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Calisthenics: Which Calisthenics Skills To Learn First?

calithenics what to learn first featured image

After failing again and again I finally sat down. 

I felt miserable because I still couldn’t do a single muscle-up…

No matter how hard I tried or how often I trained it wasn’t working.

I just couldn’t transfer my body on top of the pull-up bar even if I had one of the best pull up bars directly attached to the wall inside my bedroom…

My pull-up bar

And the worst part was the fact that this was my second month of trying all sorts of things in order to learn it. 

So far I’ve spent hours and hours watching countless Youtube videos, reading many blog posts and trying different things. 

I even asked a couple of my workout buddies for advice on what to do but nothing I tried was working…

I was very confused because I had the strength to easily do 15 pull-ups, 40 push-ups, and about 20-25 dips.

I wasn’t that weak but I was missing something. 

  • Maybe I had to learn some other calisthenics skills first?
  • Maybe I was getting more than I can chew?

But what to do? What the hell I’m doing wrong?

I couldn’t bare 2 more months of failure. 

I had to find a solution. 

And I had to do it FAST…

Hi there, my name is Bozhidar and it this blog post I‘m going to show you what calisthenics skills you need to learn first, what to do if you get stuck and what is the fastest way to speed up your whole learning process.

Keep reading till the very end because in the next few chapters you are going to find out exactly what to learn first in calisthenics and why.

Before I show you the bodyweight movements and teach you how to do them I want to offer you something you may find incredibly useful.

In order to help my readers I’ve decided to make our massive guide “How to Start Calisthenics: The Ultimate Guide” 100% Free for a limited time.

All you need to do is enter your email below and I’m going to send it to you immediately.

Inside you will find a lot more useful tips, tricks, and step-by-step blueprints that are going to help you get faster and better results.

Here you go:

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With that out of the way, let’s answer the basic and most important question you probably currently have…

Calisthenics 101: Which Calisthenics Skills To Learn First?

Your main goal should be to master the basic bodyweight movements such as pull-ups, push-ups, dips, squats, and sit-ups until you can do at least 20.

After you have done that it’s nice to start with medium difficulty movements such as different types of static holds and explosive exercises.

You should aim to hold the isometric exercises for at least 10 seconds and have the power to do at least 10-15 explosive repetitions.

Once that’s done your goal should be to master advanced bodyweight moves such as different types of levers, handstands, human flag, muscle-ups, etc.

Trust me, it’s 100 times more easy to read all those exercises than actually do them in real life.

That’s why I highly recommend you to keep reading.

Especially if you are a complete beginner or intermediate athlete who wants to finally learn how to boost his results.

Here’s my story about how I did it…

After wasting 2 months by following free advice I found on the web and trying many different inefficient things I finally decided I’ve had enough.

Everything I did was super chaotic and I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

I’ve got the “shiny object syndrome” meaning I was always searching for that one thing that could really help me get better by ditching everything I was currently doing.

I tried multiple different things, strategies but nothing seemed to work

Because of my lack of any progress, I was feeling helpless and angry at myself because I knew I could do way better than that.

And it wasn’t only me.

During many of my outdoor workouts at my local street workout playground, I saw many people struggling with the same problem I had.

here’s the playground

Seeing all those people made me believe that learning this stuff is nearly impossible…

Luckily for me, that wasn’t the end.

After reading some more information on the internet I come to the conclusion that the biggest reason why I and the majority of people fail to learn new skills or master old ones was the lack of a good training program.

Yes, a simple workout program… yikes

The logic behind this new founding is called progressive overload.

In order for me to learn and master a new skill, I had to learn many different progressive variations of it and slowly become better and stronger until I had the power to master the complete movement.

See your new movement as a cake. In order to make it, you are going to need all the ingredients. And these ingredients are represented by all the little steps you have to make.

With my new finding, I finally had a better plan.

In order for me to get out of my plateau and keep the progress going I had to do 3 main things:

  1. Find a good calisthenics workout program based on progressive overload
  2. Make sure it has different progressive variations of each exercise 
  3. Focus on only 1 thing alone. No more lack of progress.

With my freshly made plan, I was ready. For the first time in a very long time, I was actually feeling happy. I was finally doing something about my problem.

After everything was prepared I started with my research. 

You need information, right?

My first goal was to find a good progressive workout plan for free. After finding a couple of different programs on Youtube and Google I compared them. 

Sadly they sucked

There were either too little information or the program was lacking the progressive steps I was looking for.

But I wasn’t very surprised.

That is exactly what happens when you look for “free” stuff:

 In most cases, they suck or are not enough.

Even if I am cheap I know when I would have to spend some money. 

But in order to do so, I need something to spend it on and I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Where on Earth I’m going to find a good program? Where to even start?

