Do Calisthenics Build Muscle?

In short, yes! Calisthenics is particularly helpful for gaining muscle with little to no equipment. 

Particularly, you can see quick gains in the upper body and can help if you have been troubled by joint pain or other injuries.

Muscle acquisition can be massive, but does vary depending upon many factors.

Your biology, experience and effort all contribute!

Why use Calisthenics to build muscle?

There are many reasons you may want to use calisthenics to build muscle. Apart from the general health benefits of muscle gain, calisthenics also improves range of movement, weight management, boned density and reduces risks of chronic disease.

All of this with reduced risk of injuries compared to hitting heavy weights in the gym.

What’s not to love then? Well, you may not see the massive gains you could see in a gym, but those gains have significant risks.

With that said, lets move on.

How do I gain muscle with calisthenics?

Building your muscles is still possible without the need for loaded dumbbells, machines, heavy weights, or gym memberships. The basic idea behind this is the term hypertrophy.

This essentially means “resistance.”

Resistance is essentially the weight the muscle holds, which may come in the form of dumbbells or even your own body.

Lets dive in below so we can learn ways we can use our body weight to build muscle!

1. Speed Up Your Movement

The goal of getting hypertrophied is to do enough damage to your muscle fibers to get bigger and stronger. Doing it quicker would generate energy, drain the muscle, and potentially make it look like a stamina strategy. However, this will not break down the muscle fibers for the necessary number, so no sense of hypertrophy will occur.

To correct this, concentrate on your movement. Say you are doing five push-ups; perform with five seconds up and another five seconds down. Successfully executing this and speeding your movement will allow more damage to your muscle fibers and increase hypertrophy.

2. Change the Angle

In terms of calisthenics, you ought to adjust the angle to make the workout a little more challenging. For instance, there are three different angles of a regular push up, natural, incline, and decrease. There will only be massive muscle injury if the workout is challenging enough for you.

If you can do more than 20 regular push-ups and are not exhausted, you can now turn to another stage and try doing decline push-ups. The idea is to promote muscle development with vigorous workouts without reaching 12 reps. This is the limit served because exceeding this point would be an endurance technique.

3. Muscle Tension

The full muscle injury occurs at the end of the movement toward gravity. At the end of each concentric and eccentric movement, we suggest pausing for 1-3 seconds. This can inflict more muscle damage and, after healing, which, in return, develops bigger muscles.

4. Rest Time

It is not good for a hypertrophy strategy to make the muscle completely heal in sets. As much as you can, it would help if you had more muscle trauma, so it is ideal for resting about 45 secs. Progression in this aspect is achieved by minimizing the rest time as you move along, decreasing from 90 seconds to 60, 45, or 30 seconds.

5. Periodization

Have you ever heard of “muscle adaptation”? This happens when the body gets used to the workout and no longer gets affected by it. You will need to change the schedule or move to another variant if it happens, which is, for example, aided one arm push-ups as a substitution for decline push-ups.

Changing the reps and the sets is another means of periodizing the schedule. The reps and sets of the hypertrophy training schedule usually tend to be strong. Because of this, it will be better than it can move from hypertrophy (8-12 reps X 6-8 sets) to power (4-6 reps X 5 sets) in push ups by working out on each fitness routine for 3-4 weeks.

Can you gain weight from calisthenics?

Yes, you can gain weight from calisthenics. For one, muscles take part of your total body weight. This means that if you successfully build your muscles, you will weigh more than you did before you engaged in calisthenics as a way of muscle building.

Work on the correct form of each calisthenic exercise and progressive overload so you can build muscle and gain weight. The workout, however, should be accompanied by a balanced diet. Focus on the diet and your daily calorie intake, and consider increasing your daily calories by 200–300 to gain proper exercise weight.

Are 20 minutes of calisthenics enough?

No one size fits all when talking about the ideal duration for a calisthenics exercise. You should be your judge and see whether a 20-minute workout is already enough or not. However, if you want to squeeze in your calisthenics exercise within this time, make sure to target the right muscle groups throughout your routine.

Others perform their routines based on their capacities and the goals that they set for themselves. If you think you are not entirely satisfied by the end of the 20-minute mark, go ahead and extend your workout until you feel good and satisfied.

Conclusion

Calisthenics effectively builds muscle as a form of exercise that has little to no involvement of tools and equipment. You need to find the right exercises in your target muscle groups and build upon them. Muscle building through calisthenics is not for the weak-hearted because you will always need to push yourself out of your limits. Click here if you want to know how strong you can get with calisthenics!