How To Start Calisthenics For Beginners At Home No Equipment I Push Ups & Pull Ups I Lucy Lismore

Hey guys, how are you going? I hope you're all doing well and welcome to another video. In today's video, we're going to be talking about how you can start calisthenics in your own home. Now, if you know me, you know that I absolutely love calisthenics, and there's so many reasons that I love it. Not only is the community amazing, but also it's something that you can do anywhere at all. You don't need to have equipment, although you can have some as well, so you can work on some new skills, and really you can just enjoy moving your body and trying new things. But if you've never heard the term calisthenics before, what we're talking about here is body weight movements and body weight exercises, and there's loads of different variations of calisthenics, but you can start with some basic fundamental exercises, which is what we're going to run through in this video, and you can start to progress those into some pretty amazing gravity-defying skills. So we're talking about pretty mind-boggling things like planches, back levers, front levers, human flags, and there's just so, so much more. Now don't get me wrong, it takes a lot of dedication and hard work to be able to work up towards these skills, but trust me when I say there are so many fun things that you can work on and progressions throughout the journey that are just as fun to learn. And not only that, but they're built off all the same principle exercises, the ones that we're going to run through in this video. So those main exercises are push-ups, pull-ups, dips, squats, and also a hip hinge and core strength movements. So those are the five exercises that we're going to talk about in this video, because they are super important to be able to master so you can start to progress your skills in other areas. Now mastering those exercises alone is a hard feat, and trust me, I know because I've been there, it's taken me years, and I'm still working on some of them, but that is why it's important to try to enjoy the process, and while you can follow some of the progressions and regressions, also just have fun moving your body and trying things. Just see if you can do them. So a couple more things before we get into this video. I'm going to show you the progressions from a very beginner level, so you can start working up towards these exercises. So for example, if you're trying to learn a pull-up and you don't have a pull-up bar at home, you're not going to be able to do a pull-up until you have a bar or you can go to the park, but there's definitely things that you can do around the house using a table or using some bands that can help you progress and strengthen the muscles needed to be able to do that exercise. Also, if you're a beginner, don't expect to be able to progress through the progressions alone in a quick period of time. The beauty and also the frustration of calisthenics and body weight training is that it takes a long time to see progress. So again, just try to enjoy what you're doing. Enjoy being a beginner and learning something new. And one day, what you're doing today, which feels impossible, will be your warmup. Lastly, before we get into the video, I have made a video which is similar to this, but it was based in a gym, so there was a lot of equipment available. So if you do have access to a gym, that's going to be super beneficial, so you can go and check that out. But this one, we're getting a little bit inventive with things that you might have around the house. All right, without further ado, don't forget to have fun. Enjoy the process. Let's get straight on into the video. Okay, first up, we're going to be talking about the good old humble push-up, probably the top of most people's list of exercises they want to be able to achieve, and also a really, really important foundational pushing exercise as well. Now, obviously, it's unrealistic to expect a beginner to be able to do a push-up on their toes. So the best piece of advice is to start on an inclined surface, and you can literally use anything that you have in the house. So for example here, I'm just showing you on a chair what an inclined push-up would look like. But you can start just like this on the wall, which is exactly where I started, or you can choose any surface that's going to basically allow you to be able to start doing reps of this exercise and working on your form and strength. I have clients who use the side of their bathtub, the side of their sofa, the staircase. Literally anything can be used, so just find something that works for you. Now, in regards to form, I have made a video on push-up form in the past, which I will put up in a card above. But you want to have your hands around shoulder width apart, and you want to be able to bring your chest down in between your hands. Here, I'm showing you an example of what not to do, which is to hinge at your hips and then focus more on bringing your head down towards the ground. You want your body to be in a nice long line like this, keeping your core switched on, your glutes switched on, and then coming down with your chest. Once you feel that you can do around 8 to 12 reps with good form on that inclined surface, you can start to reduce the incline, and then eventually you'll be able to slowly work your way to the floor. And please don't be stressed out if this is taking you a long time. It took me probably 8 or 9 months to be able to do one on my toes, and that wasn't even with good form either. So be patient and enjoy the process. Now, for a lot of beginners, it's really tempting to do modified push-ups on your knees. And there's nothing inherently wrong with this, but if you had a choice between an inclined push-up and a knee modified push-up, I would suggest trying to do the inclined one. And the reason is because, although this looks like an upper body exercise, it actually requires a lot of core strength and for you to have your glutes switched on. So it's really a full body movement, which is what we would call a compound movement. And when you're on your knees performing a push-up, you're taking away all the lower body part and the core stability and core engagement that you need. So it's good to practice on an incline and start reducing that incline, rather than just practicing on your knees. Because once you can do a lot of reps on your knees, you're going to have to progress onto your toes and you're going to find it very, very difficult. So the last thing I just wanted to quickly mention is training eccentrics. And this is useful for loads of exercises, but particularly useful for exercises like push-ups and pull-ups as well. So if you feel like you can do a