Calisthenics | Minimalist Workout | Calisthenics Equipment

Calisthenics is the best Minimalist Workout. If you want to function and work properly and get along with your body, you need to workout.

Your body needs the right amount of nutrients and exercise and nights of sleep to stay sane. The myth that we need to buy a membership at the gym and tons of supplements is just a myth.

The best way to boost your muscles and to get a perfect body is to use your body weight to do so. If you think about our legs, the muscles in our legs are developed to support our body and are constantly trained.

I think that the best way to work out and get a perfect body is via what we now call calisthenics, this is without any doubt a minimalist workout. All you will need is your body weight and a few bars to perform some exercises.

If you are interested in how to get the perfect body without having to pay a dime, read this article in its whole. We are going to talk about:

Calisthenics.
Nutrition.
Minimalist Workout.

I will also attach some workout routines you will be able to download, and if you stick with them you will become shredded like a ninja turtle.

Working out, from the history until now and the future.

The word workout probably was invented not so long ago. I doubt that our ancestors even ever used this word in their lives.

If I think of how life for the parents of my grandparents was, I am pretty sure that they never worked out, they were just working. If we go back to the first civilizations and even more back to the prehistorical man, we can see that probably no one ever used the word workout.

Being in shape was just a part of the mundane life, and as I said in this article, to reconnect with your minimalistic survivals. If you wanted to live you needed to be fit or else you would have been killed, eaten or dead because of your weaknesses.

So the man of Neanderthal was forced to have a nice and strong body in order to survive. Probably he was forced to climb trees to avoid animals, cross streams to get to the other side of the place. He probably needed to run and jump and so on.

It is fascinating that these guys didn’t have an iPhone or a house to live but they survived and thanks to them we are here now. Could you imagine yourself having to survive in this world? Would you have time to hit the gym and follow a paleo diet?

The answer is heck no.

The first men on earth and working out.

The first man appeared 6 millions of years ago more or less. From then the first civilization that comes at in my mind are the Egyptians. Before of that, we don’t know that much of what people were doing.

The Egyptians were people that lived 5000 years ago, which is nothing compared to how old the earth and the universe are. If you divide 5000 years by the average human lifespan of 70 years, we get 71 as a number.

5000 / 70 = 71 Generations.

There are only 71 generations between our generation and the Egyptians if you think about it, it’s nothing. These guys together with the Romans and Greeks and so on started to develop more sophisticated societies.

We know that some people were trained for wars, Olympiads and they started to work out their way. It was no longer just a survival thing, but some of them were doing this also to boost their strength and power.

Here in the 21st century, we are going to the gym and pay for expensive workout machines and crazy diets and doctors. Because still, we need to do this in order to stay alive and sane.

But the reason why we have to pay or waste time and money in it is that we live a more sedentary life, we all have a shelter and we don’t need to go hunting for food.

Our body is a perfect machine, and to make it happy we need just to use it the way is supposed to be used.

That is why calisthenics comes in as the best minimalist workout. If you are doing calisthenics every day even for a few hours or minutes you will be shredded and in shape physically and mentally speaking.

What is Calisthenics

Calisthenics is everything that involves using your body to improve your physical and mental capacities.

Walking, running, climbing trees, jumping etc. Can be called calisthenics, but recently calisthenics as a minimalistic workout has become more interesting.

All we need, to have our awesome “minimalist home gym”, is just our body and a few steel bars. We will need some steel bars because pull-ups are one of the most interesting and complete exercises we can perform.

How to start calisthenics

If you want to start with calisthenics just follow along with this guide, and I will tell you how easy it is. I will guide you in creating a routine that will work for you. The most important thing, like for everything is to never give up and believe in something.

I promise you that going to a gym or paying for memberships will be outdated pretty soon.

To start with calisthenics you need to find some time for yourself to practice this. I assume that you have a regular job and you have a house and a normal 21st-century life.

