Saturday, September 21, 2013

How To Start Street Workout - Complete Guide


So, as a request from a lot of you guys, here it is, the Complete Guide on how to start working out with Street Workout!


I'm going to try to keep this as simple as possible, but I'll do my best to give great info!



1- Equipment

I'm guessing a lot of you already know this, but SW requires little to no equipment. However, there are some great stuff you could consider purchasing to make your workouts smoother and fun:

- Pull-up bar: The foundation of calisthenics. If you want to be your best, you will need one of these. You can find then at a local park. But as I'm guessing lots of you workout at home, I really (really) recommend getting a Door Pull-up bar. It's great both for beginners and intermediate (E.g. Iron Gym Bar).


- Dip bar: Again, basic equipment. You can use two steady chairs (I used to do this) or maybe use two tables. Dip bars require imagination!


- Gloves: Even though lots of practitioners see gloves as a pussy equipment, if you are gonna go hardcore, you will need some. Destroying your hand will only prevent you from working out (and we don't want that). The best gloves are the cheapest ones believe it or not.



- Resistance bands: Great piece of equipment  it can add another level of fun and variety to your workouts, I recommend the ones with which you can change the resistance band.

I'm not going to talk about weights yet, just because this is a beginner guide, and beginners should forget about weights in calisthenics for a while!

2- Find Your Max Reps

Warm up, get on the floor and do max pushups, then rest (take your time) and do max pull-ups, then rest again and do max dips. Do the same with knee raises and handstand hold against the wall. Also, find your max in squats and lunges, although this might take some more time. Keep your form perfect. Do not cheat your reps. We need to find your perfect form max, anyone can add 10 reps to an exercise while cheating, but we don't want that.
After you have done that, write them down!

3- Find Your Goals

Do you train for strength? Speed? Looks? Power? Endurance? Just to be healthy? Find your goals and adjust your workouts to that.

4- Eat right

I'm not asking you to go crazy on diet, just adjust it to your goals. If you want to gain muscle mass / weight then eat more than what you're eating now. If you're trying to lose weight, eat less calories! Also, forget about junk food, go step by step. First try not to drink sodas for one week, then try not to eat sugars for another week etc. Keep progressing. You will not progress unless you have a healthy diet that fits your goals. I will go more in depth about diet in another post.


5- Start your workout


This is what I want you to do: Focus on the basics

This is extremely helpful and will get you much faster to were you wanna be. Without the basics in place, your progress will be slower and you will most probably injure yourself. I wish I would have started by doing this.

So yeah, a general guideline would be this:

--> Warm Up
Some basic jumping around, do some easy exercises to get your blood flowing. If you want to, stretch, but don't go crazy, don't injure yourself. At the end I always like to do 50 jumping jacks to push further.


--> Time For The Basics
There are many ways to approach this, but this is my personal one. Now that you know your max reps, cut them in half. So let's say you can do:

14 push-ups
4 pull-ups, 6 dips,

30 squats,

40 lunges,

20 knee raises,
10s handstand hold.


Cut those reps in half, and go one exercise after the other. Do supersets. Your goals here is to go through all the exercises at least 3 times within one hour (adjust the time to your needs). Do this until you get a decent amount of reps on every basic exercise. The strength you need will come, and you'll be a beast. Just be patient.



--> More detailed information about Mastering The Basics: CLICK ME!

6- Adjust The Difficulty

But what if I can't do pull-ups or handstand holds? You might be thinking. Well, lucky guy, the beauty of SW is that it has lots of progressions. Just lower the difficulty of the exercise and do it until you are strong enough. For example:


- Instead of pull-ups do negative pull-ups, then increase the time of the negative

- Instead of handstand do pike pushups, then elevated pike pushups

- Instead of regular pushups, do them on your knees
- Instead of dips on parallel bars, do them on the edge of a chair, later one elevate your feet for greater difficulty

Just find a way to make the exercise easier but challenging to keep progressing.

7- Track Your Progress

This is really important. Track the reps you do on every single workout. Write them down, as well as your sets, feelings (yes, feelings) and personal notes. Every 2-3 days, try as hard as you can to add at least 1 more rep to every exercise. This, my friend, is called progress.

8- Stop Worrying

Don't be afraid of trying. Don't be afraid of failing. Because you will try, you will fail, but you will try again, and again until you get there. If you don't, I'll kick your ass, personally (<3). Stop worrying to working out by yourself, you don't need a fancy chart to know a workout is good.

