What Calisthenics is…

Calisthenics in essence, is body weight training. These are movements that have the intention of exercise without added weight or equipment.

The word calisthenics comes from the ancient Greek words kalos, which means "beauty", and sthenos, meaning "strength". It is the art of using one's body weight and qualities of inertia as a means to develop one's physique.

When and how was the term Calisthenics popularized….

The word Calisthenics was coined in 1842 when “gymnastics suitable for girls” became a “thing”. Calisthenics was widely practiced in girls boarding schools until the mid-1900’s when sports and other exercises became mandated in schools.

Calisthenics took a backseat for a long time as weightlifting and sports became popular.  The idea of Calisthenics has never left, but the word seems to have made a comeback in the past few years.

History of Calisthenics in the USA….

• Industrial Revolution began around 1760
  • Transition from manual production to machines
  • Changing trends in the way people worked, lived and moved
  • More people became sedentary
  • Intentional fitness methods arose. Staying fit, healthy, and ready to serve in battle remained important
• Catherine Beecher developed the first calisthenics program in US schools in 1823. Specifically focusing on exercise programs for school aged girls.
  • At the same time, an influx of European immigrants coming to the USA brought their gymnastic and callisthenic culture to the Country.
  • 1824, German scholar Charles Beck opened the first gymnasiums in Massachusetts. It was open to the public and also hosted school gymnastics programs.
  • One notable club founder, Dudley Sargent, opened many gyms and even challenged the view that women were weak and prone to fainting by encourage freedom of dress and vigorous activity for girls and women.
• The rise of “modern” fitness that we think of today (weightlifting, weightloss, bodybuilding) began at the beginning of the 1900’s. By the time the 1960’s rolled in, plates, and bars were the most common in exercise routines.
• Even though body weight training declined in popularity, US programs such as the US Military and school physical education programs continued to base fitness tests off of body weight exercises such as push ups, pull ups, and running.
  • Army Physical Fitness Test: Run 2 miles in 13 minutes or less (6.5 minute miles), 75 push ups, 80 sit ups,
• Presidential Fitness test in school
  • 1953, New York Professor Dr. Hans Kraus warned that children were losing muscle tone because of the “affluent” lifestyle of 20th century children. He also showed that US children were less fit than their European counterparts.
  • President Eisenhower created the President’s Council on Youth Fitness in 1956
  • President Kennedy’s administration developed a physical fitness curriculum for schools.
  • 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration created a national fitness survey, and in 1966 created the Presidential Fitness Challenge for schools. This included throwing a softball, a broad jump, a 50 yard dash, and a 600 meter walk.
  • People such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Drew Brees, and Dominique Daws sit on the committee of the Presidential Fitness Challenge.
  • To qualify for the President’s Challenge Fitness award today, students must fall into the 85th percentile in all five of the test’s activities. For a 15-year-old girl, that means finishing 38 crunches in a minute, running an eight-minute mile, the shuttle run, two pull-ups, a 10-second shuttle run (short sprint) and reaching 8 inches past her feet in a V-Sit Reach.
  • The Physical Fitness Test graduated high school in 2003, when the Council, under George W. Bush, introduced the Adult Fitness Challenge. Bush’s Council also added the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA), which recognized a regular fitness routine instead of a one-shot test.
  • Since Obama took office, First Lady Michelle Obama added another initiative to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition. Her movement to end childhood obesity, Let’s Move, does not affect the Physical Fitness Test, but it helps introduce healthy foods and more physical fitness into the nation’s schools.
• Today, there is a rise in the popularity of “street sports” is on the rise in the form of Parkour, urban solo climbing, highwire walking, streetball, streethockey, and freerunning are all forms of calisthenic exercises.
• There has also been a rise in adult gymnastics and mobility. More and more adults are turning away from weights and rigid routines toward freedom of body movement, agility, and purposeful fitness.

Common exercises….

Lunges, Jumping Jacks, Bodyweight squats, squat jumps, sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, planks, hyperextensions,

Here are a few links to the history of fitness and a few hundred body weight exercises:

Over 200 Calisthenics Exercises

History of Fitness

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The pelvic floor is targeted in this episode to help understand what it is and how exercising it can help improve a variety of problems from back pain to Erectile Dysfunction! 

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ZHealth is a brain based training system that targets and fixes dysfunctional movement. Using a variety of mobility drills Zhealth is unlike any other fitness certification and training system out there.

Drew recently got certified in their essentials course and he shares what he learned and how it is influencing his training.

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Attainable Fitness is a term we have been using lately. We use it to describe what types of things you might be looking for from your fitness if you're not a fitness model or work in the fitness industry.

We also talk about the fitness industry and supplements, how fitness models work and some exercises you might have missed.

We are very excited to announce our 10 minute yoga series. We have put together some great, easy yoga videos for you to enjoy on Youtube. These videos are great for the beginner or as a warm up or even your workout for the day!

