4 Essential Calisthenics Exercises For Real World Strength

Ever since I started to study body weight based exercise, I have come to regard 4 exercises as essential for real world strength and performance. In fact, I believe these moves are so important that I would argue that it’s almost impossible to achieve optimal strength without them.

Pushups

I used to be a bench press fanatic, but when I started focusing on push ups my improvement in strength couldn’t be ignored. Everything from punching to pushing around furniture became far more powerful.

The reason for the explosion in strength came from the fact that the push up improved the ability to press without any support against the back or spine. So when force is applied to the hands the force needs to transfer through the entire body and out through the feet. This sort of transfer of force happens with almost all pressing applications in real life, but seldom happens when pressing while sitting or lying down.

Lunges

Squats are great, but we seldom use our legs in a bilateral fashion. Instead we almost always use our legs for locomotion, where our weight shifts from one leg to the other in a rhythmic pattern.

This is why lunges are so essential for leg strength. You can have all of the power in the world in your legs, but if you can’t balance and coordinate that strength for stepping and moving it’s not going to do you much good.

On top of that, lunges allow us to move in a 360 degree field of movement. We can lunge to the front, side, back and diagonal, just like we need to do on the field or on the court.

Bridges

 

All of the strength and power you generate needs to run through your back. More importantly through your spine and the smaller muscles that run along your spine.

Unfortunately our sit-down culture tends to create weakness and stiffness along our spine that can impede performance and increase the risk of injury.

We could do many different exercises to strengthen our back and many more to stretch it out, but why bother when you can do it all with bridges?

Simply pressing the hips into the air as high as possible will provide you with the strength and flexibility you simply must have to optimize your performance.

Pull Ups and recline rows

I used to strengthen my back the same way many gym goers do.
I used seated row machines, pull down machines, cable machines, and hammer strength machines.

All of these devices built up my pulling muscles, but I could only use that strength if my body was supported by pads. When it came time to lift myself into a truck bed or carry a box of books my strength was very limited.

Just like real world pushing activities, pulling activities seldom have external supports to stabilize the body. By using recline rows the entire posterior chain is also activated allowing you to make the most of the pulling strength in the upper body.

Give these moves a regular and frequent place in your workout. I promise your strength and performance will improve because of it.