7 Steps to Building a Science-Based Calisthenics Program

If you want to build a calisthenics training program to learn skills like planche, one arm chin up or handstand push up, but you struggle with feeling confused and overwhelmed with all the possible choices to make and don't know where to start, you’ve come to the right place.

This article is an ultimate, in-depth guide based on years of coaching experience, interviewing experts and reviewing literature. And it’s been written specifically to help people like you on the calisthenics journey.

Structure Seeker (Backstory)

If you are like me, you like things structured. Ever since I started my calisthenics journey in 2014, when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I've always been drawn to some sort of planning.

And sure, sometimes it was "productive procrastination", but I really believe that knowing what I was supposed to do was part of my success in sticking to it and doing the hard, uncomfortable work at the time.

At first, I was not intrinsically motivated to exercise, I did it only for the benefits it was supposed to bring. However, the process of writing down the numbers in my notebook was extremely satisfying. I felt that I was building something. I felt that my hard work was not being forgotten, but was being documented in some way (just like the training videos).

While my training journey has had its ups and downs over the last 13 years I’ve been on it, I have maintained this habit, and I am glad I did.

As I became more educated and experienced, the ability to create training programs that focus on calisthenic elements such as planche, front lever, or muscle up in conjunction with lifting weights and often rehab work (leveraging my physiotherapy background) became my great passion, intellectual pursuit, and primary means of making a living.

Well Designed Program = Game Changer

1. Better results

   Without a doubt, the biggest benefit of a good training program is better results. With a well-designed program, we have a better chance of achieving calisthenics skills, building muscle, and gaining strength over the long term. Correct decisions made over time compound, and having a program is about making calculated, well thought out decisions.

2. Reducing the risk of injury

   I am always careful with throwing around this particular claim, as the topic of injuries is really complex. However, there is no doubt that a well designed training program that incorporates autoregulatory elements is one of the things we can do to keep training workloads in check and mitigate the risk of developing some type of overuse injury.

3. Piece of mind

   When you follow something that has been written and you know it has a good theoretical basis behind it, it can take the constant overthinking and pressure off of you. You start to treat the training process as more of a data collection exercise than a competition. Each training session is a piece of a puzzle, if it goes wrong you can approach it with curiosity, and if some problems occur consistently you can address them in the next phase of the training program.

4. Documentation

   When we follow a training program, we document what we do, which helps us make better decisions in the future. Results become a little more predictable and you know what to avoid. And there is also some psychological value in being able to access your old training numbers and see exactly where you were months and years ago.

Why Is Training Programming Difficult?

In my own training and while working with clients over the years, I have found that the skill of training programming, while very gratifying, can also be very confusing and overwhelming.

Conflicting information, shiny object syndrome and FOMO related to all sorts of training methods and programs, constantly updating sports science literature and new recommendations emerging from it, are some of the problems you may have faced.

In such an environment, it is hard not to overthink and constantly change variables & approaches. And there is a significant danger behind this.

You see, there are activities where we deal with immediate feedback loops. When you play a piece on the piano, you can immediately notice when you make a mistake. And when you practice, you can notice the patterns and correct them as you go.

On the other hand, if you want to become a famous musician, you will see the results of your actions long after you have done them. You may record 4 albums before one of them gets the recognition and attention to your other work that will drive the momentum.

That's an extreme example, because the result in this case is partially related to your musical ability, and a large part is in the shaping industry, economy, trends, and even technology. You don't know if you are getting closer to your goal or if there is a better way, sometimes for years. So you have to stick with something long enough, but never get complacent, and be committed to evolving and iterating.

Training programming, while very practical in nature, is an intellectual domain. We base our actions on data derived from scientific evidence, sometimes more direct - training outcome studies - and sometimes more fundamental - anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, psychology.

We also base our actions on our own data that we collect during the training process. We learn what works, what doesn't, and how our bodies respond to different types of intervention. And we have to do that to some extent because our individual bodies are unique in some ways.

Here is the catch incoming though. The way we validate what we do is through changes that manifest in the biological system that is our body. And just like the economy, our bodies are complicated, dynamic, and they respond to a variety of factors, both internal and external. They are also highly adaptive, but it takes time to see noticeable adaptations.

This is what makes training programming a discipline with a delayed feedback loop. In most cases, you need a fair amount of time to test and validate an idea before you can make more fundamental iterations.

I think that is why so many people struggle with this. Intellectual domains are typically non-linear. The amount of time you put into something doesn't determine your progress. However, training itself, in the sense of "exercising", is a physical domain - which is much more linear, the compound effects and consistency of just sticking to something is what matters.

Therefore, calisthenics programming is a discipline that requires a lot of iteration, testing and entertaining different ideas and points of view. But the way to validate it is through consistency and sticking to an approach over time. And that often leads to conflict.

To give you an example, I may come up with a fantastic way to increase my weighted pull-up. I am going to work my brachioradialis, do partial reps, and train with heavy loads and high frequency.