Check out the latest one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofiO--FCQgo

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Doctors have given some odd advice over the years… Take these for example:

1. The Salisbury Steak Diet. People we told only to eat Salisbury steak to cure their sickness.
2. The Tongue Patch Diet. A doctor will sew a plastic patch to your tongue making it excruciatingly painful to eat solid foods.
3. Bicycle Face. Women were warned not to ride a bike because it would cause undesirable physical attributes such as a red puffy face and extended chin.
4. The Spinning Chair. A study took participants and spun them in various directions with the goal of curing brain injuries and mental illness.

Also on the show we discuss something called “Alien Yoga” and give a few fitness tips.

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Sleep is our favorite thing to do and we discuss what happens when you sleep and why you should do it! Also why it is important for athletes and gym goers to sleep plenty. 

Show Notes: 

Stages of Sleep

Stage 1 -  Non-Rapid Eye Movement 1

• The in-between (the upside down)
• This stage is linked to internalizing body movements during the day.

Stage 2 – Non-Rapid Eye Movement 2

• Onset of full sleep
• Disengaged from surroundings

Stage 3 – Non-rapid Eye Movement 3

• Deepest sleep
• Hormone release
• Human Growth hormone
• Blood rushes to muscles where Muscle restoration and development takes place
• Liver continues to detoxify your body and send vital nutrients to where they need to go
• Less adrenaline is pumping through your body
• Interesting fact: children with sleep apnea are usually shorter and smaller than other kids their age. Once their tonsils are removed and they can breathe normally while sleeping, their body finally starts getting the human growth hormones that they need and they grow at an incredible rate.

Stage 4 – Rapid Eye Movement

• Active brain
• Dream State
• REM has been shown to have restorative effects on the brain. Useless memories are deleted and important ones are imprinted into long term memory.

Hormone Release during sleep

• Human Growth Hormone is naturally produced by your own body. This hormone allows you to become stronger, faster, and better in the gym.
• The stress hormone Cortisol is suppressed. High levels of cortisol in your system leads to high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, diabetes and more.
• Prolactin is released. Prolactin is an anti-inflammatory and is important in joint recovery 

What Happens when you don’t sleep well 

• Hunger hormones aren’t well regulated, because you didn’t sleep well. Meaning you are more likely to crave high calorie, maybe not so healthy food.  This could result in weight gain.
• Sleep deprivation decreases your levels of leptin, which is a hormone that makes you feel full. It also increases your level of ghrelin, which increases appetite.
  • This makes sense when you look at the way we evolved. During the day we were always out gathering, hunting and preparing food. At night we would always shut ourselves away from danger. Our bodies had to suppress hunger.

• Circadian rhythm controls the release of all hormones. If the circadian rhythm is off, your hormones go whack
• Without REM, the hippocampus of the brain does not function properly. Causing the Amygdala to have to work more. The amygdala is associated with rage, irritability and moodiness.
• When you don’t sleep well, HGH doesn’t get released in the numbers it should. Refer back to the children with sleep apnea
• Your metabolism slows way down. It basically goes into survival mode. Some researchers think that when you don’t sleep, your stress hormones (cortisol) continue create a “fight-or-flight” response in your body. Because the cortisol is not being suppressed by sleep. And when you are in fight-or-flight response, your body saves as much as it can.  Thus the slowed metabolism.
• Long term bad sleep will significantly decrease your reflexes and quick thinking skills.

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Kerstin got sick and tired of being sick and tired and decided to do something about it! She joined a Boot Camp program and immediately fell in love with the results and continued to watch the pounds a fall off and the inches float away. She talks about her journey and tells us everything! 

Topic: How pain or tightness can lead to poor performance. 

We talk about how doing a super slow 60 second rep can boost strength and performance. 

This is a method of training I have heard a few times, first at the Colorado Springs Human Performance and Rehabilitation clinic and then again in a book called “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle. The basic concept is to slow a movement way down taking an entire minute to complete a single rep. During this rep you are to take notice of how you feel throughout the movement and take note of anything interesting you might find. You might notice your feel tight or weak at a certain part of the move and you can then put together a training program to address any problems to find.

The first step is to pick a movement to perform a 60 second rep and use a weight that is relatively easy for you to perform. Usually a weight that you can do 15 reps for multiple sets is a good starting point. If it feels too heavy during a super slow rep lower the weight and try again.

The second step is to perform your 60 second rep. Aiming for a full 30 seconds on each half of the movement. If you’re doing a deadlift for example it would take you 30 seconds to stand up with the weight and another 30 seconds to lower the weight back down to the floor. The best way to track this is using your phone timer or looking at a clock. It is pretty hard to count seconds as you are doing this so some sort of timer will come in very handy.

