About this Calisthenics Workout

Gaining muscle, getting strong and learning skills are not the only goals in calisthenics. Especially if you want to have an overall balanced healthy body. You MUST do cardio.

“But what is it and what is for?”, you might ask. 

Cardio or cardiovascular endurance training develops the efficiency of your lungs and heart to deliver oxygen enriched blood to your body during prolonged physical activities. Basically, you are training your heart and lungs to perform for long periods of exercise. You are building up your stamina.

Benefits of this type of training goes beyond the getting to run or swim (or whatever exercise you prefer) for hours and hours. These benefits include:

• Fat loss
• Improved metabolism
• Stress alleviation
• Reduced the risk of health complications
• More friends! (If done outside)

All of these benefits correlating to the physiological effects of exercise.

Now, how do we train then? There are numerous methods for cardio training ,especially you could also do sport specific cardio; swimming, cycling, dancing, rowing to name a few. 

For now, we will be focusing on circuit training as our approach. Each station, you will perform cardio exercises that focuses on different aspects of the body. We will also maintain an elevated heart rate by keeping your rest periods very short. 

Note: Listen well to your body. Do not push yourself until your vision starts to fade and you are becoming light headed. Remember we are training also for our health. We do not want any injuries that is a hindrance and very detrimental to our fitness goals.

Shall we get started?

Before the workout, warm up your body first!

Do a proper warm-up first to increase your performance. It prepares your body for the upcoming stress you’re going to exert on yourself. Do simple warm-up routines to get the blood flowing and your joints lubricated.

Though most of exercises are low-moderate intensity, a warm-up routine is still a must. It also decreases any chance of injury.

Here is Your Workout :

How it’s done

Burpees

An exercise that will suck the lungs out of you, burpees are also good for developing your full body explosiveness. From a standing position, you must squat down with proper form and put your hands in front of you in between your legs. This is for a single count. Next, push back your legs with power for another count. Keep your body tight and in a straight body line then do a single push up. As you push your body up, quickly tuck your legs in to get back in a squat position. From the squat position, muster the power to jump up from that position with full force. As you land, slight bend your knees to properly absorb ng force. Congratulations, you’ve don’t your first proper burpees.

Mountain Climbers

This is an excellent exercise to build up core strength as well building cardiovascular endurance. To perform, start in a standard push-up position. Maintain a straight body line and engage the whole body. Tuck one knee to the chest then push it back out and do this for the other leg. Alternately to this for the set amount of time. We’ll be doing this with one count per tuck and push back to prioritize the cardio aspect of the exercise.

Jumping Jacks

This is your regular good ol’ fashioned jumping jacks that you have probably been doing since you’re a kid. The difference is the intensity of your effort. When performing the movement, don’t be lousy just to get the movement done.

Jump Rope

This is very similar with the jumping jacks. You probably already know how to do it but you have to do it with energy. This does not mean you have to jump with full force every repetition. You just have to exert a good amount of effort for 90 seconds. Listen to your body while pushing it. Maintain a steady pace and breathe normally while doing the exercise. 

Clapping Push-ups

Push ups are excellent for building strength and muscle, but you could also develop your explosiveness and cardiovascular endurance by tweaking your execution. From a push-up position, lower yourself down in one count then push up with force to make your upper body lift off the ground. Catch yourself by going straight to the lowest position then immediately do the next rep. Continue this for the set amount of reps.

Sprint

Lastly, you want to push your remaining energy to run as fast as you can for 10 seconds 2 times. The previous exercises were low to moderate intensity since you are not exerting your maximum effort. For this exercise, exert everything you got for those quick seconds (it might feel like an eternity) to boost up the effects of the training. Also take a breather in between the sprints.

Listen to your body especially during your first try. Pushing your body too much and too early is detrimental to your gains and to your overall health. If you feel you can’t last for 90 seconds, you could stop the rest for a while. The last thing we want is blacking out and smacking our head right down to the floor.

Enjoy your workout and then enjoy the awesome benefits it beholds. Cardio is such an essential aspect of anyone’s fitness journey. Do not miss out on your cardio guys!

But what if I can’t do some of these

exercises? 

Get a tailored training routine just for you.

It’s a problem many of us face. We’re given routines – usually based on a standardized level – beginner, intermediate, advanced. Calisthenics Academy used to do that too – because it’s very hard to create a personalized training for each and every person unless we spend a significant amount of time with them.

There was just one problem with this approach (actually there are a lot of problems with it) – it hindered our athletes’ progress. We’ve written extensively on the matter in the blog post, The end of beginner/intermediate/advanced – that is hurting your training.

It simply explains why a lack of personalisation is hurting your training.

Imagine if some of these exercises above were too hard for you. Your body will try to compensate with a poor form, movement dysfunction and possibly risk injury if it’s too challenging.

If some of these exercises were too easy they wouldn’t challenge your muscles to grow – you’d simply be wasting your time.

This is why we created Calisthenics Academy: to offer a fully personalized training program reflecting exactly where your level is for optimal performance.

Take the assessment to see how do you stack up on the 8 fundamental calisthenics moves.

Stay strong, friends!