram that can do everything. Firstly, that person is most likely training longer than you, and second your progress is going to look completely different and you have a unique background.
I understand wanting to try different elements at the start, and would even encourage it to a degree, but at some point you need to decide what movements you want to focus on for an extended period of time before moving into something else. As an example, you might feel you are close to catching a handstand and maybe even a back lever. But if you only spend twenty minutes on them because you have seen a random new skill on Instagram that has taken your attention, your neglecting something you can progress in while the new trend has taken over for twenty minutes. Identify what you feel you are closest to first ( this will be different to everyone ) and ‘pay attention’ to these before moving on to the next shiny one!
3. Identify your strengths
This links to our previous tip about being a jack of all trades, master of none. Deciding what movements you should focus on should be relevant to your strengths. This does not mean physical strength, it relates to the type of movements or discipline that you feel suits you and your personal background. Calisthenics is one of the few sports that provides this because of the unlimited amount of movements you can start to learn.
So for example, if you are flexible and can do a bridge, it would make more sense to pick up new movements similar to this than doing something which is the opposite! You want to develop a sense of competence within the sport initially and feel as though this is something you can progress in, therefore it makes sense that you start with movements that match your previous background or interests. A crossfit athlete will probably relate to endurance-type workouts from calisthenics, while someone who has done parkour will prefer freestyle!
Identify your previous experience and try to link this with calisthenics. You don’t need to do random workouts, you don’t need ten pull-ups before you can try something that might have no relevance to pull-ups. General strength is not the same as relative strength and there isn’t always a crossover just from random workouts. So my advice when you are starting is to try and find exercises that complement your strengths!
4. Tracking ( times or reps instead of weight loss )
So if you come from the gym, or maybe crossfit as two examples, how you track your progress here is VERY different to how we track calisthenics ( unless you do endurance ). With the gym, you might be tracking your weight ( either muscle mass or weight loss ) but with calisthenics we are working on movement skills and sometimes this can be difficult for people to gauge if they are actually making progress or not.
This is because they might feel they are stuck on the same progression for a long time ( think of a one leg back lever for example ). However, if you track yourself by timing the movements you are working on ( handstand, front lever, planche ) this will give you a better indicator of your progress. Yes, you might still be on one leg back lever, but if you go from 4 seconds to 8 in a couple of weeks you are making progress! ( a sprinter or marathon runner would be delighted to take an extra four seconds off their time, so it is the same for us! )
This also gives you an indication of when you are ready to move on to the next progression. So to sum up, we are tracking our progress from timing our movements and if we are adding new ones to our collection! Whereas in crossfit it is about completing a WOD, or the gym is about appearance essentially ( not criticising either one just highlighting differences ) within calisthenics this is how we track our progression through the sport.
5. Enjoy it! Find a why
Last one, and probably the most important, is to enjoy your training and give yourself a ‘why’. This means you have a purpose for why you are training calisthenics. What is it about the sport that interests you? Why are you choosing this over the hundreds of other sports and forms of fitness? You can always give yourself a reason not to, and if you don’t have a counter-argument ready for yourself in those moments then it’s easy to listen to that voice saying skip tonight. If you find a community of people that you enjoy being around, as well as a sport you find interesting, that’s less likely to happen!
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