If you don’t, probably you need to go hunting and you don’t need calisthenics at all. If you are living a life naked and connected to your survivals you will do calisthenics nonetheless every day. You don’t need to follow a routine.

The reason why I think calisthenics is so powerful, and a truly excellent minimalist workout, is because our body works the best when it is stressed in the most efficient way using our body weight.

Doing some proper push ups or pull ups or dips and jumping the rope are the best way to become shredded and strong.

Calisthenics workouts

Before performing any of these exercises it is recommended that you warm up at least a couple of minutes. Jumping the rope, running or moving around your limbs is good, just do it and don’t be a fool.

You need to perform the exercises and squeeze your muscles. Feel them working do not try to cheat or do the exercise wrong, focus on your muscle fibers.

I will put some videos, and give some credits to Chris Heria, I have met this guy back in 2012 and felt immediately he was a badass.

Push-ups

Push-ups are the simplest exercise ever, but still, the muscles involved in this kind of exercise are a lot. If you can not do it the right way you can start off with your knees touching the ground.

And then when you feel more comfortable pushing up you can start to experiment many variations. I will drop a video from Chris Heria down below. When you will be stronger you can try all of these variations.

The most minimalist push up is the one that we all know. But trying also the other variation can stimulate your muscles in other directions. Stimulating your muscles from a different direction will activate your muscle structure and you will become stronger and more efficient.

As we can see in this video all we need is just our body and eventually a chair or a dip bar.

Ring Push Ups

To make it harder, we can buy two gym rings, and perform all the exercises above using those rings as a support. Doing so your muscles will develop a memory and a muscle balance strength. You should try to do some push-ups using this tweak.

Pull-ups

With pull-ups you have nothing to lose, you can’t injure yourself and you will make your body strong. Pull-ups engage all of your body, back, shoulders, arms, lat, abs, neck.

Pull-ups are the core exercises with calisthenics, you can not build a strong and shredded body without doing pull-ups.

There are many variations, and as always you can look at Chris Heria Awesome videos. For some people might be very hard even to do a regular pull up. You should always realize your limits first and then progress to more advanced techniques. Here is a list of my favorite pull-ups:

Regular pull up.
Front lever pull up.
Wide pull-ups.
Chin-ups.
Behind the back pull-ups.

To be able to pull up, you might want to go to a park or just buy a piece of steel to lay somewhere solid. You can also buy machines and bars that you can put on walls or in your garage.

Muscle-ups

Muscle-ups are way harder than regular pull-ups. Your goal is to perform the exercise the correct way, so the muscles will work as it should. Do not try to cheat using your legs and swing your ass all the way on top of the bar.

The purpose of this exercise is to make your upper body stronger, if you cheat using your legs you will just become less stronger. Here another few videos of Chris Heria. I love this dude so just watch his videos and you will learn a lot.

When you have developed a significant strength and stamina, you can add some freestyle to your muscle ups. I love this “jump on the bar” version of the muscle up. It took me a few months to be able to jump on a bar like this. You need first to become great with pull-ups and muscle ups, then you can think about doing this.

Weighted pull-ups

Before starting your muscle ups journey, a nice transition to build a lot of strength is to add weight to your body when doing pull-ups. You can buy a weighted vest, or just hold a dumbbell or something heavy you find in your house with your feet.

If you start to pull up with weight, when you will have no weight it will feel like you are not even pulling up. This will make the transition from pull up to muscle up a lot easier.

Weighted Muscle Ups

When you will be a master with muscle-ups, you can add weight to your muscle up as well. This is very hard and you might need a weighted vest or a weight attached to your hips. To muscle up with the weight, it requires a lot of time and you must be very strong.

It’s all a matter of time, you will get there if you want too.

Flag raises

You have problem heard about the human flag, this is a very nice exercise that increases your lateral abs and arms strength. Before starting to make human flags you should start with flag raises.

Human Flag

Here is a video on how to human flag, I actually started to do calisthenics because I wanted to do this exercise. It is not easy though and must be practiced a lot.

