Progress in calisthenics is driven primarily by improvements in relative strength, which combines increases in muscular strength with efficient bodyweight management. This article explores the key neurological and morphological mechanisms that contribute to getting stronger, such as improved motor unit recruitment, coordination, hypertrophy, and tendon adaptations. Understanding how these mechanisms develop over time helps athletes and coaches structure training to optimize long-term performance.
The Fitness & Fatigue Model is an advanced framework for understanding how training affects our performance over time. Unlike the simpler SRA model, this model breaks performance into two components - fitness (positive adaptations) and fatigue (temporary reduction of performance). In this article, we’ll explore how these two interact and how this understanding can help you plan smarter training.
Muscle contraction is the foundation of all movement and force generation in the human body. This article breaks down how the nervous system initiates contraction and how tension is produced through both active mechanisms like the cross-bridge cycle and passive mechanisms like titin. Understanding this process is essential for grasping how calisthenics and other forms of exercise actually work at a physiological level and how the adaptation to the exercise works, for example by means of muscle hypertrophy and strength.
Understanding how muscles generate tension under different conditions is essential for analyzing movement and optimizing training. In this article, we explore the primary muscle action modes—concentric, eccentric, and isometric—as well as passive stretching, and how they influence force production and exercise performance. Grasping these distinctions provides a foundation for better exercise programming and deeper insight into calisthenics mechanics.
