Last updated on April 4th, 2022 at 09:44 am
Calisthenics is a great workout discipline that improves your overall strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility. With little or no equipment, calisthenics utilizes body weight and gravity as resistance to target your muscles and strengthen them.
Before diving right into these skills, your muscles must be conditioned for these skills as having a solid foundation will make the learning process easier and reduce the risk of injuries along the way. By foundations, I mean pull ups, push ups, dips, squats, and their variations. I have previously written a blog: How To Start Calisthenics: A Beginner’s Guide which shows you how to use these fundamentals to train anywhere, anytime, with little equipment.
An empirical study suggests that resistance training is associated with many improvements in physical function and athletic performance, with an increase in muscular strength, endurance, power, and hypertrophy.
Below are three calisthenics skills you can learn at home if you’re a beginner. You don’t need any equipment to learn these impressive skills, and they can be practiced anywhere around your home. You will learn all of the progressions to learn these skills if you can’t do them yet.
The elbow is an impressive skill that is challenging, though it’s not as hard as it looks. This is because you’ll be supporting most of your body weight on your elbows while balancing on your hands, hence the name elbow lever. If you’re interested in a comprehensive guide to this skill, check out this elbow lever tutorial.
Requirements to learn the elbow lever
#1 – Tucked Elbow Lever
#2 – Straddle Elbow Lever
#3 – Elbow Lever
The handstand is a fundamental calisthenics skill that every calisthenics athlete should learn as this is the gateway to more advanced skills such as handstand push ups, 90 degrees handstand push ups, and the one-arm handstand. I have already made a detailed handstand tutorial which you should definitely check out if you want to learn this awesome skill.
Requirements to learn handstand:
#1 – Chest to Wall Handstand
#2 – Wall Handstand Kick Ups
#2 – Back To Wall Handstand
You can train the back-to-wall handstand with the chest-to-wall handstand in a single session. I’d recommend you to start with either progression first for 10 minutes, followed by switching to the other. For instance, train the back-to-wall handstand for 10 minutes, followed by chest to wall handstand for 10 minutes.
So that’s 20 minutes in total. The same principle applies here, you’d simply get into a chest-to-wall handstand position, followed by gently pushing your feet away from the wall to try and balance for a split second. Work towards being able to hold 10 seconds consistently.
The L-sit is a cool calisthenics skill that primarily targets the abs. It can be done on the floor, on a parallel bar, a chair with two handles, in between two chairs, or anywhere with two surfaces at equal height with space in between them. Holding this skill will require significant core strength, if you can’t hold it straight away, you can work on these progressions.
#1 – Tucked L-sit
#2 – One Leg L-sit
#3 – Full L-sit
So there you have it, three calisthenics skills to learn at home for beginners. I hope you enjoyed this article and that you’ve found some different movements to play with. In bodyweight training, it’s really important not only to learn the fundamentals and become good at those but also to be able to explore and have fun with them.
By doing this, you’ll start to enjoy moving your body and sometimes you may work on these skills for hours and not even realize all the training that you have done. So the next time that you’re bored and you’ve got nothing to do other than sit on a couch at night, you could try to do the elbow lever. Or while you’re waiting for the laundry to finish washing you could practice some handstands on the wall.
Just have fun because that’s the most important part of exercising. If you’ve tried any of these exercises mentioned, I’d love to know how it went. Feel free to drop a comment down below and let me know.
If you’re looking for a step-by-step program that shows how to correctly train, eat, and recover, then check out our fitness programs. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this article, and I’ll catch you in the next one!
My name is Pat Chadwick, I am a calisthenics coach with over 4 years of experience in helping people from all backgrounds to achieve their calisthenics goals. My goal is to become the number one calisthenics coach in the world as it is my passion to help people change their lives through inspiring bodyweight movements. I believe everyone deserves the right to feel good about their health, body, and be delighted inside and out.
© Copyright Gymless.org All Rights Reserved
Developed by IronMonk