Beyond Bodyweight: 5 life-changing benefits of calisthenics training

If you haven’t noticed I am a big fan of calisthenics. In fact, it’s been my only form of strength training for over three years now, and it’s really catapulted my fitness to a new level.

So in this article I’m going to try my best to convince you to also incorporate calisthenics into your training regimen by giving you 5 reasons why you should train calisthenics. Hopefully by the end of this article you’ll be convinced and ready to take your own fitness to another level.

1) It gives you fun goals to strive towards

One of the biggest problems I see when it comes to fitness is motivation. Its true that some people really enjoy going to the gym and lifting weights, but plenty of other people get tired of the monotony of doing a bunch of sets and reps.

This is where calisthenics comes in, because you can now start focusing your fitness on learning specific skills that just so happen to require strength, balance, concentration, etc. So learning how to do a handstand pushup, for example, may be genuinely more enjoyable for some people because it's something that can keep your committed to your fitness journey without thinking about it as training or working out. Instead you're just trying to learn fun and interesting skills.

For me there’s something more fulfilling about training for months building up your strength, your balance, your coordination, and fluidity in your movements to ultimately be able to do a 90 degree pushup or a front lever. It takes a different level of focus to move your whole body through space.

Also when you practice calisthenics skills, you’re still resistance training, so W\when you spend time practicing skills you’ll naturally build muscle without even trying. If you pay close attention you'll notice that almost anyone you see doing advanced calisthenics is extremely lean and shredded.

It’s mainly because the months of practice to be able to do a particular movement has naturally built the muscles necessary to successfully do so.

This is a great segue into the next benefit of calisthenics…

2) Getting ripped is a natural part of the process

If you do calisthenics one of the most important factors that you’ll want to pay attention to is your relative strength which is basically a measure of how strong you are compared to how heavy you are. Since calisthenics is all about moving your body through space in gravity-defying ways, you’ll want to minimize any body mass that doesn’t contribute to strength while simultaneously maximizing muscle.

In other words, being lean is a pre-requisite for advancement, and it just so happens that you will develop a pretty decent aesthetic as a result.

Progressing to advanced level calisthenics without being lean is like trying to make it into the NBA and not being tall. It’s doable but it’s unnecessarily difficult.

So as you graduate from doing pushups and pullups to more advanced movements, you’ll need to cut body fat while building or maintaining muscle mass. And if you have specific skills that you’re working towards, you have a sort of north star that will help to motivate you to stick to your diet and training plan.

This is really important because I think the hardest part about changing body composition to be leaner is the mental aspect. A lot of time the “why” or the reason for wanting to get leaner just isn’t strong enough to keep a person motivated over the long run.

When you’re trying to level up your calisthenics skills, your fitness is not solely attached to superficial goals like aesthetics, but its also attached to the joy and fulfillment that you get from unlocking new skills that most people are not capable of doing.

As you get leaner and more muscular you’re no longer simply losing weight or building muscle, but you’re also seeing tangible progress in your ability to complete physical movements. So I think calisthenics is a good way to keep your motivation high and to keep your sights set on progress rather than feeling like you’re just going through the motions to finish a workout.

Speaking of paying closer attention to your body composition, and the mental challenges that come along with it, the third reason for doing calisthenics is....

3) Cognitive and meditative benefits through strengthened mind and body connection

With calisthenics, having strength is not enough. You may be strong enough to do a handstand pushup, but that doesn’t mean you can do it. This is because it also requires intense mental focus to maintain balance and be in full control of every part of your body all while exerting yourself to lift your body weight in very difficult ways.

This is the kind of focus that puts us into a flow state where everything else that’s happening outside of our minds and bodies ceases to exist for that moment. You have to turn off your thoughts about everything else that’s happening around you as you focus on what you are doing with your body.

So in a way its like a form of meditation where you’re making space inside of your mind to be attuned to your body and present in the moment.

I think most of us know that almost any physical activity translates to improved cognitive functioning. As the brain coach Jim Kwik says, “when the body moves, the brain grooves.” Adding the elements of extreme focus, balance, and being present to strength training, in my opinion, provides a full suite of benefits to strengthen your brain and your connection with your sense of self.

4) It promotes self-reliance and confidence

Lately I’ve been on this self-reliance kick. As humans we all rely on other people for one thing or another, but a lot of things in life come from within, and calisthenics in a way is a physical manifestation of the self-reliance principle.

When you leverage your own bodyweight for resistance training you are in a sense encouraging yourself to be creative and resourceful enough to find solutions without outside help. Any space, a park, a hotel room, an office, or anywhere else becomes a place which, with enough creativity, can become a suitable place for training.

There’s a psychological benefit to knowing that you are capable of getting a high quality strength training session in with no need for a gym, or for equipment because it translates to other areas of life where you may think you need things to do something, but you really can continue on without that thing.

It highlights the fact that we use a lot of external things as a crutch that we think we need to accomplish life’s tasks rather than simply being a tool that’s nice to have and enhances our lives. Calisthenics is a reminder that we are already fully equipped for life’s challenges with most of our capabilities coming from within. We realize that external sources of gratification like validation from others or material objects are helpful at times, but not required for progress.

What’s more is that the act of practicing something that is really difficult, and eventually unlocking new skills is a huge confidence booster that shifts your mind state from the self-limiting beliefs that you can’t do something, towards more self-actualizing believes that you can achieve anything with persistence, effort, and time.

I remember the first time I tried doing a front lever, and I figured I’m just not cut out for it. I thought there’s no way I’m going to ever be strong enough to do this. But after 8 months of consistent effort, something happened. I one day found myself being able to do front levers practically in my sleep.

Overcoming challenges in calisthenics has translated to other areas of my life where I previously would have just told myself that “it’s going to be way too difficult to try… it’ll be wasted effort.” I know for a fact that I can do a lot of things that I previously thought was impossible for me, from achieving financial independence to learning a foreign language and everything in between.

5) Bodyweight training travels very well

This one is for anyone who travels often, and especially for those that travel internationally.

Traveling is one of the main culprits for people when it comes to getting knocked off of their fitness routines. It becomes easier to make excuses for yourself because you may have the added hurdle of not having ready access to a gym. Or maybe you’re staying in a hotel with one of those gyms that only have a couple of treadmills and a kettlebell, if you’re lucky.

You don’t need access to a gym or equipment, so you have the freedom and knowledge to improvise a workout anywhere. This eliminates any reason for making up excuses as to why you can’t workout when you’re in a different city or country. Hotel rooms, park benches, and even trees provide more than enough to build an amazing workout, but if you do like to use equipment then you can easily bring a set of gymnastic rings, or some mini parallettes and you’re good to go.

Now whenever I’m in a foreign country, I’ll either do a workout in the hotel room or Airbnb if I’m short on time, or I’ll head to a regular park or a calisthenics park. I’m sure it isn’t the case everywhere in the world but I find that calisthenics parks are fairly easy to come by in most cities outside of the US.

I’ve had the pleasure of working out in parks all over the world, especially in Europe. In fact, when I was in Berlin, I don’t think I was ever more than an 10 or 15 minute walk away from a calisthenics park, so I had a great time being outdoors with other people who are also training and improving themselves, and being able to train in that kind of environment really adds to my immersive experience whenever I travel to different places.

But no matter where you chose to work out, the exciting part is that you don’t need to go through the hassle of trying to find a gym, and then the gym might not even have the right equipment for you if you depend on equipment for your workouts.