9- Be Consistent

You will never ever get to where you wanna be if you aren't consistent. Just because you don't see results in the first couple of weeks it doesn't mean you are "not meant for this". Stick to your workout and your diet. I promise you, you will see results.

10- Be Realistic

You will not get like Corey Hall, Swiss, Hannibal, Zyzz etc. in a matter of weeks. Results take time, a lot of time. We are not here to make a 60 day goal or a 90 day goal, we are here to make working out a lifestyle.

11- Start

It's simple, just start. You don't need a Monday or a new year to do so. Just start.
Do what you can with what you have, where you are, and strive for progression, not perfection.

12- Keep It Fun

You will not keep working out if it feels boring, nor will enjoy your workouts. Keep them fun, play some music, challenge yourself, scream, jump around. Working out has to be an enjoyable pain.

13- Get Motivated

Keep connected with other people. Find some workout partners if you can. If not, then go to a forum like this one and get ready to learn! This is my personal inspirational list of people:

- Les Brown
- Eric Thomas
- Barstarzz
- Bar Brothers
- Corey Hall
- Swiss
- Hannibal 

- Zyzz
- Daniel (FitnessFAQ's)
- And many others


I will also treat motivation in another topic soon.



That's it! Now you have no excuses! Let's get this started.

Train Hard.

"First they ask you why you're doing it, then they ask you how you did it".

10 comments:

  1. Felicitaciones Raizo por el blog. Esta muy bueno. En un futuro podrias agregar la rutina que pusiste en el foro de madbarz, asi hay una rutina ya formada para los que recien empiezan. Suerte y te deseo lo mejor!

    Joel (del foro de madbarz)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Muchas gracias! Y sí tengo planeado poner varias rutinas por aquí! :)

      Delete
  2. Saludos desde Terrassa (BCN) y ¡¡¡adelante con el Blog, Raizo.!!!

    Soy un cuarentón que quiere empezar en este mundillo. Digo empezar, aunque siempre he podido hacer unas 10 dominadas seguidas, pero nunca he seguido una rutina. ¡Pues es hora de comenzar, no?!

    ¿Cómo plantearías una rutina básica para ectomorfos el lunes, miércoles y viernes teniendo en cuenta que los lunes juego a fútbol sala y ya castigo bastante las piernas? Los martes, jueves y fin de semana lo tengo casi imposible para hacer nada (trabajo, niños, etc).

    Saludos.






    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hola Alberto! Gracisa por el apoyo! Siento tardar tanto en responder, el blog no avisa de nuevos comentarios...

      Una rutina básica es bastante simple de hacer, para el tronco superior céntrate en:

      - Dominadas
      - Flexiones
      - Dips (ni idea de como se dice en castellano)
      - Handstand (hacer el pino contra una pared. Si no puedes usa una variación más sencilla como las "pike pushups")

      Encuentra tu máximo de repeticiones en cada ejercicio (en el caso del Handstand hablamos de segundos). Una vez tengas el máximo, corta esos números en dos.

      Lo que deberías hacer sería algo así

      - 1/2 Max Dominadas
      - 1/2 Max Flexiones
      - 1/2 Max Dips
      - 1/2 Max Handstand
      (= 1 set)

      Ir haciendo la mitad de tu máximo, sin descansar entre ejercicios. Una vez hayas completado 1 set, descansa unos 2-3 minutos, y repite ese mismo set. El objetivo sería hacer ese set un máximo de veces en 1h o en el tiempo en que quieras entrenar.

      Cada día cambia el "grip" de los ejericios, un día haz flexiones de diamante, otro día hazlas con las manos muy separadas etc. Varía con cada ejericio, intenta seguir un orden lógico (Ej: Dia 1 = normal. Dia 2 = Close grip. Dia 3 = Wide grip).

      Con eso creo que estás servido! Recuerda que tu forma debe ser perfecta, aunque hagas menos repeticiones, la forma es lo que más importa! Y pásatelo bien entrenando, sino, para qué hacerlo?

      Un saludo!

      Delete
  3. Hye.i am 31 years old..my weight is 110kg..i wanna try to do this exercise everyday..i hope all of u can give me moral support...thanks for the information admin..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, the information is really great thanks for sharing. Can you please explain the diet part. I have seen a lot if videos for calisthenics workout and want to do all that stuff. My height is 6 feet and weight is 63 and i am pure vegetarian so please let me know how to gain weight. Thanks in advance, looking forward for some good stuff from you soon.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your explanation is concise and unbiased. I like Calisthenics, especially it has helped me in maintaining health and wellness. I'm interested in Calisthenics because watch some Bar Brothers motivation and transformation videos.

    ReplyDelete
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