Calisthenics to Weight Lifting

 With spring just around the corner I felt this reader had an excellent question for fitness training. One reader asked how to transition from calisthenics to weightlifting. Let’s consider a few things before jumping into that.

Exercise, be it body weight or external weights as resistance, is an excellent ectivity for your body. It improves flexibility, muscle tone, cardiovascular health, morale and mental outlook among many other benefits. 

Calisthenics is an exercise protocol of using one’s own weight as the resistance for the exercises. This has many benefits. One being that you can take your routine almost anywhere to complete it. I used a local playground as the tools needed for my calisthenics routine for years. Pull-ups, dips, squats, jumping, dips and more were all done using the equipment at the playground. It is also near a running track so I also added cardio. 

I was able to maintain my weight at 220 to 230 pounds during these years. I train to be larger than average. Your goals may differ. Still, if there is a park or playground with monkey bars you have all you need. 

Think about how the military trains its personnel. Everyone begins calisthenics in boot camp. While on active duty many units do daily physical training or PT. This PT is mainly body weight based or employs equipment that all participants have. 

Consider weight lifting for a moment. In this one uses weights external ti the body to increase load and tension on the muscles. One can work every part of their body with weights. The difference in outcomes for lifting comes down to your goals and the necessary training methods. 

Calisthenics will certainly improve your fitness levels as well as strength and stamina. Using your body and simple equipment you can hone your body into an exercise machine. When in the military I’d do sets of pushups yo surpass 100, sit-ups and crunches, squats and lunges for legs, and then running for overall cardio. Calisthenics were more than adequate for fitness. 

Weightlifting can take you past the point at which calisthenics stops. You can continue to overload your muscles with greater amounts of weight as your strength grows. 

Now, transitioning between the two. All it takes is a gym membership or some equipment at home to make the switch. How to start is a point to understand.

When I switched I focused on the core lifts which are called compound exercises. A compound exercise uses multiple joints and multiple muscles to perform. These include benchpress, squat, deadlift, bent or seated row, lat pull down or pull-ups, upright row, and shoulder press. There are more, but this should make it clear. 

By building a routine around compound movements you can efficiently work your entire body in a shorter period of time. For instance, a basic full body routine would include squats, bench press, bent row, and either upright row or shoulder press. These exercises done properly will work your entire body including your core. 

This type of routine is typically started at three sets of 10 repetitions each set. A set is the number of repetitions completed. Three sets is conventionally considered enough to fully work the targeted muscle group.

After achieving some level of experience with weights there are intensity techniques you can add to make the workout more effective. You can add sets or change the repetition numbers to achieve different goals. 

Optimally, you can combine the two training styles and tailor your routine to include both calisthenics and weights. Many consider this optimal. At my gym it is a regular thing for somebody to do pull-ups and pushups as part of their lifting routine. Another excellent body weight exercise seen is dips. This is considered the squat for the upper body. Years ago, I would benchpress, isolate my triceps, and then do dips. The results were outstanding. My physical power and stamina were beyond my contemporaries. 

As to which exercise style is better comes down to your goals and how you best like to train. I am not going to tell you that weights are better as I’ve used both techniques. Each method fills and filled a specific need at that time.

Selecting the load you use is entirely based on you. Use a weight that makes you do just less than the number of repetitions you are aiming for. Keep at it until you can perform the number of repetitions you have selected. That is, try to pick a weight that will allow you to get close to three sets of 10 reps. When you can complete 10 reps across all sets then increase the weight by 10%. 

A balanced routine is one that will work your body completely and keep push muscles worked as equally well as pull muscles. Such a program or routine will ideally include the following five areas: 

Aerobic Futness

Strength Training

Core Exercises

Balance Training

Flexibility and Stretching

Schedule your workouts so that you have enough time to fully recover before lifting again. Not recovering between sessions can lead to a condition called over training. This is when you are breaking muscle tissue faster than your body can recover and rebuild. Signs of this include:

Increased Muscle Pain

Injuries

Getting Weaker not Stronger

If you find your fitness levels decreasing improve your diet with more protein and carbohydrates or increase the off days between exercising. 

