Year: 2025

2025 was the first year I started calisthenics. Well, technically it was 2024, and I only started posting content online after about 6 months.

It was hard. I had no idea what I was doing. The biggest help was the Overcoming Gravity (opens in a new tab) book. It taught me the basics.

This was my first viral video. It shows me doing basic exercises like push-ups and pull-ups.

I unlocked all the skills shown in the video within about 3-4 months of starting calisthenics. I believe this was due to my existing base strength. Without previous fitness experience, it could have taken much longer.

There are a couple of calisthenics skills that impress the general public, and the human flag is one of them. In fact, out of everything I posted this year, this is the clip I get the most comments about.

Which is funny, because not many people train for it. Most athletes unlock the human flag automatically once they have sufficient strength.

It also isn't a skill worth spending time on, at least not in the beginning, because you won't get much out of it. Push-ups lead to pike push-ups, which eventually lead to handstand push-ups. The human flag, on the other hand, won't build any pushing or pulling strength. That's why I eventually stopped training it.

This is one of the best examples of how you should NOT be training.

Negatives are fine, but me jumping around and trying to perform a skill without any control is a recipe for injury.

One-arm push-ups were always a skill I wanted to unlock. At this stage I had no idea that there are many different difficulty levels.

And the gap between a "technically" one-arm push-up and the strict version is huge.

I think anyone can unlock this weird and twisted one-arm version once they can do 20 normal push-ups.

A lot of people who want to get into calisthenics don't want to stop training with weights, which I understand. But mixing weights and calisthenics is almost never a good idea, because they interfere with each other. That's why I stopped lifting since starting calisthenics.

Nevertheless, I wanted to see if my shoulder press had improved due to constant handstand and other overhead training.

And to my surprise, it did. My PR went from 90kg to 110kg in a short period of time, without doing any lifting.

However, I don't know if that was due to the overhead training or improved shoulder mobility, because at that time I spent a lot of time just doing shoulder mobility drills.

And I think that was the main contributor to the increase in performance, rather than the calisthenics skills themselves.

I never thought of doing ring push-ups on the floor. I didn't even know it was a thing.

I saw a challenge on TikTok and wanted to try it myself. Little did I know at the time that this would become my favourite way of doing push-ups.

And contrary to popular belief, this exercise is not as dangerous as it looks. That's because you know WHEN you are going to fall, and you know HOW to fall, so it is no more dangerous than handstand training.

It is hard, though. It took me 4 months of training to get them right. That's because I wasted a lot of time doing exercises that don't really contribute much.

The L-sit is another basic exercise. So if you are not overweight and have sufficient mobility, it shouldn't be that hard. But if you are like me, then this exercise is incredibly hard.

That's because it requires compressing and pushing your whole bodyweight, which in my case was 136 kg, with straight arms.

A handstand, for example, also requires pushing. However, most of the weight in a handstand is supported by your skeleton. If you can find good alignment, the strength component reduces considerably.

The L-sit, on the other hand, is purely strength. If you can do one, congrats, you are strong.

At this stage of training, normal planks started to become easy, which is why I wanted to find an alternative.

And standing ab rollouts are a good one. However, I made a mistake here as well, because it was too soon to train them before mastering the superman plank. In my defence, at the time I didn't even know there was an exercise called the superman plank.

But it kinda makes sense, because a superman plank basically looks like an ab rollout without the ab roller.

The one-arm dead hang is an exercise that leads towards the one-arm pull-up. But again, it was a big mistake to learn it so soon. If you can't do at least 10 strict pull-ups, then this exercise is pointless.

It will only injure you.

I remember having an explosive push-up variation in my workout from day one of starting calisthenics. I first started on my knees, then moved to this version.

If I had the chance to redo it, I wouldn't do that anymore. Explosive movements look cool, but they put enormous stress on your body. Plyometric calisthenics, sometimes referred to as freestyle calisthenics, is an advanced version of calisthenics and should be progressed towards only once you have a good base.

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to do a pull-up with 4 fingers. I guess just for views... But the day after this video, I felt huge pain in my inner elbow.

It was medial epicondylitis, also known as golfer's elbow.

I had golfer's elbow before, and it usually got better after a couple of months. But this one was much nastier. It took me a whole year to fully recover.

And during this time I couldn't do any pulling movements.

I don't really do endurance training, and doing dozens of push-ups is not the most effective way of training anyway. Nevertheless, I wanted to know how many I could do in one go.

So this was my first attempt at maxing out my push-ups. I did 41 in this video, which I found very interesting:

"How can I do over 40 push-ups, if I never trained for them?"

The most push-ups I had done before was 10 or so, which makes me think that if you build pushing strength, it transfers to endurance as well.

I never took dragon flags seriously; to me they seemed like a goofy exercise.