Finally the last step is to concentrate on how you feel during the rep. What we have found is that certain parts of the movement are harder than others and sometimes we notice our body tends to do weird things like are knees might com inward during a squat or a rouge elbow might flare out during a bench press.

Finding and pinpointing these little things that happen can make a world of difference in improving once performance because you have specific weak points to work on.

Another great way to use this is in sport specific training and developing a good patter for lifting weights. Athletes use this in their training to help develop a perfect swing or skill specific to their sport. In the gym we use this to develop the perfect path of the bar so that every rep is done with precision and perfect performance.

Lastly the 60 second rep is great for building muscle and strength and you are working very hard to maintain balance throughout the movement and the time under tension your muscles are working is a very unique and challenging way to train.

Building a home gym is really easy and cheap! We discuss some of our favorite pieces of home equipment including a Kettle Bell, Pull-Up Bar, Resistance Band and Sand Bag. All together our home gym cost less than $100 and can give us a great workout in minutes. 

The key to getting the most out of your training is to have a plan and execute that plan consistently.

We’ve talked to many experts in the field of health and fitness and have come away from those conversations with some great tips that are really easy and practical to add immediately into our training programs. Over the past year we have learned so many things and we would like to take this opportunity to comb back over some of those interviews and pull out some of the highlights that we will be putting to good use this year to achieve our goals.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of your training:

Obviously there are so any different aspects to training and to say that one is more important than the other would be a mistake so keep that in mind as you read these next tips.

1. Pick a goal – This is something that might take some time at first but once you know where you’re going it will be so much easier to get there. If you don’t know what your fitness goals are I suggest trying some different gyms, trainers and coaches to find something that you enjoy and that you will keep doing. There are so many different options that there is something for everyone from sport specific training to recreational sports to personal competitions that no matter what you should be able to find something. I talk to so many people who think that the only path is burpess and high intensity workouts that make you throw up but the truth is that playing basketball with friends or slowly lifting weights with a specific program would be so much more effective because you can get a great workout that doesn’t feel like a workout and have fun too. The only program that works is the one that you will do and be constant with it so take some time and try some different things and find what’s right for you.
2. Focus on efficiency – In this case I’ve broken it into 5 categories as follows:

1. No Pain.
2. Breathing.
3. Precision.
4. Posture.
5. Relax.

We have talked about these before in previous posts and if you would like to see the full breakdown please find it HERE. However for this I will give you the basic breakdown. No pain means you move without and pain and if you do feel pain you should stop and asses the problem before you continue. Breathing should be something you consider before watch movement and not an afterthought. Move with precision, meaning only moving as much or as far as you need to perform your exercise. Your posture needs to be correct to perform each movement and finally relax and let go of unnecessary tightness in muscles that are not being utilized in the current move.

3. Use the Minimal Effective Load – We also did a very lengthy post about what this is and again we will give you the cliff notes but this basically means only do as much as you need to achieve the desired outcome and nothing more. In practice this will relate to overtraining and doing more than you need to. The body is amazing in how it responds to exercise and you don’t need to do as much as you might think to achieve some great results. If you’re always super so to the point you can’t walk straight or you muscles hurt every time you move them then there is a good chance you’re over training and would see better results if you throttled it back a little bit to give your body a chance to recover.

4. Slow things way down – Slowing down a movement will help you see the movement in separate chunks and that will allow you to see if you’re weak at a specific part of the move so you can develop a training program to address those weaknesses. Say for instance while you’re doing a really slow squat you notice your knees are caving inward you can add some in some supplementary exercises to address that issue. You can slow down every single exercise from squats to bench press to bicep curls. We’ve used this in our training and have found that starting out with 10 second reps and increasing that time to 30 second reps over time seems to work well.

5. Treat each exercise as a whole body Movement - The entire body’s connected from your head to your toes and you should treat it as such. When doing any exercise take note of what your whole body is doing and see if your wasting performance in unnecessary areas. From example when you’re doing a bench press, though this is mostly a chest exercise, every part of your body is involved. Your feet are planted firmly on the ground to balance you on the bench. Your core is engaged. Your back is firm on the bench and though your arms and chest will fatigue there are many other muscles involved and your whole body it ultimately connected so each piece is important.

6. Mobility and Performance Drills – This is similar to what is known as a traditional “warm up.” In this case I’m talking about taking the time to prep your body for the workout of the day and do specific drills that will improve your performance. On leg day you should do ankle, knee and hip mobility drills to start the day. On squat day you should incorporate a whole body being sure to include some spinal flexion drills and arm circles. Also in between sets you can do some simple drills to keep things moving well and working properly. Taking 10 minutes before a workout and 30 seconds in between sets can make a huge difference in your recovery and overall soreness and performance.

These are just a few of the things we have learned to help you get the most our of your training and to get the most out of this information please listen to the show and get our full thoughts and some great tips to achieve your fitness goals this year!

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