Calisthenics is a bodyweight form of training that’s free and can be practically done anywhere. It also doesn’t take up much room to perform. You were probably introduced to calisthenics at a young age, most likely in a PE lesson in school.
You probably don’t relate calisthenics to muscle building, but calisthenics is training, so should be able to build muscle, right?
Overview of muscle building
When your muscles undergo high tension and stress, they get micro-tears, which rebuild days after the continuous movements. This could range from 1 to 4 days, maybe even more, but they usually fully rebuild between 48 and 72 hours, depending on how intense your movements are.
In workout terms, the more volume you have in your workout (reps and sets) to a certain degree, the longer your muscles will take to recover. But this is only if you’re doing your exercises properly with a full range of motion and going close to failure every set.
It also depends on how effective the exercises you’re doing are. For example, if you’re doing exercises that are generally easier, for example, incline pushups, you will be able to do more incline pushups than regular pushups, so more reps. But that doesn’t mean you’ll build as much muscle as if you were meant to do regular pushups.
You can build muscle with calisthenics
By doing exercises like pushups and pullups for your upper body, and jump squats, squats and lunges for your lower body, you can build a good foundation of strength and muscle as a beginner. These are functional movements we often do in our daily lives that you probably don’t even think about.
For example, pullups work your back and biceps, which would help you with picking up groceries, and pushups will increase your pushing strength.
As long as you do enough sets and reps with these exercises, you will build muscle. For a start, you could aim to do 15 sets of pushups, pullups and squats, jump squats or lunges a week, which you should split into 3 full-body workouts a week or 6 upper-lower body workouts a week. Do each exercise close to failure.
Although you can build muscle with calisthenics, how much muscle can you build?
How much muscle you can build with calisthenics
You can build a decent amount of muscle with calisthenics. In fact, I did calisthenics for the first year when I was working out and I was able to get stronger, build more muscle and become more defined (check out my transformation).
However, you will be limited with calisthenics because of progressive overload. This is when you add weight, force increase your reps or sets. However, adding weight is by far the most effective form of progressive overload, and it’s difficult to do it with calisthenics.
But to further improve the effectiveness of calisthenics, you can still progressive overload.
Progressive overload with calisthenics
There are two ways you can progressively overload with calisthenics:
- By adding weights
- By doing harder exercises
If you decide to add weights, which is what I did, when you can do many pushups in a row, for example, 45, you could put water bottles in a backpack, wear it and do pushups with it. I did this and it helped further improve my physique and it got me stronger.
I bought a weight set to use for my progressive overload, and also to do bicep curls and dumbbell rows. But I also used the dumbbells to hold and do jump squats and split squat jumps. These worked my leg muscles more effectively as I was able to do many body-weight jump squats, and adding the resistance made it more of a muscle and strength-building exercise for me instead of an endurance one.
That’s what I would recommend if you can do many reps of the bodyweight exercises, as water bottles may not be enough, especially if you have to hold many and do jump squats unless you prefer to jump with water bottles on your back.
By doing harder exercises, like diamond or wide-grip pushups, you can provide a different stimulus to your muscles, hence making them stronger, or ones you didn’t previously target as much, like your triceps more when you do diamond pushups.
But even though this will get you further, it will only get you so far.
Why you are limited with calisthenics
There are not enough effective calisthenics exercises to target every muscle on your upper and lower body. Firstly, progressive overload is limited for some exercises. For example, there’ll be a point where you can do a lot of bodyweight squats, and you would need to overload them. So you switch to jump squats. And that’s too easy so you switch to weighted jump squats. But the problem is that you can’t go too heavy on jump squats or they’ll become ineffective, and this results in you reaching a plateau.
Secondly, motor recruitment and lack of isolation are other issues. Individual muscles like your triceps or shoulders may be weaker than the rest and need to be worked on, but there are limited calisthenics exercises to isolate them effectively. But pushups can’t effectively do that. Although you could do diamond or pike pushups, there’s only so far you could get with them.
This applied to me when I did weighted calisthenics. I was stuck at the same weight and reps with my pushups, then when I began to work out in the gym and do exercises like the bench press, pec flyes and tricep extensions, my weighted pushup number went up, showing that the gym was able to further make me stronger.
How much muscle you can build compared to the gym
You will build more muscle in the gym because there is a wider range of exercises which are dedicated to specific muscles. For example, you may only be able to do pull-ups at home, which is a potent exercise for your back. But in the gym, you can do rows which work on your lower back and is another functional movement you do in your daily life. You can increase your leg strength with back squats that can be overloaded effectively to strengthen your lower body instead of being limited to jump squats or lunges. Muscles like your hamstrings and hips are difficult to target when doing calisthenics, but the gym has machines dedicated to those muscles.
You can do more movements in the gym, and a good example of this is with your chest. At home, you can only do the pushing movement to work your chest from pushups, but not the closing motion with your chest, which can be worked by doing pec flyes.
There are many more examples I could list, but this shows that by working out in the gym, you can maximise your potential, and get even more gains. And this is coming from someone who has done calisthenics and weighted calisthenics for 2 years and has only been going to the gym for 3 months (from January 2025 up to the time this article has been uploaded) and has seen impressive gains.
Takeaway
Calisthenics is a great start for your workout journey, and you can reap solid results, building a foundation for progression. You could mix calisthenics with the gym if you have access to one, or if you think you’ve reached your “calisthenics peak” (you’re not seeing any progression), even with weighted calisthenics, then you could switch to the gym only, and do calisthenics once in a while, which is what I do.
If you’re doing calisthenics, always prioritise exercises like pushups, pullups, lunges or lunge jumps, squats or squat jumps, planks and sit-ups.
