3 Lessons in Calisthenics I Learned the Harsh Way
Avoid these mistakes and you’ll see much better progress
Bodyweight training comes in handy in almost any situation. But the scope of mistakes it has is as much as handy it is.
Following are some lessons that I learned the harsh way by making mistakes myself and learning from the ones who know better.
Focus on your form more than your numbers
In calisthenics, you can cheat the training in the easiest way possible.
The biggest mistake that I used to do was not controlling my movement, especially during the negatives. I used to leave my body go down with the help of gravity and didn’t even bother to control the motion.
To cheat, I tried to execute the movement too quickly, resulting in losing muscle tension very quickly and more importantly, joint stabilization.
It's not wrong to perform an exercise with a fast rep speed, but controlling the movement with a proper form is a must. If you can’t control your movement then you should swallow your pride and get down to an easier variation.
If you can’t control your movement then it’s better that you swallow your pride and get down to an easier variation.
So if you are a beginner, try to perform your reps slowly, in a proper form, and most importantly, be present at the moment, after all, that’s what we call meditation.
Jumping to a harder exercise without having enough strength
I have recently learned to do a dragon flag. But did I hop into it directly?
No, not at all. The most important requirement for this exercise is a lot of core strength and reasonable pulling strength generated mostly from the upper back and biceps.
I knew that I have enough pulling strength as I can do at least 10 clean pull-ups in one go. But my core lacked enough strength, so I first tried to master basic core exercises like hanging leg raises.
Didn’t I make mistakes while learning a skill?
I definitely did, before unlocking the dragon flag, I successfully unlocked the L-sit hold, and now I can hold it for a minute. But I definitely feel if I didn’t make the mistakes that I made, I could have achieved it much earlier.
What were the mistakes?
I was lacking major strength in my scapula that is necessary to hold the L sit in proper form by pushing the ground so that you can lift yourself. Many people confuse pushing with triceps, yeah that’s important too, but the real essence of the pushing in L sit comes from the scapular strength.
Not just that, a significant amount of strength is required in the quads too, which I lacked at that time. I didn’t address these issues and was just trying to attempt L sit every time here and there.
Though gradually, I gained enough strength in my quads and core to do the L sit (that too after a very long time, which could have cut down exponentially if I trained my quads separately (back then I didn’t focus on my legs properly as I thought that running and playing football would do the thing for me, but I am extremely guilty of it)), but the scapular strength, it was still not in place.
I achieved the L sit, but with a sloppy form.
It still looked like it was being forced on me until I worked upon my scapula separately.
What do I want to convey by the above events?
To learn a movement, you must have enough control over your muscles and joints to perform that movement. You won’t be able to execute the exercise well if you pick an exercise that’s beyond your “range of improvement at that point”.
What do I mean by the range of improvement at that point?
It’s a must to step out of your comfort zone to get better. But it has its own limit, you can’t go and lift 30kg if you recently got able to lift 15kg. The same counts for calisthenic exercises too, each exercise has variations. Pick the one which you can control and challenges you as well.
Choose an exercise that’s challenging to control and not the one which you are unable to control.
Proper preparation is a must
I am not talking about the warm-up. That’s always a must.
Jump on to the one arm push ups and complain for wrist pain the whole week.
I did the same thing and regret the decision for two weeks.
And not just that, in general with any exercise, if your body is not used to working out, you should always start with a preparation phase. It’s not at all a good idea to copy advanced athletes.
The preparation phase means letting your body adapt to the exercise, its movement, its intensity. A good preparation phase must contain a high volume of reps with lower intensity so that your body gets used to the motion without injuring itself.
It goes like this, no experience->sore muscles and sometimes injury->long recovery->slow progress.
It’s also essential to incorporate certain joint preparation exercises for a difficult exercise.
For example, I have a specific wrist training program before I jump into training for handstand. The program includes wrist warm-ups and a gradual increase in the intensity of push-ups (without exhausting myself) so that my wrist can anticipate what’s about to come.
You don’t need to reach failure each time
Think about this, you train to failure today and don’t work out for the whole week. Does it make sense? No, right?
I am not against training to failure, in fact, nowadays I do reach failure every time but we must listen to our body, muscle soreness, and failure are not the same thing. You can wake up tomorrow with a sore muscle without training to failure today.
Training to failure has its own place but if you are a beginner, focusing on strength and movement must be your main goal. There’s no point in training to the failure one day and then not training the movement for a long time.
Not just for the beginners, intermediates, and advanced athletes when trying to learn a new movement start with a preparation phase where they don’t train to failure every day.
Sometimes you also sabotage your own progress because of going to failure each time as you need a very long time to recover.
To grow, you must train your muscles constantly, and not wait for a week for the next session.
Failure can be effective, not necessary.
To summarize
The 3 lessons are,
- Focus on your form, reps can be increased later.
- Make sure you prepare yourself before picking up a difficult movement.
- You don’t need to reach failure each time.
So those were the 3 lessons in the bodyweight training a.k.a. calisthenics I learned the difficult way, I hope you don’t need to do so.
I hope you learned something new. Thanks for reading!!
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