Can You Get Big With Calisthenics?
Wanna put on some serious size and become brutally strong?
I bet you think you need to waste money on a gym membership. Maybe even buy your own fancy equipment in order to work out from home and further limit interaction with other human beings.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
My friend, calisthenics are all you need.
Cali-what-what?!, you ask.
Calisthenics, I said!
If you don’t know what that is, calisthenics is basically the use of your body weight to exercise. That’s right, it’s nothing more than a fancy way of saying “bodyweight exercises”. As for what the exercises are that you can do with your body weight, think back to gym class and some of the sucky shit your gym teacher used to make you warm up with to kill time while they came up with what you were doing for the day at that exact moment.
Now that we have that explained, calisthenics are all you need to get big.
Just your body weight?!, you ask.
Yup!
Burpees, push-ups, pull-ups, wall sits, air squats, and all sorts of body weight exercises are going to get you big!
…or at least that’s what cultists from the body weight movement would have you believe.
They couldn’t be more wronger!
Can you get big with calisthenics?
While “big” is a subjective term that lacks clearly defined parameters, it’s generally used to convey that someone has a high degree of muscularity, such as a bodybuilder or individual with a physique one or two tiers below. The answer to whether or not such a body and the strength associated with it can be achieved with calisthenics is a resounding “no” because the first law of building muscle and strength is what?
Correctomundo!
The first law of building muscle and strength is progressive overload, that of gradually increasing the amount of stress placed on the body, which in turn prompts the desired adaptation of you becoming bigger and stronger. This increase in muscle size and strength can, in a way, be said to be a defense mechanism because these adaptations allow the body to better handle the stress the next time it’s exposed to it, which is why you have to continually work the muscles harder than the last time to make progress.
While you can very easily satisfy the volume requirement of progressive overload by performing more sets and reps, body weight exercises are severely wont of the other half of the equation, which is weight.
See, once accessories like a 40 lbs weight vest and 2 lbs ankle weights offer no more resistance to make an exercise harder, it becomes more difficult to induce hypertrophy as opposed to a barbell where it’s possible to increase the external load to infinity or a machine where you have the ability to adjust the pin and add plates to make the load even heavier once the stack is no longer enough.
Because there’s a limit to the load that can be placed on the body with calisthenics only, it clearly has a limit on the amount of muscle mass and strength one can gain past a certain point, and that point is well short of HYOOOGE, bruh!
That is, of course, unless one keeps eating and increasing their body weight in order to increase the resistance.
There’s a big drawback to the use of one’s own body weight as resistance, especially if you’re trying to get big. That is, if your definition of “big” is the appearance of looking big, which can’t be said to describe almost everybody who preaches the exclusive use of bodyweight training and are held up by others in the circle jerk as looking big when they’re really not.1e.g. Frank Medrano, Chris Heria, Hannibal Lanham (a/k/a Hannibal For King), etc. Ripped?2That’s mainly a product of one’s diet. Okay. Jacked? Maybe. But big? Ha!
Now, while calisthenics certainly isn’t the best option for hypertrophy when it comes to putting on considerable size or gaining brutal strength, it definitely has its place. For those who don’t have any appreciable experience with resistance training, bodyweight exercises are often enough to build initial strength, as well as muscle definition when paired with a calorie-restrictive diet because calisthenics help burn fat by increasing the heart rate. If you’re already physically fit or lift weights regularly, calisthenics are an activity that can be done on rest days because of their low-impact nature on the body. Another attractive feature is improved muscular endurance, or the body’s resistance to fatigue, which is beneficial for beginners and non-beginners alike. Calisthenics are also a great alternative for people who want to work out without the need for a gym or exercise equipment, such as when traveling on vacation or instances when you can’t leave home. Calisthenics has all of those things going for it. But when it comes to reaching swoleness?
Ha, there’s no better choice than traditional weightlifting!
Glossary: barbell, bodybuilder, calisthenics, diet, exercise, exercise equipment, gym, gym membership, hypertrophy, muscle, physique, rest day, ripped, swole, work out
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