Warming up your muscles is always advised. Take some time to get the blood pumping prior to undertaking the full workload. By doing a target exercise with light weights you increase joint lunrication. This, of course, protects your joints from excess wear and tear. This will also get blood moving through the target muscles. It primes them for the heavy excertion you are planning.

Use proper equipment for your safety and health. Form is the actual movement you perform the exercise in. Many lifts seem simple, almost elementary. There are, however, details that you must be aware of. Going through the proper form for all of the exercises you may use woul be chapters in a book. Thankfully, there are a plethora of quick videos and articles available for free that will give you all the details you need. I have also detailed the squat in the piece linked here (https://famfitfun.blogspot.com/2020/07/squats-and-knees-training-legs-is.html?m=1).

Before you begin any new routine endure that you are capable of withstanding the stresses involved. Talk to your doctor about what you’re planning. It is better to know where your overall health line is than to push your luck.

Common Injuries and Treatments

We are into the second week of Tabatas. We all know what muscle soreness is and what is not, whether you are new to physical training or not. I wanted to take a little time to cover some of the more common calisthenic related injuries and how to treat them.

I am not a physician, sports therapist, nor a trainer. I am an athlete with a long resume of training, training mistakes, and injuries. I was a professional research writer for the government for 12 years, 10 in the military (Active and Reserve and a few as a contractor). That being said, if you have any injury related pain, GO AND TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR.

For those of you who don’t trust the medical and pharmaceutical industry, because they only make money when we get sick or injured, let’s get started.

COMMON INJURIES

With calisthenics, there is far less risk of injury than of a weight dropping on you, or doing a movement with absolutely injurious form. Even using machines to isolate a muscle group can cause painful injuries to joints. With bodyweight-only exercises, our bodies move more naturally. We find our groove faster and easier. There are still injuries to be had. The two most common are pattern overload and a muscular imbalance that causes a tit in the lumbo-pelvic girdle.

The two most Pattern Overload, as explained at T-Nation, is one cause of joint pain. You could also call this overuse of pattern movement or repetitive stress The same thing can happen with other joints.

Quarterbacks throw passes in the range of hundreds of thousands to the million range, causing shoulder and elbow injuries. Tennis players get elbow and knee injuries. We have mentioned carpal tunnel syndrome. Runners often develop knee injuries, as do soldiers in the infantry who spend weeks on end conducting long foot patrols with one or two hundred pounds of gear on their backs, not to mention the back problems they develop in the process, too. These are examples of Pattern Overload.

The military, by the way, has a very skewed view on doing physical training. Just as an FYI, folks, the Army and Navy, having served in both, I can say this about both of them. They will insist that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing the absolute same exercise daily. Do it the same way. Every day. Day after day. The number of soldiers I have seen develop confirmed shoulder injuries by just doing the one standard type of push-up leaves me shaking my head. So, how does one deal with pattern overload? Grunt Candy (a handful of 800mg Motrin washed down with a Red Bull and coffee)? No, not if you have any intention of keeping your kdneys. Here are the two things you need for prevention:

1. Stretch and warm up/cool-down, before and after your workout. This gives your body time to adjust and move blood and nutrients into the regions that you will be stressing. This should take no less than 10 minutes.

2. Change the manner in which you are doing the exercise. There are many different types of push-ups. Diamonds, wide spaced, and turning your hands to different angles to change the direction of stress and the muscles involvement. Pull-ups and chin-ups engage muscles differently, too. Vary hand width. Switch it up as much as you can. Even try throwing a towel over the bar and grabbing each end to do your pull-ups. This is a fantastic way to firm up your grip if you’re into grappling. Keep your training fresh and creative to avoid the mental rut and Pattern Overload.

Muscular Imbalances occur when one muscle group around a joint is trained to be stronger than the other muscle groups around that joint. The result is pain and injury. The most common areas where this happens that I am familiar with are the hips and pelvic girdle and in the shoulders.