push-up down to the ground, but you can't get back up again, this might be a really great training tool for you. And essentially what you're going to do is slow down the eccentric part of the exercise, which is when the muscle is lengthening. When you get to the bottom, you're just going to step back up to the top and you're going to repeat this. And hopefully this should help build up the strength for you to be able to improve your push-ups. Like I mentioned, I have already made a video all about push-ups and form as well. So if you want to check that out, I will make sure it is linked down below. Okay, moving on to a pull exercise instead now, and we're looking at pull-ups or you could look at chin-ups as well. Now, pull-ups are shown in this video clip here, where my fingers are facing away from me on the bar. And this is recruiting a lot more of my back muscles. Whereas a chin-up, you'd have your fingers facing towards you and it puts your bicep in a more favorable position, which means you should find it a little bit easier if you're a beginner. But in today's video, we're going to just focus on pull-ups, although this is interchangeable for both pull-ups and chin-ups as well. But I want to talk about how we regress a chin-up or a pull-up movement. So there's loads of different ways that you can work up towards pull-ups, but a really important thing is to strengthen up the muscles that you're going to be using to be able to do a pull-up. And those main ones are going to be in your back and in your arms. So we want to really focus on strengthening those pulling muscles. Now if we were in a gym, we'd be using a setup like this, and we could do this exercise, which is called an Australian pull-up or a bodyweight row. This is a fantastic exercise to be able to start building up the strength to start working towards your pull-ups. Now how do we do this at home? Well, you're going to need a sturdy table like this one, and you're just going to set yourself under the table, holding on with your shoulders about shoulder width apart, and then pulling your chest up towards the table, squeezing your shoulder blades together at the top, holding for a second, and then coming back down. Obviously, we're getting pretty inventive here because most people will not have a bar in their home, but I would definitely suggest if you can invest in one and you want to learn how to do pull-ups, it's a really good investment. But you know, using a sturdy table can be fantastic. You can also use two sturdy chairs and pull yourself up in between them, and also a banister, for example, as well. Now with a table, if you do have a sturdy one around, you can also practice chin-ups. So you're just going to flip your hands so your grip is coming towards you, and then pull your chest up to the table as well. The closer that your feet are in towards your body, the easier this exercise will be, and as you extend your legs out, it will get harder as well. Now bodyweight rows and Australian pull-ups are an amazing exercise for beginners. And obviously, the higher the surface that you're pulling from, the easier this will be, and as it gets closer to the ground, it will get harder. So you can definitely progress and regress this at home slightly as well. So don't overlook it. Now when I was learning to do pull-ups at home, this was one thing I actually tried, and I would only suggest doing this if you have sturdy enough doors. I actually used to start with a chair underneath my feet, so I'd always have my feet planted on the chair, and then I would put my bodyweight into my feet and just pull with my arms. So I was practicing that pulling movement and squeezing my shoulder blades at the top. It looks a little bit crazy, but you've just got to make do sometimes. And like I say, only do this if you have a sturdy door and you feel confident. Otherwise, just either head to the park, do the table rows, or if you can invest in a bar, you can invest in a bar. You don't have to get one like this. I never had one of these until last year, and I learned all on the small door-mounted pull-up bars, and I think it cost me $20 from Kmart. So not a huge investment, but very worthwhile. Okay, we are moving on to yet another upper body exercise, but all of these use your entire body. So we're moving on to dips. Now this is going to particularly work your chest and your triceps, but also your shoulders as well. And this is what a full dip looks like, but again, of course, beginners are not going to be at that level. So we're going to take you through some of the progressions and regressions. Now you're going to start here for tricep dips. You're just going to grab yourself a table, the arm of a sofa, a chair, whatever you have, and you're going to keep your legs close to you, and you're just going to bend your arms towards the back of the room and then really squeeze your tricep, which is at the back of your upper arm, at the top of the movement. With this exercise, the more you extend your legs out, the harder this will be, so you can start to progress this by stepping your legs out slowly until you feel like you're challenged enough. Just on a quick side note, you'll start to notice if you start to train calisthenics how you can progress and regress exercises, and it's really all balanced on center of gravity and levers. So you'll be able to work out how you can easily make an exercise harder or easier by spreading your weight. So once you feel confident with the dips we just looked at, you might want to start training towards a full bodyweight dip like this. And at the gym, we have machines that you can do this on and parallel bars, but at home, you won't have this. So you can easily substitute it for two sturdy chairs. Well, I say stable, but these are just two IKEA chairs, which are relatively sturdy, and they work perfectly for me. So you're going to place them around shoulder width apart, and you're going to put your hands on it. And here, I'm showing you a assisted one. So you're going to keep your legs on the floor, and you're going to bear a lot of your bodyweight through your legs. And this will just give you an opportunity to play around with the weight in your arms and start practicing the movement and building up a little bit of strength as well. To progress this, you can start working on doing some eccentrics, which we looked at in the pushups part, which is coming down nice and slowly. So you're going to lift your legs off the floor, bend your elbows backwards. You're going to make sure that you're keeping your core nice and strong, and you want to try and keep your head up as much as possible with your shoulders away from your ears. Keep practicing this, and eventually, you'll be able to start