So this was my first attempt. Clearly, my form is not good. You should keep your body straight the whole time.

It is also a very advanced and technical exercise. You need to know exactly which muscles to engage and how much, and most people, including me, are simply too weak to do them properly.

On top of that, there is a big gap between negatives and doing them for reps. And for most people, even the negative is already too difficult.

The bent-arm handstand is a progression towards the bent-arm handstand press, and then the handstand press. But to be fair, I don't think it is the best approach.

It is better to master the handstand first, then learn the handstand push-up, and only then the press to handstand.

That said, this version is actually easier than a full handstand, because it requires less balance, even though the strength component is higher.

At this stage I could do a 15 second handstand, and the next progression is the handstand push-up. The wall handstand push-up is the intermediate step.

But again, I made a mistake, because the wall HSPU was too advanced for me. You can see in the video that most of the pushing movement comes from the chest, but for the HSPU we need shoulder strength.

So the best first progression for the HSPU is the pike push-up, not the wall HSPU.

Me doing a handstand for 15 seconds.

If you have watched all the clips, you would have noticed that all my handstand attempts were on the bars. That's because, for me, doing a handstand on bars was always easier.

The problem with this approach is that handstand gains on bars do not transfer to the hands. Balance training is even more specific than strength training. That's why it is so important to train the handstand under different conditions: even surfaces, uneven surfaces, eyes open, eyes closed, indoors, outdoors, and so on.

I could hold a handstand on bars for 15 seconds, but couldn't on my hands at all. So it took me another 6 months to learn the handstand on my hands.

HSPU negatives are another progression towards the handstand push-up. But as always, this progression was too early.

First master the handstand and the pike push-up; you can work on them simultaneously. Then the wall handstand push-up, and only then go for HSPU negatives.

We all know that a slow and controlled tempo is better than fast and uncontrolled, at least for strength. But if that is the case, then what if we increase the tempo to ridiculous levels?

The one minute push-up is an example of this. It kinda looks like an isometric, but it isn't, because you are still moving through the whole range of motion, just very, very slowly.

I have only tried it a couple of times because it is very exhausting. You do one rep and you are done for the day.

It is definitely a useful tool in the arsenal, but I wouldn't make this exercise a permanent part of the program. My recommendation is to do it once in a while, just like maxing out your push-ups.

One of the advantages of training with a partner or a coach is that they can help you find the balance point by holding your legs.

Unfortunately, I don't have anyone like that, so the idea was to use a pull-up bar as assistance.

To be fair, I am a little bit skeptical about this, because it is dangerous and its effectiveness is questionable.

I personally tried it a couple of times, but then stopped. So I don't recommend this anymore; there are better and safer ways to practise the handstand.

The one-arm dead hang with weights, which is a totally useless exercise.

If you can hold a dead hang, the next progression is not to increase resistance but to unlock the active hang, where you engage your scapulae and lats.

You could argue that added weight is good for grip strength, which is kinda true. But if you want to focus on grip, a better approach is direct forearm training, like wrist pronation, supination, and similar exercises. That is exactly what I did, and it is why my grip got strong enough to hold a thick 20kg plate.

The back bridge isn't the most popular exercise in calisthenics. Maybe it resembles yoga too much, or maybe it is too easy, I don't know. But in my opinion it is worth learning, because it targets the full posterior chain, and there aren't many calisthenics exercises that do that.

I never really trained for the back bridge specifically, so I was very surprised that I managed to do it on the first try.

Of course, the form is quite poor, but technically it is a back bridge.

I made a few embarrassing videos, but this one sits at the top.

These are assisted tucked planche attempts. The main problem is that I set up the band diagonally, when it should be vertical.

In other words, I want to lean forward, but the band is pulling me backwards, which does not make any sense. I don't know what I was thinking.

I never tried it again, because these attempts put so much stress on my elbows that I was worried they would do real damage. So I stopped doing this exercise altogether. And besides, it was too soon for me to train for the planche anyway.

Finger push-ups are a good way to test your finger and forearm strength.

They are one of those deceptive exercises that look easy but are not, because finger strength is a different type of strength that you have to train specifically.

So if you don't have good conditioning, this exercise can be dangerous. I remember spraining my thumb while doing it. That's why I suggest starting with finger planks first, to build endurance and strength in the tendons, and only then moving on to push-ups.

It was very hard to unlock the one-arm push-up, but once I had, adding extra reps one after another was quite easy. I kept it in my workout and went from a couple of reps to 10 in about 4 months.

Finally, just before Christmas, I unlocked the superman push-up. However, once I unlocked it I stopped doing them, because as I said earlier, explosive movements put a lot of stress on the body, so the risk-to-reward ratio is very small.

After one year of calisthenics, these were my achievements.