Because I’m not new to the web (I own a freaking website lol) I know that the majority of online programs suck. I’ve been scammed too many times in order to trust some crappy ads or sales copy. 

Golden Tip: Never, ever buy the stuff you see on late night tv commercials. They never work as promised.

With the help of my genius mind (not really – I’m pretty dumb sometimes)

I’ve come to the conclusion that my best bet is to simply ask other people who are into calisthenics. 

Maybe they may know a good calisthenics program that can help me learn new skills fast.

Solid logic, right? 

Oh man, was I right… 

The next day the weather was perfect. It was a warm and sunny day with light summer breeze. 

The ideal day for an outdoor bodyweight workout.

Once I met my usual group of calisthenics junkies the questions started flowing out of my mouth.

  • “Hey man, do you know a good calisthenics workout?”
  • “Yo bro, what is your favorite workout routine. Do you have some recommendations?”
  • “Hi, Steve, what do you think is the best bodyweight training program I can buy online?”

and a bunch of other dumb questions

Surprisingly, I had just hit the jackpot. In less than 10 minutes of asking different questions, I got the name of a good program.

It’s surprising how far can you achieve by simply asking questions…

The recommended program was called Bar Brothers The System and it cost about $40-50 bucks.

Click the link above to learn more

According to my workout buddies, this calisthenics program had everything I really needed. 

It was cheap, based on progressive overload and had step-by-step tutorials focused on different movements. It was a great way that could really help me learn a lot of the main calisthenics movements.

And that’s why I’ve decided to buy it.

But did it worked? Was it a complete waste of money?

Here’s what happened in the next few months…

What to do in order to keep learning new things in calisthenics?

I’m going to start by saying that buying this course was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made. 

As soon as I got it I began to follow all the workouts very strictly. And because of my effort, the results were not far behind.

Only after a couple of weeks of hard training, I had seriously improved my explosive power and technique. And I had done it – I finally managed to do my first muscle-up

The second my body transferred above the bar was the second I felt like a true Greek god.

During the last 2-3 months by following the course I learned a lot of new movements and gained more muscle and strength.

So in order for you to keep going forward, you must have an amazing workout plan which is strategically designed to help you progress. 

If you believe you have the knowledge to make it yourself please do so. This is one of the best things you can do.

If you are like me and are not that comfortable I highly recommend you to take a look at my Brother Brothers The System review here <<.

Sneak peek of the review

Inside my post, you will learn exactly what are you getting from this program and why it is worth it.

Yes, it’s going to cost you some money upfront but if you follow everything you are going to learn so much stuff that you will feel like a king.

This initial investment is going to be long forgotten and you will be glad you did buy it.

Whatever option you choose make sure that it is designed on progressive overload

Speaking of that remember this:

In order for you to keep the progress going, you must do new and uncomfortable things.

I remember the first time I tried to do a handstand. It was terrifying. But slowly and steadily I got out of my comfort zone and eventually learned the movement. 

Trust me, trying new things is not as scary as it seems. 

Even if you currently don’t have a clue on how to do a certain thing that doesn’t mean you should avoid it like the plague. 

Nobody is born with skills and you can learn a lot if you really want to.

Speaking of learning let’s see what is the faster way to learn new calisthenics skills.

It’s quite simple actually…

What is the fastest way to learn new things in calisthenics?

I was 15 and I just got passionate about bodyweight training. 

During that time I really wanted to build a lot of muscle. 

me doing dips

As my strength was growing and I was seeing some progress I believed that as long as I kept eating healthy foods I would become bigger and bigger.

Sadly nothing good comes from following non-backed up guesses. 

No matter how hard and often I trained I wasn’t seeing progress. 

I was stuck at 68 kg (about 130 lbs) for many weeks. At first, I thought that I wasn’t giving my best so in order to fight my problem, I decided to increase the intensity and included some new exercises.

Guess what happened next? 

Nothing. Nada. Zero.

All my strategies were failing miserably and I wasn’t getting any bigger at all. 

Only if I was a little smarter back then…

Can you see my mistake?

It was not the workouts but the food.

I didn’t have a clue about what, how much and when I should eat. 

I simply ate everything healthy I could get my hands on. Don’t get me wrong. 

I’m not saying it’s bad to eat healthy foods but if you want to gain muscle mass you are going to have to do a lot more than that.

If only I had the information back then I could save myself weeks and months of frustration, headaches and lack of results.

And that’s the reason why I believe that the best and fastest way to learn calisthenics or anything else is to have the proper knowledge. 

In our society there are 2 things you can do in order to get useful information:

  1. Test different things on your own and get experience and knowledge by trial and error.
  2. Learn from somebody more experienced than you.

Which way is faster and easier?

If you want to learn something new the best thing you can do is simply learn from somebody that has way more experience and information than you.