training full bodyweight dips. You can always put a resistance band underneath your knees and then hold onto it on either side on your hands, but this is the end result that we're trying to get to. Now, finally, if you have a kitchen counter that has a corner unit like this, it can be a really stable and useful piece of equipment, believe it or not. So I like to use this for doing my dips, and I just do these when I'm boiling my kettle or making my food, and it can be really fun, and you can also use it for knee raises as well. So always a useful piece of equipment. Okay, we're finally moving on to another body part. We're going on to lower body, and we're going to look at squats. So here I'm just showing you a Cossack squat, but when we're talking about squats, what we want to do is master the basic bodyweight squat, and then we can start building up into loads of different squat variations from there. So to start with, you might be at this level where you need to actually sit onto a chair or a table, and that is completely fine. What we're trying to achieve by doing this is to start working on our form and understanding where we want our body to be. So we want to have our feet hip distance apart, with our toes facing slightly outwards. We want our knees to come down and face in the same direction as our toes. We want to keep our core engaged at all times. So I like to imagine you've got someone who's going to come punch you in the stomach, and you're going to tense it really, really hard, and you want to try and keep that chest up nice and tall. Once you feel like you've achieved this, you can start to progress this by adding a little bit of weight. And you can literally hold onto a heavy book, a backpack if you have one, or if you do have a dumbbell lying around, you can hold that at your chest and do a goblet squat. Once you feel comfortable with your bodyweight squats and you feel like you're strong and you want to start learning some new skills, you might want to work towards things like pistol squats. And this is a regression of a pistol squat. So start to work up by sitting on a chair and just stepping up on one leg. I'm actually trying to get my pistol squats back at the moment after my back injury, and it is a long, old process, but it's a lot of fun as well, and it always feels amazing when you can finally do it. Another variation is a Cossack squat. So again, it's a one-sided squat, and you're going to come down, and it's really about having a really good range of motion and keeping that heel fixed to the ground. There are so many variations of a squat in calisthenics, and these are just obviously two examples, but there's always something to work on, but they're all based on that fundamental bodyweight squat. Okay, moving on to the last fundamental now, and that is the core exercises or a hip hinge movement. So there are loads of amazing core exercises, and here I'm just taking you through a few that are really, really beneficial. Super simple, but start practicing them, and they are going to go a long way to helping you. Those are the hollow body hold, the reverse plank, and then a regular plank as well. But moving on to an exercise that is really fundamental in calisthenics, and that is the L-sit. So we're going to start working on some progressions towards an L-sit, and we're going to start on the floor. Now, L-sits are usually performed either on parallettes, hanging on a bar, or having your hands planted on the ground. But we're going to start with our back on the floor, working on leg raises. So what you want to do is lie on the floor and eliminate the space between your lower back and the ground. And to do this, you're going to pick your hips up, scoop your tailbone under, and then you're going to plant your back on the ground and pull your belly button down towards the ground. Now, to start with, you're going to start with a single leg raise, and leg raises can be quite challenging, especially for beginners. So if we take one leg out of the equation, we're going to be able to focus on strengthening of that movement and really thinking about what muscles we need to use. Once you feel like you're confident and strong enough with that one, you can move into regular leg raises. And you can keep your hands planted on the ground and either have your head and shoulders off the ground, or you can keep them down on the ground as well. And if you want to make this a little bit easier, you can always sit on your hands as well. If you want to start to progress this exercise, you can use a couple of chairs in lieu of some parallettes. And what you're going to do to start with is just hold yourself there. Focus on holding yourself off the ground and keeping your shoulders away from your ears. Now in this position, extending your legs out fully into an L-sit is very, very challenging. So we tend to start with raising our knees instead. So again, in lieu of a bar or parallettes, you can just do a simple knee raise on the chair and start building up the strength of controlling any swinging and just pulling your knees up towards your chest using your abs. Once you feel confident with that one, you can extend one leg into a single leg L-sit and hold it for around three to five seconds and then switch over. Now don't be fooled. It is very challenging to jump from knee raises to a single leg L-sit. So it takes a little bit of practice, but don't get frustrated. Just keep going and eventually it will get easier. The final movement we want to get to is a L-sit here. And again, I'm still working on these because I struggle to extend my legs fully at the moment because of my injury. And so it's really, really challenging to keep it there. But once you can start working towards it, you'll be able to get one second, then two seconds, and you'll notice that you start to progress quite quickly. All right. And that is it. That is all five fundamental exercises and some ways in which you can train them at home. Now this doesn't cover every single way, every single progression and regression at all. But it's really about experimenting, trying new things, having a play with it, and just enjoying the process. There's no right or wrong. And you can try something, not be very good at it, and then come back to it and feel like you've achieved it in a couple of days time. But again, please do not be disheartened with how difficult some of these progressions can be. And it can take a long time. It can take months, if not years, to be able to work through these progressions. So enjoy the process, have fun with it, and know that it is going to be worthwhile. All right, guys, that is it for this video. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one. Have a great day.