The technical term for the region we are talking about is the lumbo-pelvic hip girdle. It’s where the lower lumbar region of the spine connects to the hip girdle. That should be the most technical we get in terminology.

By using treadmills exclusively or too frequently, the muscles and tendons at the front of your hips and hip flexors getting most use. This is because the motorized belt is assisting in bringing your legs back while you are using the muscles and tendons in and around the hip flexors to lift and bring your legs forward. It is this mechanical assist from the moving belt that effectively eliminates use of your glutes and anterior muscles & tendons around the hip girdle.

Over time this muscular offset will create a tilt in the pelvis. This tilt leads to increasing pain in the lower lumbar region.

How these injuries occur is really quite simple and, thankfully, so is avoiding them. The treadmill is a really convenient training device to have. You live in an apartment or a condo and don’t have a place to go running, or maybe your gym doesn’t have an attached running track. Whatever it is, you have the best access to a treadmill.

Treating

Treating these injuries takes nothing more than patience and time.

1. Use a Lacrosse Ball to deeply massage the injured area. You don’t need to spend $30 or even $20 dollars on some shiny plastic vibrating thingy from the electronic gadget store at the mall. You can, if you want, but it’s not necessary. You could save a few bucks by just getting a lacrosse ball. Use it by pressing it as deeply into the sore or injured areas as you are comfortable with and roll it around. Press it between your back and the wall to hit those hard to reach places, too.

2. Sometimes, using wraps like lifting straps or ace bandages may be useful in supporting the injured joint until healed and back to full strength. What that feels like and what that level is will be up to you and your physician. 3. Use the R-I-C-E acronym to treat pain and injuries. This means Rest Ice Compression Elevation during the first 72 hours after the injury.

From my own experience and what I have read these should be the best and the worst of the injuries you face. No guarantee on this. There will always be someone who makes it happen...maybe they blow an ACL or tear something or were recovering from a previous injury. If you are concerned about a pain or these tips are not helping, see a professional without any further delay.

From the No-Frills-No-Cost-No-Excuses Gym, Train Hard. Train Smart. Train for life!

Explosive!

     One of the points relating to the Tabata Challenge that we have not discussed is the tempo at which we should be doing these. That is a point I wish to rectify here and now. It is important and it will make a difference in your training, strength, and stamina.

      Joe Weider is the Father of Modern Bodybuilding. His creativity, intelligence, curiosity, and determination paved the way for many of the greatest. Lou Ferigno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu. Not to mention the hordes of athletes who train to day using the principles he developed without ever knowing who came up with these ideas.
      For this month's challenge, we are using Weider principle #27. This principle states that muscle contractions should be done as quickly as possible and the extension at a more normal speed. What this means and looks like is this:
     Push-ups; lower your chest as close to the ground/floor as you can without touching it doing so at a speed that takes two seconds. When you press against the floor to raise your body up do so explosively. It's as if you are trying to do a clapping push -up,  but not quite. This explosiveness results in more strength in less time. Studies have proven this. Time has held this as one of Joe Weider's principles. If it didn't work it wouldn't be in his list.
     You can do pull-ups with the same explosiveness. If doing free-hanging pull-ups with that much force limits you to one or two, it's not going to accomplish much. In this case, you could benefit from elastic bands to assist with the explosive reps for the first two sets. Then, lose the straps and do the best you can for the other 6 sets in the Tabata. If that means you’re doing cheats by hopping up to get your up over the bar, then so be it. Get yourself up over the bar and hold it for at least one second before beginning your decent. The decent should take about two seconds. Not that it will destroy the universe if you are unable to hold that pace. You are, after all, employing some intense techniques to really burn out your muscles. Another option might be having a friend help you up over the top so you can focus on the negative portion. There's nothing wrong with that.
     Employ explosiveness and enjoy newfound strength.
     Train daily. Train hard. Be strong.