This is the so-called “secret” most fitness gurus talk about. 

For me, it’s just some common sense. 

But let’s get more practical than that.

You are going to love what’s coming next…

Top 3 Things You Can Do Right Now To Boost Your Calisthenics Learning Curve

If you don’t want to waste a lot of time, energy and money on useless stuff I highly recommend you to read these following 3 tips because they can be really helpful if you use them correctly.

Let’s start…

1. Have a plan

One of the best and simplest things you can do is to come up with a solid plan that is going to help you reach your goals. 

Have a solid plan

If you follow a program you already have one.

But If you don’t want to invest in a decent program you will have to come up with everything.

No matter your current situation it’s always better to have a plan. 

But do you have one?

Answer these few questions to find out:

  • How many days do you train during the week?
  • What is your monthly goal? What do you want to achieve in 30 days? Be as specific as possible.
  • In what area exactly do you want to progress?
  • Are you currently tracking your progress?
  • Do you know exactly what are you going to do for your next workout? (exercises, reps, sets, resistance, etc.)

Can you answer all those questions with solid answers?

If your answer is yes, then congratulation. You are on the right track.

If your answer is no, then you are probably missing something. Figure out which answers are giving you trouble and improve those specific areas. 

Make a quick plan about what you can do today to improve them and take action as soon as possible.

2. Invest in yourself

What is the fastest and easiest way to learn new stuff?

Practice and repetition. 

If you want to get good at pull-ups simply do a lot of pull-ups. 

If you want to learn new skills read books and articles, watch videos, buy online courses, and talk with more advanced friends.

Well not that much…

All the information you seek is already there just waiting for you to grasp it. 

So the next time when you are saying the phrase “I don’t know how” stop for a moment and think.

Is there any information about exactly that? If you believe so think how can you get it!

And please don’t forget the power of the internet.

If you have some available money that you want to invest in a decent calisthenics course I highly recommend you check out Bar Brothers The System.

One of the things you get from this program

It’s a really good program so if you want to learn more about it simply click here to read my honest review and see what exactly what you get and what you can expect from this course.

3. Get outside your comfort zone

Learning new stuff isn’t very fun. Especially in the beginning. 

Everything is going to be super hard and you are going to be scared and uncomfortable but that’s normal.

Great things are created once you embrace your fear and step outside your comfort zone.

Example:

Think of any movement you are really scared to do.

For me that movement was handstand. I was terrified that I’m going to fall backward and smash my head on the concrete.

While I was believing that I did anything on my power to stay away from it. Once I grew some balls and finally decided to give it a try against a wall.

After I’ve done the impossible I saw that it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

The sad thing is that if I haven’t got the courage to try it I would probably still be afraid to walk on my hands. 

That’s why you must find your deepest fears and crush them.

If you feel uncomfortable doing explosive clapping pull-ups do exactly that. If you are scared of backflips try and do a couple.

The things that you are most scared of are usually the things that are going to give you the best results.

So these were my top 3 tips on how to speed up your calisthenics results. 

As you can see they are simple and anyone can do them.

My advice is to pick only 1 thing and apply it in your life. 

And please, do it today!

Calisthenics: The Next Steps

You’ve reached the end, congrats! 

By now you should know exactly what calisthenics skills to learn first and why

Please use all those tips wisely and you are going to have much better and faster results than anyone else.

It is really important to keep learning and trying new things

And remember that you are going to fail a lot but don’t be discouraged. Failure is part of your journey so embrace it.

But we are not done!

In order to help you even more I’ve prepared for you 3 simple steps you can do right now that are going to guarantee you better and faster results.

Here’s what you need to do.

STEP 1:

If you already haven’t already take 3 seconds and get instant access to our FREE huge guide “How to Start Calisthenics: The Ultimate Guide

Inside you are going to find a ton of very useful things that are going to help you 10X your results.

Enter you email below and get started:

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STEP 2:

If you really want to skyrocket your results even more and are looking for a simple and working calisthenics program don’t forget to check out my Bar Brothers The System review from here <<

This is my favorite calisthenics program and I recommend it to anybody looking for a great way to master calisthenics and learn from the very best.

STEP 3:

In case you like this article you should take a few minutes and check some of other great ones as well.

Here are some of my favorite ones:

Thanks a lot for reading this article. I would be really happy if I managed to help you. 

If you have any questions and thoughts leave them in the comment section below.

And don’t forget: May the gains be with you, always,

– Bozhidar

Bozhidar

Hey there, my name is Bozhidar and I'm a certified online personal trainer with University Degree in Sports and Nutrition.

With the help of my knowledge and over 8 years of workout experience, I can help you get on the next level. I own a home gym, do calisthenics, little gymnastics, and love to ride a bike.

About me