Health is a massive part of my life. I think the day that I stop being active is the day that I give up. Endorphins can be a good thing to form an addiction to, if any addiction can be such.
I used to be a big runner and ran upwards of 5-6 miles a day, supplemented with weights. After injuries lead to my fourth knee surgery, my orthopedist broke the terrible news: If I wanted to walk into my old age, I should give up running. I know I am not the only one to go through something like this, but it truly is a disorienting feeling to have such a staple of life ripped away. There was no voluntary ramp down with thoughts of "I am getting too old for this, I should slow down" coupled with an exploration of other activities that might do the trick. It was a scrambling to figure out how to fill a sudden void.
Calisthenics
However, this even reset my viewfinder on health. While I would give up a lot to go back to running, this forced me to realize that health goals are malleable and there are about a million ways to stay healthy. My current iteration of health goals revolves around calisthenics. I used to live in Germany where it is much more widely practiced. When I moved there, it was about 3 months post surgery and I was still only doing weight lifting (which I found fairly boring at the time) and stationary cycling. I saw a guy bring some parallettes to the gym and bust out some handstand pushups.
It was SO. COOL.
After my workout that day, I came home and furiously googled handstand pushups and workout plans for them and stumbled upon the world of calisthenics. I was pretty hooked. I worked my way to some early gains and functional strength and have been working on towards some skill-based holds. This was about 4 months and 1.5 years after starting, respectively:
That second handstand on the bar was a product of wondering if I could do something (a handstand on a pull up bar) and then going out one day and trying it. And yes, it scared the shit out of me. But I pushed my limits even further back, which is, of all the things in life, the thing I love most.
I did eventually get to handstand pushups and, if I say so myself, I think they made me look cooler than I actually am. Here is a recent-ish video from when I still had them in my routine:
Some Finer Points on Body Weight Workouts
The best and worst thing about calisthenics is that whatever goal you choose won't works isolated muscles groups and works many major groups together. It's the worst because that means you can't pick a lot of similar goals (90 degree push ups, planche, handstand pushups and rings handstand) and expect to make much progress; the muscle groups overlap way too much. It is much better to take a handful of goals that work disparate groups of muscle and work from there. And with how long it can take to get to one goal or another (the advanced positions can take years), this means you have to find your priorities early. What makes this very same phenomenon the best thing is that strength translates. So if you work towards a front lever, you will be well on your way to doing a dragon flag. If you can do intermediate levels of planche, stalder presses and 90 degree pushups aren't that far off.
Other difficulties are body type and build. Calisthenics has many different levels of difficulty, but the taller you are and the harder it is for you to put on mass, the more out-of-reach the advanced levels of the exercises become. If you're 6 feet tall, the only chance you'll have to get to a full planche is if you don't work legs and you're freakishly strong. That doesn't mean you can't do a straddle planche, however! Or muscleups, or handstand push ups or human flag variations, though! The benefits of the sport are still there, no matter your age or body makeup. I hit some long-term milestones after I was in my 30s (please excuse the grainy home videos):
I think I have a few years yet to eke out more progress on these exercises and see how far I can go. When my joints are trashed and my body succumbs to the decline of strength that its destined to, I will switch to something else. Because the beauty of physical health is that it comes in many, many forms and with many, many goals. I am a kid in a candy shop with it. Except obviously we would not be in a candy shop if we were trying to be healthy. Whatever. You know what I mean.
Resources
If you would like to check out more resources on calisthenics or bodyweight fitness, I highly receommend this book:
- Overcoming Gravity, second edition by Steven Low - basically the bible of calisthenics
- r/bodyweightfitness on Reddit - you'll find a lot of great info here (and Steven Low frequents this subreddit!)