Pistol Squats

Pistol squats are a great exercise for your legs like the regular squats are making your legs stronger. The difference is that here all you need is your body. You will acquire strength a lot faster compared to regular squats.

We always have to remember that legs are the biggest muscles in our body and we should have included a leg workout when working out.

Running.
Jumping Ropes.
Pistols Squats.

These are my favorite exercises to keep my legs in shape.

Jump the rope

Jumping the rope is so good for you that you don’t have an idea yet. Jumping the rope will increase your stamina, coordination, strength, abs, elastic memory muscles and so on.

It is also a kick-ass exercise to do as a warm-up. Jump the rope a few minutes before starting to pull up or push up. The chances that you will get injured or stretched or fucked up for a while, significantly lower down.

So start always your workout with a nice jumping rope session, and then pull up, push up and take out the beast in you on those piece of steel.

Backflip

Backflips are impressive. If you are able to backflip it means that you have a control over your body beyond the regular control. Also, it is pretty cool to see and on top of the skills and muscles you develop doing so, you will also impress people.

Calisthenics VS Weights

So at the end of this short calisthenics chapter, I will leave to Chris to explain why this kind of training is better than weights.

Strenght makes you shred a lot more. And you will develop a body awareness.

Check out Chris Heria and download his app here at thenx.com

Also, Subscribe to his YouTube Channel Here Officialthenx.

Calisthenics equipment

The calisthenics equipment is very minimalist, the main ingredient is your body weight, and I assume that you have it for free.

If you don’t have it, I don’t think is a nice sign.

Here is a list of the tools and calisthenics equipment that you might wanna have or buy or borrow and use on the street or home.

Pull up bars

Pull-ups bars are the core of the whole discipline, doing pull-ups on a daily base is all you wanna do. If you have a park that has bars near your house, just go there and start to pull up.

If you don’t have any of this, or you are living in a cold country and you don’t feel comfortable in pulling outside.

There are many options to do this indoors. Just go to a carpentry and ask for a nice piece of steel and place it in your house somewhere still and solid.

Rings

Gym rings can add some challenge to your workouts. You can attach them to the bars or just use them as I said before to make your push-ups more hard.

You can find them for a few bucks or make them with some steel, it will probably cost less than $5.

Dips Bars

You can make dips bars as well, if you go to your carpentry place, they will probably make 2 dip bars for less than $10.

If you don’t want to get them it’s fine, you can use whatever you have in your house that might do the job. Dips bars are also called Parallettes.

Gloves

Some people don’t use gloves and are completely fine, speaking of my self I can not do these exercises without gloves.

My hands hurt to fast and then I have to quit my exercise not before I am tired or I because I can not do it, but because my hands hurt. So if you have this problem I suggest you buy some gym gloves.

Jump rope

The rope is an awesome tool you need, you can build one or just buy one for a few bucks at Walmart or on Amazon.

As I said before you definitely wanna start jumping the rope every day if you are not able to go running or you want to workout home next to your computer jumping the rope is the solution.

Running though is the best thing you can do, your body loves to be outside and if you have the chance to go running just run.

Calisthenics nutrition

So now you have built your routine, you have started to dedicate some time to do some calisthenics and your strength has improved. You can’t do a lot with a routine and strength if you keep eating dog shit.

In the first lines of this article I highlighted how important is for you to balance these 3 factors:

food.
sleep.
exercise.

We have talked about the calisthenics exercise part. I assume you are trying to sleep 8 hours each night and going to sleep in the dark.

Following the natural light and stay in touch with nature will help you in the process of becoming a minimalist perfect individual.

Diet

Educating yourself on what your body needs to function the best is the best diet. I am sure that you should avoid taking any supplement or chemical product that promises miracles.

There are no magical pills to lose weight or gain mass.

Those might be just shortcuts that will have repercussions on your health later on in your life. My best is advice is to try any kind of food, and see how your body reacts. I will give you an example of my story so maybe it can help.