Sounds great, but now before I have another great strategy - I have to actually test this one, and I won't get an immediate answer. Instead, I'll get a ballpark idea of whether it worked after 2 months, and that's if I roughly control for all the other variables that could be affecting my body (and as mentioned, a lot of things do affect it).

How Do I Use This Article?

In this article, I will do my best to give you 7 concrete steps to building your calisthenics program. Each step is an important piece of the puzzle and should not be ignored.

• Steps 1 and 2 are foundational and will help you set the direction of your training or systematize it.
• Steps 3 and 4 will focus on building an individual training session.
• Steps 5 and 6 will move up the organizational scale and focus on building a training week and consecutive weeks of training.
• Step 7 is about taking a broader look at your training program and applying some long-term strategies to make sure you don't get carried away while being open to iterations.

The interesting analogy is to think of the process of writing a training program as writing a novel. If the core idea is weak, then nothing else will make up for it. If the story is not properly outlined, good writing will not make up for the inconsistencies in the plot. Bad writing can't be made up for by good chapter structure and illustrations.

Finally, if the book is not well written, publishing and marketing will not solve the underlying problem. We'll just be promoting the book, which is substandard, which likely won't make us more recognizable authors if that's our goal.

The point of this analogy is to show how each step builds on the previous one. We can have a pretty good training plan if we focus on steps 1-4 and ignore the rest. On the other hand, we can put all the effort into step 7 and it will not matter at all if the previous steps are not taken care of. So, as you go through these points, just be sure to follow them in order and spend some time thinking about each one as you build your training program.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the pyramid reflects the importance of a step. It rather reflects the order in which things should be planned.

Throughout these steps, we will also go over the actual process of building a sample training program focused on handstand push-ups. Each section devoted to this will be written in this color for better navigation.

Finally, I want you to prepare... Yes, there is A LOT to cover. But that's what it takes to really dive into the subject and build a calisthenics program with an understanding of the principles behind it.

If that's what you're looking for, you won't be disappointed. However, while we've done everything in our power to make this more consumable, both on the content and technical side, I still recommend taking this article piece by piece so you don't get overwhelmed.

You will also find many links in this article that will take you to parts of our fundamentals library. Whenever I mention a concept that is a little less straightforward, you can read more about it and educate yourself on the subject by reading a specific article.

1. Determine Your Stage of Development

What is The Development Stage?

Before we can begin to build a training program, we must determine our development stage, also known as our training status. I use this term rather than "level" for a very important reason: how good you are at calisthenics is not the sole determinant of your developmental stage.

This is quite counterintuitive because we naturally associate performance metrics with the level of development. While this may be a good metric if we are competing, comparing or ranking athletes, it is not helpful in training programming.

How good we are at calisthenics is a product of multiple factors - not just training, but also our body composition, anthropometry and some other genetics related factors. It doesn't map well to the physiological response to hard training, which is what we're trying to do with training programming.

So the other metric that probably comes to your mind is simply - experience, the amount of time we have spent training. Again, this is not the only determining factor. Just like better performance, greater training age correlates with developmental stage, but it is subject to other variables.

What if someone trained for 3 years, but never really tried to progress, never really approached an uncomfortable point in training, and did not train as regularly during that time? Do they have a higher training status than someone who trained for 1 year, but structured their whole life around it?

Well, all of these are very important in determining the stage we are in, but the single factor that should be considered the most important is the rate of development. In other words, how fast someone is able to adapt to training and get better.

In fact, the goal of assessing rate of development is primarily to tailor our subsequent steps to the athlete's characteristics and to set expectations for evaluating the success of certain interventions we make.

Novice & Post-Novice Stage

In our practice at Calintellect, we differentiate between 2 phases of training, each of which has its own early and late sub-phases. The reason for this is that it is redundant to try to divide athletes into many different categories. It is very difficult, and honestly probably impossible, but it is also simply not useful. Novice and post-novice are clearly different, and that distinction can have a real impact on physiology and training program decisions.

This table illustrates the rough metrics we use to evaluate our onboarding athletes. Keep in mind that progression rate is still the most important aspect, but we can add other things into the mix.

These stages are a continuum, and so the transition between them is also fluid. So don't think of them as forms of Robotboy,

but rather the transition of Goku throughout Dragon Ball and DBZ.

Finally, remember that these levels are also contextual. An individual athlete may be a novice in the lower body while being post-novice in the upper body. Some athletes may be novice in their pushing skills, while being post-novice in their pulling skills. A good example of such a situation are climbers who try calisthenics.

This is just another reason why we should not be overly specific when analyzing these stages, but rather look for general trends.

Actionable Step

Analyze your situation using the chart above and determine if you are more in the novice or post-novice stage. Remember that there is a middle ground, but try to assess whether you are in the late novice or rather early post-novice stage.

For the sake of this article, we will assume that you are in the late novice stage or post novice-stage. The goal is to show you as many applicable examples as possible that you can apply to your training.

You can use the following questionnaire to determine your own stage of development.

What is My Stage of Development?

Start

2. Set Long-Term & Short-Term Goals