What is calisthenics?
Calisthenics, or body weight training are a form of
training. With help of calisthenics you can
exercise your body without any dumbbells, barbells or a gym membership. Old School bodybuilding originates from it as I wrote before in my post on “Muscle Beach”. Later more and more weights where involved. Especially after bodybuilding became hot after the legendary movie “Pumping Iron” with Arnold and Louie.
There is a big difference between Calisthenics, Bodybuilding and Weight lifting. Bodybuilding is just for looks and has very little to do with strength or functional muscle. As far as the differences between just bodyweight and
weights, I think both are good and you should do both. You must be able to handle your body weight, but you also must be able to handle more. In the beginning sportsmen like football players where discouraged to do weighttraining, “because all those muscle would make them stiff and slow” and it wasn’t functional muscle just “blown-up muscle”. All professional sportsmen and women know better by now. Many disciplines in training do not have to push one another away, they can exist together and even done together, just like in the days of Arnold. You can join a gym and also join a group of people that train Calisthenics in the open air. It will broaden your vision.