My story and diet

I am a very skinny guy, I can eat 4000 calories a day and still being able to lose weight. This is because I am a very nervous person and my TSH levels are pretty low. My body is like a furnace that burns and burns.

I have the need to eat a lot more in order to function, and I always try to eat not a lot but often during the day. My ‘not a lot’ portion might be already 3 times bigger than yours but for me, it’s not.

It took me years to figure out that I needed to eat a lot of carbs to compensate the energy I burn during the day. I can’t have lunch without some pasta or bread or carbs. If I eat a salad for lunch for 3 weeks I might lose something like 20lbs with ease.

Also, I needed to train and pull up in order to gain weight, if I just eat carbs and proteins without training I do not gain weight. My biggest challenge in life was gaining weight and I have found my balance eating a lot of carbs and proteins and fruit combined to pull ups.

This might not work for you, the thing is that you need to swallow proteins to build serious mass.

What are the proteins?

Proteins are the bricks of your muscles, you need to assume the right amount of protein when working out to build muscles. Period!!

It is best practice always to read the labels of the food you swallow and educate yourself on the amount of protein you put in your body, every time you eat.

A nice source of good proteins is white and red meat. On average every 100grams of meat contain 30grams of protein.

Other sources are eggs, fish, milk, beans and so on. Here a good article on the best sources of proteins out there.

Apps that are helping you with workouts and food.

If you have a smartphone it can be easy to keep track of this, I like an app called myfitnesspal. You can literally scan the labels of the food you are going to eat. You put the weight written on the package and you ‘ll get the quantity of proteins you are going to eat.

You can keep track of all of these things with your smartphone or apple watch. You should also drink at least 2 liters of water, here another app that helps you achieve that.

It is very important to find the diet that works best for you, and eat what your body is asking. It is very hard to do this in the world we are living.

If you have a regular job you will be almost forced to go to eat out with colleagues or eat junk food. I personally don’t go to any fast food and always try to eat food that doesn’t make me sick.

And of course, download our Chris Heria thenx app. To receive every day a new calisthenics workout and motivation. The idea is crazy good, it is a social network like Instagram, you can post pics of your progress and on top of that, you will be able to follow videos and routines and receive notifications in your phone.

Workout + Food + Mindfulness + Sleep = BOMB

So if you want a perfect body and an extraordinary life you can use calisthenics. You might want to own a calisthenics equipment or just do it yourself. Sleeping is another key factor to build nice muscles, the process of creating new cells and connection between muscle tissues happens while you are asleep.

Relaxed and calm people tend to have less stress visible on their faces and a better body. I find a little bit useful to use this app called Headspace. This will help you achieve mindfulness and hopefully sleep better.

You don’t need any apps thought, all you have to do while meditating is trying to reset your brain and do not think about anything. If you ever tried to do it is not easy.

NOT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING IS HARD.

I have created some simple workout routines, you can download them here. There will be a printable PDF and a .ppt, you can modify and print.

DOWNLOAD MY ROUTINES SLIDES

It is important to write down the rest time and your progression. You need to do more the next workout.

Conclusions

Calisthenics is the best workout you can do. It will help you to stay aware of your body and potential, it can be done without the need of any tool, your body weight will do everything for you.

There are several exercises you can do to gain immense strength, some of them are written above, but mainly are those:

Jump rope.
Push Ups.
Pull Ups.

You will need to find the time and create a routine that works for you so that you can balance these 3 aspects of your life:

Exercise.
Food.
Sleep (and meditation).

In this piece of content, I have tried to explain the importance of exercising and how this is the best minimalist workout ever. I hope that you will start from right now to put into practice these easy concept and I wish you the best in your backflip practicing.

If you found the motivation to be able to backflip after you have read this article, I would be glad to know it. Feel free to comment below for any question. I will post your backflip video on the minimalistboy Facebook page.

If you are looking forward to more content, Bookmark this blog. Share it with your friends and spread some rumors about it.

Calisthenics | Minimalist Workout | Calisthenics Equipment