10 Calisthenics Exercises That Build The MOST Muscle!
Choose the right calisthenics exercises and you will build muscle mass with them. Pick the wrong ones and all you’ll get is a conditioning effect at best and not much muscle growth for your hard work. In this video, I’m going to show you the best muscle building calisthenics exercises for getting a
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. Calisthenics: The ultimate manifestation of the strength and control of the human body in space. As a matter of fact, they are an irreplaceable part of a complete athletic training approach because at some point, regardless of your achievements in the weight room, you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet literally and put your body to the test in competition. Today, I’m ranking the top 10 best calisthenics exercises for helping you to build muscle, and what you won’t find here are exercises like this, or this, or this.
And while I have great respect for those that can make these exercises look so damn easy, they re missing some key components that are actually creating the opportunity for the muscle growth that you’re seeking. Now, look, I’m a big fan of calisthenics myself, incorporating them into almost every single one of my workouts. However, even the ones you see here are not going to make it to the list because for the same very reasons, they’re not going to drive the muscle growth that we’re seeking that’s relegated to the top 10 here that I’ve chosen. That being said, let’s start breaking them down one by one. And we kick the list off here with one of my favorite exercises for building muscle when it comes to the back.
And no, we’re not up to the pull up bar just yet. Instead, we do something here called the human pullover. And what this is designed to do it again is to overload the lats from the top to the bottom, from origin to insertion to build a better lat. And we’re overloading them because we’re utilizing our entire body weight. This is not an ab driven exercise.
It could be if you do it incorrectly. Instead of curling your trunk up by using your abs, you drive your body up by pulling your arms down. Think straighter arm push down to get your body up rather than lifting your pelvis into the air using your abs. If you do this exercise, guys, you will create overload instantly because of the weight of your own body. It’s an effective exercise, albeit a hard one, but it will drive muscle growth guaranteed.
Exercise num—Jesse, I hate these stupid transitions. Can I just do it my way, please? No! This is fun. Exercise number two is another one with lat involvement, but if you do this right, we’re going to turn it into a great bicep building exercise and it’s a classic chin up.
What’s great about this is it has all the components of a bicep contraction. It’s got that flexion of the shoulder. It’s got supination here of the forearm. And of course, it has deflection of the elbow as you get towards the top of the movement. But what’s key is maintaining the right relationship of your body to the bar.
When you do the exercise, don’t get too close, as I’ve mentioned many times before, but maintain some distance between your body and the bar at the top to keep the focus more on the biceps and less on the lats. And I promise you, because once again you’re lifting your own body weight, the overload you’re seeking is readily available, making the gains that you’re seeking much easier to come by. Exercise number three is one of my favorite ways to build shoulders, even if you have access to a full gym. Because we’re talking about a closed chain shoulder building exercise using just this wall over here. It’s a handstand push up.
And what’s great about this again, I mentioned closed chain, this is one of the very few opportunities you have to do a shoulder exercise with an overhead pressing motion where your hands are still in contact with the ground, which activates the kinetic chain in a different way. It stabilizes the scapula differently because they’re not in this open chain environment of pressing the bar up overhead, and it still gives you the chance to push the weight of your own body instantly, once again creating that overload that’s necessary to push and drive those new muscle gains. Exercise number four is another one that I would include in any training program, even if I had access to a full gym. And while we’re talking about it, guys, these calisthenics exercises are those that actually should be incorporated into every single training program because they perfectly complement what it is you’re trying to do when you have access to weights. What’s the one we’re talking about here?
It’s the glute hammer bridge you can see with this exercise. What it does is it incorporates both hamstring activation and glute activation and more importantly, ties them together in function. If you can allow the glutes to drive the function of the hamstrings by contracting and stabilizing first, you’re going to get not only a better contraction of the hamstrings, but a safer one where they’re not overloaded with the responsibility that the glutes are not taking part in. The bottom line is this will create gains in the size of both the hamstrings and the glutes. If you perform it regularly and it’s the reason why it sits here squarely at the number four spot on our list of the best calisthenics exercises.
And that brings us to number five, the halfway mark on the list. One of the most classic muscle building exercises out there, and it’s the pushup. But Jeff, you said that pushups are killing my gains. No, my friend, not listening is killing your games. Pushups are actually okay.
Let me explain here for a second, guys. So, we’re talking about pushups. I’ve mentioned that many times in the past why I like them and why don’t first of all, you got to do them right. Those last two inches of extension on the push up matter if you want to get a complete chess contraction, but more importantly, the variation of the pushup matters. Don’t stick to the version that you can do 30, 40, 50 or a hundred reps of.
Instead, find the version that challenges you to do maybe 10 or 15 at most, and we know that there’s plenty of variations out there. It’s going to take the exercise that it can do many of and instantly make it more challenging and difficult. Who cares how many of you actually ultimately do, the fact is, you create the overload that’s necessary to drive the muscle growth that you’re seeking. As room move to exercise. Number six is important to understand that your abs are muscles, too, and they too can grow if you apply the right resistance.
So, the absence of weights, what do you do? You use the weights that you carry around every day and that’s your legs. And the best way to do that is with a hanging leg raise. So, when we go to a hanging exercise here, we take the weight of the legs and lift them up in space, which creates that necessary overload. Remember, resistance is resistance whatever form it comes in, we can create hypertrophy and growth.
When it comes to the abs, it’s actually something that you want because the more they grow, the more they pop, particularly at lower body fat levels. This exercise is a keeper. And speaking of suspending your body in space, the dip is another exercise where we get an opportunity to do that. And again, it’s one that needs to be included regardless of whether you have access to a gym or you don’t. The dip is a great chest, shoulder and tricep builder, and it actually becomes a lot more difficult more quickly rather than pushup.
Because you’re suspending your entire weight of your body in space, rather than having your feet to offload some of your own body weight like we do in the pushup. The fact is, we can do this anywhere, guys whether you have access to a dip station or even as I’ve mentioned many times before, a kitchen coun